2nd Chance Read online

  “That won’t be necessary, Special Agent. This has always been a city case. We’ll see it through with city personnel.”

  Chapter 77

  ONLY ONE THING was standing in the way now. We had to find Frank Coombs.

  Coombs’s prison file mentioned a wife, Ingrid, who had divorced him while he was in prison and remarried. It was a long shot. The PO said he hadn’t been in touch. But long shots were coming in right now.

  “C’mon, Warren.” I nudged Jacobi. “You’re coming with me. It’ll be like old times.”

  “Aww, ain’t that sweet.”

  Ingrid Thiasson lived on a pleasant middle-class street off of Laguna.

  We parked across the street, went up, and rang the bell. No one answered. We didn’t know if Coombs’s wife worked, and there was no car in the driveway.

  Just as we were about to head back, an old-model Volvo station wagon pulled into the driveway.

  Ingrid Thiasson looked about fifty, with stringy brown hair; she wore a plain, shapeless blue dress under a heavy gray sweater. She climbed out of the car and opened the rear hatch to unload groceries.

  An old cop’s wife, she ID’d us the minute we walked up. “What do you people want with me?” she asked.

  “A few minutes. We’re trying to locate your ex-husband.”

  “You got nerve coming around here.” She scowled, hoisting two bags in her arms.

  “We’re just checking all the possibilities,” Jacobi said.

  She snapped back, “Like I told his parole officer, I haven’t heard a word from him since he got out.”

  “He hasn’t been to see you?”

  “Once, when he got out. He came by to pick up some personal stuff he thought I had held for him. I told him I threw it all out.”

  “What kind of stuff?” I asked.

  “Useless letters, newspaper articles on the trial. Probably the old guns he kept around. Frank was always into guns. Stuff only a man with nothing to show for his life would find value in.”

  Jacobi nodded. “So what’d he do then?”

  “What’d he do?” Ingrid Thiasson snorted. “He left without a word about what life had been like for us for the past twenty years. Without a word about me or his son. You believe that?”

  “And you have no idea where we could contact him?”

  “None. That man was poison. I found someone who’s treated me with respect. Who’s been a father to my boy. I don’t want to see Frank Coombs again.”

  I asked, “You have any idea if he might be in touch with your son?”

  “No way. I always kept them apart. My son doesn’t have any links to his father. And don’t go buzzing around him. He’s in college at Stanford.”

  I stepped forward. “Anyone who might know where he is, Ms. Thiasson, it would be a help to us. This is a murder case.”

  I saw the slightest sign of hesitation. “I’ve lived a good life for twenty years. We’re a family now. I don’t want anyone knowing this came from me.”

  I nodded. I felt the blood rushing to my head.

  “Frank kept up with Tom Keating. Even when he was locked away. Anyone knows where he is, it’d be him.”

  Tom Keating. I knew the name.

  He was a retired cop.

  Chapter 78

  LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, Jacobi and I pulled up in front of condo 3A at the Blakesly Residential Community, down the coast in Half Moon Bay.

  Keating’s name had stuck in my mind from when I was a kid. He’d been a regular at the Alibi after the nine-to-four shift, where many afternoons I’d been hoisted up on a bar stool by my father. In my mind, Keating had a ruddy complexion and a shock of prematurely white hair. God, I thought, that was almost thirty years ago.

  We knocked on the door of Keating’s modest slatted-wood condo. A trim, pleasant-looking woman with gray hair answered.

  “Mrs. Keating? I’m Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer of the San Francisco Homicide detail. This is Inspector Jacobi. Is your husband at home?”

  “Homicide…?” she said, surprised.

  “Just an old case,” I said with a smile.

  A voice called from inside, “Helen, I can’t find the damned clicker anywhere.”

  “Just a minute, Tom. He’s in the back,” she said as she motioned us into the house.

  We walked through the sparsely decorated house and into a sunroom overlooking a small patio. There were several framed police photos on the wall. Keating was as I remembered him, just thirty years older. Gaunt, white hair thinning, but with that same ruddy complexion.

