Star Witness by Mallory Kane Page A

might resent Harte’s carefully patient tone, as if he were trying to calm a screaming child. But right now he was her only port in the storm—literally. And he was being quite nice.
    He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and checked it. He shook his head.
    “Still no service?” she asked. In the distance, a high-pitched wail signaled that emergency vehicles were responding to calls.
    “Not even one bar. When I was trying to talk to the D.A., I had two bars and it still kept dropping the connection. I hope the storm hasn’t knocked out any towers.” He sighed and pocketed the phone. “So. Your grandfather and whoever was in his study were yelling.”
    She cleared her throat. “Then I heard noises—grunts and crashes, like furniture being knocked over or things being thrown. I didn’t know at the time, but now I know they were hitting him. When I think of those awful sounds, I—” She stopped. She had to swallow a couple of times to get rid of the lump in her throat. “There was one guy. He was louder than the others, sounded like he was in charge. He’s the one who started naming names.”
    “What names did you hear?”
    Dani looked at Harte blankly for a moment. Her head was filled with the awful, sickening sounds she’d heard that night. The dull thud of fists hitting flesh. The crash of a body falling against a table or the floor. Sounds that would always haunt her dreams.
    “Dani?” Harte said. “What names did you hear?”
    “Yeoman, Senator Stamps and Paul Guillame. All that’s in my statement.”
    “I know. But remember, I asked you to tell me about the night as if I’d never heard it before.”
    She sighed. “I heard ‘Mr. Yeoman sent us,’ and—”
    “Okay, hold on a second,” Harte interrupted. “One of the men said, ‘Yeoman sent us’?”
    “He said, ‘Mr. Yeoman sent us.’”
    “You’re absolutely sure? It couldn’t have been ‘Mr. Yeoman said’ or ‘Mr. Yeoman should’?”
    Irritation burned in her stomach. “You know it’s not either of those. He said, ‘Mr. Yeoman sent us.’”
    Harte studied her for a moment. “Okay. Don’t forget that I’m asking you these questions for the jury. What else did they say?”
    “I couldn’t understand everything. The next thing I could make out was something about Senator Stamps, and—” She stopped. Just like that night, the exact words the men had said eluded her.
    “Can you tell me specifically what they said when they mentioned Stamps’s name?” Harte prodded.
    “They didn’t mention Stamps’s name. They yelled it.”
    “Okay,” he said with exaggerated patience.
    She closed her eyes and forced herself back there. Creeping quietly across the hardwood floor toward Granddad’s study, her stomach queasily protesting, listening to the awful sounds and trying to remember where her cell phone was so she could call 911. “It was like ‘Senator Stamps warned or armed or aimed.’ I was groggy from nausea medication and terrified, because I couldn’t figure out what was happening.”
    Harte’s mouth thinned. “That brings up a good point. Where were you that night while all this was going on?”
    “I was trying to get to the telephone in the living room.”
    “And where was your grandfather?”
    “In his study, on the other side of the house.”
    “That distance has been measured. From the door of your bedroom to the door of Freeman Canto’s study is sixty-two feet. Are you telling me that you could hear and understand what the men were saying?”
    She bristled. “Ye-e-es.” She drew out the word sarcastically.
    “Dani, you’re supposed to be answering as if you were on the witness stand. You’re the prosecution’s main witness. As an attorney you know better than to get defensive. Remember that it’s your job to give the judge and jury an accurate recounting of the events that led up to your grandfather’s death.”
    The control she was holding on to with such desperation cracked and her eyes filled