The 20th Victim Read online

  He had a pretty good idea that the final location would be Moving Targets. This time Barkley would be his unknowing tour guide.

  Stempien wasn’t wrong.

  After virtually hopscotching around the globe, he watched as Moving Targets’ front page slowly came up on his screen, like an image taking form on old-fashioned photo paper inside a tray of fixer.

  In the center of the screen was the wheel of fortune. To the left side was a map of the USA with blinking pin lights marking Detroit and Miami and San Francisco.

  Stempien thought those cities were the locations of upcoming hits. “It’s part of the Moving Targets program,” he said. “Go time, Zero-eight-thirty.”

  He homed in on the winking city lights and took a series of screen shots, planning to enlarge them later. He might be able to decode names or addresses. He made a mental note that Barkley hadn’t spun the wheel.

  What Barkley did instead was jump into the chat room, where, using the screen name Kill Shot, he typed, I’m here.

  Screen names joined Kill Shot in the chat room, and rolling lines of applauding emoticons, yahoos, and fireworks burst onto the screen.

  Fellow players urged him to talk, virtually chanting, Kill Shot. Kill Shot. Kill Shot.

  Tell us about it, Kill Shot. Everything.

  Stempien picked up his cell phone and called Brady.

  “Lieutenant, this is Mike Stempien with a red alert. I have a physical location on Barkley.…Yeah. San Francisco, 430 Thornton. Right now.”

  Chapter 115

  It was nearly six in the evening when Conklin and I arrived at Silver Terrace.

  A uniform standing beside his cruiser at the top of Apollo told us to park in front of the green house, one of dozens just like it, stairstepped down both sides of the sloping avenue.

  Conklin drove us down the hill, passing the herd of black armored SWAT and FBI vehicles banked at the curb in front of a brown stucco house that Stempien had identified as belonging to Barkley’s Moving Targets comrade Marty Floyd.

  We slowed in front of the green house with an overgrown front yard and a stubby, empty driveway and parked as directed. This was the house between the Barkley and Floyd residences, and the interior was dark. The brown house to its left belonged to the Barkleys. Two unoccupied unmarked cars and a cruiser formed a barricade in front of it.

  Overhead, an Eyewitness News helicopter chopped at the air, and any minute now the press would attempt to penetrate the scene. They would be barred from this section of the street, but there was every chance that Leonard Barkley would flip the table, set off explosives, and turn this porous residential neighborhood into a shooting gallery.

  As I had those thoughts, a pair of black-and-white cruisers parked crosswise on the north and south ends of the 800 block, cordoning off the area, bracketing Floyd’s brown house, Barkley’s brown house, and the green house in between.

  The stage was set.

  Richie and I were there mainly to arrest Barkley, and I hoped to God that that would happen without anyone firing a shot. I had an edgy feeling, a cross between high anxiety and disbelief. We’d been looking for Barkley so intently, and he had gotten away so many times, that I could hardly accept that he was trapped, that we would be reading him his rights within minutes or hours.

  As I mentally prepared for the unknowable, Conklin spoke on the phone with Paul Chi. I picked up that Chi and McNeil were inside the Barkley house with Randi and her personal cop escort, Officer Carol Ma Fullerton. That Randi and her husband were separated by one twenty-five-foot-wide front yard had to have been planned.

  Conklin hung up from his call with Chi and filled me in on the consensus of the cops inside the Barkley house. Based on Randi’s nothing-to-lose attitude and escape potential, she’d been locked up inside a windowless back room with cops taking shifts at the door.

  It was too bad for Barkley that he’d jumped onto Marty Floyd’s computer and logged on to Moving Targets. And I felt bad for Randi, pining for her husband.

  But I snapped out of it.

  Leonard Barkley didn’t deserve sympathy.

  He was the number one suspect in the high-profile killings of Paul and Ramona Baron, and the three men who’d been dropped at the jazz center like puppets with cut strings. And it was entirely possible that Barkley had also shot Roger Jennings and other San Francisco drug dealers we didn’t know were his victims.

