2nd Chance Page 9

  I knocked gently and pushed it in. There was Jill, in her favorite easy chair, knees tucked to her chest and a yellow legal pad resting on them. Her desk was piled high with briefs.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “Snagged.” She sighed, raising her hands in mock surrender. “It’s just this goddamn Perrone thing. Closing arguments Monday morning.” Jill was at the end of a high-profile case in which a derelict landlord was being charged with manslaughter after a faulty ceiling caved in on an eight-year-old child.

  “You’re pregnant, Jill. It’s after seven o’clock.”

  “So is Connie Sperling, for the defense. They’re calling it the Battle of the Bulge.”

  “Whatever they’re calling it, so much for the shift of gears.”

  Jill turned down the CD player and extended her long legs. “Anyway, Steve’s out of town. What else is new? I’d only be doing the same thing if I were at home.” She cocked her head and smiled. “You’re checking up on me.”

  “No, but maybe someone should.”

  “Good lord, Lindsay, I’m just preparing notes, not running a ten-k. I’m doing fine. Anyway”—she glanced at her watch—“since when did you turn into the poster girl for keeping everything in perspective?”

  “I’m not pregnant, Jill. All right, all right—I’ll stop lecturing.”

  I stepped inside her office—eyed her women’s final four soccer photo from Stanford, framed diplomas, and pictures of her and Steve rock climbing and running with their black Lab, Snake Eyes.

  “I still have a beer in the fridge if you want to sit,” she said, tossing her legal pad on the desk. “Pull a Buckler out for me.”

  I did just that. Then I shifted the black Max Mara suit jacket hastily thrown over a cushion and sank back in the leather couch. We tilted our bottles, and both of us blurted in the same breath, “So… how’s your case?”

  “You first.” Jill laughed.

  I spread my thumb and index finger barely a half inch apart to indicate basically zip. I took her through the maze of dead ends: the van, the chimera sketch, the surveillance photo of the Templars, that CSU had come up with nothing on the Davidson ambush.

  Jill came over and sat beside me on the couch. “You want to talk, Linds? Like you said, you didn’t come up here to make sure I was behaving myself.”

  I smiled guiltily, then placed my beer on the coffee table. “I need to shift the investigation, Jill.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m listening…. This is just between us.”

  Piece by piece, I laid out my theory that the killer was not some reckless, hate-mongering maniac but a bold, plotting pattern killer acting out a vendetta.

  “Maybe you’re overreaching,” Jill replied. “What you do have is three terror crimes aimed at African Americans.”

  “So why these victims, Jill? An eleven-year-old girl? A decorated cop? Estelle Chipman, whose husband has been dead for five years?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I just nail ’em to the wall when you turn them over.”

  I smiled. Then I leaned forward. “Jill, I need you to help me. I need to find some connection between these victims. I know it’s there. I need to check out past cases in which a white plaintiff was victimized by a black police officer. That’s where my gut leads me. It’s where I think these killings might start. It has something to do with revenge.”

  “What happens when the next victim never had anything to do with a police officer? What are you gonna do then?”

  I looked at her imploringly. “Are you going to help me?”

  “Of course I’m going to help you.” She shook her head at me. “Duh… Anything you can give me that will help me narrow it down?”

  I nodded. “Male, white. Maybe a tattoo or three.”

  “That oughtta do it.” She rolled her eyes.

  I reached out and squeezed her hand. I knew I could count on her. I looked at my watch. Seven-thirty. “I better let you finish up while you’re still in your first trimester.”

  “Don’t go, Lindsay.” Jill held my arm. “Stick around.”

  I could see something on her face. That clear, professional intensity suddenly weakened into a thousand-yard stare.

  “Something wrong, Jill? Did the doctor tell you something?”

  In her sleeveless vest, with her dark hair curled around her ears, she looked every bit the power lawyer, number two in the city’s legal department. But there was a tremor in her breath. “I’m fine. Really, physically, I’m fine. I should be happy, right? I’m gonna have a baby. I should be riding the air.”

