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  “That was months ago.” Jill snorted, taking a bite of a chicken-and-avocado wrap. “He sure took his time.”

  “That’s what I said.” I nodded.

  Cindy shook her head. “He just decided after twenty years to show up at your door?”

  “I think it’s a good thing, Lindsay,” injected Claire. “You know me—positive.”

  “A good thing that after twenty years he marches back in with a guilty conscience.”

  “No, a good thing because he needs you, Lindsay. He’s alone, right?”

  “He told me he got married again for two years, but he’s divorced. Imagine, Claire, finding out years after the fact that your father got married again.”

  “That’s not the point, Lindsay,” Claire replied. “He’s reaching out. You shouldn’t be too proud to accept it.”

  “How do you feel?” inquired Jill.

  I wiped my mouth, took a sip of iced tea and then a long breath. “The truth? I don’t even know. He’s like some ghost from the past who brings back a lot of bad memories. Everything he’s touched has only hurt people.”

  “He’s your father, honey,” Claire said. “You’ve carried this hurt around since I’ve known you. You should let him in, Lindsay. You could have something you never had before.”

  “He could also kick her in the shins again,” said Jill.

  “Gee.” Cindy looked over at Jill. “The prospect of motherhood hasn’t exactly made you all soft and gooey, has it?”

  “One date with the reverend,” Jill chuffed back, “and suddenly you’re the conscience of the group? I’m impressed.”

  We looked at Cindy, all of us suppressing smiles.

  “That’s true.” Claire nodded. “You don’t think you’re going to get off the hook, do you?”

  Cindy began to blush. Never since I’d known her had I seen Cindy Thomas blush.

  “You guys do make quite the couple.” I sighed.

  “I like him,” Cindy blurted. “We talked for hours. At a bar. Then he took me home. The end.”

  “Sure.” Jill grinned. “He’s cute, he’s got a steady job, and if you’re ever tragically killed, you don’t have to worry about who will preside over your service.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that one.” Cindy finally smiled. “Look, it was one date. I’m doing a piece on him and the neighborhood. I’m sure he won’t ask me out again.”

  “But will you ask him out again?” said Jill.

  “We’re friends. No, we’re friendly. It was a great couple of hours. I guarantee, all of you would have enjoyed yourselves. It’s research,” Cindy said, and she folded her arms.

  We all smiled. But Cindy was right—none of us would have turned down a couple of hours with Aaron Winslow. I still got chills when I remembered his talk at Tasha Catchings’s funeral.

  As we crumpled our trash, I turned to Jill. “So, how’re you feeling? You okay?”

  She smiled. “Pretty good, actually.” Then she linked her hands around her barely swollen belly and puffed out her cheeks as if to say, Fat… “I’ve just got this last case to finish up on. Then, who knows, I might even take some time off.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it.” Cindy chortled. Claire and I mooned our eyes in support.

  “Well, you just might be surprised,” Jill said.

  “So what’re you gonna do?” Claire turned to me as we got up to leave.

  “Keep trying to link the victims. They’ll connect.”

  She kept her eyes on me. “I meant about your dad.”

  “I don’t know. It’s a bad time, Claire. Now Marty comes barging in. If he wants a dispensation, he can wait in line.”

  Claire stood up. She shot me one of her wise smirks.

  “You obviously have a suggestion,” I said.

  “Naturally. Why not do what you normally do in situations of doubt and stress?”

  “And that is…?”

  “Cook the man a meal.”

  Chapter 56

  THAT AFTERNOON, Cindy hunched in front of her computer at the Chronicle, sipping a Stewart’s Orange n’ Cream, as she scrolled down another futile query.

  Somewhere, in the deepest bin of her memory, there was something she had filed away, a nagging recollection she couldn’t place. Chimera… the word used in another context, some other form that would help the case.

  She’d gone through CAL, the Chronicle’s on-line archives, and come back with zilch. She had browsed through the usual search engines: Yahoo, Jeeves, Google. Her antennae were buzzing on high mode. She felt, as did Lindsay, that this fantastical monster led somewhere other than hate groups. It led to one very twisted and clever individual.

