Women's Murder Club [02] 2nd Chance Page 5

  Bringing in the FBI at this stage didn’t fill me with enthusiasm. I asked Kirkwood to give me what he had, and an hour later he came up, carrying a plastic bin crammed with blue and red folders. “Background reading.” He winked, dropping the bin heavily on my desk.

  At the sight of the mass of files, my hopes sank. “You got any ideas about this, Stu?”

  He shrugged sympathetically. “San Francisco’s not exactly a hotbed for these groups. Most of what I gave you here seems pretty benign. They seem to spend most of their time hoisting back a few beers and shooting off ammo.”

  I ordered up a salad, figuring I’d spend the next couple of hours at my desk with a bunch of nutcases railing against blacks and Jews. I pulled out a handful of files and opened one at random.

  Some sort of militia group, operating up in Greenview, near the Oregon border. The California Patriots. Some summary information supplied by the FBI: Activity Type: Militia, sixteen to twenty members. Weapons Assessment: Minor, small to semi-automatic arms, over-the-counter. On the bottom it had: Threat: Low / Moderate.

  I skimmed through the file. Some printed materials with logos of crossed guns, detailing everything from population shifts from “the white, European majority,” to media cover-ups on government programs to promote test-tube fertilization of minorities.

  I couldn’t imagine my killer buying into this claptrap. I didn’t see him on the same wavelength at all. Our guy was organized and bold, not some pumped-up backwoods bozo. He had gone to elaborate lengths to hide the murders in the MO of a hate crime. And he had signed them.

  Like most serials, he wanted us to know.

  And to know there would be more.

  I leafed through a few more files. Nothing jumped out at me. I was starting to have the feeling this was a waste of time.

  Suddenly, Lorraine burst into my office. “We caught a break, Lieutenant. We found the white van.”

  Chapter 20

  I STRAPPED ON MY GLOCK and grabbed Cappy and Jacobi on the way out before Lorraine had even finished filling me in. “I want a SWAT team out there,” I yelled.

  Ten minutes later, we all screeched up to a makeshift roadblock on San Jacinto, a quiet residential street.

  A radio car on routine patrol had spotted a Dodge Caravan parked outside a house in tony Forest Hills. What made him sure this was the car we were looking for was the decal of a two-headed lion on the rear bumper.

  Vasquez, the young patrolman who had called in the van, pointed toward a tree-shaded Tudor halfway down the block, the white minivan parked at the end of the driveway. It seemed crazy. This was an affluent neighborhood, not a likely haven for criminals or murderers.

  But there it was.

  Our white van.

  And Bernard Smith’s Mufasa.

  Moments later, an unmarked SWAT vehicle rigged to look like a cable TV repair truck pulled onto the street. The team was headed by Lieutenant Skip Arbichaut. I didn’t know what the situation entailed, whether we would have a siege or possibly have to break our way in.

  “Cappy, Jacobi, and I will go in first,” I said.

  This was a homicide operation and I wasn’t letting anyone else take the risk. I had Arbichaut deploy his men, two around back, three manning the front, and one with a sledge with us in case we had to bust in.

  We strapped on protective vests and donned black nylon jackets identifying us as police. I clicked my 9mm off safety. There wasn’t much time to get nervous.

  The SWAT truck started down the street, three black-vested snipers hugging its opposite side.

  Cappy, Jacobi, and I followed the truck as cover until it pulled to a stop in front of a mailbox marked 610. Vasquez was right. The van was a match.

  My heart was racing now. I had been in many forced entries before, but none with more at stake. We cautiously wove our way to the front of the house.

  There were lights on inside, some noise from a TV.

  At my nod, Cappy pounded the door with his gun. “San Francisco Police.” Jacobi and I crouched with our guns ready.

  No one answered.

  After a few tense seconds, I signaled Arbichaut for a ram.

  Suddenly, the front door cracked open.

  “Freeze,” Cappy boomed, swinging his gun into a shooting position. “San Francisco Police.”

