Everyone Pays (20 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

After she had smoked the better part of two cigarettes, I decided to give it another try. I glanced at Hendricks, then back at Emily again. He’d been driving aimlessly, letting the wheels roll as she smoked, hoping the ride and the solidarity would help us make personal contact.

I asked her, “How much can you tell us about your priest, Father Michael?”

“He is
good
.”

“She talks?” Hendricks asked.

“Best she can. Did you catch that?”

“No.”

I clarified for him. Watching her mouth helped.

She told us he meant to save her, that by taking away the men who had caused her sins, he was “cleansing her,” saving her soul.

“When he is done, my sins will be erased.”

It sounded like a good deal, but I wondered about the endgame. “What do you want to happen when he’s done?” I feared the answer.

“I will go to heaven,” she said. There was no mistaking her words.

“How?”

“He takes me home. To Him.”

That was the answer that worried me most.

“Not if I can help it,” I said under my breath.

We had come to a dirty corner south of Market, were stopped at a red light. Emily peered out through the glass.

Outside, I saw a few kids about her age with tattooed faces. They were fighting similar addictions. One of them, a girl, sat on a refrigerator box against a wall. Her face and hands were dirty. She had no shoes, and her formerly white tube socks were gray, almost black. She swayed her head ear to ear like Stevie Wonder.

Emily pursed her lips, still staring out the window. Then the light changed, and Hendricks began to pull away. She reached for the door, but I grabbed her arm, stopped her before the handle. “You’re not going to buy,” I said.

She turned to meet my eyes with something like fear and disdain. Then those broke, and she nodded.

Hendricks said, “Jesus, don’t tell me you still want to be out there.”

Her expression turned to disgust.

“She’s clean,” I said.

Maybe I could win her over eventually. We’d be a new version of good cop, bad cop: insensitive cop, observant cop.

“Check your phone,” Hendricks said. “See if he responded to your email.”

I pulled up email, checked to see what had come in. More responses to the Clip, sightings real and imagined, cops from different districts chiming in to tell us what they’d seen, none of these an apprehend. Then the message from him. His reply: “Bring him to me.” That was all.

“He wants us to bring him Meaders. Didn’t say where.”

“Write back. Tell him we will. Give him your number.”

“Yeah? That’s our plan now? You sound like me at the Thirsty Bear.”

“We ride together, Donner. I listen to one of yours, you listen to one of mine. Turns out, we wind up sounding like one another.”

It was almost meaningful enough to work.

He added, “And I don’t slap you when I make a suggestion.”

I laughed but not easily. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Forget it. You’re tired.”

“Maybe the case. Maybe not enough sleep.” I shrugged an apology. “He’s going to want
her
,” I said, “more than Meaders.”

“That’s the chip we don’t use. Write him. Let him know we’ll come with his man.”

She sat in the back during all of this, watching us, listening to our back and forth.

“I want to go to him,” she said. “
Let
me
go
.”

“Time to head back to the Hall, partner. Circle our wagons.”

I agreed. We could get Emily under control there, give her a place to stay safe for at least a little while. Hendricks made a wide U-turn at the next block, hitting the siren to clear the way, and took us north toward the Hall.

I wrote an email back to Father Michael, agreed to bring Meaders to him, asking him to call to set up the place.

We’d figure out the rest as we went. Coggins, Bennett, whatever or whomever else we needed, we’d make this work.

“It’s sent,” I said.

Emily asked from the backseat where we were going. Neither of us bothered to answer.

My phone vibrated in my hand: a text message coming through from Alan. It was an image: a picture of a clear backboard and the rim and net of a hoop. The rec center. At just after nine o’clock, they’d be finished and leaving the gym. I’d missed the games, though they seemed like a very distant part of my life now, an activity from a different place and time. I wondered if my world and Alan’s would ever intersect.

Hendricks and I sped south through the night, with our bruised and battered passenger in the rear, headed for the Hall.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

In the homicide squad room on the Hall’s seventh floor, Hendricks showed Emily to the chair next to his desk and plopped down in his own. We’d picked up food along the way: burgers for us and a vegetable soup for Emily. I put the bags down on our desks. This, just a fast few bites in the middle of it all, was the best we could do for the night. Hopefully it would be enough to keep us going.

“Fire it up,” I said. “Call Coggins and Bennett, see what’s what over there.”

Hendricks unwrapped his double cheeseburger, took a huge bite, and said through the mouthful, “We don’t want him here.”

“Oh, no. But get them ready to move if they need to.”

“Roger that.” He finished chewing, took another bite before putting the burger down to shove his phone under his ear and dial. When someone was on the other end, he said, “Yeah. How’s our friend?”

He nodded, took another bite.

