I got to my feet, swore to God on an old worn Bible, and placed my fate in the hands of my attorney.
Mickey cut straight to the chase. “Lindsay, were you drunk on the night of May tenth?”
The judge broke in: “Mr. Sherman, please don’t address your client by her first name.”
“Okay. Lieutenant, were you drunk that night?”
“No.”
“Okay, let’s back up. Were you on duty that night?”
“No. My shift was over at five p.m.”
Mickey took me through the events of that night in excruciating detail, and I told it all. I described the drinks I’d had at Susie’s and told the court about getting the call from Jacobi. I stated that I’d told Jacobi the truth when I’d said that I was good to go along that night.
When Mickey asked why I’d responded to the call when I was off duty, I said, “I’m a cop twenty-four hours a day. When my partner needs me, I’m there.”
“Did you locate the car in question?” Mickey asked me.
“We did.”
“And what happened then?”
“The car took off at high speed, and we chased it. Eight minutes later, the car went out of control and crashed.”
“After the crash, when you saw that Sara and Sam Cabot were in medical distress, were you afraid of them?”
“No. They were kids. I figured they’d stolen the car or made some other bad decision. Happens every day.”
“So what did you do?”
“Inspector Jacobi and I put away our guns and tried to render aid.”
“At what point did you pull out your gun again?”
“After Inspector Jacobi and I had both been shot and after warning the suspects to drop their weapons.”
“Thank you, Lindsay. I have no further questions.”
I reviewed my testimony and gave myself a passing grade. I looked across the room and saw Joe smile and nod even as Mickey turned away from me.
“Your witness,” he said to Mason Broyles.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 20
A SILENCE STRETCHED BETWEEN me and Broyles, who sat staring at me for so long I wanted to scream. It was an old interrogator’s trick and he had perfected it. Voices rippled across the small gray room until the judge banged her gavel and jolted Broyles into action.
I looked straight into his eyes as he approached.
“Tell us, Lieutenant Boxer, what are the proper police procedures for a felony stop?”
“Approach with guns drawn, get the suspects out of their car, disarm them, cuff them, get the situation safely under control.”
“And is that what you did, Lieutenant?”
“We did approach with guns drawn, but the occupants couldn’t get out of the car without assistance. We put our guns away in order to free them from the vehicle.”
“You violated police procedures, didn’t you?”
“We had an obligation to render aid.”
“Yes, I know. You were trying to be kind to the ‘kids.’ But you’re admitting that you didn’t follow police procedures, correct?”
“Look, I made a mistake,” I blurted. “But those kids were bleeding and vomiting. The car could’ve caught fire —”
“Your Honor?”
“Please limit your answers to the question, Lieutenant Boxer.”
I sat back hard in the chair. I’d seen Broyles operate many times before in the courtroom and recognized his genius for finding his opponent’s pressure point.
He’d just fingered mine.
I was still blaming myself for not cuffing those kids, and Jacobi, with more than twenty years on the force, had been suckered, too. But Christ, you can only do what you can do.
“I’ll rephrase that,” Broyles said offhandedly. “Do you always try to follow police procedures?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s the police policy about being intoxicated on the job?”
“Objection,” Mickey shouted, leaping to his feet. “There’s evidence that the witness had been drinking, but there’s no evidence that she was intoxicated.”
Broyles smirked and turned his back to me. “I have nothing further, Your Honor.”
I felt huge wet circles under my arms. I stepped down from the witness stand, forgetting about my leg injury until the pain called it sharply to my attention. I limped back to my seat, feeling worse than I had before.
I turned to Mickey, who smiled his encouragement, but I knew the smile was fake.
His brow was corrugated with worry.
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 21
I WAS SHAKEN BY the way Mason Broyles had flipped the events of May 10 and placed the blame on me. He was good at his job, that slime, and it took all my strength to park my face in neutral and sit calmly as Broyles made his closing argument.
“Your Honor,” he said, “Sara Cabot is dead because Lindsay Boxer killed her. And Sam Cabot, age thirteen, is in a wheelchair for life. The defendant admits that she didn’t follow proper police procedures. Granted, there may have been some misdoing on the part of my clients, but we don’t expect juveniles to exercise good judgment. Police officers, however, are trained to deal with all manner of crises, and the defendant couldn’t handle a crisis, because she was drunk.
“Simply put, if Lieutenant Boxer had properly performed the duties of her job, this tragedy wouldn’t have occurred and we wouldn’t be here today.”
Broyles’s speech outraged me, but I had to admit he was persuasive and had I been sitting in the gallery instead of the dock, I might have seen it his way. By the time Mickey stood to mount his closing argument, my blood was pounding so hard in my ears it was as though a rock band were jamming inside my head.
“Your Honor, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer didn’t put loaded guns into the hands of Sara and Samuel Cabot,” Mickey said, his voice ringing with indignation. “They did that themselves. They shot unarmed police officers without provocation, and my client returned fire in pure self-defense. The only thing she’s guilty of is being too kind to citizens who showed her no kindness in return.
“In all fairness, Your Honor, this suit should be dismissed and this fine officer allowed to return to her duties without blame or blemish to her distinguished service record.”
Mickey finished his summation sooner than I had expected. A gap opened behind his last ringing words, and my fear poured in. As he sat down beside me, the courtroom filled with slight mouselike stirrings: papers rustling, the clicking of laptop keys, bodies shifting in their chairs.
I gripped Mickey’s hand under the table and I even prayed. Dear God, let her dismiss the charges, please.
The judge pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, but I couldn’t read her face. When she spoke, she did so concisely and in a weary tone.
“I believe the defendant did everything she could to salvage a situation gone horribly wrong,” said Judge Algierri. “But the alcohol bothers me. A life has been lost. Sara Cabot is dead. There’s enough evidence here to merit sending this case to a jury.”
Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July
Chapter 22
I WENT RIGID WITH shock as the trial date was set for a few weeks in the future. Everyone stood as the judge left the courtroom, then the mob closed in around me. I saw blue uniforms at the edge of the throng, eyes not quite meeting mine, and then clumps of microphones were pushed up to my face. I still held Mickey’s hand.
We should have gotten a dismissal.
We should have won.
Mickey helped me to my feet, and I followed him as he cut through the crowd. Joe’s hand was on the small of my back as the three of us and Yuki Castellano exited the courtroom and made for the stairs. We stopped in the ground-floor stairwell.