The Trial (3 page)

It was just after
8:00 p.m. when I walked into the apartment where Julie and I live. It's on Lake Street, not too far from the park.

Mrs. Rose, Julie's nanny, was snoozing on the big leather sofa, and our HDTV was on mute. Martha, my border collie and dear old friend, jumped to her feet and charged at me, woofing and leaping, overcome with joy.

Mrs. Rose swung her feet to the floor, and Julie let out a wail from her little room.

There was no place like home.

I spent a good hour cuddling with my little girl, chowing down on Gloria Rose's famous three-protein meat loaf, downing a couple of glasses of Pinot Noir, and giving Martha a back rub.

Once the place was tidy, the baby was asleep, and Mrs. Rose had left for the night, I opened my computer and e-mail.

First up, Charlie Clapper's ballistics report.

“Three guns recovered, all snubbies,” he wrote, meaning short-barreled .38 Saturday night specials. “Bullets used were soft lead. Squashed to putty, every one of them, no striations. Fingerprints on the guns and shells match the two dead men and the man you booked, identity uncertain. Tats on the dead men are the usual prison-ink variety, with death heads and so forth, and they have both the Los Toros bull insignia and lettering saying
Mala Sangre.
Photos on file.”

Charlie's report went on.

“Blood on the clothing of the dead men and your suspect is a match to the blood of the victims positively identified as Cameron Whittaker, white, twenty-five, grade-school substitute teacher, and Lucille Stone, white, twenty-eight. ID says she was VP of marketing at Solar Juice, a software firm in the city of Sunnyvale.

“That's all I've got, Lindsay. Sorry I don't have better news. Chas.”

I phoned Richie, and Cindy picked up.

My reporter friend was a cross between an adorable, girly journalist and a pit bull, so she said, “I want to work on this Kingfisher story, Linds. Tell Rich it's okay for him to share with me.”

I snorted a laugh, then said, “May I speak with him?”

“Will you? Share?”

“Not yet. We'll see.”

“Fine,” Cindy huffed. “Thanks.”

Richie got on the phone.

He said, “I've got something that could lead to motive.”

“Tell me.”

“I spoke with the girlfriend's mother. She says Lucy was seeing Sierra but broke it off with him about a month ago. Right after that Lucy believed that Sierra was dead. I mean, we all did, right?”

“Correct.”

“According to Lucy Stone's mother, Sierra went to Lucy's apartment yesterday and Lucy wouldn't let him in. Mrs. Stone said her daughter called her and told her that Sierra was angry and threatening. Apparently, Lucy was afraid.”

“He could have staked her out. Followed her to the Vault.”

“Probably, yeah. I asked Mrs. Stone if she could ID Sierra. And she said—”

“Let me guess. ‘No.'”

“Bingo. However…”

“Don't tease me, Richie.”

He laughed. “Here ya go. Mrs. Stone said that the King's wife, Elena Sierra, has been living under the name Maura Steele. I got her number and address on Nob Hill.”

A lead. An actual lead.

I told Richie he was the greatest. He laughed again. Must be nice to have such a sunny disposition.

After hanging up, I checked the locks on the door and windows, double-checked the alarm, looked in on my darling Julie, and put my gun on my night table.

I whistled for Martha.

She bounded into the bedroom and onto the bed.

“Night-night, sweet Martha.”

I turned off the light and tried to sleep.

We met in the
squad's break room the next morning: Conklin, Brady, ADA Schein, and me.

Schein was thirty-six, married, and a father of two. He reported directly to DA Len “Red Dog” Parisi, and he'd been pitching no-hitters since he took the job, sending the accused to jail every time he took the mound. Putting Kingfisher away would be Schein's ticket to a five-star law firm if he wanted it. He was suited up for the next big thing even now, close shaved and natty in this shabby setting, and he was all business. I liked it. I liked him.

Schein said, “Summarizing what we have: A 911 tape of a male with a Spanish accent reporting that he's seen Kingfisher at the Vault, and we presume that that's the man we arrested. The tipster said he was a kitchen worker but could have been anyone. He called from a burner phone, and this witness hasn't stepped forward.”

Conklin and I nodded. Schein went on.

“We have a witness who saw the run-up to the shooting but didn't see the actual event.”