“Got it.” He pushed the phone away from his mouth, told me they were already sick of Meaders. “He won’t stop asking questions.”

I unwrapped my own cheeseburger, a single with lettuce and tomato. “Shoot. Bring him down here. Let’s scare him into submission. Throw him in a box, get her to make an ID, and charge him with solicitation. Then see what he has to say.”

“I don’t want to see any of those men. Please, no.” Emily hadn’t touched her food. The spoon sat on top of a covered Styrofoam container.

Hendricks waited, eyebrows raised, for my next thought. Something would have to break before too long; we couldn’t keep Coggins and Bennett on Meaders all night. Neither could Hendricks and I babysit Emily in the Hall until morning—not if we were to come at it again functioning tomorrow. I fired up my old desktop computer.

“Yeah,” Hendricks said into the phone, “keep sitting on him. We’ll call you back.”

When he hung up, he said, “They’re restless. Can’t blame ’em.”

“I hate little dogs.”

“Come on, partner. Lighten up.” He turned to Emily. “She should lighten up, shouldn’t she?”

Emily stared down at her spoon without responding.

“Meaders will want to walk that thing soon. They prepared for that?”

Hendricks shrugged, shoved more of the burger into his mouth. “Backyard?”

“Maybe.” I wanted, needed to keep Meaders safe. He was our chip still, the goat on a leash that kept us from using Emily to lure the priest. I didn’t want to involve Emily any further than we had to, not as long as it could be avoided.

As I ate, I clicked my email open. Nothing new. I checked my texts again and looked at Alan’s picture. We had a few minutes, so I decided to make the call. I ate half the burger first to get my blood sugar headed in the right direction, then told Hendricks I’d be right back.

He got that familiar look like he’d give me hell for something, but I ignored him, took my cell, and walked over to the windows. Being new on the floor meant I had no seniority when I chose my desk. The best I could do was go along with where Hendricks had the clout to put us. I’d heard some rumors about him getting in trouble with Bowen over the years and that this accounted for our placement at the center of the twenty-by-thirty squad room, right under the harshest fluorescent lights.

At this time of night, the rows of desks by the windows had been abandoned. Everyone on the squad was either out on a case, on call, or at home. Against the black glass, I felt the cold radiating inward at me, looked out over the Bay in the direction of AT&T Park.

Alan picked up. “Clara? Hang on a second, all right?”

“Sure.” He was in the car. “Where you headed?”

When he came back, he said, “Home. Just got done playing. You like my pic?”

“I miss it,” I said, “playing tonight.”

“There’ll be other games. You’ll be back.”

How had it gotten this way: that we could simply talk? It all felt suddenly, inexplicably easy.

He said, “What do you say to dinner this weekend? Pick a night.”

And then it didn’t.

“You’re not going to like my answer.” I touched the cold glass, felt my finger pads press against it. Emily’s head bowed, thin ribbons of muscle sticking out down the back of her neck. Hendricks’s desk phone rang, and I turned to watch him answer. He waved his finger in a circle, telling me to hurry up. That was when the phone rang again, and I realized it was
mine
.

Hendricks pointed more dramatically now, waving me over. This call could be our priest.

I swore under my breath.

In my ear, Alan said, “Guess you’re a hard woman to pin down.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I hope I get to find out.”

“Yeah,” I said, “let’s talk again soon. I have to go.”

He started to tell me to have a good night, maybe even to be safe, but I was already running across the room to my desk. I hung up before he got to finish. At my desk, I grabbed the phone receiver and rushed it to my ear.

“Donner here.”

A deep male voice said, “Hello, Detective.”

It was him.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

“We’ve been looking for you.”

“That I’ve gathered.”

“Where do you want us to bring your guy?”

“Meaders.”

Hendricks lifted an extension of the phone to his ear, listening in. This was how it worked in the real world: two cops in the Hall late at night, without any techs running phone taps, tracing the caller’s location, using a landline. I had his number on my caller ID now, so I’d run it through the system and see what popped out, but that wasn’t likely to yield much.

Emily had come out of her funk; she watched us intently, hanging on every word.

“Meaders. Yes. Tell us where to bring him.” Part of me even hoped it could be that easy: that we’d just hand Meaders over and be done with it. But it wasn’t. Never would be.

Emily said, “I want to go with him.”

I waved at Hendricks to quiet her down. He got around the desk and put his hand over her mouth faster than I’d ever seen him move.

“Is that her? Emily is with you?”

I didn’t know how he heard her through the line, though her voice was hard to mistake. I waited, not knowing what to say.

“Was that her?”

“It’s not her,” I said. “She isn’t with us here. But she’s safe.”