  “You should be feeling whatever you’re feeling, Jill.” I took her hand.

  She nodded glassily. Then she curled her knees up to her chest. “When I was a kid, I would sometimes wake up in the night. I always had this little terror, this feeling that the whole world was asleep, that around this whole, huge planet, I was the only one left awake in the world. Sometimes my father would come in and try to rock me to sleep. He’d be downstairs in his study, preparing his cases, and he’d always check on me before he turned in. He called me his second chair. But even with him there, I still felt so alone.”

  She shook her head at me, tears glistening in her eyes. “Look at me. Steve’s away for two nights and I turn into a fucking idiot,” she said.

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot,” I said, stroking her pretty face.

  “I can’t lose this baby, Lindsay. I know it seems stupid. I’m carrying a life. It’s here, always in me, right next to me. How is it I feel so alone?”

  I held her tightly by the shoulders. My father had never been there to rock me to sleep. Even before he left us, he worked the third shift and would always head to Mc-Goey’s for a beer afterward. Sometimes I felt like the heartbeat that was closest to me was the pulse of the bastards I had to track down.

  “I know what you mean,” I heard myself whisper. I held Jill. “Sometimes I feel that way, too.”

  Chapter 41

  ON THE CORNER of Ocean and Victoria, a man in a green fatigue windbreaker hunched chewing a burrito as the black Lincoln slowly made its way down the block. He had waited here dozens of nights, stalked his next prey for weeks.

  The person he had watched for so long lived in a pleasant stucco house inside Ingleside Heights, just a short walk away. He had a family, two girls in Catholic school; his wife was a registered nurse. He had a black Lab; sometimes it bounded out to greet him as his car pulled up. The Lab was named Bullitt, like the old movie.

  Usually, the car drove by around seven-thirty. A couple of times a week, the man got out to walk. It was always at the same spot, on Victoria. He liked to stop at the Korean market, chat with the owner as he picked out a melon or a cabbage. Playing the big man walking among his people.

  Then he might mosey into Tiny’s News, stuff his arms with a few magazines: Car and Driver, PC World, Sports Illustrated. Once, he had even stood behind him in the line as he waited to pay for his reading material.

  He could have taken him out. Many times. One dazzling shot from a distance.

  But no, this one had to be up close. Eye to eye. This murder would blow the lid off everything, the entire city of San Francisco. This would take the case international, and not many got that big.

  His heart sprung alive as he huddled in the damp drizzle, but this time the black Lincoln merely passed by.

  So it won’t be tonight. He exhaled. Go home to your little wife and dog…. But soon… You’ve grown forgetful, he thought, balling his burrito in the wrapper and tossing it in a trash bin. Forgetful of the past. But it always finds you.

  I live with the past every day.

  He watched as the black Lincoln, its windows dark, made its customary left turn onto Cerritos and disappeared into Ingleside Heights.

  You stole my life. Now I’m going to take yours.

  Chapter 42

  I TOOK SUNDAY MORNING OFF to run Martha by the bay and do my tai chi on the Marina Green. By noon I was in jeans and a sweatsh
irt, back at my desk. By Monday, the investigation was listing toward the dead zone, no new angles to work. We were putting out releases just to keep the press off our tail. Each stalled line of questioning, each frustrating dead end only narrowed the time to when Chimera would strike again.

  I was returning some case files to Jill when the elevator door opened and Chief Mercer ambled in. He looked surprised when he saw me but not displeased.

  “Come take a ride with me,” he said.

  Mercer’s car was waiting along the side entrance on Eighth Street. As the police driver leaned back, Mercer told him, “West Portal, Sam.”

  West Portal was a diverse middle-class neighborhood out of the center of the city. I didn’t know why Mercer would be dragging me out there in the middle of the day.

  As we rode, Mercer asked a few questions but stayed mostly silent. A tremor shot through me: He’s gonna take me off the case.

  The driver pulled onto a residential street I had never been on before. He parked in front of a small blue Victorian across from a high school playground. A pickup basketball game was going on.

