2nd Chance (24 page)

“Of course he knew. You met him face-to-face. You’re in charge of his case.”

“I don’t mean from the case,” I said. “He knew about you.”

My father’s eyes looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“That I was your daughter. He knew. He called me Marty Boxer’s little girl.”

A light was blinking from a beer sign in the 7-Eleven window. It illuminated my father’s face.

“I already told you,” he said, “Coombs and I were familiar. Everybody knew me back then.”

“That wasn’t what he meant.” I shook my head. “He called me Marty Boxer’s little girl. It was about you.”

I had a flash of my face-to-face with Coombs that morning at the hotel. I’d had the same fleeting sensation then. That he knew me. That there was something
between him and me
.

I pulled away, my voice straining. “Why were you following me? I need to hear everything.”

“To protect you. I swear. To do the right thing for once.”

“I’m a cop, Dad, not your little Buttercup. You’re holding something back. You’re involved in this somehow. You want to do the right thing for once, this is the time to start.”

My father leaned his head back, eyes fixed straight ahead. He sucked in a sharp breath. “Coombs called me when he got out of fuel. He managed to trace me down south.”

“Coombs called
you?”
I said, wide-eyed, completely in shock. “Why would he call you?”

“He asked how I’d enjoyed the last twenty years of my life, while he was away. If I’d made something of myself. He said it was time to pay me back.”

“Pay you back? Pay you back for what?” As soon as I asked the question, the answer shot through me. I stared hard into my father’s lying eyes.

“You were there that night, weren’t you? You were in this twenty years ago.

M
Y
FATHER
AVERTED
HIS
EYES
. I’d seen the shamed and guilty look before – too many times – when I was just a little girl.

He started to explain. Here we go again, huh, Daddy?

“Six of us got to the crime scene, Lindsay. I was only there by chance. I was subbing for this guy, Ed Dooley. We were last on the scene. I didn’t see shit. We got there after everything had been played out. But he’s been badgering us, all of us, ever since.

“I never knew he was Chimera, Lindsay,” my father said. “That you have to believe. I never heard of this cop Chipman until you told me the other day. I thought he was just threatening me.”

“Threatening you, Dad?” I blinked in disbelief. My heart was breaking a little. “Threatening you with what? Please make me understand. I
really
want to understand.”

“He said he was going to make me feel the way he did all these years. Watching himself lose everything. He said he was going after
you.”

“That’s why you came back,” I said with a sigh, “wasn’t it? “All that stuff about wanting to set things right. Make amends with me. That wasn’t it at all.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’d already pissed away so much. I couldn’t let him take the rest, the part that was good. That’s why I’m here, Lindsay I swear it. I’m not lying this time.”

My head was ringing. I had a murder suspect loose. Shots had been fired. I didn’t know what to make of this. What to do about my father? How much did he really know? How to deal with Coombs now?
With Chimera?

“You’re telling me the truth? For once? This is my case, my big, important case. I have to know the truth. Please don’t lie to me, Dad.”

“I swear,” he said, his eyes hooded with shame. “What’re you going to do?”

I glared at him. “About what? About Coombs, or us…?”

“About this whole mess. What happened tonight.”

“I don’t know.” I swallowed. “But I do know one thing… If I can, I’m bringing Coombs in.”

B
Y
TEN
THE
NEXT
MORNING
, I had a search warrant in my hands. It granted access to Coombs’s room at the William Simon. Half a dozen of us rushed over there in two cars.

Coombs was out in the open. There were things we could nail him for: like attempted murder of a police officer and resisting arrest. I had put out an
APB
on him and sent a team to go over the meet house where everyone had scattered the night before.

I asked Jill to meet Jacobi and me at the William Simon. I was hoping against hope that we’d find something in Coombs’s room that would tie him to one of the murders. If we did, I wanted a warrant in motion immediately.

The same Indian desk clerk let us in the room. It was unkempt, a row of crushed beer bottles and soda cans lining the windowsill. The only furniture was a metal-frame bed with a thin mattress, and a chest of drawers with his toiletries on top, a desk, a table, and two chairs.

