The 6th Target (18 page)

“I’d say yes.”

“Did he know you?”

“No, sirree.”

“Did you provoke Mr. Brinkley into shooting you?”

“Just the opposite.”

“So you’d have to say that the shooting was basically a random act based upon no foundation whatsoever?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so? You’d never met him before, and he was saying things to you that just didn’t make sense. You
saw
him shoot four people before he aimed his gun at you, didn’t you? Isn’t there a simple word that describes someone who acts this way? Wouldn’t that word be ‘insane’?”

“Objection, Your Honor — argumentative, and that’s a legal question for the jury.”

“Sustained.”

Yuki sat down, slumped back in her seat. Mickey saw her eyes dart from him to the jury to the witness and back to him.
Good. She was rattled
.

“Did Mr. Brinkley seem
sane
to you, Dr. Washburn?”

“No.”

“Thank you. I have no further questions.”

“Ms. Castellano, redirect?” the judge asked.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Yuki got out of her chair and approached her witness, Mickey noting Yuki’s furrowed brow, her fingers knit together. He knew that Yuki was big with hand gestures and was probably training herself to keep her hands still.

“Dr. Washburn,” she said, “do you know what Alfred Brinkley was thinking when he shot you?”

“
No
. I absolutely do
not
,” Claire said emphatically.

“In your
opinion
, Doctor, when Mr. Brinkley shot you, isn’t it likely that he knew the wrongfulness of his acts,
that he knew what he was doing was wrong
?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Dr. Washburn. I have nothing else for this witness, Your Honor.”

As the judge dismissed Claire Washburn, Mickey Sherman spoke softly to his client, using his hand as a shield, as though what he was saying was deeply private.

“That went pretty well, Fred, don’t you think?”

Brinkley nodded like a bobblehead doll, poor guy steeped in medication, Mickey hearing Yuki Castellano say, “Please call Sergeant Lindsay Boxer to the stand.”

I’D JUST SPENT A ROCKY NIGHT on Cindy’s couch, waking up at odd hours to patrol the halls of the Blakely Arms. I’d checked the emergency exits, the stairwells, the roof, and the basement, finding no prowler, only a lone elderly woman doing her laundry at two a.m. When the sun came up, I made a quick pit stop at home to change my clothes, and now, sitting outside the courtroom, a trickle of adrenaline entered my bloodstream as the bailiff called my name.

I walked inside through the double doors and the vestibule, and down the well-worn oak floorboards to the witness stand, where I was sworn in.

Yuki greeted me formally and questioned me to establish my credentials.

Then she said, “Do you recognize the man who confessed to the ferry shootings?”

I said “yes” and pointed out the cleaned-up sack of shit sitting next to Mickey Sherman.

In truth, Alfred Brinkley looked very different than he had when I’d seen him last. His face had filled out, his darting eyes were still. Shaved and sheared, he looked six years younger than when he’d confessed to the
Del Norte
killings.

Scarily, he looked harmless now, like everyone’s cousin Freddy, just an average joe.

Yuki spun toward me, pivoting on her pointy heels, asking, “Were you surprised when the defendant rang your doorbell?”

“I was kind of
stunned
, actually, but when he called up to my window and asked me to come downstairs and arrest him, I was ready to go.”

“And what did you do?”

“I disarmed him, cuffed him, then called for backup. Lieutenant Warren Jacobi and I brought him to the police station, where Mr. Brinkley was booked and interrogated.”

“Did you read Mr. Brinkley his rights?”

“Yes, outside my doorway and again at the station.”

“Did he seem to comprehend what you were saying?”

“Yes. I gave him a mental-status test to make sure he knew his name, where he was, and what he had done. He waived his rights in writing and told me again that he’d shot and killed those people on the
Del Norte
.”

“Did he seem sane to you, Sergeant?”

“He did. He was agitated. He was unkempt. But Lieutenant Jacobi and I found him to be lucid and aware, which is what I call sane.”

“Thank you, Sergeant Boxer,” Yuki said. “Your witness.”

The eyes of the jurors swung toward the dapper man sitting beside Alfred Brinkley. Mickey Sherman stood, fastened the middle button of his smart charcoal-gray suit jacket, gave me a dazzling smile.

“Hi, Lindsay,” he said.

