The 6th Target (26 page)

“He’s lapping up the attention,” I said to Conklin.

“It’s a good thing I’m not in the box with him,” Conklin said. “I couldn’t handle this.”

“This” was Waller’s smugness and affability. Instead of smart-mouthing or showing defiance, Waller talked to Stanford and Thomson as if they were colleagues, as if he expected to have an ongoing relationship with them after he’d finished the clever telling of his story.

Macklin, Conklin, and I sat riveted to our chairs as Waller caressed their names: André Devereaux, Erica Whitten, Madison Tyler, and a little girl named Dorothea Alvarez from Mexico City.

A child we hadn’t known about.

A child who might still be alive.

While he sipped his coffee, Waller told Stanford and Thomson where the three missing children were living as sex toys in rich men’s homes around the globe.

Waller said, “It was my wife’s idea to import pretty European girls, place them as nannies with good families. Then find buyers for the children. I worked with the nannies. That was my job. My girls were proudest of the kids who were the most beautiful, intelligent, and gifted. And I encouraged the girls to tell me all about them.”

“So the nannies fingered the children, but they never knew what you planned to do with them,” Thomson said.

Renfrew smiled.

“How did you find your buyers?” Stanford asked.

“Word of mouth,” Renfrew said. “Our clients were all men of wealth and quality, and I always felt the children were in good hands.”

I wanted to throw up, but I gripped the arms of my chair, kept my eyes on the screen in front of me.

“You kept Madison for almost two weeks,” Thomson said. “Seems kind of risky.”

“We were waiting for a money transfer,” Waller said regretfully. “A million five had been pledged for Madison, but the deal stalled. We had another offer, not as good, and then the original buyer came back into play. Those few extra days cost us everything.”

“About the abduction of Madison and Paola,” Stanford said, “so many people were in the park that day. It was broad daylight. A very impressive snatch, I have to say. I’d really like to know how you pulled that off.”

“Ah, yes, but I have to tell you, it almost went all to hell,” Waller said, exhaling loudly at the memory, seeming to think through how he wanted to tell the story.

“We drove the van to the Alta Plaza playground,” said the psychopath in the gray herringbone suit.

“I asked Paola and Madison to come with us. See, the children trusted the nannies, and the nannies trusted
us
.”

“Brilliant,” said Stanford.

Renfrew nodded, and having received so much encouragement, he wanted to go on. “We told Paola and Madison that there had been an emergency at the Tyler house, that Elizabeth Tyler had taken a fall.

“I knocked out Madison with chloroform in the backseat, the precise plan we’d used with three other abductions. But Paola tried to grab the steering wheel. We could have all been killed. I had to take her down fast. What would you have done?” Renfrew asked Dave Stanford.

“I would have smothered you at birth,” Stanford said. “I wish to God I could have done that.”

THE GALLERY WAS JAM-PACKED with law clerks, crime reporters, families of the victims, and dozens of people who were on the
Del Norte
when Alfred Brinkley had fired his fatal shots. Hushed voices rose to a rumble as two guards escorted Brinkley into the courtroom.

There he was!

The ferry shooter.

Mickey Sherman stood as Brinkley’s cuffs and waist chains were removed. He pulled out a chair for his client, who asked him, “Am I going to get my chance?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Sherman said to his client. “You sure about this, Fred?”

Brinkley nodded. “Do I look okay?”

“Yep. You look fine.”

Mickey sat back and took a good look at his pale, skin-and-bones client with the patchy haircut, razor rash, and shiny suit hanging from a scarecrow frame.

General rule is that you don’t put your client on the stand unless you’re sucking swamp water, and even then, only when your client is credible and sympathetic enough to actually sway the jury.

Fred Brinkley was nerdy and dull.

On the other hand, what did they have to lose? The prosecution had eyewitness testimony, videotape, and a
confession
. So Sherman was kicking the idea around. Avoiding big risk versus a chance that Fred-a-lito-lindo could convince the jurors that the noise in his head was so
crushing
, he was out of his mind when he fired on those poor people. . . .