“What’d ya expect” – Jacobi smirked – “… a Holiday Inn?”

Several newspapers were littered about,
Chronicles
and
Examiners
. Nothing out of the ordinary. On a ledge to the side of the bed, my eyes fell on a small marksmanship trophy – a prone sharpshooter aiming a rifle with the inscription
Regional 50 Meter Straight Target Champion
and Frank Coombs’s name.

It made my stomach turn.

I went over to the desk. Stuck under the phone were crumpled receipts and a few numbers I didn’t recognize. I found a map of San Francisco and the surrounding areas. I yanked out the drawers of the desk. An old Yellow Pages, some take-out menus to local restaurants, an out-of-date city guide.

Nothing…

Jill looked at me. She shook her head, grimaced.

I kept searching the room. Something had to be here.
Coombs was Chimera.

I kicked a desk drawer in, sending a lamp toppling to the floor. In the same frustrated fit, I grabbed hold of the mattress and angrily ripped it off the bed.

“It’s here, Jill. Something has to be.”

To my surprise, a manila envelope that had been between the mattress and the box spring fell to the floor. I picked it up and spilled the contents onto Coombs’s bed.

It wasn’t a gun or something taken from the victims, but it was a virtual history of the Chimera case. Newspaper and magazine articles, some of them going back twenty-two years to the trial, one from
Time
magazine, detailing the case. One, headlined “
POLICE
LOBBY
DEMANDS
COOMBS
ARREST
,” had a picture of an Officers for Justice rally at City Hall Square. Scanning through it, my eye was drawn by a slashing red circle Coombs had made, highlighting a quote ascribed to a group spokesman, patrol Sergeant Edward Chipman.

“
Bing-o.”
Jacobi whistled.

Continuing on, we came upon articles on the trial and copies of letters from Coombs to the
POA
demanding a new trial. A faded copy of the original Police Commission’s report on the incident in Bay View. There were lots of angry comments penned in the margins by Coombs. “
Liar,
” boldly underlined, and “Fucking coward.” A bold red bracket highlighted the testimony of Field Lieutenant Earl Mercer.

Then a series of current articles, tracing the most recent murders: Tasha Catchings, Davidson, Mercer… a blurb in the
Oakland Times
about Estelle Chipman with a scrawled-in comment, “A man without honor dishonors everything.”

I looked at Jill. It wasn’t perfect; it wasn’t something we could tie directly to a murder case. But it was enough to remove all doubt that we had found our man. “It’s all here,” I said. “At least we can make this stick for Chipman and Mercer.”

She thought awhile, then finally bunched her lips together and gave me a satisfied nod.

As I rebundled the file, perfunctorily leafing through the last few items, something hit my eye. My jaw stiffened.

It was a newspaper clipping from the first press conference after the Tasha Catchings murder. The photo showed Chief Mercer standing behind several microphones.

Jill noticed my changed expression. She took the clipping out of my hand. “
Oh God, Lindsay
… ”

In the photo’s background, behind Mercer, were several people connected to the investigation. The mayor, Chief of Detectives Ryan, Gabe Carr.

Coombs had drawn a bold red circle around one face.

My face.

B
Y
THE
END
OF
THE
DAY
, Frank Coombs’s description was in the hands of every cop in the city. This was personal. We all wanted to bring him down.

Coombs had no belongings, no real money, no network that we knew of. By all reckoning, we should have him soon.

I asked the girls to get together in Jill’s office after everyone else had left. When I arrived, they were cheerful and smiling, probably thinking about congratulating me. The newspapers had Coombs’s picture on the front page. He
looked
like a killer.

I sank down on the leather couch next to Claire.

“Something’s wrong,” she said. “I don’t think we want to hear this.”

I nodded. “I need to talk about something.”

As they listened, I described my experience of the night before. The real version. How tailing Coombs had been risky and impulsive, though I hadn’t had any real choice. How I had gotten trapped. How when I was sure there was no hope, my father had rescued me.

