2nd Chance (2 page)

Even in shock and dismay, Winslow carried himself with a graceful bearing – a smooth face, jet-black hair cut flat on top, and a football running back’s build. Everyone in San Francisco knew what he was doing for this neighborhood.

He was supposed to be a real-life hero, and I must say he looked the part.

I walked over.

“This is Reverend Aaron Winslow;” Chin said, introducing us.

“Lindsay Boxer,” I said, extending my hand.

“
Lieutenant
Boxer,” said Chin. “She’ll be overseeing the case.”

“I’m familiar with your work,” I said. “You’ve given a lot to this neighborhood. I’m so sorry for this. I don’t have any words for it.”

His eyes shifted toward the murdered girl. He spoke in the softest voice imaginable. “I’ve known her since she was a child. These are good, responsible people. Her mother… she brought up Tasha and her brother on her own. These were all young kids. Choir practice, Lieutenant.”

I didn’t want to intrude, but I had to. “Can I ask a few questions? Please.”

He nodded blankly. “Of course.

“You see anyone? Someone fleeing? A shape, a glimpse?”

“I saw where the shots came from,” Winslow said, and he pointed to the same thicket of bushes where Jacobi had gone. “I saw the trailer fire. I was busy trying to get everyone down. It was madness.”

“Has anyone made any threats recently against you or your church?” I asked.

“Threats?” Winslow screwed up his face. “Maybe years ago, when we first got funding to rebuild some of these houses.”

A short distance away, a haunting wail came from Tasha Catchings’s mother as the girl’s body was lifted onto a gurney. This was so sad. The surrounding crowd was growing edgy. Taunts and accusations began to ring out. “Why are you all standing around? Go find her killer!”

“I better get over there,” Winslow said, “before this thing goes the wrong way.” He started to move, then turned with tight-lipped resignation on his face. “I could have saved that poor baby. I heard the shots.”

“You couldn’t save them all,” I said. “You did what you could.”

He finally nodded. Then he said something that totally shocked me. “It was an M Sixteen, Lieutenant. Thirty-round clip. The bastard reloaded twice.”

How would you know that?” I asked, surprised.

“Desert Storm,” he answered. “I was a field chaplain. No way I would ever forget that awful sound. No one ever does.”

I
HEARD
MY
NAME
CALLED
OUT
over the din of the crowd. It was Jacobi. He was in the woods behind the church. “Hey Lieutenant, come check this out.”

Heading over, I wondered what kind of person could do such a terrible thing. I had worked on a hundred homicides; usually drugs, money or sex was at the heart of them. But
this… this was meant to shock.

“Check it out,” Jacobi said, bending down over a spot. He’d found a bullet casing.

“M Sixteen, I bet,” I replied.

Jacobi nodded. “Little lady’s been brushing up during her time off? Shell’s a Remington two twenty-three.”

“
Lieutenant
Little Lady to you.” I smirked. Then I told him how I knew.

Dozens of empty shells were scattered all around. We were deep in the brush and trees, hidden from the church. The casings were strewn in two distinct clusters about five yards apart.

“You can see where he started firing,” Jacobi said. “I figure here. He must’ve moved around.”

From the first cluster of shells, there was a clear line of sight to the side of the church. That stained-glass window in full view… all those kids streaming toward the street… I could see why no one had spotted him. His hiding place was totally protected.

“When he reloaded, he must’ve moved over there.” Jacobi pointed.

I made my way over and crouched near the second cluster of shells. Something wasn’t making sense. The facade of the church was in view; the front steps where Tasha Catchings had lain. But only barely.

I squinted through an imaginary sight, leveling my gaze at where Tasha must’ve been when she was hit. You could barely even fix it into sight. There was no way he could’ve intentionally been aiming for her. She had been struck from a totally improbable angle.

“Lucky shot,” Jacobi muttered. “What do you think, a ricochet?”

“What’s back here?” I asked. I looked around, pushing my way through the thick bushes leading away from the church. No one had seen the shooter escape, so he obviously hadn’t made his way along Harrow Street. The brush was about twenty feet deep.