  Was Barkley in charge of the entire Moving Targets operation? Was he a soldier taking orders? Could he be charged with any of these killings I had just counted up?

  I brought myself back to the imminent Barkley takedown. Barkley was a dead shot, a proficient killer. His neighbor Marty Floyd was a transit cop and so had also been trained in the use of guns. I was glad to see that Brady had called in the FBI to back up our SWAT team. Commander Reg Covington had a high record of success, and he was in charge.

  Conklin and I watched from our squad car. SWAT was using the hoods of their vehicles as gun braces. A BearCat ran up on Marty Floyd’s lawn, and twelve men in tactical gear swarmed out. Two took positions on either side of the front door. Others took posts near the windows and at the back and side doors.

  I radioed Covington.

  “It’s Boxer,” I said. “What can you tell me?”

  Covington said, “Barkley’s not answering his phone. Neither is the house owner. We’re warning them, then going in.”

  I watched from the relative safety of our squad car as Covington lifted the bullhorn. A high-pitched squeal that felt like an electric current connected every person in the unit as one.

  Covington’s voice boomed toward the brown house.

  “Mr. Barkley, this is Commander Covington, SFPD. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. You and Mr. Floyd open the door and show us your hands. Do not do anything stupid.”

  I watched the door, waiting for it to crack open, for Barkley to step out with his hands above his head. I could almost see him, wearing fatigues and a new beard. Could see him limping from a wartime injury. I waited to hear him say, “Don’t shoot.”

  That’s not what happened.

  Someone panicked. An officer at the barricade twitched his trigger finger and fired a burst of bullets at the brown house. Automatic gunfire was returned from windows on the second floor.

  Conklin and I ducked inside our vehicle as World War III broke out on Thornton Avenue.

  Chapter 116

  The misfire from our side was an epic error that had launched a firefight that could cost dozens of lives. It could continue until every last one of us was dead.

  I clapped my hands over my ears and stayed down, actually shaking as I waited for it all to be over. During a brief break in the shooting, I lifted my head from under the dash to scope out the scene and glanced at the Barkley house, ahead and to our right.

  I saw a side door open.

  Randi Barkley darted out, and despite the recent gunfire, she streaked across her side yard toward the rear of the empty house armed with nothing but ragged jeans and a tank top.

  She was trying to get to Barkley.

  I knew that because she’d told me she and Barkley had a “pact with death” and that she expected to die with her husband—and clearly she was trying to make that dream come true.

  Pointing through the windshield, I said to Conklin, “Look.” The BearCat, an armored vehicle resembling a prehistoric reptile, ran up over the curb, crossing the narrow lawn between Floyd’s brown house and the green one in front of our car. They were forming a barrier.

  I heard Covington shout, “Hold your fire,” and the shooting on both sides stopped.

  Conklin was out of the car before the bullhorn’s echo died. I followed. Predicting Randi’s trajectory, Conklin cut her off with a well-timed tackle to her knees. Chi, McNeil, and Fullerton burst from the Barkley house and huddled around us.

  In a well-practiced maneuver called a cuff-and-stuff, I got handcuffs on Randi, and Chi and McNeil grabbed her and stuffed her into the BearCat. The drive
r took off for the outer perimeter, where Randi would be transferred to a patrol car.

  Chi was embarrassed by Randi’s escape. He said, “There were no doors or windows in that effing room, Boxer.”

  McNeil said, “However, we didn’t do a microscopic inspection of the floor.”

  I got it. And I didn’t doubt that Barkley’s entire house was swiss-cheesed with hidden shafts leading to Barkley’s beaten path to the Caltrain tunnel that ran under Silver Terrace. But Randi’s dash for the Floyd house hadn’t done her any good. I watched as Randi, cuffed in the back of a patrol car, cleared the barricades and headed to the Hall of Justice.

  I returned to our car in time to hear Covington announce over his mike, “Five seconds. On my go.”

  The front door split open before Covington had counted to five. The commando to the left of the door kicked it in, cracking it in half. A stout man with blood pouring down his face and arms cried out, “I give up. I give up.”