  I blinked first. “What was it you wanted to talk about, Chief?”

  Mercer turned to me. “You have any personal heroes, Lindsay?”

  “You mean like Amelia Earhart or Margaret Thatcher?” I shook my head. I had never grown up with those. “Maybe Claire Washburn.” I grinned.

  Mercer nodded. “Arthur Ashe was always one of mine. Someone asked him if it was hard to cope with AIDS, and he answered, ‘Not nearly as hard as it was to deal with growing up black in the United States.’ ”

  His expression deepened. “Vernon Jones tells the mayor that I’ve lost sight of what’s really at stake in this case.” He pointed toward the blue Victorian across the street. “You see that house? My parents’ house. I was raised there.

  “My father was a mechanic in the transit yards, and my mother did the books for an electrical contractor. They worked their whole lives to send me and my sister to school. She’s a trial litigator now, in Atlanta. But this is where we’re from.”

  “My father worked for the city, too.” I nodded.

  “I know I never told you, Lindsay, but I knew your father.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Yeah, we started out together. Radio cops, out of Central. Even shifted together a few times. Marty Boxer… Your father was a bit of a legend, Lindsay, and not necessarily for exemplary duty.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “All right…” He paused. “He was a good cop then. A damned good cop. A lot of us looked up to him.”

  “Before he bagged out.”

  Mercer looked at me. “You must know by now, things happen in a cop’s life that don’t always break down so easily into choices the rest of us can understand.”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t spoken to him in twenty-two years.”

  Mercer nodded. “I can’t speak for him as a father, or as a husband, but is there a chance that as a man, or at least a cop, you’ve judged him without knowing all the facts?”

  “He never stuck around long enough to present the facts,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Mercer said. “I’ll tell you some things about Marty Boxer, but another time.”

  “Tell me what? When?”

  He drew down the privacy barrier and instructed his driver that it was time to head back to the Hall. “When you find Chimera.”

  Chapter 43

  LATER THAT NIGHT, as his Town Car slowed in the evening traffic near his home, Chief Mercer spoke up from the backseat. “Why don’t I get out here, Sam.”

  His driver, Sam Mendez, glanced back. The mandate from the Hall was no unnecessary risks.

  Mercer was firm on the matter. “Sam, there’s more cops on patrol in a five-block radius here than there are back at the Hall.” There was usually a patrol car or two cruising on Ocean and one stationed across from his home.

  The car eased to a stop. Mercer opened the door and thrust his heavy shape onto the street. “Pick me up tomorrow, Sam. Have a good night.”

  As his car pulled away, Mercer lugged his thick briefcase in one hand and threw his tan raincoat over his shoulder with the other. He experienced a surge of freedom and relief. These little after-work excursions were the only times he felt free.

  He stopped at Kim’s Market and picked out the sweetest-looking basket of strawberries, and some choice plums, too. Then he wandered across the street to the Ingleside Wine Shop. He decided on a Beaujolais that would go with the lamb stew Eunice was making.

  On the street, he glanced at his watch and headed toward home. On Cerritos, two stone pillars separated Ocean from the secure enclave of Ingleside Heights. The traffic disappeared behind him.

  He passed the low stone house belonging to the Taylors. A noise rustled out from a hedge. “Well, well, Chief…?”

  Mercer stopped. His heart was already pounding.

  “Don’t be shy. I haven’t seen you in years,” the voice said again. “You probably don’t remember.”

  What the hell was going on?

  A tall, muscular man stepped out from behind the hedge. He was wearing a cocky smirk, a green wind-breaker wrapped around him.

  A vague recognition came over Mercer, a familiarity in the face he couldn’t quite place. Then all at once it came back to him. Suddenly, everything made sense, and it took his breath away.

  “This is such an honor,” the man said. “For you.”

  He had a gun, heavy and silver. It was extended toward Mercer’s chest. Mercer knew he had to do something. Ram him. Get to his own gun somehow. He needed to act like a cop on the street again.