  C’mon. She exhaled, jabbing the enter key in frustration. I know you’re in here somewhere.

  The day was nearly gone, and she’d come up with nothing. Not even a lead for tomorrow morning’s edition. Her editor would be pissed. We have readers, he would grumble. Readers want continuity. She’d have to promise him something. But what? The investigation was stalled.

  When she found it, she was in Google, wearily eyeing down the eighth page of responses. It hit her like a slap.

  Chimera… Hellhole, an exposé of prison life in Pelican Bay, by Antoine James. Posthumous publication of prison hardships, cruelties, life of crime.

  Pelican Bay… Pelican Bay was where they threw the worst of the worst troublemakers in the California prison system. Violent offenders who couldn’t be controlled anywhere else.

  She remembered now that she had read about Pelican Bay in the Chronicle, maybe two years before. That was where she’d heard of Chimera. It was how it fit. That was what had been needling her.

  She spun her chair over to the CAL terminal on a nearby shelf. She pushed her glasses up on her forehead and typed in the query. Antoine James.

  Five seconds later, a response came up. One article, August 10, 1998. Two years before. Written by Deb Meyer, a Sunday section feature writer. Headlined: “POSTHUMOUS JOURNAL DETAILS NIGHTMARE WORLD OF VIOLENCE BEHIND BARS.”

  She clicked on the display bar, and in another few seconds a facsimile of the article flashed on the screen. It was a Lifestyle article in a Sunday Metro section. Antoine James, while serving a ten-to-fifteen sentence at Pelican Bay for armed robbery, had been stabbed and killed in a prison squabble. He had kept a journal detailing the unsettling story of life on the inside, alleging a routine of forced snitching, racial attacks, beatings by guards, and perpetual gang violence.

  She printed the article, closed out of CAL, and spun her chair back across to her desk. She leaned back in her chair and rested her feet on a stack of books. She scanned the page.

  “From the moment they process you through the doors, life in Pelican Bay is a constant war of guard intimidation and gang violence,” James had written in a black composition book. “The gangs provide your status, your identity, your protection, too. Everyone pledges out, and whatever group you belong to controls who you are and what’s expected of you.”

  Cindy’s eyes raced further down. The prison was a viper’s nest of gangs and retaliation. The blacks had the Bloods and the Daggers, as well as the Muslims. The Latinos had the Nortenos in their red headbands and the Serranos in their blue, and the Mexican Mafia, Los Eme. Among the whites, there were the Guineas and the Bikers, and some white-trash shitbags called the Stinky Toilet People. And the supremacist Aryans.

  “Some of the groups were ultra-secret,” James wrote. “Once you were in, nobody touched you.

  “One of these white groups was particularly nasty. All ‘max’ guys, serving violent felony time. They’d cut a brother open just to bet on what he had to eat.”

  Adrenaline shot through Cindy as she stopped on the next sentence.

  James had a name for the group—Chimera.

  Chapter 57

  I WAS JUST FINISHING UP for the day—nothing further on the four victims and the white chalk still a mystery, when I got a call from Cindy.

  “The Hall still under m
artial law?” she quipped, referring to the mayor’s moratorium on the press.

  “Trust me, it’s no picnic on the inside either.”

  “Why don’t you meet me? I’ve got something.”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “Look out your window. I’m right outside.”

  I peered out and saw Cindy, leaning on a car parked outside the Hall. It was almost seven. I cleared my desk, called a quick good-night to Lorraine and Chin, and ducked out the rear entrance. I ran across the street and went up to Cindy. She was in a short skirt and embroidered jean jacket, with a faded khaki knapsack slung over her shoulder.

  “Choir practice?” I winked.

  “You should talk. Next time I see you in SWAT gear, I’ll assume you have a date with your dad.”

  “Speaking of Marty, I called him. I asked him over tomorrow night. So, Deep Throat, what’s so important that we’re meeting out here?”

