“You and Paul cooked this up together? To frame her for rape and blackmail her?”
“It was my idea,” Marc said, his voice just barely audible. “Paul helped me.”
“Helped you plan?” Yuki asked.
“Yes.”
“And he shot you?”
“I asked him to do it.”
“But you were going to cut him in?”
“Yes to all of that,” Marc told Yuki. He looked broken, and Yuki felt that he was finally telling the truth.
“Why, Marc? Why did you do this?”
He grabbed the arms of the chair and lunged toward her, shouting, “Can’t you see what a ballbuster she is?”
There it was—his anger and his venom. His dark side that he’d used to bring down Briana Hill. It would now fuel his own reversal of fortune.
Yuki drew back and said, “Oh, my God.”
Marc sagged in the chair. His voice was breaking when he asked, “What’s going to happen to me?”
“I’ll let you know. Stay here.”
Marc said, “I’m going to be sick.”
“That makes two of us.”
Yuki reached under her desk, pulled out the trash can, and walked it over to where Marc was slumped over his knees. She handed him the wastebasket and said, “You’re despicable.”
She picked her phone up off the desk, left the room, and walked down the hall to Red Dog’s office.
He was waiting for her.
CHAPTER 94
YUKI PARKED HER car on Clayton Street in front of the pretty, shingled condo building where Briana Hill lived.
She grabbed her car keys and stepped out onto the tree-shaded residential block, walked up stone steps and under a trellis. She paused for a moment, checking her anxiety level, and then rang the doorbell.
She heard footsteps, the click of the peephole, followed by the clack of the lock. And there was Briana in her pink-and-blue-striped pajamas, smelling of liquor at three in the afternoon.
“What are you doing here?” Briana asked her.
“Hi, Briana. May I come in?”
“I can’t speak with you without my lawyer present. You know that.”
“Mr. Giftos is with DA Parisi right now,” Yuki told her. “He knows that I’m here and he knows why. It’s okay with him, but of course you should call him if you like.”
Briana stepped back and let Yuki in.
The place was a mess—clothes tossed on the furniture, coffee cups and bowls of half-eaten cereal on tables and counters, dried-out potted palms. An open bottle of vodka was centered on the coffee table.
Briana threw herself into a basket chair. Yuki sat on the edge of a facing sectional.
Briana said, “So, why are you here?”
“I’ve got good news and bad news.”
“For God’s sake. What next? A knock-knock joke?” Yuki could do nothing but press on.
“Paul Yates committed suicide, Briana. His body was found this morning.”
Briana’s expression was one of sheer disbelief. She shouted, “No way. Paul is dead? Why? Why did that creep kill himself?”
“According to his suicide note, it’s because he regretted what he’d done to you.”
Briana got up and paced around the room. When she had completed the circuit, she came back to Yuki and said, “Bad news and good news, you said?”
“The DA is dropping the case against you. It’s over.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely,” Yuki said.
Briana said, “You’re dropping the case? I’m free?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I might have a heart attack.”
Briana’s phone rang from under a throw blanket on the couch. She found it, looked at the caller ID, said, “Mom? I can’t talk. The DA is here … Yes. In my fucking apartment.”
Briana clicked off the call and said to Yuki, “I’ll be right back.”
She went down the hallway and into another room out of Yuki’s view, but Yuki heard the door slam closed.
Right after that Yuki heard Briana screaming a loud, wordless howl, then came cursing, more screaming.
There was the sound of running water.
A moment later Briana came back into the living room with a towel around her neck, hair dripping, like she had put her head under the faucet.
She dropped back into the basket chair and said, “Okay, Yuki. Tell me everything. The good, the bad, the ugly, and any other damned thing you’ve got.”
CHAPTER 95
YUKI PRESSED ON, past her own tremendous discomfort in the face of the shock Briana was clearly feeling.
She folded her hands in her lap and told Briana about confronting Marc with Paul Yates’s suicide note, and the subsequent confession from Marc two hours ago.
“He committed crimes against you and he manipulated the justice system. We’re working up charges against him now,” Yuki told her. “Extortion, perjury, criminal libel, and maybe a few other things we can throw at him once we get his signed confession.”
Briana shot out of her chair, lit up all over again. She stood over Yuki and shouted, “Throw everything at him. Do not spare him. Do you know what that maniac has done to me? He’s wrecked my career, my reputation. Even my friends have lost faith in me. I can’t leave the house without people taking pictures of me. Pointing. ‘She raped that cute guy. She had a gun.’
“My privacy is gone. My dignity—destroyed. My poor mother, a proud woman, is now an object of pity.”
Briana clambered back into the basket chair. She scowled, curled up, and hugged her knees, her face radiating hurt and anger. She turned her head and pinned Yuki with a hard glare.
“Do you understand? Marc took everything from me. I want to write hate mail to him in jail.”
Yuki said, “Briana, I do understand. I feel terrible. Please, hear me out. I came to tell you that I’m sorry for my part in what you’ve had to go through.”
“Oh. You’re sorry. Thanks.”
“I believed Marc,” said Yuki. “The police believed Marc. His story was convincing, and if he’d been raped, as our office believed, he would have needed justice. I thought other male victims of rape would also be vindicated once this crime was exposed.”
“You mean I had to be exposed.”
“Not exactly. I’m a prosecutor. My intention was to prosecute a rapist. Briana, I only started to suspect Marc when he testified. Even then I thought he was making up things to make himself look better, not that the whole story was a complete fabrication.”
Briana said, “Am I getting this right? Did Marc and Paul collude in this disgusting scam?”
“Yes,” Yuki said. “Marc admitted it was his idea and Paul helped him. Paul apologized to you in his suicide note.”
Briana scoffed, shook her head. “Sick. Both of them. I really don’t have words.”
She put her feet on the floor, grabbed the Stoli from the table, put the mouth of the bottle up to her lips, then stopped. She offered the bottle to Yuki.
“Can’t,” Yuki said, “I’m driving.”
“Okay,” Briana said. She took a few slugs of vodka and sighed loudly.
When she turned back to Yuki, her expression had softened.
She said, “You don’t have to justify yourself, Yuki. You were doing your job. I respect that. I never felt that you were attacking me personally. I didn’t think you were mean. If you want my forgiveness, you’ve got it.”
“I do,” said Yuki. “Thank you very much.”
“If Paul hadn’t pulled the plug, do you think you would have won?”
Yuki shrugged. “You never know with juries.”
Briana said, “That horrible video. What a piece of work.” She held out the bottle to Yuki. “You’re sure?”
Yuki took the bottle, tipped it up, swallowed twice, and handed the bottle back. “That’s my limit,” she said.
Briana smiled. “So, what happens next?”
“You’ll be hearing from James any minute now. He’ll have a plan.”
“That’s good. Jesus. I still can’t believe this. Talk about having your entire life turned inside out and then outside in. I’ve got to call my mom.”
The two women stood up and walked to the front door. Briana said, “Thanks for coming. Really.”
“Thank you. Briana.”
Spontaneously they embraced and held each other for a good long minute in the doorway.
Then Yuki left the apartment and walked out to her car. When she was sitting behind the wheel, she called Parisi.