4th of July

Chapter 16

CABOT’S LAWYER SHOT HIS cuffs and stood silently for so long you could’ve twanged the tension in the room like a guitar string. Someone in the gallery coughed nervously.

“The plaintiff calls chief medical examiner Dr. Claire Washburn,” said Broyles at last, and my best friend took the stand for the plaintiffs.

I wanted to wave, smile, wink—something—but of course all I could do was watch. Broyles warmed up with a few easy lobs across the plate, but from then on, it was fastballs and knuckle curves all the way.

“On the evening of May tenth did you perform an autopsy on Sara Cabot?” Broyles asked.

“I did.”

“What can you tell us about her injuries?”

All eyes were fixed on Claire as she flipped through a leather-bound notepad before speaking again.

“I found two gunshot wounds to the chest pretty close together. Gunshot wound A was a penetrating gunshot wound situated on the left upper/outer chest six inches below the left shoulder and two and a half inches left of the anterior midline.”

Claire’s testimony was crucial, but still my mind drifted out of the courtroom and into the past. I saw myself standing in a dusky patch of streetlight on Larkin Street. I watched Sara take her gun out of her jacket and shoot me. I fell, rolled into a prone position.

“Drop your gun!”

“Fuck you, bitch.”

I fired my gun twice, and Sara fell only yards from where I lay. I’d killed that girl, and although I was innocent of the charges against me, my conscience was guilty, guilty, guilty.

I listened to Claire’s testimony as she described the second shot, which had gone through Sara’s sternum.

“It’s what we call a K-five,” said Claire. “It went through the pericardial sac, continued on through the heart, and terminated in thoracic vertebra number four, where I retrieved a semijacketed copper-colored, partially deformed, medium-size projectile.”

“Is this consistent with a nine-millimeter bullet?”

“It is.”

“Thank you, Dr. Washburn. I’m finished with this witness, Your Honor.”

Mickey put his hands flat on the defense table and came to his feet.

“Dr. Washburn, did Sara Cabot die instantly?”

“I’d say so. Within a heartbeat or two. Both of those gunshot wounds perforated the heart.”

“Uh-huh. And, Doctor, had the deceased recently fired a gun?”

“Yes. I saw some darkening at the base of her index finger that would be consistent with cylinder flare.”

“How do you know that that’s gunshot residue?”

“The way you know your mother’s your mother,” Claire said, her eyes twinkling. “Because that’s what she looks like.” She paused for the laughter to subside, then she continued. “Besides which, I photographed that smudging, documented it, and did a gunshot wound residue test, which was submitted to the laboratory and came back positive.”

“Could the deceased have shot Lieutenant Boxer after she herself was shot?”

“I don’t see how a dead girl could shoot anyone, Mr. Sherman.”

Mickey nodded. “Did you also note the trajectory of those gunshot wounds, Dr. Washburn?”

“I did. They were fired upward at angles of forty-seven and forty-nine degrees.”

“So to be absolutely clear, Doctor, Sara Cabot shot Lieutenant Boxer first—and the lieutenant returned fire upward from where she lay on the ground.”

“In my opinion, yes, that’s how it happened.”

“Would you call that ‘excessive force’ or ‘wrongful death’ or ‘police misconduct’?”

The judge sustained Broyles’s outraged objection. Mickey thanked Claire and dismissed her. He was smiling as he came toward me. My muscles relaxed, and I even returned Mickey’s smile. But the hearing was just beginning.

I felt a shock of fear when I saw the look in Mason Broyles’s eyes. You could only describe it as anticipatory. He couldn’t wait to get his next witness on the stand.