Fred had a right to testify in his own defense, but Sherman thought he could dissuade him. He was still undecided as the jurors settled into the jury box and the judge took the bench. The bailiff called the court into session, and a blanket of expectant silence fell over the wood-paneled courtroom.

Judge Moore looked over the black rims of his thick glasses and asked, “Are you ready, Mr. Sherman?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Sherman said, standing up, fastening the middle button of his suit jacket. He spoke to his client. “Fred . . .”

“AND SO AFTER YOUR SISTER’S ACCIDENT, you went to Napa State Hospital?” Sherman asked, noting that Fred was very much at ease on the witness stand. Better than he’d expected.

“Yes. I had myself committed. I was cracking up.”

“I see. And were you medicated at Napa?”

“Sure, I was. Being sixteen is bad enough without having your little sister die in front of your eyes.”

“So you were depressed because when your sister was hit by the boom and went overboard, you couldn’t save her?”

“Your Honor,” Yuki said, coming to her feet, “we have no objection to Mr. Sherman’s testifying, but I think he should at least be sworn in.”

“I’ll ask another question,” Sherman said, smiling, cool, just talking to his client. “Fred, did you hear voices in your head before your sister’s accident?”

“No. I started hearing
him
after that.”

“Fred, can you tell the jury who you’re talking about?”

Brinkley clasped his hands across the top of his head, sighed deeply as if describing the voice would bring it into being.

“See, there’s more than one voice,” Brinkley explained. “There’s a woman’s voice, kind of singsongy and whiny, but forget about
her
. There’s this other voice, and he’s really
angry
. Out-of-control, screaming-reaming angry. And he
runs
me.”

“This is the voice that told you to shoot that day on the ferry?”

Brinkley nodded miserably. “He was yelling, ‘
Kill, kill, kill
,’ and nothing else
mattered
. All I could hear was
him
. All I could do was what he
told
me. It was just
him
, and everything else was a horrible dream.”

“Fred, would it be fair to say that you would never,
ever
have shot anyone if it were not for the voices that ‘ran you’ for the fifteen years following your sister’s accident?” Sherman asked.

Sherman noticed that he’d lost his client’s attention, that Fred was staring out over the gallery.

“That’s my
mother
,” Brinkley said with wonder in his voice. “That’s my
mom
!”

Heads swiveled toward an attractive, light-skinned African American woman in her early fifties as she edged along a row of seats, smiled stiffly at her son, and sat down.

“Fred,” Sherman said.

“Mom! I’m going to tell,” Brinkley called out, his voice warbling with emotion, his expression twisted up in pain.

“Are you listening, Mom? Get ready for the truth! Mr. Sherman, you’ve got it wrong. You keep calling it an
accident
. Lily’s death was
no accident
!”

Sherman turned to the judge, said matter-of-factly, “Your Honor, this is probably a good time for a break —”

Brinkley interrupted his lawyer, saying sharply, “I don’t need a
break
. And frankly, I don’t need your help anymore, Mr. Sherman.”

“YOUR HONOR,” Sherman said evenly, doing his best to act as though his client hadn’t gone off road and wasn’t about to go airborne over a cliff, “I’d ask that Mr. Brinkley’s testimony be stricken.”

“On what grounds, Mr. Sherman?”

“I was having
sex
with her, Mom!” Brinkley shouted across the room. “We’d done it
before
. She was taking off her
top
when the boom came around —”

Someone in the gallery moaned, “Oh, my God.”

“Your Honor,” Sherman said, “this testimony is unresponsive.”

Yuki jumped to her feet. “Your Honor, Mr. Sherman opened the door to his witness —
who is also his client
!”

Brinkley turned away from his mother, pinned the jurors to their seats with his intense, shifting stare.

“I swore to tell the truth,” he said as chaos swamped the courtroom. Even the judge’s gavel, banging hard enough to split the striker plate, was drowned out by the commotion. “And the truth is that I didn’t lift a finger to save my sister,” Brinkley said, spittle flying from his lips. “And I killed those people on the ferry because
he
told me, I’m a
very dangerous man
.”