  “Good news, bad news,” Cindy said. She pulled off her knapsack and came up with an 8 × 11 envelope. “I think I found it, Lindsay.”

  She handed me the envelope, and I opened it: a Chronicle article dated two years ago about a prison diary, Hell-hole, by someone named Antoine James. A few passages were highlighted in yellow. I began to read.

  “Aryan… worse than Aryan. All max guys. White, bad, and hating. We didn’t know who they hated worse, us, the ‘swarms’ they had to share their meals with, or the cops and guards who had put them there.

  “These bastards had a name for themselves. They called themselves Chimera….”

  My eyes fixed on the word.

  “They’re animals, Lindsay. The worst troublemakers in the penal system. They’re even committed to carrying out each other’s hits on the outside.

  “That’s the good news,” she said. “The bad news is, it’s Pelican Bay.”

  Chapter 58

  IN THE ANATOMY of the California state prison system, Pelican Bay was the place where the sun don’t shine.

  The following day, I took Jacobi and “req’d” a police helicopter for the hour’s flight up the coast to Crescent City, near the Oregon border. I had been to Pelican Bay twice before, to meet with a snitch on a murder case and attend a parole hearing for someone I had put away. Each time, as I flew over the dense redwood forest surrounding the facility, it left a hole in the pit of my stomach.

  If you were a law-enforcement agent—especially a woman—this was the kind of place you didn’t want to go. There’s a sign, as they process you through the front gate, warning that if you’re taken hostage you’re on your own. No negotiations.

  I had arranged to meet with the assistant warden, Roland Estes, in the main administrative building. He kept us waiting for a few minutes. When he showed up, Estes was tall and serious, with a hard face and tight blue eyes. He had that clenched-fist unconfidingness that comes from years of living under the highest discipline.

  “I apologize for being late,” he said, taking a seat behind his large oak desk. “We had a disturbance down in O block. One of our resident Nortenos stabbed a rival in the neck.”

  “How’d he get the knife?” Jacobi asked.

  “No knives.” Estes smiled thinly. “He used the filed-down edge of a gardening hoe.”

  I wouldn’t have had Estes’s job for a heartbeat, but I also didn’t like the reputation this place had for beatings, intimidation, and the motto “Snitch, Parole, or Die.”

  “So, you said this was related to Chief Mercer’s murder, Lieutenant?” The warden leaned forward.

  I nodded, removing a case file from my bag. “To a possible string of murders. I’m interested in what you may know about a prison gang here.”

  Estes shrugged. “Most of these inmates have been in gangs from the time they were ten. You’ll find that every territory or gang domain that exists in Oakland or East L.A. exists here.”

  “This particular gang is called Chimera,” I said.

  Estes registered no immediate surprise. “No starting with the small stuff, huh, Lieutenant? So what is it you want to know?”

  “I want to know if these murders lead to these men in Chimera. I want to know if they’re as bad as they’re made out to be. And I want to know the names of any reputed members who are now on the outside.”

  “The answer to all of that is yes.” Estes nodded flatly. “It’s a sort of a trial by fire. Prisoners who can take the worst we can dish out. The ones who have been in the SHU’s, isolation, for a substantial time. It earns them rank—and certain privileges.”

  “Privileges?”

  “Freedom. In the way we define it here. From being debriefed. From snitching.”

  “I’d like a list of any paroled members of this gang.”

  The warden smiled. “Not many get paroled. Some get transferred to other facilities. I suspect there are Chimera offshoots at every max facility in the state. And it’s not like we have a file of who’s in and who’s not. It’s more like who gets to sit next to the Big Motherfucker at mess.”

  “But you know, don’t you? You know who’s in.”

  “We know.” The warden nodded. He stood up as if our interview had come to an end. “It’ll take some time. Some of this I need to consult on. But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “While I’m here, I might as well meet with him.”

  “Who, Lieutenant?”

  “The Big Motherfucker. The head of Chimera.”

  Estes looked at me. “Sorry, Lieutenant, no one gets to do that. No one gets into the Pool.”

