21st Birthday, James Patterson [best mystery novels of all time TXT] 📗

Conroy said, “I’m not sure. Luke was very upset that weekend. I wanted to comfort him. That’s what I did. I wasn’t watching the clock.”

Yuki said, “Thank you. That’s all I have for this witness.”

Judge Passarelli told Conroy she could step down, and Gardner called his next and only other witness.

“I call Lucas Burke.”

Gardner helped Lucas around the counsel table without knocking over his chair, then released his client’s arm and watched him take the twenty-yard walk to the witness stand on his own.

Yuki wondered what the hell Gardner could ask Lucas that could redeem him from Yuki’s crushing witness interrogations. Would he break down again? Or did Gardner have a-get-out-of-jail-free card up his sleeve?

Whatever was about to happen, he was holding the hundred and forty–odd people in Courtroom 2C in absolute suspense.

The bailiff stood behind Burke, ready to assist him as he climbed the two steps to the witness box.

Chapter 103

Watching him, Cindy was still shocked at how much Lucas Burke, a fairly fit, fortyish man, had declined after five months in jail.

Gardner walked up to his client and said, “I have a few questions for you, Mr. Burke. I hope they will give you a chance to answer to the situation in which you find yourself.”

“Ready and willing,” said the witness.

“Fine. Did you, possibly with good reason, kill anyone? Your wife and daughter, your mistress, anyone else?”

“Absolutely not. It’s true that my wife, Tara, and I were fighting. She was only twenty. She’d never worked for a living. She wanted a lot of clothing and accessories that we couldn’t afford on my teacher’s salary.

“We had fights, but not physical ones. We called each other names, and once, after her mother got her going, Tara threw a pot at me, but she missed. As for my little daughter…” Burke’s voice broke and he covered his face with his arm. His shoulders shook.

Gardner said, “Take your time, Luke.”

Burke put down his arm, cleared his throat, took a couple of sips of water from a plastic bottle, then said with a quavering voice, “I loved Lorrie more than anyone in the world. My little sister and my mother both disappeared more than fifteen years ago, and I’ll never get over the loss of them. Lorrie reminded me of my sister, Jodie, when she was a baby. My heart is broken. I pray that Lorrie didn’t know what was happening to her. That she didn’t suffer.”

“I’m so sorry about all of that, Luke. I must ask you about Melissa. You called her Misty.”

“Misty was the sweetest young woman, but our relationship was doomed. She was eighteen. She should have gone to college. There was no way to make sense of our relationship except that we loved each other.”

“Did you make a date to see Misty the night she was killed?”

“No, and if I had, she would be alive. We did often meet in the parking lot, but I didn’t even know what day it was. Or even think about Misty. I had just been released from jail. The police were ransacking my house. I got into my car and just drove fast.

“Alexandra Conroy, my ex-wife, had called me when she heard about Lorrie. She lives only a couple of hours away. I wanted to be with her, just to talk. Although our marriage had died a long time ago, Alex always understood me. I called her. She said, ‘Come.’

“I drove straight to her house. It was dark when I got there.”

“And then what, Luke?”

“We talked. I cried for hours. Alex made a reservation for us, a weekend’s stay at a resort in Carmel. We woke up early and drove to the resort. We spent Friday night, and late Saturday morning, in the breakfast room, I saw the paper with Misty’s picture under a headline saying that she’d been murdered.

“Alex and I left the resort and drove directly to the police station in this building, where I was arrested for murders I didn’t, couldn’t have, would never commit. So help me, God.”

“Thank you, Lucas.”

Gardner turned his handsome face to the jury as if to say, You see what kind of man he is. He didn’t do it.

“Your witness,” Gardner said to ADA Castellano.

“No questions,” Yuki said.

“Okay then,” said Gardner. “The defense rests.”

Chapter 104

The judge called a twenty-minute recess, which gave Yuki some time to settle her nerves.

This was it. She was about to give her closing argument. She’d been rehearsing variations on her summation for months with Len Parisi, with Nick Gaines, and with her husband, Jackson Brady.

She swung her eyes to the back of the room and saw Brady standing beside Cindy’s chair.

He gave her a smile and she returned one of her own.

She heard the judge call her name and felt the hush in the courtroom as if it were a chill breeze. Nick’s note was in front of her: “Go get ’em.”

ADA Castellano walked to the lectern and addressed the jury with all of the confidence she had.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, this case is about the murder of two innocent young women and a baby girl, all of whom were intimately connected to the defendant, Lucas Burke.

“Mr. Burke claims to have loved them all and denies his guilt, but the evidence shows that he decided, with malice aforethought, to kill all three.

“How do we know he did it?

“Mr. Burke has testified that his marriage was going up in flames. Tara was too spendy with her credit cards, and the defendant states that he couldn’t afford this. He told her to grow up, to stick to the budget, and when she continued to overspend, he canceled her credit cards.

“She was angry.

“You heard Tara’s mother, Kathleen Wyatt, who told you that Mr. Burke was abusive to her daughter. Tara denied it, but this is often the case with abused spouses, and this seems to be such a case. Fights, bruises, mounting anger.

“Mr. Burke already had another teenage girlfriend. We have introduced the note that he wrote