Page 110

CHAPTER 108

YUKI LOOKED AROUND the courtroom, which was littered with helicopter parts and debris lying on the gray linoleum floor. The wounded cried out and begged for help.

Judge Walden stood in the corner, speaking with a Sacramento police lieutenant. A few yards away from her, Jon Credendino stared at Dario Garza’s face-down, handcuffed body. He stepped aside as two guards lifted the dead man onto a stretcher and made for an exit.

Tiago Garza strained against his own handcuffs and the guards holding him, asking, “Where are you taking my son? Where?”

He asked this again and again until he was removed from the courtroom by the sheriff, who’d had more than enough.

“We’re driving you both back to San Francisco. Now shut the fuck up.”

Tiago Garza gave up the fight. As he was taken outside, he wept, apologizing in English and in Spanish to his dead son, to his wife, and because he was sobbing so loudly, there was no way of understanding him at all.