  A wide-eyed woman in powder blue exercise clothes stood frozen in the door. “Oh, my God,” she screeched, eyes fastened on our weapons.

  Cappy yanked her out the front door as Arbichaut’s SWAT team rushed the house. He barked, “Is anyone else at home?”

  “Just my daughter,” the frightened woman shrieked. “She’s two.”

  The black-vested SWAT team barged past her into the house as if they were searching for Elian Gonzalez.

  “Is that your van?” Jacobi barked.

  The woman’s eyes darted toward the street. “What is this about?”

  “Is that your van?” Jacobi’s voice boomed again.

  “No,” she said, trembling. “No…”

  “Do you know who it belongs to?”

  She looked again, terrified, and shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before in my life.”

  It was all wrong; I could see that. The neighborhood, the plastic kid’s slide on the lawn, the spooked mom in the workout clothes. A disappointed sigh was expelled from my chest. The van had been dumped here.

  All of a sudden, a green Audi knifed its way up to the curb, followed by two police cars. The Audi must have gone right through our roadblock. A well-dressed man in a suit and tortoiseshell glasses jumped out and ran toward the house. “Kathy, what the hell’s going on?”

  “Steve…” The woman hugged him with a sigh of relief. “This is my husband. I called him when I saw all the police outside our house.”

  The man looked around at the eight cop cars, SWAT backup, and the SFPD inspectors standing around with weapons drawn. “What are you doing at my house? This is insane! This is nuts!”

  “We believe that van was the vehicle used in the commission of a homicide,” I said. “We have every right to be here.”

  “A homicide…?”

  Two of Arbichaut’s men emerged from the house, indicating that there wasn’t anyone else inside. Across the street, people were starting to file outdoors. “That van’s been our number one priority for two days. I’m sorry to have upset you. There was no way to be sure.”

  The husband’s indignation rose. His face and neck were beet red. “You’re thinking we had something to do with this? With a homicide?”

  I figured I had upset their lives enough. “The La Salle Heights shooting.”

  “Have you people lost your minds? You suspected us in the strafing of a church?” His jaw dropped, and he fixed on me incredulously. “Do you idiots have any idea what I do?”

  My eyes fell on his pinstriped gray suit, his blue button-down-collar shirt. I had the humiliating feeling I had just been made a fool of.

  “I’m chief counsel for the Northern California chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.”

  Chapter 21

  WE HAD BEEN made fools of by the killer. No one on the block knew anything about or had any connection to the stolen van. It had been dumped there, purposely, to show us up. Even as Clapper’s CSU went over it inch by inch, I knew it wouldn’t yield shit. I studied the decal and I was sure it was the same thing I had seen in Oakland. One head was a lion’s, one seemed to be a goat’s, the tail suggested a reptile. But what the hell did it mean?

  “One thing we learned.” Jacobi smirked. “The SOB’s got a sense of humor.”

  “I’m glad you’re a fan,” I said.

  Back at the Hall, I said to Lorraine, “I want to know where that van came from; I want to know who it belonged to, who had access to it, every contact the owner had a month prior to its theft.”

  I was fuming mad. We had a vicious killer out there but not a single clue as to what made him tick. Was it a hate crime or a killing spree? An organized group or a lone wolf? We k
new the guy was fairly intelligent. His strikes had been well planned, and if irony was part of his MO, dumping the getaway car where he had was a real beaut.

  Karen buzzed in, informing me that Ron Vandervellen was on the line. The Oakland cop came on chuckling. “Word is you managed to subdue a dangerous threat to our society masquerading as a legal watchdog in the Anti-Defamation League.”

  “I guess that makes our investigations about equal, Ron,” I retorted.

  “Relax, Lindsay, I didn’t call to rub it in,” he said, shifting his tone. “Actually, I thought I would make your day.”

  “I won’t argue, Ron. I could use anything about now. What do you have for us?”

  “You knew Estelle Chipman was a widow, right?”

  “I think you mentioned that.”