Sherman sat down in his seat behind the defense table and calmly put folders into an accordion file.

Brinkley shouted, “That day on the ferry. I lined those people up in my gun sight and I pulled the trigger.
I could do it again
.”

The jurors were wide-eyed as Alfred Brinkley wiped tears from his sunken cheeks with the palms of his hands.

“
That’s enough
, Mr. Brinkley,” the judge barked.

“You people took an oath to do justice,” Brinkley trumpeted, rhythmically gripping and slapping at his knees. “You have to execute me for what I did to those people. That’s the only way to make sure that I’ll never do it again. And if you don’t give me the death penalty, I
promise
I’ll be back.”

Mickey Sherman put the accordion file into his shiny metal briefcase and snapped the locks. Closing up shop.

“Mr. Sherman,” Judge Moore said, exasperation coloring his face a rich salmon pink, “do you have any more questions for your witness?”

“None that I can think of, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Castellano? Do you wish to cross?”

There was nothing Yuki could say that would top Brinkley’s own words:
If you don’t give me the death penalty, I promise I’ll be back
.

“I have no further questions, Your Honor,” Yuki said.

But as the judge told Brinkley to stand down, a little red light started blinking in Yuki’s mind.

Had Brinkley really just nailed his own coffin shut?

Or had he done more to convince the jury that he was insane than anything Mickey Sherman could have said or done?

FRED BRINKLEY SAT ON THE HARD BED in his ten-by-six-foot cell on the tenth floor of the Hall of Justice.

There was noise all around him, the voices of the other prisoners, the squealing of the wheels on the meal cart, the clang of doors shutting, echoing along the row.

Brinkley’s dinner was on a tray on his lap, and he ate the dry chicken breast and watery mashed potatoes and the hard roll, same as they gave him last night, chewing the food thoroughly but without pleasure.

He wiped his mouth with the brown paper napkin, balled it up until it was as tight and as round as a marble, and then dropped it right in the center of the plate.

Then he arranged the plastic utensils neatly to the side, got up from the bed, walked two paces, and slid the tray under the door.

He returned to his bunk bed and leaned back against the wall, his legs hanging over the side. From this position, he could see the sink-commode contraption to his left and the whole of the blank cinder-block wall across from him.

The wall was painted gray, graffiti scratched into the concrete in places, phone numbers and slang and gang names and symbols he didn’t understand.

He began to count the cinder blocks in the wall across from him, traced the grouting in his mind as if the cement that glued the blocks together was a maze and the solution lay in the lines between the blocks.

Outside his cell, a guard took the tray. His badge read
OZZIE QUINN
.

“Time for your pills, Fred-o,” Ozzie said.

Brinkley walked to the barred door, reached out his hand, and took the small paper cup holding his pills. The guard watched as Brinkley upended the contents into his mouth.

“Here ya go,” Ozzie said, handing another paper cup through the bars, this one filled with water. He watched as Brinkley swallowed the pills.

“Ten minutes until lights-out,” Ozzie said to Fred.

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” Fred said.

He returned to his mattress, leaned back against the wall again. He tried singing under his breath,
Ay, ay, ay, ay, Mama-cita-lindo
.

And then he gripped the edge of the bunk and launched himself, running headfirst into the cement-block wall.

Then he did it again.

WHEN YUKI REENTERED THE COURTROOM, her boss, Leonard Parisi, was sitting beside David Hale at the defense table. Yuki had called Len as soon as she’d heard about Brinkley’s suicide attempt. But she hadn’t expected to see him in court.

“Leonard, good to see you,” she said, thinking,
Shit! Is he going to take over the case? Can he do that to me
?

“The jurors seem okay?” Parisi asked.

“So they told the judge. No one wants a mistrial. Mickey didn’t even ask for a continuance.”

“Good. I love that cocky bastard,” Parisi muttered.

Across the aisle, Sherman was talking to his client. Brinkley’s eyes were black-and-blue. There was a large gauze bandage taped across his forehead, and he was wearing a pale-blue cotton hospital gown over striped pajama bottoms.