  I looked Estes in the eyes. “You want me to come back with a state order to get it done? Listen, our chief of police is dead. Every politician in this state wants this guy caught. I’ve got backing all the way. You already know that. Bring the bastard up.”

  The warden’s taut face relaxed. “Be my guest, Lieutenant. But he doesn’t leave. You go to him.”

  Estes picked up his phone and dialed a number. After a pause, he muttered sharply, “Get Weiscz ready. He has a visitor. It’s a woman.”

  Chapter 59

  WE WENT THROUGH a long underground walkway, accompanied by Estes and a club-toting head guard named O’Koren.

  When we came to a stairway marked SHU-C, the warden led us up, waving at a security screen, then through a heavy compression door that opened into the ultramodern prison ward.

  Along the way, he filled me in. “Like most of our inmates, Weiscz came in from another facility, Folsom. He was the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood there, until he strangled a black guard. He’s been iso-ed here for eighteen months now. Until we start sending people to the death house in this state, there’s nothing more we can do to him.”

  Jacobi leaned over and whispered, “You sure of what you’re doing here, Lindsay?”

  I wasn’t sure. My heart was starting to gallop, and my palms had busted out in a nervous sweat. “That’s why I brought you along.”

  “Yeah,” Jacobi muttered.

  Pelican Bay’s isolation unit was unlike anything I had ever seen. Everything was painted a dull, sterile white. Burly khaki-uniformed guards, of both sexes but uniformly white, manned glassed-in command posts.

  Monitors and security cameras were everywhere. Everywhere. The unit was configured like a pod with ten cells, the compression-sealed doors tightly shut.

  Warden Estes stopped in front of a metal door with a large window. “Welcome to ground zero of the human race,” he said.

  A muscular, balding senior guard holding a face visor and some sort of Uzi-like taser gun came up. “Weiscz had to be extracted, Warden. I think he’ll need a few moments to loosen up.”

  I looked up at Estes. “Extracted?”

  Estes sniffed. “You would think after being holed up a couple of months, he’d be happy to get out. Just so you know what’s coming next, Weiscz was uncooperative. We had to send a team in to pretty him up for you.”

  He nodded toward the window. “There’s your man….”

  I stepped in front of the solid pressure-sealed door. Stra
pped to a metal chair, his feet bound in irons, his hands cuffed from behind, hunched a hulking, muscular shape. His hair was long and oily and straggly, and he wore a thin, unkempt goatee. He was dressed in an orange short-sleeved jumpsuit, open at the chest, revealing ornate tattoos covering his pumped-up arms and chest.

  The warden said, “There’ll be a guard in there with you and you’ll be monitored at all times. Stay away from him. Don’t get closer than five feet. If he as much as juts his chin in your direction, he’ll be immobilized.”

  “The guy’s bound and chained,” I said.

  “This sonofabitch eats chains,” Estes said. “Believe it.”

  “Anything I can promise him?”

  “Yeah.” Estes smirked. “A Happy Meal. You ready…?” I winked at Jacobi, who widened his eyes in caution. My heart nearly stopped, like a skeet target exploded out of the sky.

  “Bon voyage,” Estes muttered. Then he signaled the control booth. I heard a ka-shoosh as the heavy compression door unlocked.

  Chapter 60

  I STEPPED INTO THE stark white cell. It was completely empty except for a metal table and four chairs, all bolted to the floor, and two security cameras high up on the walls. In a corner stood a silent, tight-lipped guard holding a stun gun.

  Weiscz barely acknowledged me. His legs were fastened and his hands tightly cuffed behind the chair. His eyes had a steely, inhuman quality to them.

  “I’m Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer,” I said, stopping about five feet from him.

  Weiscz said nothing, only tilted his eyes toward me. Narrow, almost phosphorescent slits.

  “I need to talk to you about some murders that have taken place. I can’t promise you much. I’m hoping you’ll hear me out. Maybe help.”

  “Blow me,” he spat with a hoarse voice.

  The guard took a step toward him, and Weiscz stiffened as if he’d taken a jolt from the taser. I put up my hand to hold him back.