when she called out to her husband, the intruder dropped the gun and took off. She said that she picked up the gun and ran after the intruder. That she had fired out toward the street to scare him off.”
I left the courtroom quietly. I was still nowhere on the Richardson case and Brady had made it superclear to me that the Candace Martin case was closed.
What he didn’t know was that I had gone through the Martin case file last night. I had read all of Paul Chi’s notes and had found a lead I wanted to check out. I
Chapter 55
WHAT I HAD GLEANED from Chi’s notes was that Caitlin and Duncan Martin had a piano teacher who came to their home to give them lessons twice a week.
His name was Bernard St. John.
Chi had interviewed St. John during the Martin investigation, and according to his notes, St. John had no idea who the killer was. In fact, he’d made a point of saying that he did not believe that Candace Martin shot her husband.
Chi had never interviewed St. John again, but because the piano teacher felt so strongly that Candace Martin was innocent, I wanted to hear from him how and why he had formed that opinion.
St. John’s rented apartment was in a Victorian house in the mostly residential 2400 block of Octavia Street. He was expecting me, and when I rang the bell on the ground floor, he buzzed me in.
I sized St. John up at his doorway.
He was in his early forties, five foot eight, with a slim build and spiky hair. I followed him into his apartment and saw that he clearly liked drama in his furnishings. The parlor was gold with red draperies, faux zebra-skin rugs were flung about, and a very nice Steinway grand sat near the bay window.
After offering me a chair, St. John sat down on a tassel-fringed hassock and told me he was glad that I had called.
“But I don’t understand why the police want to talk to me now,” he said. “No one wanted me as a witness.”
“You weren’t in the Martin house the night of the murder, were you?”
“No. I wasn’t there. I saw no gun. Heard no threats,” he said with a shrug.
“From what you said in our phone call, I take it that you were privy to certain behaviors in the household that you thought might be important.”
“Well, I have some thoughts and observations, Sergeant. I certainly do. Starting with when Candace had breast cancer a couple of years ago.”
St. John needed no encouragement to fill me in on the last two years of his employment with the Martins, a story laced with petty complaints and gossip. Still, the fact that he was a gossip didn’t make him a bad witness.
On the contrary.
“Candace was bitchy to everyone when she was in chemo,” he said. “Especially to Ellen.”
“Ellen Lafferty. The children’s nanny.”
“That’s right,” St. John told me. “I don’t know when it started, but it was well over a year ago when Ellen confided in me,” St. John said. “She told me that she was having an affair with Dennis.”
“Why didn’t you tell this to the police?”
“I didn’t think it was important. Is it?”
“I’m not sure. But tell me — why did you say to Inspector Chi that you didn’t think Candace was capable of shooting her husband?”
“She’s a doctor. ‘First, do no harm.’ Killing Dennis would have harmed everyone in the house. And look. It did.”
I closed my notebook and thanked St. John for his time. As I left his apartment, I thought about Phil Hoffman telling me that what he knew about Ellen Lafferty could cause the charges against Candace Martin to be dismissed.
Candace had speculated that her husband had been sleeping with Ellen Lafferty, and now Bernard St. John had confirmed that part of her theory.
Had Lafferty gotten jealous, as Candace had suggested?
Was Ellen Lafferty the so-called intruder who killed Dennis Martin?
Chapter 56
I THOUGHT PAUL Chi might still be steamed at me for questioning the slam-dunk first-degree murder charge against Candace Martin. If he wasn’t fuming now, he would be after I told him I was still turning over stones on his case, that I still wasn’t prepared to let it go.
It was about 5 p.m. when I brought him a latte and sat down across from him at his very tidy desk in the squad room.
Chi looked at me, his expression absolutely blank, and said, “You still trying to pry open my closed case?”
I nodded. “You just have to let me get this out of my system,” I said. “If you were me, you’d do the same.”
“You’re the boss.”
“You remember Bernard St. John?” I asked him.
“The piano teacher. How could I forget that guy?”
“I just spoke with him.”
“I’m not pissed off, Lindsay. I just want to understand you better. Fifty homicides a year come through here. We solve only half of them. And that’s in a good year. So, here we got one that we actually close. Why has
“I can’t explain it.”
“Can’t explain an insult to me, McNeill, Brady, the SFPD as a whole, and the DA’s entire office? You think this is going to score us any points with the DA?”
“I’ve got to do this, Paul. If Candace Martin is guilty, my poking around isn’t going to change that.”
“But you don’t think she is guilty, do you?”
“I don’t know.”
Chi grinned. A rare occurrence. Like a blue moon in June.
“What’s funny?” I asked him.
“I like this about you, Lindsay. You never give up. But you know, Brady doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
“I’ll deal with him when I have to.”
Chi shrugged and said, “So what did Bernard St. John tell you?”
“That Dennis Martin was sleeping with Ellen Lafferty. Lafferty confided in him.”
“Whoa-ho. Well, there’s your motive, Sergeant. You’re making the case against Dr. Martin even stronger. Candace found out her husband was sleeping with the nanny, so she shot him. Motive as old as the history of mankind.”
“Or — what if it was the other way around?”
“You think
“It’s not so crazy, Paul. I want to talk to you about that contract killer. Gregor Guzman.”
