“So leave him in lockup.”

  “You got it.”

  As the two officers left with Cates through the rear exit, Cindy, panting from the climb, arrived in the changing room and called out to me.

  “Lindsay. What happened?”

  “Hey, Cindy. You know I can’t tell you.”

  “Off the record?”

  “Hah.”

  “Okay. I know. Anyway, I’m here to tell you that our waiter needs to clear our table. There’s a cake. With candles. Oh, and here you are, Claire. We didn’t even sing ‘Happy Birthday to You.’”

  Claire said, “It’s okay, Cin. Medical emergency.”

  The ambulance driver appeared in the locker room with a pair of EMTs who went to Mary Elena Hayes and lifted her onto a stretcher. While Claire filled in the EMTs on her observations, I thought about what Mary Elena Hayes had told me.

  He raped us. What had she meant by that?

  Cindy sighed as the room cleared out, leaving her without a story. She put her arm around my waist.

  “Trouble always finds you, Linds.”

  I hugged her and said, “Look who’s talking.”

  Cindy smiled at her feet, then said, “We can still kinda make this work. Let’s bag the gifts. Box up the cake. Pay up. And then you tell me everything.”

  “Girl Reporter,” I said, giving her a squeeze. “You’re incorrigible.”

  PRESENT DAY

  MONDAY

  CHAPTER 1

  THE DAYDREAMER WAS ninety feet of streamlined fiberglass, teak, and chrome. I’d never been on a yacht like this, but today was the day. Bob Barnett, Cindy’s agent and lawyer, had treated her to a three-hour excursion on the bay because her just-published book, coauthored with a twisted serial killer, had topped the New York Times Best Seller list.

  We grouped around Cindy on the main deck as she read Barnett’s card out loud.

  “Writing Burke’s book was an act of admirable courage and determination, Cindy. You’re a winner and your book is a new true crime classic. Promise me that you’ll relax and have fun today. Try, okay? Love, Bob.”

  Cindy called out, “Thank you, Bob. Wherever you are.”

  I seconded that emotion.

  A ship’s officer showed us through the lounge and passageways to the aft deck, where a cushioned bench rounded the stern and lounge chairs were set up under the shade of the overhanging deck.

  As the yacht cast off, Cindy took a lounge chair at the center. Claire and Yuki settled into the chairs flanking hers and I stretched out on one of the long side benches across from them. We were all beaming. It was a picture-worthy moment.

  I took a selfie with my friends waving their hands behind me. Phones were passed around for portraits of a memorable day and the breeze blew away the worries of the last week. Yuki lifted her glass, saying, “To a life of happy days.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  Claire reached her hand over to Cindy’s chair, saying, “So we’re soon to become the Women’s Married Club.”

  “Who told you?” Cindy joked.

  Claire laughed. “Let’s see that blinding green bling on your finger again.”

  Cindy stuck out her hand theatrically and Claire said, “Wow oh wow.”

  Yuki said, “Let me see,” and Cindy showed her, too.

  “It’s too gorgeous, Cindy. It’s stunning.”

  “He bought it for me. I don’t even want to know what it cost him,” Cindy said, first time I’d ever seen her looking shy.

  “Really suits you, Cin,” I said. I’d first seen the ring years ago. When Rich asked me what I thought of the square cut emerald I’d said, “It’s perfect!” The next day, he’d proposed to Cindy at Grace Cathedral. She’d said yes but then later changed her mind.

  It had killed Richie, but he’d hung in for love.

  Now, Cindy was wearing the ring again. She was getting married.

  And she was marrying the perfect man.

  CHAPTER 2

  CLAIRE PROPPED HERSELF up on the chaise and asked Cindy, “So, tell us again, but this time fill in some details. The juicier the better. What did Richie say?”

  “Aw, I don’t think I can tell you that.”

  Yuki said, “You can tell us, Cindy. It’s off the record.”

  We all laughed, Cindy included. So many times we’d discussed a case in front of her and she’d started taking notes. One or all of us would shout, “Off the record.”

  I said, “Not fair, Cindy. Come on. We’ve been talking about you and Richie for years.”