At the end was a five-foot-high chain-link fence dividing the church grounds from the surrounding neighborhood. The fence wasn’t high. I planted my flats and hoisted myself over.

I found myself facing penned-in backyards and tiny row houses. A few people had gathered, watching the show. To the right, the playgrounds of the Whitney Young projects.

Jacobi finally caught up with me. “Take it easy, Loo,” he huffed. “There’s an audience. You’re making me look bad.”

“This is how he must’ve made his way out, Warren.” We looked in both directions. One way led toward an alley, the other toward a row of homes.

I shouted to a group of onlookers who had gathered on a back porch, “Anyone see anything?” No one responded.

“Someone was shooting at the church,” I shouted. “A little girl’s been killed. Help us out. We need your help.”

Everyone stood around with the unconfiding silence of people who don’t talk to the police.

Then slowly a woman of about thirty came forward. She was nudging a young boy ahead of her. “Bernard saw something,” she said in a muffled voice.

Bernard appeared to be about six, with cautious, round eyes, wearing a gold-and-purple Kobe Bryant sweatshirt.

“It was a van,” Bernard blurted. “Like Uncle Reggie’s.” He pointed to the dirt road leading to the alley. “It was parked down
there
.”

I knelt down, gently smiling into the scared boy’s eyes. “What color van, Bernard?”

The kid replied, “White.”

“My brother’s got a white Dodge minivan,” Bernard’s mother said.

“Was it like your uncle’s, Bernard?” I asked.

“Sorta. Not really though.”

“Did you see the man who was driving it?”

He shook his head. “I was bringing out the garbage. I only saw it drive away.”

“Do you think you would recognize it again if you saw it?” I asked.

Bernard nodded.

“Because it looked like your uncle’s?”

He hesitated. “No, because it had a picture on the back.”

“A picture? You mean like an insignia? Or some kind of advertising?”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head; his moon-like eyes were searching around. Then they lit up. “I mean like that.” He pointed toward a pickup truck in a neighbor’s driveway. There was a sticker of a Cal Golden Bear on the rear bumper.

“You mean a decal?” I confirmed.

“On the door.”

I held the boy softly by the shoulders. “What did this decal look like, Bernard?”

“Like Mufasa,” the boy said, “from
The Lion King
.”

“A lion?” My mind raced through anything that seemed likely. Sports teams, college logos, corporations…

“Yeah, like Mufasa,” Bernard repeated. “Except it had two heads.”

L
ESS
THAN
AN
HOUR
LATER
, I was pushing through a surging crowd that had built up on the steps of the Hall of Justice. I felt hollowed out and terribly sad, but knew I couldn’t show it here.

The lobby of the tomb-like granite building where I worked was packed with reporters and news crews, shoving their microphones at anyone who came in wearing a badge.

Most of the crime reporters knew me but I waved them off until I could get upstairs.

Then a set of hands grasped my shoulders and a familiar voice chimed, “Linds, we need to talk.

I spun to face Cindy Thomas, one of my closest friends, though it also happened she was the lead crime reporter at the _Chronicle. _”I won’t bother you now,” she said above the din. “But it’s important. How about Susie’s, at ten?”

It had been Cindy who, as a stringer buried on the paper’s Metro desk, had sneaked into the heart of the bride and groom case and helped blow it wide open. Cindy who, as much as any of us, was responsible for the gold on my shield today.

I managed a smile. “I’ll see you there.”

Upstairs on three, I strode into the cramped fluorescent-lit room that the twelve inspectors who managed Homicide for the city called home. Lorraine Stafford was waiting for me there. She had been my first appointment, after six successful years in Sex Crimes. And Cappy Mcneil had come in, too.

Lorraine asked, “What can I do?”

“You can check with Sacramento for any stolen white vans. Any model. In-state plates. And put out an
APB
along with it for a bumper sticker of some sort of lion on the rear.” She nodded and started away.

“Lorraine.” I stopped her. “Make that a two-headed lion.”

Cappy walked with me while I made myself a cup of tea.

He’d been in Homicide for fifteen years, and I knew he had supported me when Chief Mercer consulted him about offering me the lieutenant job. He looked sad, thoroughly depressed. “I know Aaron Winslow. I played ball with him in Oakland. He’s devoted his life to those kids. He really is one of the good guys, Lieutenant.”