I said, “We've got blood on the suspect's shirt.”

“Good. But a juror is going to ask if he could have gotten that blood spray if he was near the victim but he didn't fire the weapon.”

Schein shrugged. “What can I say. Yeah. Bottom line, twenty-four hours from now we get a ‘proceed to prosecution' from the grand jury, or our suspect goes out of our hands and into the lap of a higher or different jurisdiction.”

“Spell out exactly what you need,” said Brady. He was making a list with a red grease pencil on a lined yellow pad.

“We need legally sufficient evidence and probable cause,” said Schein. “And I can be persuasive up to a point.”

“We have to positively ID our man as Jorge Sierra?”

“That's the price of admission. Without that, no hearing.”

“Additionally,” said Brady, “we get a witness to the shooting or to Sierra's intent to kill.”

“That would nail it.”

When the coffee containers and doughnut box were in the trash and we were alone at last, Rich said, “Cindy should run it in the
Chron
online.”

“Like, ‘SFPD needs info from anyone who was at the Vault on Wednesday night and saw the shooting'?”

“Yep,” said Rich. “It's worked before.”

Rich went back to
the crime scene for another look, and I called the former Mrs. Jorge Sierra, now Ms. Maura Steele. She didn't answer the phone, so I signed out a squad car and drove to her address in Nob Hill.

I badged the doorman and asked him to ring up to Ms. Sierra-a.k.a.-Steele's apartment.

He said, “You just missed her.”

“This is important police business,” I said. “Where can I find her?”

“She went to the gym. She usually gets back at around ten o'clock.”

It was quarter to. I took a seat in a wingback chair with a view of the street through two-story-tall plate-glass windows and saw the black limo stop at the curb. A liveried driver got out, went around to the sidewalk side of the car, and opened the rear door.

A very attractive woman in her late twenties or early thirties got out and headed toward the lobby doors while she went for the keys in her bag.

Ms. Steele was slim and fine boned, with short, dark, curly hair. She wore a smart shearling coat over her red tracksuit. I shot a look at the doorman and he nodded. When she came through the door, I introduced myself and showed her my badge.

“Police? What's this about?”

“Jorge Sierra,” I said.

She drew back. Fear flickered in her eyes, and her face tightened.

She said, “I don't know anyone by that name.”

“Please, Ms. Steele. Don't make me take you to the station for questioning. I just need you to ID a photograph.”

The doorman was fiddling with papers at the front desk, trying to look as though he wasn't paying attention. He looked like Matt Damon but didn't have Damon's talent.

“Come upstairs with me,” Ms. Steele said to me.

I followed her into the elevator, which opened directly into her sumptuous apartment. It was almost blindingly luxurious, with its Persian carpets, expensive furnishings, and what looked to me like good art against a backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay.

I'd looked her up before getting into the car. Ms. Steele didn't have a job now and had no listing under Sierra or Steele on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Who's Who in Business. Odds were, she was living on the spoils of her marriage to one of the richest men west of the Rockies.

Steele didn't ask me to sit down.

“I want to be absolutely clear,” she said. “If you quote me or depose me or in any way try to put me on the record, I will deny everything. I'm still married. I can't testify.”

I took the mug shot out of my pocket and held it up for her to see. “Is this Jorge Sierra?” I asked. “Known as Kingfisher?”

She began nodding like a bobblehead on crack. I can't say I didn't understand her terror. I'd felt something like it myself.

I said, “Thank you.”

I asked follow-up questions as she walked with me back toward the elevator door. Had her husband been in touch with her? When was the last time she'd spoken with him? Any idea why he would have killed two women in a nightclub?

She stopped moving and answered only the last question.

“Because he is
crazy.
Because he is
mental
when it comes to women. I tried to leave him and make a run for the US border, but when he caught me, he did this.”

She lifted her top so that her torso was exposed. There was a large scar on her body, about fifteen inches wide by ten inches long, shirring her skin from under her breasts to her navel. It looked like a burn made by a white-hot iron in the shape of a particular bird with a prominent beak. A kingfisher.

“He wanted any man I ever met to know that I belonged to him. Don't forget your promise. And don't let him go. If he gets out, call me. Okay?”

“Deal,” I said. “That's a deal.”