  Cindy said, “Okay, okay.”

  She let it all out and we didn’t interrupt. She said that the other night she’d opened the bedroom closet door and a pile of gun catalogs had slid down from the top shelf, hitting her in the face. Rich was asleep but when she grabbed up the catalogs and dropped them into the trash, the noise woke him up.

  “We had a shouting match about whose closet it was—his—and how sick I was of living in that dark hole with him, and I threatened to move out.”

  Claire said, “But this was bull, right? You were fighting about something else, am I right?”

  Cindy nodded her head. “I was fuming, packing up, and wondering what the hell I was doing when Rich sat me on the bed, grabbed my hands, and said, ‘I want to marry you, Cindy.’” She stopped to cough, then went on.

  “He said, ‘I love you more than anything, more than closet space, more than a clean fridge, more than a dozen kids.’ Something like that,” Cindy said, looking at each of us. “And he said, ‘Marry me? Will you please?’”

  We swarmed over her, congratulating her, practically pulling her finger off her hand to see the ring. One of us was crying. I think it was me.

  About then, the waiter came out and said that lunch was served. We four grabbed onto one another and staggered against the surprising roll of the deck.

  Claire said to Cindy, “By the way, Cin. This is what marriage is like.”

  We were all still giggling when we reached the dining salon. A large round table was set for eight in the center of the room and four of the places were taken.

  It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkened interior, and by then, the men at the table had gotten to their feet. They were grinning because they’d totally blindsided us.

  “How’d you get here without us seeing you?” I asked Joe, my dearly loved husband.

  “I’m a G-man, remember?” he said.

  We reached out to our husbands. Cindy hugged Rich, her husband-to-be. Claire gave Edmund a big smack. Joe hugged me and got in a butt grab while he was at it. Yuki’s husband, my commanding officer, Homicide Lieutenant Jackson Brady, swept Yuki off her feet—literally—then toasted the newly engaged couple.

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER 3

  AT SEVEN THE next morning, Yuki sat in the small conference room in the DA’s suite of offices at the Hall of Justice. Tyler Cates’s trial would begin tomorrow, and she was polishing her already buffed opening statement.

  There was a mug of black coffee at her right hand and her laptop was open to the voluminous Cates folder, filled with depositions and videos and her own notes.

  The note on the first page of the folder was the key point of her case against Cates: “Show that Tyler Cates knew that Mary Elena Hayes has a severe mental disorder known as dissociative identity disorder (DID), and therefore cannot, could not, give informed consent to sex.”

  Yuki had put a star next to this point because it was critical to her case. She would maintain that Cates knew Hayes had a mental condition, and she also knew that Cates’s attorney would challenge this claim to the bitter end.

  Yuki had listed the proofs of rape in bullet points: That although Mary Elena had no firsthand memory of the event, there was abundant medical proof that Tyler Cates had raped her: The bruises, the vaginal tearing, Cates’s semen inside her body. The screams of protest witnesses heard down on the ground floor, rising above the ambient sounds in the restaurant. Cates’s admission to Lindsay that he’d had sex with Hayes at the scene of the crime. And that the woman he’d had sex with had said her name was Olivia, while the woman who told Lindsay she’d been raped said her name was Loretta. Anything else? Cates had ignored his victim’s multiple names and identities, and instead had congratulated himself that he was having a lucky day.

  Yuki’s second chair, Nick Gaines, pulled open the conference room door, and took a seat beside Yuki.

  “I read it. I like it,” he said of the draft of her opening statement.

  “You only like it? Not love it? You’re not blown away?”

  Gaines had been Yuki’s second chair on dozens of trials. Based on his GPA from Harvard Law, he could have been fast-tracked up the ladder at any prestigious firm, but that’s not who Gaines was. He was sharp, insightful, had attack-dog instincts and a genuine soft spot for victims of violent crime.

  He said, “I’m this close to being blown away, Yuki. I don’t doubt you. It’s Mary Elena and company. I don’t know if there is a defense against Olivia. From the tapes, she’s charming and likable. If Olivia comes forward when Mary Elena is on the stand, the jury will love her, and she’ll say she was crazy about Cates.”

