The 8th Confession Read Online Free PDF

client, Stacey Glenn.
    Hoffman was tall, stooped, six-foot-four, forty-two years old, with unruly dark hair. He wore a midnight-blue Armani suit and a pink satin tie. His nails were manicured.
    Like Yuki, Hoffman was a perfectionist.
    Unlike her, Hoffman's win-to-loss ratio put him in the all-star league. Normally, he commanded fees upwards of nine hundred bucks an hour, but he was currently representing Stacey Glenn pro bono. Hoffman was no altruist. The courtroom was packed with press, and their coverage of this case was worth millions to his firm.
    Stacey Glenn was a stunning blue-eyed brunette with two spots of blush on her cheeks emphasizing her jailhouse pallor. She wore a frumpy suit in an unflattering olive-toned plaid, conveying schoolteacher or statistician rather than the calculating, murdering, moneygrubbing psychopath that she was.
    Beside Yuki, Nicky Gaines, with his perpetual adenoidal wheeze, breathed noisily as the jurors entered the small courtroom from a side door and settled into their seats in the jury box.
    Judge Duffy greeted the jurors, explained that today both sides would summarize their cases and that afterward, the jury could begin its deliberations.
    Duffy took a long pull of soda right out of the can, then asked, "Ms. Castellano, are the People ready to proceed?"
    "Yes, Your Honor."
    Taking her notes from the table, Yuki walked to the lectern in the center of the oak-lined courtroom. She smiled at the twelve jurors and two alternates she'd come to know by their tics, grimaces, laughter, and eye-rolling over the past six weeks, said, "Morning, everyone," then, pointing to the defendant, spoke from her heart.
    "Stacey Glenn is a depraved and unrepentant murderer.
    "She killed her father, who adored her. She did her level best to kill her mother and thought she had. She bludgeoned her parents without mercy because she wanted to collect their life-insurance payout of a million dollars.
    "She did it for the
money.
"
    Yuki went over the timeline she'd established during the trial—the tollbooth attendant's testimony and that of the Glenns' neighbor—and she reminded them of the insurance broker Stacey had called to check on the status of her parents' policy.
    Last, she asked the jury to recall the testimonies of Inspector Paul Chi, a decorated Homicide investigator with the SFPD, and Lynn Colomello, a seasoned paramedic.
    "Inspector Chi and EMS Sergeant Lynn Colomello have both testified that although Rose Glenn was close to death when she was found in bed beside her murdered husband, she had
cognition
and she was
lucid,
" Yuki told the jury.
    "Rose Glenn obeyed the paramedics' directions. She knew who had attacked her and, most important,
she was able to convey this information to the police.
    "You know that Inspector Chi had a video camera with him when he was called to the scene of a homicide that morning. When he realized that Mrs. Glenn was still alive, he videotaped their conversation, believing it to be Mrs. Glenn's dying declaration.
    "Rose Glenn knew full well who had attacked her. And on this videotape, she tells this story more powerfully than anything I can say.
    "Nicky, please roll it."

Chapter 14
     
    A VIDEOTAPE OF the dimly lit murder scene appeared on the screen to the side of the judge's bench closest to the jury.
    The camera's eye focused on a bedroom dominated by a king-size bed. The linens were in disarray and dark with drying blood. A man's twisted body was on the far side of the bed, his face turned away from the camera, blood and brains spattering the headboard, deep wounds visible on his scalp and throat.
    A woman's ghostly hand lifted from the bed and motioned the viewer to come closer. The sound of labored breathing intensified as the camera neared the bed.
    It was shocking and horrifying to see that although her jaw was clearly smashed and one eye was gone,
Rose Glenn was alive.
    "I'm Inspector Paul Chi," said a man's voice off camera. "An ambulance is on the way, Mrs.