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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.
    “When you walk outside, hold your head up,” Mickey advised me. “When they scream, ‘Why did you kill that girl?’ just walk slowly to the car. Don’t smile, don’t smirk, and don’t let the media beat you. You did nothing wrong. Go home and don’t answer your phone. I’ll stop by your house later.”
    The rain had ended by the time we stepped out of the courthouse into the dull late afternoon. I shouldn’t have been shocked to see that hundreds of people had gathered outside the courthouse to see the cop who’d shot and killed a teenage girl.
    Mickey and Yuki split away from us to address the press, and I knew that Mickey’s thoughts were turning now to how he was going to defend the SFPD and the City of San Francisco.
    Joe and I walked through the jostling, yelling crowd toward the alley where the car was waiting. I heard a chant, “Child killer, child killer,” and questions were lobbed at me like stones.
    “What were you thinking, Lieutenant?”
    “How did you feel when you shot those kids?”
    I knew the faces of the television reporters: Carlos Vega, Sandra Dunne, Kate Morley, all of whom had interviewed me when I’d been a witness for the prosecution. I did my best to ignore them now and to look past the rolling cameras and the jouncing placards reading Guilty of Police Brutality.
    I kept my eyes focused just ahead and my steps matching Joe’s until we reached the black sedan.
    As soon as the doors thunked closed, the driver put the car into reverse and backed out fast onto Polk Street. Then he wheeled the car around and pointed it toward Potrero Hill.
    “He murdered me in there,” I said to Joe once we were under way.
    “The judge saw you, saw the kind of person you are. It’s too bad she felt she had to do what she did.”
    “Cops are watching me, Joe, cops who work for me and who expect me to do the right thing. I’m supposed to keep their respect after this?”
    “Lindsay, the right-minded people in this city are rooting for you. You’re a good person, damn it, and a fine cop.”
    Joe’s words got to me in a way that Mason Broyles’s vicious barbs had not. I put my head on his nice blue shirt and let the pent-up tears come as he held and comforted me.
    “I’m okay,” I said at last. I mopped up with the hankie he offered me. “It’s my hay fever. A high pollen count always makes me weep.”
    Molinari laughed and gave me a good hug as the car climbed homeward. We crossed Twentieth Street, and the staggered rows of pastel Victorian houses came into view.
    “I’d quit my job right now,” I said, “but that would only make it look like I’m guilty.”
    “Those murdering kids, Lindsay. No jury’s going to find in their favor. There’s just no way.”
    “Promise?”
    Joe squeezed me again, but he didn’t answer. I knew that he believed in me completely, but he wouldn’t make a promise that he couldn’t keep.
    “You going back right now?” I asked at last.
    “I wish I didn’t have to. But