  He sat watching an afternoon news show with the stock market tape streaming by. I realized he was sitting in a wheelchair.

  Helen Keating introduced us, then, finding the clicker, put the TV volume down. Keating seemed pleased to have visitors from the force.

  “I don’t get to many functions since my legs went. Arthritis, they tell me. Brought on by a bullet to lumbar four. Can’t play golf anymore.” He chuckled. “But I can still watch the old pension grow.”

  I saw him studying my face. “You’re Marty Boxer’s little girl, aren’t you?”

  I smiled. “The Alibi… A couple of five-oh-ones, right, Tom?” A 5-0-1 was the call for backup, and how they used to call a favorite drink, an Irish whiskey with a beer chaser.

  “I heard you were quite the big shot these days.” Keating nodded with a toothy smile. “So, what brings you two honchos down to talk to an old street cop?”

  “Frank Coombs,” I said.

  Keating’s features suddenly turned hard. “What about Frank?”

  “We’re trying to find him, Tom. I was told you might know where he is.”

  “Why don’t you call his parole officer? That wouldn’t be me.”

  “He’s split, Tom. Four weeks now. Quit his job.”

  “So they got Homicide following up on parole offenders now?”

  I held Keating’s eyes. “What do you say, Tom?”

  “What makes you think I’d have any idea?” He glanced toward his legs. “Old times are old times.”

  “I heard you guys kept in touch. It’s important.”

  “Well, you’re wasting your time here, Lieutenant,” he said, suddenly turning formal.

  I knew he was lying. “When was the last time you spoke with Coombs?”

  “Maybe just after he got out. Could be once or twice since then. He needed some help to get on his feet. I may have lent him a hand.”

  “And where was he staying,” Jacobi cut in, “while you were lending him this hand?”

  Keating shook his head. “Some hotel down on Eddy or O’Farrell. Wasn’t the St. Francis,” he said.

  “And you haven’t spoken with him since?” My eyes flicked toward Helen Keating.

  “What do you want with the man, anyway?” Keating snapped. “He’s paid his time. Why don’t you just leave him alone?”

  “It would be easier this way, Tom,” I said. “If you’d just talk to us.”

  Keating pursed his dry lips, trying to size up where his loyalties fell.

  “You put in thirty years, didn’t you?” Jacobi said.

  “Twenty-four.” He patted his leg. “Got it cut short at the end.”

  “Twenty-four good years. It’d be a shame to dishonor it in any way by not cooperating now….”

  He shot back, “You want to know who was a goddamn expert in lack of cooperation? Frank Coombs. Man was only doing his job and all those bastards, supposedly his friends, looked the other way. Maybe that’s the way you do things now, with your community action meetings and your sensitivity training. But then we had to get the bad guys off the streets. With the means that we had.”

  “Tom.” His wife raised her voice. “Frank Coombs killed a boy. These people, they’re your friends. They want to speak with him. I don’t know how far you have to take this duty-and-loyalty thing. Your duty’s here.”

  Keating glared at her harshly. “Yeah, sure, my duty’s here.” He picked up the TV clicker and turned back to me. “
Stay here all day if you like; I don’t have the slightest idea where Frank Coombs is.”

  He turned up the volume on his TV.

  Chapter 79

  “FUCK HIM,” Jacobi said as we left the house. “Old-school asshole.”

  “We’re halfway down the peninsula already,” I said to him. “You want to drive down to Stanford? See Frankie’s kid?”

  “What the hell.” He shrugged. “I can use the education.”

  We hooked back onto 280 and made it to Palo Alto in half an hour.

  As we pulled onto the campus drive—the tall palms lining the road, the stately ocher buildings with their red roofs, the Hoover Tower majestically rising over the Main Quad—I felt the spell of being part of campus life. Every one of these kids was special and talented. I even felt some pride that Coombs’s son, despite his rough beginnings, had made it here.