  “Schneider will underscore that on cross and we’ll have to cancel out our own witness on redirect.” Yuki sighed, continuing Gaines’s line of thought.

  But could she redirect if the house was on fire?

  Gaines handed over the thumb drive of interviews psychiatrists had done with Mary Elena, and said he was ready to meet her.

  “If you don’t mind, Yuki, I want to push her buttons a little.”

  Yuki thought about it, said, “Risky. But maybe it’s worth trying before we go to court.”

  Gaines said, “Send me the Cates transcripts and video again, okay?”

  Yuki tapped some keys on her laptop as Gaines got out of his seat. “Done,” she said.

  She was gathering up her laptop, handbag, and coffee mug, planning to go back to her office, when her boss, Len Parisi, walked through the conference room door. Yuki sat back down.

  San Francisco district attorney Leonard Parisi was known as Red Dog for his grizzled red hair and unflagging “winners win” mentality. As he took a chair across from Yuki, saying, “How’s it going?” a cell phone rang. “Wait a second. I have to take this.”

  Parisi put his phone to his ear, giving Yuki another few moments to order her thoughts. The boss got snappish if she didn’t give him a clean-to-the-bone summary of the matter at hand.

  Red Dog growled into the phone, “Right. Call me when you have something real,” and hung up.

  “Sorry, Yuki. This day is shaping up to be a multicar pileup on Route 101.”

  CHAPTER 4

  YUKI CHECKED HER watch. Eight fifteen already.

  She said, “It’s complicated, Len. Mary Elena has dissociative identity disorder, formerly and still commonly called multiple personality disorder. Much of the time, she’s like the rest of us. Has a job, memories—”

  Parisi said, “I know, you’ve told me this before. Several times.”

  “This time I’m telling you as if you’re a juror. See how it plays.”

  “As I’ve been saying for months, Yuki. This is a weak, circumstantial case. Your best witness is Tyler Cates and he’s not going to convict himself. So, you’re at the mercy of Mary Elena’s invisible friends.”

  Parisi had made his point, but she still wanted his support. A loophole. Or a story of a no-win case that he’d turned into a touchdown. But he wasn’t going there. He was itemizing all the reasons the Hayes case was doomed. Yuki listened while looking Red Dog in the eye.

  When Parisi ran out of gas, Yuki said, “Hear me out, Len. I was with Mary Elena immediately after she was raped. She’d been choked and punched, and fingerprint-shaped bruises were coming up on her inner thighs. The DNA inside her body matched Cates’s DNA. We need to convict him—”

  Parisi cut her off, saying, “Olivia was behind the wheel when Cates got busy.”

  “True.”

  “And she may have seduced him.”

  “That’s what he says. But there’s more to it than that. How much time do you have?”

  “You’ll have to discredit Olivia without discrediting Mary Elena. How are you going to do that?”

  Yuki pictured it. Cates had told Lindsay that he’d had sex with Olivia and only heard the name Loretta after the fact. Still, it was indisputable that sex had been forced. Though Cates would say Olivia directed him to be rough.

  Parisi cut into her thoughts. He said, “Can you bring out the personality who took the attack? Loretta?”

  “If only,” said Yuki. “It doesn’t exactly work that way with Mary Elena. If I stress her out—or Cates’s counsel goes after her, accuses her of being a liar, say—in that case, one of Mary Elena’s alters might step in to protect her, but we don’t know which one. More than one could front her on the stand.”

  “What’s ‘front her’ mean?”

  “Become the dominant personality.”

  “Okay. So, you’re saying that Loretta or Olivia could come out, and Mary Elena wouldn’t be there. Consciously. Or another of her alternate personalities could take control, a personality that you don’t know?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I don’t like this, Yuki.”

  Yuki thought that was at least the fourteenth time he’d told her that.

  Parisi slapped the conference table and stood up.

  “You want to ride this case into a box canyon, it’s your horse. Go right ahead. I have a meeting.”