  “Well, we were doing some standard background on her. We found a son in Chicago. He’s coming to claim the body. Given what’s been going on, I thought what he told us was too coincidental to ignore.”

  “What, Ron?”

  “Her husband died five years ago. Heart attack. Want to guess what the dude did for a living?”

  I had the rising feeling Vandervellen was about to blow this thing wide open.

  “Estelle Chipman’s husband was a San Francisco cop.”

  Chapter 22

  CINDY THOMAS parked her Mazda across from the La Salle Heights Church and let out a long sigh. The church’s white clapboard front had been defaced by a pattern of ugly chinks and bullet holes. A gaping hole where the beautiful stained-glass window had been was sealed with a black canvas tarp.

  She remembered seeing it the day the window was first unveiled, on her old beat at the paper. The mayor, some local dignitaries, Aaron Winslow, all made speeches about how the beautiful scene had been paid for through community work. A symbol. She remembered interviewing Winslow and being impressed with his passion, and also his unexpected humbleness.

  Cindy ducked under the yellow police tape and stepped closer to the bullet-ridden wall. On her job at the Chronicle, she’d been assigned to other stories where people had died. But this was the first one where she felt the human race had died a little, too.

  She was startled by a voice. “You can stare for as long as you want, but it doesn’t get any prettier.”

  Cindy spun and found herself facing a man with a smooth and very handsome face. Kind eyes. She knew him. She nodded. “I was here when the window was unveiled. It carried a lot of hope.”

  “Still does,” Winslow said. “We didn’t lose our hope. Don’t worry about that.”

  She smiled, staring into his deep brown eyes.

  “I’m Aaron Winslow,” he said, shifting a stack of children’s textbooks to extend his hand.

  “Cindy Thomas,” she replied. His grip was warm and gentle.

  “Don’t tell me they’ve put our church as one of the scenic sights on the Forty-nine Mile Drive.” Winslow started to walk toward the rear of the church, and she followed along.

  “I’m not a tourist,” Cindy said. “I just wanted to see this. Listen.” She swallowed. “I’d like to pretend I just came by to pay my respects… which I did. But I’m also with the Chronicle. On the crime desk.”

  “A reporter.” Winslow exhaled. “It makes sense now. For years, everything that really goes on here—tutoring, literacy training, a nationally recognized choir—doesn’t crank up a story. But one madman acts, and now Night-line wants to do a town meeting. What do you want to know, Ms. Thomas? What does the Chronicle want?”

  His words had stung her a little, but she kind of liked that. He was right.

  “Actually, I did a story here once before, when that window was unveiled. It was a special day.”

  He stopped walking. He focused his eyes on her, then smiled. “It was a special day. And actually, Ms. Thomas, I knew who you were when I walked up. I remember you. You interviewed me back then.”

  Someone called Winslow’s name from inside the church, and a woman came out. She reminded him that he had an eleven o’clock meeting.

  “So, have you seen all you came to see, Ms. Thomas? Should we expect you back in another couple of years?”

  “No. I want to know how you deal with this. This violence in the face of all you’ve done, how the neighborhood feels about it.”

  Winslow let himself smile. “Let me clue you in on something. I don’t deal in innocence. I’ve spent too much time in the real world.”

  She remembered that Aaron Winslow wasn’t someone whose faith had been formed through a life of detachment. He’d come up from the streets. He’d been an army chaplain. Only days before, he’d put himself in the line of fire and possibly saved lives.

  “You came here to see how this neighborhood is responding to the attack? Come see for yourself. Tasha Catchings is being memorialized tomorrow.”

  Chapter 23

  VANDERVELLEN’S STUNNING DISCLOSURE drummed in my head for the rest of the day.

  Both murder victims had been related to San Francisco cops.

  It could add up to nothing. They could be two random and unrelated victims. People in different cities, separated by sixty years.

  Or it could mean everything.

  I picked up the phone and called Claire. “I need a big favor,” I said.