  We checked in at the administrative office on the Main Quad. A dean’s assistant told us Rusty Coombs was probably at football practice down at the field house. Said Rusty was a good student, and a great tight end. We drove there, where a student manager in a red Stanford cap took us upstairs and asked us to wait outside the weight room.

  Moments later, a solidly built, orange-haired kid in a sweaty Cardinals T-shirt wandered out. Rusty Coombs had an affable face spotted with a few freckles. He had none of the dark, brooding belligerence I had seen in photos of his father.

  “I guess I know why you guys are here,” he said, coming up to us. “My mom called, told me.”

  The heavy sound of weight irons and lifting machines clanged in the background. I smiled affably. “We’re looking for your father, Rusty. We were wondering if you have any idea where he might be?”

  “He’s not my father,” the boy said, and shook his head. “My father’s name is Theodore Bell. He’s the one who brought me up with Mom. Teddy taught me how to catch a football. He’s the one who told me I could make it to Stanford.”

  “When was the last time you heard from Frank Coombs?”

  “What’s he done, anyway? My mother said you guys are from Homicide. We know what’s in the news. Everyone knows what’s going on up there. Whatever he did before, he paid his time, didn’t he? You can’t believe just because he made some mistakes twenty years ago he’s responsible for these terrible crimes?”

  “We wouldn’t have driven all the way down unless it was important,” Jacobi said.

  The football player shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet. He seemed to be a likable kid, cooperative. He rubbed his hands together. “He came here once. When he first got out. I had written him a couple of times in jail. I met with him in town. I didn’t want anybody to see him.”

  “What did he say to you?” I asked.

  “I think all he wanted was to clear his own conscience. And know what my mother thought of him. Never once did he say, ‘Hey, great job, Rusty. Look at you. You did good.’ Or, ‘Hey, I follow your games….’ He was more interested in knowing if my mom had thrown out some of his old things.”

  “What sort of things?” I asked. What would be so important that he would drive all the way here and confront his son?

  “Police things,” Rusty Coombs said and shook his head. “Maybe his guns.”

  I smiled sympathetically. I knew what it was like to look at your father with something less than admiration. “He give you any idea where he might go?”

  Rusty Coombs shook his head. He looked like he might tear up. “I’m not Frank Coombs, Inspectors. I may have his name, I may even have to live with what he did, but I’m not him. Please leave our family alone. Please.”

  Chapter 80

  WELL, THAT SUCKED. Stirring up bad memories for Rusty Coombs made me feel terrible. Even Jacobi agreed.

  We made it back to the office about four. We’d driven all the way down to Palo Alto just to run into another dead end. What fun.

  There was a phone message waiting for me. I called Cindy back immediately. “There’s a rumor floating around that you’ve narrowed on a suspect,” she said. “Truth or dare?”

  “We have a name, Cindy, but I can’t tell you anything. We just want to bring him in for questioning.”

  “So there’s no warrant?”

  “Cindy… not just yet.”

  “I’m not talking about a story, Lindsay. He went after our friend. Remember? If I can help…”

  “I got a hundred cops working on it, Cindy. Some of us have even handled an investigation or two before. Please, trust me.”

  “But if you haven’t brought him in, then you haven’t found him, right?”

  “Or maybe we haven’t made the case yet. And Cindy, that’s not for print.”

  “This is me talking, Linds. Claire, too. And Jill. We’re in this case, Lindsay. All of us.”

  She was right. Unlike any other homicide case I had worked, this one seemed to be growing more and more personal. Why was that? I didn’t have Coombs and I could use the help. As long as he stayed free, anything could happen.

  “I do need your help. Go through your old files, Cindy. You just didn’t go back far enough.”

  She paused, then sucked in a breath. “You were right, weren’t you? The guy’s a cop.”

  “You can’t go with that, sweetie. And if you did, you’d be wrong. But it’s damned close.”

  I felt her analyzing, and also biting her tongue. “We’re still going to meet, aren’t we?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, we’re going to meet. We’re a team. More than ever.”

  I was about to pack it in for the night when a call buzzed through to my line. I was sitting around thinking that Tom Keating had been lying. That he’d spoken to Coombs. But until we put out a warrant, Keating could hold back all he wanted.