  Yuki nodded and Len Parisi left the room. He was a great prosecutor. He’d never told her she was crazy to take on a case before, no matter how bad the odds of winning. But this one was brand-new territory. She didn’t know a single prosecutor who’d ever been dealt a stack of wild cards like this one.

  Then again, she’d never had an easy case in her life.

  CHAPTER 5

  MARY ELENA SAT in a visitor chair across from Yuki’s desk, relating a dream she’d had.

  “We’re in court,” Mary Elena said. “TV movie–type courtroom. I’m sitting next to you and someone says, ‘Has the jury reached a verdict?’ And the jury foreman says, ‘We have, Your Honor.’ The foreman looked like Sean Penn and I woke myself up like three times.”

  “How did you feel in the dream?” Yuki asked.

  “Scared, I guess,” she said. “Who wouldn’t be?”

  Yuki nodded. Mary Elena said she was “grounded” but, Yuki saw fear in her eyes.

  “It’ll be all right, Ms. Hayes. I read that Sean Penn is shooting a movie out of the country.”

  Mary Elena grinned and said, “My grandmother called me Mary Elena.”

  Yuki said, “My grandmother called me chiisana neko. Which means ‘little cat,’ but you can call me Yuki.”

  They both laughed and then Yuki said, “I’d like you to meet Nick Gaines. He’s working with me as second chair in our case against Mr. Cates.”

  “He knows all about…?”

  “Absolutely. And he’s got a few questions for you.”

  Yuki grabbed the desk phone and called Gaines. He picked up, and, by the time Yuki had clicked off, was at her open door. He pulled the second visitor chair around so that he triangulated both Yuki and Mary Elena.

  He smiled, said, “We have a good case, Mary Elena, but the defense is prepared and they’re going to try to win. Here’s what we figure is going to be the defense’s position. Shall we talk about it?”

  “I’m ready. I think.”

  “Nothing to worry about. This is just you and your legal team doing a practice run. Not a problem, right?”

  “Okay.”

  Gaines said, “Good,” and kept going. Yuki thought Mary Elena was not exactly okay, but she let it go. Gaines was smart and even if Mary Elena didn’t know him, this was a safe place.

  “Here we go,” Gaines said.

  Yuki saw Mary Elena’s face flatten and she heard Parisi’s warning in her mind.

  This is a weak, circumstantial case… You want to ride this case into a box canyon, it’s your horse.

  Yuki watched Gaines lean closer to Mary Elena, who, under the force of his stare, pushed her chair back flush against the wall. If Gaines felt her withdrawing from him, he showed no sign.

  “Now, Mary Elena. Ed Schneider, Tyler Cates’s attorney, is a pit bull.”

  Mary Elena said, tersely, “I heard.”

  Gaines nodded and went on.

  “The jury is going to want to hear your side. Schneider may call you to the stand and pummel you with questions. So, it’s far better if we call you. The defense will still question you, but they won’t have as much control.

  “Now, according to Cates, you followed him to the second floor. You asked him for rough sex, then when he hurt you, you said that he raped you. Schneider is going to push hard on that. Quoting his client, he’ll say that Cates met a woman named Olivia who told him, ‘I want you to take me hard and fast and now.’ In other words, the defense position will be that the sex was your idea but that you changed your mind after the fact. And that you were in full control of Olivia.”

  “I didn’t know she was out,” Mary Elena said. “She doesn’t talk that way. I only remember that when I went into the room and was looking for the ladies’ room, that guy asked me who I was. I said, ‘Elena.’ I don’t remember anything else until the police came.”

  “This is important, Mary Elena. Did any of your alters tell Cates that you have DID?”

  Mary Elena said, “I can only tell you what I know and what I’ve said. I went into Xe Sogni to use the ladies’ room. A waiter said it was upstairs, so I climbed that spiral staircase. Then I woke up on the floor, naked and hurting everywhere.”

  Gaines said, “You told Sergeant Boxer that your name was Loretta. You told her, ‘He raped us.’ You’ve just said that you were on your way to the bathroom, then woke up on the floor without memory of this rape. That’s a contradiction, isn’t it?”