“Jesus, Lindsay.” Jill’s jaw hung incredulously. “Will you
please
try to be more careful…?”

“I know.” I said.

Claire shook her head. “You said to me the other day,
I don’t know what I would do without you,
and you go off taking a risk like that. Don’t you think it works the same for us? You’re like a sister. Please stop trying to be a hero.”

“A cowboy,” Jill said.

“Cowgirl,” Cindy chimed.

“A couple of seconds either way” I smiled “and you guys would be out on a membership drive about now.”

They sat staring at me, somber and serious. Then a ripple of laughter snaked its way around the room. The thought of losing my girls, or them losing me, made what I had done seem all the more insane. Now it was funny.

“Thank God for Marty!” Jill exclaimed.

“Yeah, good old Marty.” I sighed. “My dad.”

Sensing my ambivalence, Jill leaned forward. “He didn’t hit anyone, did he?”

I took a breath. “Coombs. Maybe someone else.”

“Was there blood at the scene?” asked Claire.

“We’ve been over the house. It was rented to this small-time punk who’s disappeared. There was evidence of blood in the driveway.”

They stared back in silence. Then Jill said, “So how’d you leave it, Lindsay? With the department?”

I shook my head. “I
didn’t
. I kept my father out of it.”

“Jesus, Lindsay,” Jill shot back, “your dad may have shot one. He stuck his nose into a police situation and fired his gun.”

I looked at her. “Jill, he saved my life. I can’t just turn him in.”

“But you’re taking a huge risk. For what? His gun is properly licensed. He was your father, and he was following you. He saved you. There’s no crime in that.”

“Truth is” – I swallowed – “I’m not sure he was following me.”

Jill shot me a hard look. She wheeled her chair closer. “You want to run that by me again?”

“I’m not sure he was following me,” I said.

“Then why the hell was he there?” Cindy shook her head.

All their eyes fell on me.

Piece by piece, I laid out the exchange with my father in the car after the shooting. How after I confronted him, my father had admitted to being a material witness twenty years ago in Bay View. “He was there with Coombs.”

“Oh, shit,” Jill said with blank eyes. “Oh Jesus, Lindsay.”

“That’s why he came back,” I said. “All those uplifting conversations about reconnecting with his little girl. His little Buttercup. Coombs was threatening him. He came back to face him down.”

“That may be,” said Claire, reaching out for my hand, “but he was threatening him with you. He came back to protect you, too.”

Jill leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “Lindsay this may not be about protecting your dad from getting involved. He may have known Coombs was killing people and not come forward.”

I met her eyes. “These past weeks, having him back in my life, it was like, all of a sudden I could put aside the things he had done, the hurt he caused, and he was just a person, who made some mistakes but who was funny and needing, and who seemed happy to be with me. When I was little, I dreamed of something like this happening, my dad coming back.”

“Don’t give up on him yet,” Claire said.

Cindy asked, “So if you don’t think your father came back for you, Lindsay, what is he protecting?”

“I don’t know.” I looked around the room, my eyes stopping at every face. “That’s the big question.”

Jill got up, went over to the credenza behind her desk, and hoisted up a large cardboard box file. On the front was marked, “Case File 237654A.
State of California vs. Francis C. Coombs
.”

“I don’t know either,” she said, patting it. “But I’ll bet the answer’s somewhere in here.”

A
S
SOON
AS
SHE
GOT
TO
WORK
the next morning, Jill opened the case file and waded in. She told her secretary to hold all calls and canceled what only yesterday had seemed an urgent meeting on another murder case she’d been working on.

With a mug of coffee on her desk and her
DKNY
suit jacket slung over her chair, Jill lifted out the first heavy folder. The massive trial record – pages and pages of testimony, motions, and judicial rulings. In the end, it would be better that she didn’t find anything. That Marty Boxer ended up being a father who had come back to protect his kid. But the prosecutor in her wasn’t convinced.