  The commando on his right set down his shield, grabbed the stout man’s arm, and in one fluid move pulled him to the ground.

  That man wasn’t Barkley.

  I got out of the car again and went up to Covington, who was ordering his men to get the injured man into a police car. I touched Covington’s arm.

  He said, “Boxer?”

  “Let me talk to Barkley.”

  Covington reached for and opened the closest armored car door. Then he gripped my upper arms, lifted and moved all five feet ten inches of me like I was a doll, until I was behind the hardened-steel door and as shielded as much as possible from oncoming gunfire.

  Then he handed me the bullhorn.

  I took a breath, then spoke, my voice bouncing off the surrounding houses.

  “Mr. Barkley, this is Sergeant Lindsay Boxer. I’m in contact with Randi. Give yourself up, and you can tell her good-bye. Or in three seconds SWAT command is going to cut you down and take you out of that house alive or dead.”

  I handed off the bullhorn to Covington.

  The broken front door clattered apart, and Leonard Barkley emerged holding his hands above his head. I gave him a visual pat-down. Was he holding a weapon? A grenade? He limped out onto the front steps into the open air.

  “I surrender,” he shouted. “It’s over. You should all be proud. The drug dealers win.”

  Chapter 117

  Yuki and opposing counsel Zac Jordan met with district attorney Len Parisi in his office that Friday morning.

  Parisi was in a decent mood, and Yuki observed lipstick on his collar. Maybe that had something to do with his sunny, “Hello, you two. Come in.”

  Zac shook hands with Parisi, and Yuki flung herself onto the couch. She was so emotionally exhausted, she’d dressed in jeans and a blazer this morning. In her mind, it was casual Friday and to hell with anyone who objected.

  When Parisi was sitting behind his big-man desk, papers all straight edged and tidy, with the Red Dog clock on the wall showing 8:30 on the dot, Yuki began to explain the situation.

  “Len, the death of Antoine Castro robbed the justice system but was a good thing all around. Castro is of no danger to anyone now, but he was an El Chapo wannabe. Some aspiring drug lord is going to pick up his business unless we get out in front of it.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  Zac said, “I’ve spent a couple of hours with my client, Clay Warren. As you know, he was almost killed in jail, presumably by Castro’s crew, who wanted to stop him from talking. He’s not a bad kid. I wouldn’t call him greedy or psychopathic. He’s about average intelligence for a kid his age, but he was smart enough to stop talking when he was arrested.”

  Zac went on.

  “I’ve got the real story out of Clay, and Yuki can back me up.”

  Parisi said, “And you want to what? I’m not getting it.”

  “If you agree with what you hear,” said Zac, “we’re hoping you’ll drop the charges. Because honestly, he’s not a criminal and the shanking he got is going to shorten his life. Maybe the judge will see that he’s been punished enough. Dismiss the case and get him to a place where Castro’s gang can’t find him.”

  “Make it good,” Len said. “Right now he’s still on the hook for felony murder. Your trial is due to resume early next week.”

  “Clay is outside,” said Yuki. “Let me bring him in so he can tell you himself.”

  Chapter 118

  Zac held the office door for Clay Warren, who leaned heavily on a cane as he came through the entrance.

  Parisi stood as Yuki made the introductions, and Clay stretched out his left hand and said, “Thanks for seeing me, sir.”

  “Hello, Mr. Warren. Have a seat.”

  The teen was in obvious pain. Zac knew he had bandages wrapping his torso under his orange jumpsuit. He looked for and found a chair with arms, close enough to Parisi’s desk.

  Zac stood and took a stance he might have used to examine a witness in court.

  He said, “Clay, why are you now willing to discuss your relationship with Antoine Castro?”

  “Because he’s dead, Mr. Jordan. He can’t personally hurt me, but I don’t feel exactly safe.”

  “Explain what you mean.”

  “He’s a gangsta, Mr. Jordan. I did nothing to Antoine, but snitches don’t live to sing. I didn’t say anything, and his crew just about destroyed my whatchacallits…organs. My stomach is punched through in about four places.”