Early Friday morning Conklin
and I met with ADA Barry Schein in his office on the second floor of the Hall. He paced and flexed his hands. He was gunning his engines, which was to be expected. This was a hugely important grand jury hearing, and the weight of it was all on Barry.

“I'm going to try something a little risky,” he said.

Barry spent a few minutes reviewing what we already knew about the grand jury—that it was a tool for the DA, a way to try out the case with a large jury in an informal setting to see if there was enough probable cause to indict. If the jury indicted Mr. Sierra, Schein could skip arraignment and take Sierra directly to trial.

“That's what we want,” said Barry. “Speed.”

Rich and I nodded that we got that.

Schein said, “There's no judge, no attorney for the defense, as you know. Just me and the jury,” Schein said. “Right now we don't have sufficient evidence to indict Sierra on a murder of any degree. We can place him at the scene of the crime, but no one saw him fire his gun, and the forensics are inconclusive.”

I said, “I'm ready to hear about your ‘risky' move.”

Schein straightened his tie, patted down his thinning hair, and said, “I've subpoenaed Sierra. This is rarely done, because the putative defendant is unlikely to testify against himself.

“That said, Sierra
has
to take the stand. Like most people in this spot, he'll plead the Fifth. So I'm going to try to use that to help us.”

“How so?” I asked.

Schein cracked his first smile of the day.

“I'll lay out my case to the jury by asking Sierra: ‘You had a plan in mind when you went to the Vault on the fourteenth, isn't that right? Lucille Stone was your girlfriend, correct, sir? But she rejected you, didn't she? You followed her and learned that she was involved with a woman, isn't that right, Mr. Sierra? Is that why you murdered her and Cameron Whittaker?'”

I didn't have to ask Schein to go on. He was still circling his office, talking from the game plan in his head.

“The more he refuses to answer,” Schein said, “the more probable cause is raised in the jurors' minds. Could it backfire? Yeah. If the jury doesn't hold his refusal to testify against him, they'll hand me my hat. But we won't be any worse off than we are now.”

An hour later Rich and I were in the San Francisco Superior Court on McAllister Street, benched in the hallway. Sierra had been brought into the courtroom through a back door, and as I'd seen when the front doors opened a crack, he was wearing street clothes, had shackles around his ankles, and was sitting between two hard-boiled marshals with guns on their hips.

Sierra's attorney, J. C. Fuentes, sat alone on a bench ten yards from where I sat with my partner. He was a huge, brutish-looking man of about fifty wearing an old brown suit. I knew him to be a winning criminal defense attorney. He wasn't an orator, but he was a remarkable strategist and tactician.

Today, like the rest of us, he was permitted only to wait outside the courtroom and to be available if his client needed to consult with him.

Rich plugged into his iPad and leaned back against the wall. I jiggled my feet, people-watched, and waited for news. I was unprepared when the courtroom doors violently burst open.

I jumped to my feet.

Jorge Sierra, still in chains, was being pulled and dragged out of the courtroom and into the hallway, where Mr. Fuentes, Conklin, and I stood, openmouthed and in shock.

Sierra shouted over his shoulder through the open doors.

“I have all your names, stupid people. I know where you live. Street addresses. Apartment layouts. You and your pathetic families can expect a visit very soon.”

The doors swung closed and Fuentes rushed to Sierra's side as he was hauled past us, laughing his face off.

It was twenty past twelve. Rich said to me, “How long do you think before the jury comes back?”

I had no answer, not even a guess.

Fourteen minutes later Schein came out of the courtroom looking like he'd been through a wood chipper.

He said, “Sierra took the Fifth, and the jurors didn't like him. Before he got off the stand, he threatened them, and he didn't quit until the doors closed on his ass. Did you hear him? Threatening the jurors is another crime.”

Rich said, “When do they decide, Barry?”

Schein said, “It's done. Unanimous decision. Sierra is indicted on two counts of murder one.”

We pumped Schein's hand. The indictment gave us the time we needed to gather more evidence before Sierra went to trial. Conklin and I went back to the Hall to brief Brady.

“There is a God,” Brady said, rising to his feet.

We high-fived over his desk, and Conklin said, “Break out the Bud.”

It was a great moment. The Feds and the Mexican government had to step back. Jorge Sierra had been indicted for murder in California.

The King was in our jail and he was ours to convict.