  “Just how big?” I could feel her grin.

  “I need you to take a look at the autopsy of that woman who was hung in Oakland.”

  “I can do that. Send it over. I’ll take a look.”

  “This is where it gets huge, Claire. It’s still at the Oakland M.E.’s office. It hasn’t been released.”

  I waited expectantly as she sighed. “You must be kidding, Lindsay. You want me to stick my nose into an investigation that’s still in progress?”

  “Listen, Claire, I know this isn’t exactly procedure, but they’ve made some pretty important assumptions that could determine this case.”

  “Want to tell me what type of assumptions I’d be stepping all over a respected M.E.’s toes to review?”

  “Claire, these cases are related. There’s a pattern here. Estelle Chipman was married to a cop. Tasha Catchings’s uncle is a cop, too. My whole investigation hinges on whether we’re dealing with one killer. Oakland believes there’s a black man involved, Claire.”

  “A black man?” She gasped. “Why would a black want to do these things?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s starting to be a lot of circumstantial evidence linking both crimes. I have to know.”

  She hesitated. “Precisely what the hell would I be looking for?”

  I told her about the skin specimens they had found under the victim’s nails and their M.E.’s conclusion.

  “Teitleman’s a good man,” Claire responded. “I’d trust his findings like I would my own.”

  “I know, Claire, but he’s not you. Please. This is important.”

  “I want you to know,” she shot back, “that if Art Teitleman asked to poke his nose into one of my preliminary investigations, I’d have his parking ticket stamped and politely tell him to go back to his side of the bay. I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, Lindsay.”

  “I know that, Claire,” I said with a grateful tone. “Why do you think I’ve been working this friendship all these years?”

  Chapter 24

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, I sat at my desk as one by one my staff called it quits for the day. I couldn’t leave with them.

  My mind tried over and over to put together the parts. Everything I had was based on assumptions. Was the killer black or white? Was Claire right, that Tasha Catchings was intentionally killed? But the lion symbol had definitely been there. Link the victims, my instincts said. There’s a connection. But what the hell is it?

  I glanced at my watch and placed a call to Simone Clark in personnel, catching her just as she was preparing to leave. “Simone, I need you to pull a file for me tomorrow.”

  “Sure, whose do you need?”

  “A cop who retired maybe eight, ten years ago. His
name was Edward Chipman.”

  “That’s a while back. It would be out on the docks.” The department outsourced its old records to a document storage company. “Early afternoon, okay?”

  “Sure, Simone. Best you can do.”

  I was still bristling with nervous energy. I took out another stack of Kirkwood’s hate files and plopped them on my desk.

  I opened one at random. Americans for Constitutional Action… Ploughs and Fifes, another hayseed militia group. All these assholes, they seemed like such a bunch of right-wing jerk-offs. Was I wasting my time? Nothing jumped out. Nothing gave me any hope that this was the right track.

  Go home, Lindsay, a voice urged. Tomorrow new leads might develop. There’s the van, Chipman’s file… Call it a night. Take Martha for a run.

  Go home…

  I stacked the files, about to give in, when the top one caught my eye. The Templars. A Hells Angels offshoot out of Vallejo. The original Templars were Christian knights from the Crusades. Immediately, I noticed the FBI’s assessment of threat. Their rating was High.

  I took the file off the pile and leafed further in. There was an FBI report outlining a series of unsolved felonies the Templars had been suspected of involvement in, bank robberies, hits for hire against Latino and black gangs.

  I leafed on, case files, prison records, surveillance photos of the group. Suddenly, the breath emptied out of my lungs.

  My eyes fixed on a surveillance shot: a bunch of heavy, muscled, tattoo-covered bikers huddled outside a Vallejo bar they used as a headquarters. One of them hunched over his bike, back to the camera. He had a shaved head, a bandanna, and a sleeveless denim jacket over massive arms.

  It was the embroidery on the back of the denim jacket that caught my eye.

  I was staring at a two-headed lion with the tail of a snake.