All of a sudden Frank Barnes from Auto Theft stuck his head into our office. “Heads up, Lieutenant. Weight’s on the floor.”

“Weight, in the lexicon of the
SFPD
, meant Chief of Police Earl Mercer.

M
ERCER
STRODE
IN, all two hundred fifty pounds of him, trailed by Gabe Carr, a mean little weasel who was the department’s press liaison, and Fred Dix, who managed community relations.

The chief was still dressed in his trademark dark gray suit, blue shirt, and shiny gold cuff links. I’d watched Mercer manage a number of tense scenes – transit bombings, Internal Affairs stings, serial killers – but I’d never seen his face so tight. He motioned me into my office and, with barely a word, pulled the door shut. Fred Dix and Gabe Carr were already inside.

“I just got off the phone with Winston Gray and Vernon Jones” – two of the city’s most outspoken leaders. “They’ve assured me they’ll plead for restraint, give us some time to find out just what the fuck is going on. Just so I’m clear: By restraint, what they mean is, deliver the person or group who’s responsible for this or they’ll have two thousand outraged citizens at City Hall.”

He barely relaxed his face when he stared at me. “So I’m hoping, Lieutenant, you got something you want to share… ?”

I took him through what I had found at the church, along with Bernard Smith’s sighting of the white getaway van.

“Van or not,” the mayor’s man, Fred Dix, cut in, “you know where you have to start on this. Mayor Fernandez is going to come down hard on anyone operating in the area espousing a racist or antidiversity message. We need some heat to fall their way.”

“You seem pretty sure that’s what we’re looking at,” I said with a noncommittal glance. “Your garden-variety hate crime?”

“Shooting up a church, murdering an eleven-year-old child? Where would you start,
Lieutenant?”

“That girl’s face is going to be on every news report in the country,” Carr, the press liaison, pitched in. “The effort in the Bay View neighborhood is one of the mayor’s proudest accomplishments.”

I nodded. “Does the mayor mind if I finish my eyewitness interviews first?”

“Don’t worry yourself with the mayor,” Mercer cut in. “Right now, all you have to be concerned with is me. I grew up on these streets. My folks still live in West Portal. I don’t need a TV sound bite to see that kid’s face in my mind. You run the investigation wherever it leads. Just run it fast. And Lindsay… nothing gets in the way, you understand?”

He was about to get up. “And most importantly, I want total containment on this. I don’t want to see this investigation being run on the front page.

Everyone nodded, and Mercer, followed by Dix and Carr, stood up. He let out a deep blast of air. “Right now, we have one hell of a press conference to muck our way through.”

The others filed out of the room, but Mercer stayed behind. He leaned his thick hands on the edge of my desk, his hulking shape towering over me.

“Lindsay, I know you left a lot on the table after that last case. But all that’s done. It’s history now. I need everything you have on this case. One of the things you left behind when you took that shield was the freedom to let personal pain interfere with the job.”

“You don’t have to worry about me.” I gave him a solid stare. I’d had my differences with the man over the years, but now I was ready to give him everything I had. I had seen the dead little girl. I had seen the church torn up. My blood was on fire. I hadn’t felt this way since I left the job.

Chief Mercer flashed me a smile of understanding. “It’s good to have you back, Lieutenant.”

A
FTER
A
HIGHLY
CHARGED
NEWS
CONFERENCE
conducted on the steps of the Hall, I met Cindy at Susie’s as we had arranged. After the frenzied scene at the Hall, the relaxed, laid-back atmosphere at our favorite meeting place was a relief. She was already sipping a Corona as I arrived.

A lot had happened here at this very table. Cindy; Jill Bernhardt, the assistant district attorney; and Claire Washburn, the chief medical examiner, my closest friend. We had started to meet last summer, when it seemed that fate had pulled us together with links to the bride and groom case. In the process, we had evolved into the closest of friends.

I signaled our waitress, Loretta, for a beer, then planted myself across from Cindy with a worn-out smile. “Hey… ”

“Hey yourself.” She smiled back. “Good to see you.”