I’D LEANED ON MICKEY some months ago when I was accused of police brutality and wrongful death, took his advice on how to testify, even what to wear on the stand and what tone of voice to use. And he hadn’t let me down.

If it hadn’t been for Mickey, I don’t know what I’d be doing now, but it wouldn’t be police work, of that I was sure.

I felt a wave of affection for the man who’d once been my champion, but I put up a mental shield against his wicked charm and focused on the pictures that had never left my mind: Alfred Brinkley’s victims. The little boy who had died in the hospital. Claire, gripping my hand, thinking she was dying as she asked after her son.

And Sherman’s client was guilty of all of it.

“Sergeant Boxer,” Sherman said, “it’s rare for a killer to turn himself in to a police officer at home, isn’t it?”

“I’d say so.”

“And Fred Brinkley specifically wanted to turn himself in to you, isn’t that true?”

“That’s what he told me.”

“Did you know Mr. Brinkley?”

“No, I did not.”

“So why did Mr. Brinkley ask you to arrest him?”

“He told me that he’d seen me on TV, asking for information about the ferry shooter. He said he took that to mean that he should come to my home.”

“How did he find out where you live?”

“He said that he’d gone to a library and used a computer. Got my address off the Internet.”

“You’ve testified that you disarmed Mr. Brinkley. You took away his gun, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Same gun he used to do the shootings?”

“Yes.”

“And he’d brought a written confession with him to your doorstep, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So to get this all perfectly straight,” Mickey said, “my client heard your appeal to the public on television and interpreted that as an appeal to him
personally
. He Googled your name in a library and went to your front door
as if you’d ordered takeout
. And he was still carrying the handgun he used to kill four people.”

“Objection, Your Honor. Argumentative,” Yuki said.

“I’ll allow it, but please get to the point, Mr. Sherman.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Mickey walked over to me, gave me his full-bore, brown-eyed “you can trust me” look.

“Here’s what I’m getting at, Sergeant. Wouldn’t you agree that for a killer to keep the murder weapon and bring it to the home of a homicide inspector is not only unusual but
off the wall
?”

“It’s unusual, I’ll give you that.”

“Sergeant, did you ask Mr. Brinkley why he shot those people?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he say?”

I wanted to dig in, refuse to answer Mickey Sherman’s question, but of course I didn’t have that option. “He said he did it because voices told him to do it.”

“Voices in his head?”

“That’s how I interpreted his statement.”

Mickey smiled at me as if to say,
Oh, yes. The defense is having a very good day
. “That’s all I have. Thanks very much, Lindsay.”

YUKI SAT ACROSS FROM ME at a table by the door at MacBain’s. She looked more than just worried. She looked as if she were beating herself up horribly.

“I should have done a redirect,” Yuki said to me after we’d ordered. The place was absolutely jammed with lawyers and their clients, cops, and Hall of Justice workers of all kinds. Yuki had to raise her voice to be heard over the din. “I should have asked you what you
thought
when Brinkley told you about the voices.”

“Who cares what I thought? It’s no big deal.”

“Oh, it’s a big deal, all right.” Yuki raked her hair back with her hands. “Sergeant Boxer, what did you think when Mr. Brinkley said he was hearing voices directing him to kill?”

I shrugged.

“Come on, Lindsay. You would have said that you thought he was already staging his insanity defense.”

“Yuki, you can’t nail everything down. You’re doing a first-class job. I mean,
really
.”

Yuki snorted. “Mickey is successfully flipping every negative into a positive. ‘My client killed people for no reason? That means he’s insane, right?’ ”

“That’s all he’s got. Look, Brinkley seemed rational, and I said so. The jury’s not going to take Brinkley’s
word
that he was hearing voices.”

“Yeah.” Yuki shredded her paper napkin. “I wonder what Marcia Clark’s best friend said to her just before the jury found O. J. Simpson ‘not guilty.’ ‘Don’t worry, Marcia. Nobody’s going to care about that glove.’ ”

I sat back in my seat as Syd brought our burgers and piles of fries. “Hey,” I said, “I saw Mickey on the steps of the courthouse, mobbed by reporters. Funny how much we loved his magic act with the press last summer. Now I think,
You media hog
.”