  “I wanted you to see my face. I wanted you to know why you were dying.”

  “Don’t do this. There are cops everywhere around here.”

  “Good. That makes it even better for me. Don’t be scared, Chief. Where you’re going, you’ll be running into a lot of your old friends.”

  The first shot struck him in the chest, a burning, clothes-searing thud that buckled his knees. Mercer’s first thought was to shout. Was it Parks or Vasquez stationed in front of his house? Only precious yards away. But his voice died inaudibly in his chest. Jesus God, please save me.

  The second shot tore through his throat. He didn’t know if he was up or down. He wanted to charge the killer. He wanted to take this bastard down. But his legs felt—paralyzed, inert.

  The man with the gun was standing over him now. The bastard was still talking to him, but he couldn’t hear a word. His face kept melting in and out of focus. A name flashed in his mind. It seemed impossible. He said it twice just to be sure, his breath pounding in his ears.

  “That’s right,” the killer said, leveling the silvery gun. “You’ve solved the case. You figured out Chimera. Congratulations.”

  Mercer thought he should close his eyes—when the next bright orange flash exploded in his face.

  Chapter 44

  I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER what I was doing when I heard the news. I was home, tending a pot of farfalle on the stove. “Adia” by Sarah McLachlan was playing on the stereo.

  Claire was coming over. I’d lured her for dinner with my famous pasta with asparagus and lemon sauce. Not lured her, actually… begged. I wanted to talk about something other than the case. Her kids, yoga, the California Senate race, why the Warriors sucked. Anything…

  I will never forget…. Martha sat toying with a headless San Francisco Giants mascot bear that she had appropriated to her side of the property list. I was chopping basil; I checked on the pasta. Tasha Catchings and Art Davidson had drifted out of my mind. Thank God.

  The phone rang. A selfish thought knifed through me, hoping that it wasn’t Claire bagging out of our date at the last minute.

  I cradled the phone in the nape of my neck and answered, “Yo…”

  It was Sam Ryan, the department’s chief of detectives. Ryan was my administrative superior in the chain of command. At the sound of his voice
, I knew something had to be seriously wrong.

  “Lindsay, something terrible has happened.”

  My body went numb. It was like someone had reached inside my chest and squeezed my heart in their indifferent fist. I listened to Ryan speak. Three shots from point-blank range… Only a few yards from his house. Oh, my God… Mercer…

  “Where is he, Sam?”

  “Moffitt. Emergency surgery. He’s fighting.”

  “I’ll be right down. I’m on my way.”

  “Lindsay, there’s nothing you can do here. Get out to the scene.”

  “Chin and Lorraine will cover it. I’ll be right down.”

  The doorbell buzzed. As if in a trance, I rushed over, opened it.

  “Hey,” said Claire.

  I didn’t say a word. In an instant, she recognized the pallor on my face. “What’s happened?”

  My eyes were wet. “Claire… he’s shot Chief Mercer.”

  Chapter 45

  WE RACED DOWN THE STEPS, climbed into Claire’s Pathfinder, and made the dash from Potrero to the California Medical Center all the way over in Parnassus Heights. The entire ride, my heart pumped madly and hopefully. The streets blurred by—Twenty-fourth, Guerrero, then across the Castro on Seventeenth to the hospital atop Mt. Sutro.

  Barely ten minutes after I got the call, Claire spun the Pathfinder into a restricted parking space across from the hospital entrance.

  Claire ID’d herself to a nurse at the front desk, asking for an up-to-date report. She looked worried as she charged inside the swinging doors. I ran up to Sam Ryan. “What’s the word?”

  He shook his head. “He’s on the table now. If anyone can take three bullets and make it through, it’s him.”

  I flipped open my cell phone and patched into Lorraine Stafford at the scene. “Things are crazy here,” she said. “There’s people from Internal Affairs, and some goddamn city crisis agency. And the fucking press. I haven’t been able to get close to the radio cop who was first on the scene.”