“Ah. Yes, she said that, but —”
“The answer is yes. That’s all, Mr. Ashton. Thank you.”
“Cross, Mr. Hoffman?” LaVan asked.
Phil Hoffman stood, buttoned his jacket, straightened his Hermes tie, and walked smartly to the witness box.
“Mr. Ashton, based on your conversations with Candace, did you think she was actually going to kill her husband?”
“Objection, Your Honor. Calls for speculation,” Yuki said.
“Overruled,” Judge LaVan said. “The witness may answer.”
“No. Candace isn’t violent.”
“Let me ask this,” Hoffman said. “You’ve known the defendant for a year. In that time, did she ever show you a gun or say that she had one?”
“No, she did not.”
“Thank you. I have no further questions.”
“The witness may step down,” said the judge.
Chapter 35
YUKI SAT ON HER INCREASING RAGE at Hoffman and focused on her witness, Cyndi Parrish, the Martins’ live-in cook.
Parrish had been a jet-engine mechanic in the Navy and was now in her fifties, a soft and billowy woman with blurry tattoos on her forearms.
“And how long have you lived in the Martin household?” Yuki asked the cook.
“It will be eleven years next month. I came to the Martins after Caitlin was born.”
“And would you say, as a member of the household, that you have an informed opinion about the Martin marriage?”
“Yes, I would say so.”
“How did they get along?”
“They didn’t get along at all.”
“Ms. Parrish, do you have a close relationship with Dr. Martin?”
The large woman looked uncomfortable. She glanced down at her hands and muttered, “Yes. She confides in me.”
Yuki lobbed the next question, a softball, but it was right across the plate.
“Was Dennis Martin seeing someone? That is, was he in a sexual relationship with someone other than his wife?”
“I can’t say.”
“
“He never talked to me about anything other than food,” said the cook, earning a nice burst of laughter from the gallery.
Yuki smiled, let the laughter fade away, and then asked, “Did Dr. Martin speak to you about her husband’s affairs?”
“She did in the early days. Lately, not so much.”
“Ms. Parrish, let me be more precise. Did Candace Martin tell you how she felt about her husband the week before he was shot to death?”
“Yes. He tormented her, constantly. Night before the shooting, she said she hated him. She said she’d kill him if she could. I suppose that’s what you want me to say.”
“Just tell the truth, Ms. Parrish.”
“It wasn’t a pretty marriage. Neither one of them had any use for the other one.”
“Did Candace Martin ever say that she’d like to kill her husband?”
“Yes.”
“I have no further questions,” said Yuki, heading back to her table.
“Can I say something else?”
“That’s all, Ms. Parrish. We’re done.”
Phil Hoffman stood and approached Yuki’s witness to do his cross-examination.
He said, “What did you want to say, Ms. Parrish?”
“I wanted to say that Dr. Martin is a good person. And she loves her kids.”
“Indeed. Ms. Parrish, did you ever see a gun in the house?”
“No, I never did.”
“Thank you. That’s all I have.”
Yuki pressed her palms down on the table, stood up, and said, “Redirect, Your Honor.”
The judge said, “Go ahead, Ms. Castellano.”
“Ms. Parrish, does Dr. Martin love her kids enough to kill for them?”
“Objection,” Hoffman said. “Leading the witness. Calling for speculation.”
“Sustained.”
“Withdrawn,” said Yuki. “I’m done, Your Honor.”
“Anyone would,” the cook said.
“Thank you, Ms. Parrish. You may stand down,” said the judge.
“Anyone would kill for their kids,” the cook muttered loudly, as she got up from her seat. “It’s a law of nature.”
Hoffman stood to object, but the judge said, “I’ve got it, Mr. Hoffman. Ms. Parrish, you’ve testified under oath. It’s over. The jury will disregard the witness’s offhand remarks.”
“I won’t be silenced,” said the cook, as she lumbered across the well. “
Chapter 36
CINDY STARED at her computer monitor, far too aware of the timer in the left-hand corner ticking off the seconds toward her four-o’clock deadline.
Oh, man, she was so stuck.
After nailing yesterday’s deadline, she still didn’t know how to write this story. The heartrending and truly terrifying interviews with the rape victims were quite vivid in her mind, but she couldn’t name the witnesses, couldn’t quote the nurses, and there was no “source close to the police,” because the cops weren’t actually working the case.
Cindy had boiled the facts down to their bare bones.
The attacks had happened to women who lived and worked in three different places in the city. The women were not of a single type. They were of different ages, occupations, and ethnicities. They looked nothing alike. And the worst fact of all: Cindy could scare women readers half to death with this story, but she had no idea how they could protect themselves from the rapist.
Cindy reread her notes from her interview this morning with the latest victim, Inez Fleming. Like Laura Rizzo and Anne Bennett, Inez Fleming had woken up near her home after a blackout of many hours. During that time, she’d been raped, sloppily redressed in her own clothes, and dumped.
Fleming had been examined at nine that morning by a doctor in the emergency room at St. Francis. The head nurse had called Joyce Miller to say that she had a rape victim like the ones who had come into Metro earlier in the