  “Why did you try to hang yourself, Clay?”

  “I was afraid I was going to get killed. And I thought if I offed myself, they wouldn’t hurt my mother. My little sister is only twelve. Jesus. I can’t stand to think about those animals getting to her.”

  Tears were falling now.

  Yuki walked to the credenza behind Parisi’s desk and brought a box of tissues over to Clay. He took a handful and held them to one eye and then the other. His hands shook.

  Zac waited for Clay to pull himself together and then said, “Can you tell Mr. Parisi how you came to be involved with Antoine Castro?”

  He nodded. “I was his gofer, sir. He gave me money to get him things. Go buy him a box of Ding Dongs at the gas station. Wash his car. That’s how it started about a year ago. He’d call and tell me, do this, do that, then he’d give me money, and we needed it. I have a part-time job. Mom makes almost nothing.” He sighed and said, “I didn’t like Mr. Antoine, but he said he was watching out for me.”

  Zac said, “Tell Mr. Parisi about the day Officer Morton was killed.”

  Clay Warren said, “He, Mr. Antoine, needed me to make some deliveries with him.”

  “Deliveries of what?” Zac asked.

  “Drugs. I didn’t know what kind. They were in a suitcase. I put that into the trunk for him.”

  “You knew he was a drug dealer.”

  “Everyone did.”

  “Go on,” Zac said.

  “So he hands me the car keys and tells me, ‘First stop, South San Francisco.’ He says he’ll tell me which way to go. I said okay. I like to drive. And the car handles good. So I’m driving, and this part is all my fault,” said Clay Warren. “The light is yellow, but it turns red. No one is coming, so I gun it.

  “Mr. Antoine’s laughing. Like, Good job, boy. Now there are cops following me. And the rest is a blur. Somehow I got locked into traffic. Then the cop car makes us crash. The cop comes over and I don’t have a driver’s license. I don’t have registration. Next thing I know, Mr. Antoine is over on my side of the car and he shoots the cop and steals a car.

  “He’s gone, and I get arrested for everything.”

  Yuki asked, “Did you know that Antoine had a gun?”

  “I didn’t see it, but sure. I knew he had a gun.”

  “You say you knew he sold drugs. How about the car?”

  “It wasn’t his. But he didn’t tell me it was stolen.”

  Parisi said, “Mr. Warren, so you knew a lot, but not everything. Here’s what I need to know now. Do you know where Castro got the dr
ugs?”

  “Yes, sir. I know his special source.”

  “Do you know the names of his customers?”

  “Sure. I’ve driven him before.”

  “And do you know the names of his crew? People who are also participating in Mr. Castro’s criminal enterprise?”

  There was a long silence as Clay more or less shut down. Yuki saw the same expression on his face that she had seen when he’d stopped talking to Zac and to her, when she’d been looking at a slam-dunk conviction for felony murder.

  His expression was flat. He didn’t make eye contact.

  No one was home.

  Chapter 119

  Yuki stood in the center of the room with her hands on her hips, staring at the kid.

  “Zac, tell him,” she said.

  “Clay,” Zac said. “If you don’t want to go through with our agreement, I’ll be happy to take you to jail and say good-bye.”

  The kid shook his head, looked past Yuki and Zac to the doorway as if he were going to make a run for it, a physical impossibility.

  “Sorry, Len,” Yuki said. “We won’t take up any more of your time.”

  Clay seemed to understand he’d reached the point of no return. He said, “I could give you a list. Better than that, I have Mr. Antoine’s book. I hid it. Everything you want is in there. His allergies are in there. His PIN codes and passwords to his phone. His lists of people and I don’t know what all. He was always afraid the government would hack his phone.

  “But I have a question. How are you going to stop his crew from killing me and my family?”

  Zac said, “Mr. Parisi, I haven’t seen the book, but I know where it is. If it’s all my client says it is, we need to get him into witness protection.”

  “Where is it?” Len asked.

  “It’s in the property desk on the seventh floor.”