Read Online 14th Deadly Sin: (Women’s Murder Club 14) by James Patterson - Free Book Online
Authors: James Patterson
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said, the Tenderloin was a bad place to raise children. No kidding. It was the worst.
The impoverished district was an underworld of savagery, mayhem, and despair, populated with aggressive drunks and crackheads, runaways, derelicts, streetwalkers, and violent thieves. The best you could say of people who survived on these streets was that they were pitiable; most of them were doomed.
Yuki knew better than to get out of the car.
She was here to see the scene of Aaron-Rey’s death, to get the picture in her mind so that she could make a moving and watertight narrative for a jury.
She stared ahead at the peeling, sagging wood-frame building with a Chinese restaurant on the ground floor. The abandoned second floor, according to Yuki’s information, was a flophouse for junkies. The third floor was the trading floor, where wads of folding money and small packets of powder changed hands.
She saw the scarred metal door that opened from the interior of the house and emptied out to the street. It was clear from the numbers of men and boys who looked both ways before going through that door that the crack house was doing a brisk business.
Yuki imagined Aaron-Rey Kordell hanging out at this place because it was cool, then being shocked and confused when the shooting went down. She saw him picking up the gun—a shiny, valuable object—and running.
If this version of the story was true, and Zac Jordan believed it was, Aaron-Rey had suffered wrongful death and his family deserved justice that could only be delivered in the form of a multimillion-dollar settlement from the SFPD and the City.
Yuki was thinking about the work yet to do when there was a rap on the window. Startled, she turned to see a uniformed officer, making a circle with his index finger, indicating that she should roll down her window.
“Officer?”
“You having car trouble, miss?”
“No, not at all.”
“You know it’s not safe here, right? A woman got shot over on Hyde a couple of hours ago. Wait—”
The patrolman leaned down to get a better look at her face.
“Aren’t you the lady who’s married to Lieutenant Brady?”
“Yes. I’m Yuki Castellano.”
“I’m Clark. John. That’s
my
office,” he said, hooking a thumb toward his cruiser, smiling at her. “You’re working, Ms. Castellano? Because I gotta say, I wouldn’t like my wife to be in a car by herself on this block.”
“I’m OK, Officer. I’m looking into a multiple homicide that took place a couple of months ago,” she said, pointing to the crack house.
“Oh, right. Those drug dealers who were whacked over there. I arrested that poor mutt who did it.”
“Aaron-Rey Kordell?”
Clark said, “That’s him. He was a runner. Ran out for coffee, smokes, that kind of thing. I don’t know why he shot those pushers. But he did the City a service.”
“What did he say when you arrested him?” Yuki asked.
“Said he didn’t do it,” said Clark. “I asked what it was he didn’t do and he said, ‘I didn’t shoot those guys upstairs.’ So we went into the house and found the DBs.”
Yuki thanked the officer, then pulled her car out into the congested three-lane street. This would be a twisted story to sell to a jury. And maybe an impossible case to win.
CHAPTER 26
BACK IN HER new office at the Defense League, Yuki slugged down half a bottle of water, kicked off her shoes, and locked her handbag in a desk drawer. She booted up her computer and pulled up the Aaron-Rey Kordell dossier Zac Jordan had compiled.
The cops who interrogated Aaron-Rey after his arrest were Inspectors Stan Whitney and William Brand in Narcotics/Vice Division, SFPD.
Yuki easily located the documents showing that Aaron-Rey had been booked and incarcerated upstairs on the sixth floor of the Hall, County Jail #3, pending trial. There was also a death certificate dated a day later showing the teen’s cause of death as “sharp force trauma” to the liver, and a brief report from the
The impoverished district was an underworld of savagery, mayhem, and despair, populated with aggressive drunks and crackheads, runaways, derelicts, streetwalkers, and violent thieves. The best you could say of people who survived on these streets was that they were pitiable; most of them were doomed.
Yuki knew better than to get out of the car.
She was here to see the scene of Aaron-Rey’s death, to get the picture in her mind so that she could make a moving and watertight narrative for a jury.
She stared ahead at the peeling, sagging wood-frame building with a Chinese restaurant on the ground floor. The abandoned second floor, according to Yuki’s information, was a flophouse for junkies. The third floor was the trading floor, where wads of folding money and small packets of powder changed hands.
She saw the scarred metal door that opened from the interior of the house and emptied out to the street. It was clear from the numbers of men and boys who looked both ways before going through that door that the crack house was doing a brisk business.
Yuki imagined Aaron-Rey Kordell hanging out at this place because it was cool, then being shocked and confused when the shooting went down. She saw him picking up the gun—a shiny, valuable object—and running.
If this version of the story was true, and Zac Jordan believed it was, Aaron-Rey had suffered wrongful death and his family deserved justice that could only be delivered in the form of a multimillion-dollar settlement from the SFPD and the City.
Yuki was thinking about the work yet to do when there was a rap on the window. Startled, she turned to see a uniformed officer, making a circle with his index finger, indicating that she should roll down her window.
“Officer?”
“You having car trouble, miss?”
“No, not at all.”
“You know it’s not safe here, right? A woman got shot over on Hyde a couple of hours ago. Wait—”
The patrolman leaned down to get a better look at her face.
“Aren’t you the lady who’s married to Lieutenant Brady?”
“Yes. I’m Yuki Castellano.”
“I’m Clark. John. That’s
my
office,” he said, hooking a thumb toward his cruiser, smiling at her. “You’re working, Ms. Castellano? Because I gotta say, I wouldn’t like my wife to be in a car by herself on this block.”
“I’m OK, Officer. I’m looking into a multiple homicide that took place a couple of months ago,” she said, pointing to the crack house.
“Oh, right. Those drug dealers who were whacked over there. I arrested that poor mutt who did it.”
“Aaron-Rey Kordell?”
Clark said, “That’s him. He was a runner. Ran out for coffee, smokes, that kind of thing. I don’t know why he shot those pushers. But he did the City a service.”
“What did he say when you arrested him?” Yuki asked.
“Said he didn’t do it,” said Clark. “I asked what it was he didn’t do and he said, ‘I didn’t shoot those guys upstairs.’ So we went into the house and found the DBs.”
Yuki thanked the officer, then pulled her car out into the congested three-lane street. This would be a twisted story to sell to a jury. And maybe an impossible case to win.
CHAPTER 26
BACK IN HER new office at the Defense League, Yuki slugged down half a bottle of water, kicked off her shoes, and locked her handbag in a desk drawer. She booted up her computer and pulled up the Aaron-Rey Kordell dossier Zac Jordan had compiled.
The cops who interrogated Aaron-Rey after his arrest were Inspectors Stan Whitney and William Brand in Narcotics/Vice Division, SFPD.
Yuki easily located the documents showing that Aaron-Rey had been booked and incarcerated upstairs on the sixth floor of the Hall, County Jail #3, pending trial. There was also a death certificate dated a day later showing the teen’s cause of death as “sharp force trauma” to the liver, and a brief report from the
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