PAUL YATES WAS about thirty, lanky, with thinning hair and a thick beard, conveying an overall pleasant good-guy appearance. He shook her hand.
“I’m Paulie.”
She offered coffee and Yates asked for orange soda.
“Coffee or water. That’s what I’ve got,” she said with a laugh. “Your choice.”
He said, “Water would be great.”
“Hang on a sec,” she said.
She went out to the kitchen, got a glass bottle of water out of the fridge, and returned with it to her office.
“Premium H2O,” she said, passing the bottle to Yates. “Comes from the heart of a glacier, I think. Or else the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. I don’t really know,” she said with a grin.
He grinned back and thanked her, and Yuki showed Yates the tape recorder.
“I’ll be taping. Any problem?”
“None that I can think of.”
Yuki switched on the small recorder. Yates got comfortable in the chair across the desk from her and then reached over the desk and turned one of the framed photos toward him.
“Nice-looking guy,” said Yates. “Your husband?”
Yuki took the photo out of his hand, put it back under her desk lamp, and said, “Let’s talk about you.”
“If we must,” he said.
Paul Yates had come to San Francisco from Spokane five years before. He currently had a girlfriend, Amy, and they shared a rescue dog, Bosco. Yates was a copywriter at the Ad Shop and had won an award for last year’s Skipperoo dog food campaign. He knew Marc, but they didn’t hang out together.
Yuki said, “Paulie, I need to ask you about Briana Hill.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Did Marc tell you that she had raped him?”
“No. I only heard about it when the police started interviewing people at the agency.”
“And what did you think when you heard there had been a sexual assault?”
“I try to ignore gossip and office politics. I’ve never known of anything good to come out of either.”
“Good call,” Yuki said with a smile. “Why do you think Marc thought I should speak with you?”
“Probably because I went out with Briana. Before Amy. Before Marc, too.”
Yuki asked, “Can you tell me about dating Briana?”
“There’s not much to tell,” said Yates. “I only went out with her once.”
“Did you have sex with her?”
“Christ. You want me to talk about that?”
“Please.”
His expression tightened. He scowled.
He said, “What happens if I tell you? You’re going to ask me to testify, aren’t you?”
“Paul. I can’t say at this minute. Tell me what happened with you and Briana Hill. You’re in my office of your own volition. You’re here to help me, but you aren’t required to talk to me unless you committed a crime. Did you commit a crime?”
“Hell no. Unless going out with a psycho is a crime.”
“You’re saying that Briana Hill is a psycho?”
Paul Yates started shaking his head. Then, “Look, I don’t know you and this is embarrassing. I’ve never told anyone, and I don’t want to ever tell anyone else. Not for any reason.”
“What happened, Paulie? Did she threaten you?”
“It was … terrifying.”
“I’m listening,” Yuki said.
Yates reached over and pressed the Stop button on the tape recorder. Yuki had to let him do it.
“I’ll tell you, but I am not going to testify,” he said.
“Okay. Okay, Paulie. Just tell me.”
CHAPTER 14
YUKI AND MARC Christopher were taking the elevator to the fourth floor of the Civic Center Courthouse, where she would be making her case to the grand jury within the next twenty minutes.
The grand jury hearing was a trial run for the prosecutor. Yuki would present the case against Briana Hill, her few witnesses would testify, and she would introduce her evidence. All of this would be done fairly quickly, and with absolute secrecy.
There would be no judge, no defendant, no other attorneys. Yuki would be entirely in charge of this presentation. Unlike with a petit jury, where the jurors had to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, here the grand jurors—or twelve of nineteen of them—had only to find probable cause that Briana Hill had raped Marc Christopher.
If they found probable cause, they would indict and the case would go forward to trial.
The pressure was on Yuki, and on Marc.
While Len Parisi had always shown confidence in Yuki, she had lost big cases. But for the most part, the losses were not because of error, lack of preparation, or poor skills. Once, a star witness for the prosecution had committed suicide; another had choked on the stand and changed her testimony; and in one case the defense had sprung a surprise witness who landed a crushing blow to the prosecution’s case.
Still, Yuki had notched several important wins. Although Parisi was skeptical about the Hill case, he had given her the green light to go to the grand jury. She was sure she was right to have fought for the case.
The elevator lurched and stopped at the third floor. People got out, replaced by others squeezing in, and once the doors closed, the car continued its ascent.
Standing beside Yuki, Marc Christopher was dressed in a navy-blue suit and blue-patterned tie. His hair was recently cut and he’d had a good shave. Yuki was wearing a blue suit, very much like the one Marc was wearing. No tie for her, but a strand of angel skin coral beads Brady had given her as a wedding gift. Unlike Yuki, Marc looked completely numb.
Yuki suspected he’d popped a Xanax or two. If so, he’d made a mistake. Yuki needed him to bring the story of the sexual assault to life for the jury. He had to emote. He had to be able to describe the damaging effects of what he had been through.
Yuki wanted to ask him again if he was feeling okay, but at this point it no longer mattered.
Unless Marc said in the next few minutes, “I’ve changed my mind. I want to drop the charges,” the show would go on. She was ready. She could only hope that Marc would be ready, too.
The elevator doors slid open on the fourth floor. Yuki and Marc exited the elevator and walked down the hallway toward the grand jury room.
Her three other witnesses were waiting in the corridor outside the courtroom door.
Phyllis Chase, the arresting officer in the case, was in uniform. Paul Yates, the copywriter who had had one date with Briana Hill, wore denim and a panicked look. And Frank Pilotte, the tech specialist who would run Marc’s homemade rape video for the jury and testify to its authenticity, had the calm presence Yuki had hoped for in an expert witness.
Yates and Christopher acknowledged each other with nods. Pilotte held open the heavy wooden door for Yuki, and she entered the grand jury room. It was a modern courtroom: wood paneling and white-painted plaster under a drop ceiling lit with embedded fluorescent fixtures.
The judge’s bench, at one end of the room, would not be in use. Instead a massive wooden table had been set up facing the jurors. Yuki took her place behind the table, and her four witnesses sat alongside her.
The nineteen jurors had been impaneled for almost a month and had heard a hundred cases in that time. And still Yuki was pretty sure they hadn’t ever heard a case like this one.
Yuki felt almost calm. She was prepared. Thirty minutes from now she would know if she would be putting Briana Hill on trial for sexual assault in the first degree.
CHAPTER 15
YUKI MADE HER succinct opening remarks to the jurors, each word carefully chosen.
“It may be hard to imagine a woman forcing a strong young man into an act of sexual intercourse against his will.
“Now imagine that this woman is his boss, that she had a gun in her hand, and that she threatened to blow him away if he didn’t perform. In a few minutes Marc Christopher, the victim, will tell you exactly what happened to him. But first I want you to hear from Inspector Chase, of Sex Crimes, who investigated this case.”