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CHAPTER 57

YUKI FOLLOWED HER boss and mentor back to his office, which fit snugly into the southeast corner of the DA’s suite on the second floor. That back corner was as far as Parisi could get from the constant chatter coming from the maze of cubicles filling every free inch of space allotted to his department. But to his mind, he still wasn’t far enough away.

Parisi reached his desk and, while still standing, grabbed the receiver from his ringing desk phone.

He said into the mouthpiece, “Becky, I’m in a meeting. I’ll call them later.” To Yuki, Parisi said, “That was the press, of course. In the middle of this tragedy, there’s still no escape from the everyday crap.”

He logged into his computer, scrolled down, typed a note, and sent it. Then he turned his attention to Yuki.

“So, let’s talk. You want to know who, what, where, when, and why.”

Yuki set her laptop case down on the carpet beside the leather chair opposite Parisi’s desk. Parisi’s assistant, Becky, came in, said hi to Yuki, apologized for interrupting, and asked Parisi to step outside for a moment. Parisi threw an exasperated sigh and excused himself, and Yuki leaned back in the chair. She thought about Parisi’s “who, what, where, when, and why,” and he was exactly right, but she was sure that something within those five little words was going to surprise the hell out of her.

She lifted her eyes to the clock on the wall behind Parisi’s desk. It was the round, schoolhouse type, but on the face of the clock was a graphic of a snarling red bulldog.

Len had never told her the story of the clock, but given its prominent placement, he clearly loved it. It was 11:06 bulldog time when the legendary DA reentered his office, settled into his chair, folded his hands on the desktop, and said, “I’ve got about ten minutes.”

Yuki said, “Len. Tell me the plan.”

“I can only tell you some of it. The details are still in the works.”

“Tell me what you can.”

“We don’t have a start date on the new trial,” said Parisi, “but we have a judge. Robin Walden.”

“I’ve heard of her,” Yuki said. “Military, right?”

“Right. Judge Walden served on a military court. She’s best known for upholding a death sentence—”

“I remember now,” Yuki said. “Kuwait. An army private went nuts and shot up a bunch of tents one night, killing two fellow soldiers and wounding a dozen more.”

Parisi said, “Good memory, Yuki.”

“His defense was mental illness or defect.”

“Keep going. You must’ve heard about this in law school.”

“I haven’t thought about it in years. The killer’s AA sponsor testified, with the soldier’s permission, that he was in a cracked mental state.”

Parisi agreed, adding, “Didn’t work out for him. He was crazy, but not legally. He claimed he was under the influence of both alcohol and an anti-American family member, and he wanted to kill American soldiers. In fact, he couldn’t wait. Anyway, the decision was three to two for conviction.”

“Wow,” Yuki said, getting it. “Robin Walden was on the court that upheld his death sentence. And she’s our new judge on the Dario murder trial.”

Yuki looked up Walden on her phone, scrolling until she found a photo of a woman in her late fifties, formerly a captain in the US Marine Corps. She held her phone up to show Parisi. “Is this her?”

Parisi said, “Yes. That is her.”

“So, Len. That’s part of the who and the what. How about the where? Where is this new trial going to be held?”

Red Dog smiled. “Sacramento,” he said.

Sacramento? Yuki could only think of one place in Sacramento with maximum security, but could it hold twenty to thirty people in comfort and safety, twenty-four hours a day, for possibly months? Yuki’s mind was scrambling with the complex, maybe impossible tasks ahead, but she didn’t say so.

“Got it,” she said. “And what’s the ‘when’?”

“When I know, I’ll tell you first.”

“Thanks, Len.”

Yuki knew Red Dog well enough to know that he would not tell her first. She went back to her office fourteen paces away from his, near the interlocking cubicles of ADAs.

She closed her door, opened her laptop, and pulled up a map of Sacramento.

She spent an hour she couldn’t spare poring over locations in Sacramento. Schools. Hospitals. Legislative offices. Many of them could, with serious modification, hold officers of the court, a prisoner standing in the dock for a hideous murder, a prominent judge, defense attorneys, witnesses, and the wife of a police lieutenant. That wife being her.

But she saw no way to restructure any of those functioning, many-doored public buildings into the kind of maximum-security stronghold necessary to protect the court from Dario Garza’s possible associates.

Yuki knew that the only possible facility in the Sacramento region was the renowned Folsom State Prison.

She homed in on Folsom Prison, and after she looked at photos of it, she found archived blueprints. There was no one she could speak with about this turn of events, but she had a good mind for data and she came to a conclusion quickly.

No sane human being would want to be locked up in that place, packed wall-to-wall with convicted felons.

What was she missing? This time when Yuki dove into government databases, she found real-life shots of the prison from overhead, photos time-stamped the previous month. The focus of the images was activity in the exercise yard just beyond the baseball field. There were trucks. And cement mixers. And workmen carrying equipment. Good-bye ball field, hello—what? A new wing, like a barracks, detached from the main buildings.

This, Yuki deduced, was surely the site Parisi and the mayor were trying to arrange for the Dario trial. Yuki was no architect, but the size and simple rectangular shape of the new wing looked as if it could accommodate sleeping quarters, a courtroom, a cafeteria, and a gym. There were four guard posts overlooking the yard. It wasn’t the Palace Hotel, but if the interior of this new building could hold the court and all the players, Yuki saw it was workable.

Any juror or court officer, including herself, who agreed to be sequestered in Folsom’s new building, yards away from the prison itself, would more than demonstrate commitment to their civic duty.

If the maximum security could be maintained.

That was a mighty big “if.”