Yuki didn’t laugh.

“Yuki,” I said, circling her wrist with my fingers, “you’re coming off smart, on top of your case, and most of all you sound
right
.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, “I’m done whining. Thanks for your testimony. Thanks for your support.”

“Do something for me, girlfriend.”

“Hmmm?”

“Put some calories inside your body and have a little faith in yourself.”

Yuki lifted her hamburger, then put it back down on the plate without biting into it. “You know what’s going on with me, Linds? I made a mistake. In a case like this one, you don’t make mistakes.
Not even one
. And for the first time, I really see that I could lose.”

“MACKLIN JUST CALLED,” Jacobi said the minute I returned to the squad room after lunch. Conklin and I walked Jacobi to his office, Jacobi saying, “A kid was snatched off the street in Los Angeles three hours ago. A little boy. Described as some kind of math genius.”

I didn’t even sit down.

I fired a flurry of questions at Jacobi: Had the child been abducted by someone in a black van? Was there any evidence at the scene? A tag number, a description — anything? Had the parents of the child been checked out? Had they heard from the kidnapper? In short, did this abduction resemble the kidnapping of Madison Tyler?

“Boxer, curb your enthusiasm, will ya?” Jacobi said, chuck-ing the remains of his cheeseburger into the trash can. “I’ll give you everything I’ve got, every single detail.”

“Well, make it snappy.” I laughed. I sat down and leaned forward, putting my elbows on the desk as Jacobi filled us in.

“The parents were inside their house, and the kid was playing in the backyard,” Jacobi told us. “Mother heard a squeal of brakes. She was on the phone, looked out the window onto the street, and saw a black van speeding around the corner. She didn’t think too much about it. A couple of minutes later, she looked into the backyard, realized the boy was gone.”

“The kid wandered out to the front yard?” Conklin asked.

“Possibly. The gate was open. Kid could’ve opened it — he’s smart, right? — or maybe someone else did it. The LAPD put out an Amber Alert, but the father, not taking any chances, called the Feds.”

Jacobi pushed a fax toward me, headed with the logo of the FBI. The second page was a photocopy of an adorable little boy — big round eyes, dimples, looked to be a perfect little sweetheart.

“The boy’s name is Charles Ray, age six. The LAPD did an analysis of the tire marks outside the Ray house, and they match the type that comes standard with a late-model Honda minivan. That said, there’s no proof that the vehicle was involved in the abduction. They haven’t pulled any useful prints off the gate.”

“Did the child have a nanny?” I asked.

“Yes. Briana Kearny. She was at the dentist when Charlie was taken. Her alibi checks out. It’s a long shot, Boxer. Maybe the same party who kidnapped Madison Tyler is involved, maybe not.”

“We should interview the parents,” Conklin said.

“Like I could stop the two of you if I wanted to,” said Jacobi. “Pair of freakin’ attack dogs.”

Jacobi pushed two more sheets of paper over to our side of his desk — electronic airline tickets in my name and Conklin’s, San Francisco to LAX, round-trip.

“Listen,” Jacobi said, “until we learn otherwise, we’re treating this boy’s abduction as part of the Tyler case, so report back to Lieutenant Macklin. And
keep me in the loop
.” Jacobi looked at his watch. “It’s two fifteen. You could be in LA by four or so.”

SQUAD CARS WERE PARKED on the one-lane street outside the Rays’ wood-frame cottage. It was one of several dozen similar houses butting up against one another, lining both sides of the street.

Cops were talking on the sidewalk. They greeted us when we flashed our badges. “The mother’s home,” a uniform told us.

Eileen Ray came to the door. She was white, early thirties, five nine, looked to be about eight months pregnant and terribly, terribly vulnerable. Her dark hair was banded up in a ponytail, and her face was raw and red from crying.

I introduced Conklin and myself, and Mrs. Ray invited us inside, where an FBI tech was wiring up the phone. “The police have been . . . wonderful, and we’re so grateful,” Mrs. Ray said, indicating a sofa and chair for us to sit on.

The living room was crammed with stenciled cabinets, baskets, birdhouses, and dried flowers, and folded-down cardboard boxes were stacked on the floor near the kitchen table. The pervasive fragrance of lavender added to the gift-shop effect of the Ray abode.