  To my utter surprise, it was his wife on the line. I almost dropped the phone.

  “My husband’s a stubborn man, Lieutenant,” she began, clearly nervous. “But he wore the uniform with pride. I’ve never asked him to account for anything. And I won’t start now. But I can’t sit back. Frank Coombs killed that boy. And if he’s done something else, I refuse to wake up every morning for the rest of my life knowing I abetted a murderer.”

  “It would be better for everybody, Mrs. Keating, if your husband told us what he knows.”

  “I don’t know what he knows,” she said, “and I believe him when he says he hasn’t spoken to Coombs in some time. But he wasn’t telling the whole truth, Lieutenant.”

  “Then why don’t you start.”

  She hesitated. “Coombs did come by here. Once. Maybe two months ago.”

  “Do you know where he is?” My blood started to rush.

  “No,” she answered. “But I did take a message from him. For Tom. I still have the number.”

  I fumbled for a pen.

  She read me the number. 434-9117. “I’m pretty sure it was some kind of boarding house or hotel.”

  “Thank you, Helen.”

  I was about to hang up when she said, “There’s one more thing…. When my husband said he lent Coombs a hand, he wasn’t telling the whole story. Tom did give him some money. He also let him rummage through some old things in our storage locker.”

  “What sort of things?” I asked.

  “His old department things. Maybe an old uniform, and a badge.”

  That’s what Coombs had been looking for in his ex-wife’s house. His old police uniforms. My mind clicked. Maybe that’s how he got so close to Chipman and Mercer….

  “That’s all?” I asked.

  “No,” Helen Keating said. “Tom kept guns down there. Coombs took those, too.”

  Chapter 81

  WITHIN MINUTES I traced the number Helen Keating had given me to a boarding house on Larkin and McAllister. The Hotel William Simon. My pulse was jumping.

  I called Jacobi, catching him as he was about to sit down to dinner. “Meet me at Larkin and McAllister. The Hotel William Simon.”

  “You want me to meet you at a hotel? Cool. I’m on my way.”
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br />   “I think we found Coombs.”

  We couldn’t arrest Frank Coombs. We didn’t have a single piece of evidence that could tie him directly to a crime. I might be able to get a search warrant and bust into his room, though. Right now, the most important thing was to make certain he was still there.

  Twenty minutes later, I had driven down to the seedy area between the Civic Center and Union Square. The William Simon was a shabby one-elevator dive under a large billboard with a slinky model wearing Calvin Klein underwear. As Jill would say, yick.

  I didn’t want to go up to the desk, flashing my badge and his photo, until we were ready to make a move. Finally, I said what the hell, and placed a call to the number Helen Keating had given me. After three rings, a male voice answered, “William Simon…”

  “Frank Coombs…?” I inquired.

  “Coombs…” I listened as the desk clerk leafed through a list of names. “Nope.”

  Shit. I asked him to double-check. He came back negative.

  Just then, the passenger door of my Explorer opened. My nerves were twanging like a bass guitar.

  Jacobi climbed in. He was wearing a striped golf shirt and some sort of short, hideous Members Only jacket. His belly bulged. He grinned like a john. “Hey, lady, what does an Andrew Jackson get me?”

  “Dinner, maybe, if you’re treating.”

  “We got an ID?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I told him what I had found out.

  “Maybe he’s moved on,” Jacobi offered. “How ’bout I go in and flash the badge? With Coombs’s photo?”

  I shook my head. “How ’bout we sit here and wait.”

  We waited for over two hours. Stakeouts are incredibly dull. They would drive the average person nuts. We kept our eyes peeled on the William Simon, going over everything from Helen Keating, to what Jacobi’s wife was serving for dinner, to the 49ers, to who was sleeping with who at the Hall. Jacobi even sprung for a couple of sandwiches from a Subway.

  At ten o’clock, Jacobi grumbled, “This could go on forever. Why don’t you let me go inside, Lindsay?”