The Trial Read Free Page B

case in a day and a half? Or would the Feds walk all over us?
    Normally, my partner was the good cop and I was the hard-ass. I liked when Richie took the lead and set a trusting tone, but Kingfisher and I had history. He’d threatened my life.
    Rich opened the door to the interrogation room, and we took the chairs across from the probable mass killer.
    No one was more primed to do this interrogation than me.

Chapter 9
    The King looked as common as dirt in his orange jumpsuit and chrome-plated bracelets. But he wasn’t ordinary at all. I thought through my opening approach. I could play up to him, try to get on his side and beguile him with sympathy, a well-tested and successful interview technique. Or I could go badass.
    In the end I pitched right down the center.
    I looked him in the eyes and said, “Hello again, Mr. Sierra. The ID in your wallet says that you’re Geraldo Rivera.”
    He smirked.
    “That’s cute. What’s your real name?”
    He smirked again.
    “Okay if I call you Jorge Sierra? Facial recognition software says that’s who you are.”
    “It’s your party, Officer.”
    “That’s Sergeant. Since it’s my party, Mr. Sierra it is. How about we do this the easiest and best way. You answer some questions for me so we can all call it a night. You’re tired. I’m tired. But the internet is crackling. FBI wants you, and so do the Mexican authorities, who are already working on extradition papers. They are salivating.”
    “Everyone loves me.”
    I put the driver’s licenses of Lucille Stone and Cameron Whittaker on the table.
    “What were your relationships to these two women?”
    “They both look good to me, but I never saw either one of them before.”
    “Before tonight, you mean? We have a witness who saw you kill these women.”
    “Don’t know them, never saw them.”
    I opened a folder and took out the 8½ x 11 photo of Lucille Stone lying across the bar. “She took four slugs to the chest, three more to the face.”
    “How do you say? Tragic.”
    “She was your lady friend, right?”
    “I have a wife. I don’t have lady friends.”
    “Elena Sierra. I hear she lives here in San Francisco with your two children.”
    No answer.
    “And this woman,” I said, taking out the print of the photo I’d taken of the blond-haired woman lying on the bar floor.
    “Cameron Whittaker. I counted three or four bullet holes in her, but could be more.”
    His face was expressionless. “A complete stranger to me.”
    “Uh-huh. Our witness tells us that these two, your girlfriend and Ms. Whittaker, were very into each other. Kissing and the like.”
    Kingfisher scoffed. He truly looked amused. “I’m sorry I didn’t see them. I might have enjoyed to watch. Anyway, they have nothing to do with me.”
    I pulled out CSI’s photos of the two dead shooters. “These men. Could you identify them for us? They both have two sets of gang tats but have fake IDs on them. We’d like to notify their families.”
    No answer, but if Kingfisher gave a flip about them, you couldn’t tell. I doubted a lie detector could tell.
    As for me, my heart was still racing. I was aware of the men behind the glass, and I knew that if I screwed up this interrogation, I would let us all down.
    I looked at Richie. He moved his chair a couple of inches back from the table, signaling me that he didn’t want to insert himself into the conversation.
    I tried a Richie-like tack.
    “See it through my eyes, Mr. Sierra. You have blood spatter on your shirt. Spray, actually. The kind a person would expel onto you if she took a shot to the lung and you were standing right next to her. Your hands tested positive for gunpowder. There were a hundred witnesses. We’ve got three guns and a large number of slugs at our forensics lab, and they’re all going to tell the same story. Any ADA drawn at random could get an indictment in less time than it takes for the judge to say ‘No bail.’”
    The little bird with the long beak smiled. I