14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 35

INSPECTOR STAN WHITNEY was more refined than his partner. He had fine features and a short beard; he was wearing wire-frame glasses and a blue denim shirt under his blue gabardine jacket.

Yuki asked Whitney the same questions she had asked Brand and got the same answers. Aaron-Rey Kordell had been arrested for carrying a gun that had recently been fired. He said he didn’t shoot anyone, but his explanation of why he had the gun was weak and he was a prime suspect. And then he confessed to a triple homicide.

She asked Whitney why Aaron-Rey hadn’t been represented by a lawyer, and the detective told her he had waived his right to an attorney. And because he had no record and had lied about his age, and didn’t ask for his parents, his parents hadn’t been present.

During the depositions, Parisi said nothing, asked nothing, just fixed Yuki with his brooding and steady glare. It was a look that was far from his customary benign countenance. And it was freaky. When Yuki finished deposing Stan Whitney, Parisi’s co-counsel from Moorehouse and Rogers asked, “Anything else we can help you with, Ms. Castellano?”

“I’m good,” Yuki said. “Thanks for your time.”

She really couldn’t get out of the conference room fast enough. Brand was an intimidating cop, and Whitney’s straight-shooter manner could assure anyone of his good intentions—to their detriment. Having heard their testimony and seen clips from the videoed interrogation, a jury with an open mind would be moved and would see the cops’ determined manipulation of a kid who had no resistance to them.

In the few minutes between leaving the law offices and reaching her car, doubt crept into Yuki’s mind.

Parisi.

She would be going up against Parisi in front of a judge and jury. Parisi had had fifteen years of litigation experience before he came to the DA eight years ago.

And he would do whatever he could do to build up Whitney and Brand and their lawful interrogation and subsequent arrest. That was the only thing he had to do. Show that the interrogation had lawfully produced Aaron-Rey’s confession.

If he could convince the jury of that, the Kordells would lose their righteous lawsuit, and she would be humiliated. She just couldn’t let any of that happen.

She could not.