14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 37

I MET YUKI for lunch at Grouchy Lynn’s in the Dog-patch neighborhood: a cute little greasy spoon with striped wallpaper and two-person booths and the best French fries east of the freeway. I ordered a club sandwich with everything and got my teeth into it while Yuki played with her salad.

Yuki has always been moody in the best possible way, meaning she can be sober and focused one minute, and in the next minute launch her contagious chortle, which could pull anyone’s bad day out of the basement. But since her near-death experience during her honeymoon a few months ago, and it was really near death for hundreds of people, I’ve hardly heard her laugh at all.

And she wasn’t laughing now when she told me she had taken a major fork in the road.

I pounded the ketchup bottle in the direction of my fries and said, “What fork?”

“I took the job,” Yuki said.

She put down her utensils, abandoned her salad, and told me about a not-for-profit called the Defense League and that her client was dead.

“Who is this dead client and what are you supposed to do for him?” I asked.

“His name was Aaron-Rey Kordell, and he may have been coerced by the police into confessing to a triple homicide he didn’t commit. Then, while awaiting trial in the men’s jail, he was murdered in the showers by person or persons unknown.”

I grunted. A big part of the job was to get confessions. Cops were allowed to lie, and it was conceivable that people got worked over or tricked and confessed to things they didn’t do—but not often. Not that I knew about.

Yuki was saying, “Lindsay, if this story is in fact true, if Kordell was coerced into a confession and was then killed while awaiting trial, this is going to be a case against the city, the SFPD, and probably the cops who interrogated him, for I don’t know how many millions.”

I stopped eating.

A lawsuit against the police department would be a disaster for everyone in it, no doubt about it. A disaster. As Yuki’s friend, I had to be a fair sounding board. But never mind me.

“Your husband is a lieutenant in the SFPD,” I said.

“I know that, Linds.”

“What does he say?”

“He’s pissed off. We’re barely speaking.”

“Oh, man. You’re pretty sure Kordell was innocent?”

“He was caught with the gun on him. He was fifteen. Low IQ. It would have been fairly easy to get him to confess. I’ve seen the video of the interrogation. The narcs lied their faces off, Linds. Like ‘Tell us what you did and then you can go home.’ Then they told him what he did—their version.”

Yuki went on. “It might help me if I knew why Aaron-Rey was killed. Did he just piss someone off in jail? Or was he killed to avenge the deaths of those drug dealers? Because that would go to him being guilty.”

“I hope I don’t live to regret this, Yuki,” I said, “but I’ll see who was in lockup at the same time as Kordell. See what I can see. I don’t promise anything.”

“Just promise that whatever happens, we’re still buds.”

“That I can promise,” I said.