I listened, waiting for what he’d say next. The sound of his breathing came through the line. Then he said, “Where is she?”

“In the hospital. They’re seeing to her wounds. She’s in very capable hands. Doing well.”

Emily started squirming, struggling to get out of Hendricks’s hands. Her mouth came free for a moment, and she screamed,
“Father!”
I saw her stump tongue flapping as she did.

Hendricks got his hand back over her mouth again, lifted her, and carried her off toward an interrogation booth at the back of the squad room.

The priest breathed loudly on the other end of the phone. If seething had a sound, this was it.

“So she’s there. You lied to me.”

“She’s safe,” I said. “We’re taking care of her.”

“Give her to me. Let me deliver her.”

“
Deliver
her? Care to explain what that means?”

He did more seething. I waited.

“Give her to me.”

“I can’t do that. But I can help you with the other.”

He said, “Tell me, Detective, has God spoken to you? Given you instructions?”

I waited for Hendricks to enter the booth before I answered. “He told me to lend assistance, that you deserve our help. These men are filth.” I wondered what he’d do if I said God wanted him to surrender, if he’d believe me. “He said this will all be over soon, that you only have a few more acts.”

The priest sighed. “He knows I grow weary. But I know too that He hasn’t spoken to you. You aren’t saved.”

“I did—”

He cut me off before I could finish, though I didn’t know what I wanted to say. “You can give me Meaders, but do not pretend to hear the words of our Lord.”

Hendricks came back out of the booth, walking toward me.

“
Then
you will give me the girl. You must let us alone to finish this.”

“I can’t do that. You have to know I can’t do that.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but I have done this out of love.”

“What kind of love?”

“Love for her. God’s eternal love. Let me ask you, Detective Donner, do you believe? In
anything
?”

I closed my eyes, wrapped the phone cord around my finger. I didn’t know the answer or even how much I wanted to reveal about my own twisted logic about the world.

With Hendricks coming over, I was reluctant to say much. Somehow I was willing to tell this killer things about myself that I’d never tell my partner. The things I believed in, none of them simple or defined within the standard parameters, these were thoughts I felt more comfortable discussing with a madman or a priest. And Father Michael was both.

Hendricks tapped my shoulder, mouthed “You okay?” when I opened my eyes.

I nodded to him. “I believe in the law. That Eric Meaders did things he has to pay for and that you are an instrument of justice better than most. If God wants to punish this sinner, I don’t have a problem with that.”

With a furrowed brow, Hendricks nodded at my acting job. I assumed he’d take it as that. Maybe he couldn’t see how close I was to convinced. But we needed the priest to believe, to trust that I was riding along with him, so I didn’t question it. Neither did Hendricks; maybe he knew I wasn’t acting and didn’t care. We were both over the edge on this case, flying on our own, consequences be damned.

I said, “I’ll bring him to you. Alone. You tell me where.”

Hendricks’s eyes widened; he wouldn’t like that, me being alone, but we’d figure out the location and make it safe. The main thing now was that the priest believed, that he’d come.

He said through the phone, “Bring him to Mission Dolores. The old chapel. Where the Franciscans first prayed here in San Francisco. Bring him now.”

I waited, expecting him to hang up. Hendricks made a churning motion with his hand, wanting me to keep the priest on the phone. I shrugged.

“I can do that.” I didn’t want to bring up Emily. He would want her, but that was a harder conversation. I waited, but then the priest didn’t say more. I realized he had hung up.

I took the phone from my ear. “He’s gone.”

Hendricks frowned. He came around my desk and copied the number off the caller ID onto a scrap of paper.

“That’s our guy.” He crossed back to his computer, ready to punch in the number to see what came up. We could ask the phone company to triangulate the signal, trying to pinpoint his location, but that could take time, and its accuracy was debatable. The best we’d do was to confirm who’d registered the phone.

In a moment, he swore and hit his desk. “Comes back as a pay phone in North Beach,” he said. “Nothing we can do with that. He’ll be on the move before we can get there.”

“So what now?” I was aware that I still stood next to my desk, hadn’t sat down since I started the call. It was an odd position, I felt, but then a lot of this case had suddenly gotten odd—I had just told a murderer I would bring him his next victim. What’s worse, I was seriously considering my own beliefs about life, wondering what I had if not religion, whether I had any form of faith. There was considerable risk to all this too—not just for myself and for Meaders, but for my job.

What did I have? I had my job, the law, justice, and truth. I had the trust of my partner, hope for maybe a boyfriend and some good times too, if I was lucky. I was a cop, here to serve the law. And I wanted my man.

Bowen was a matter we could work out later.

I was ready to do what I had to in order to get
him
.

“Your show, Donner. Tell me what’s next.”

“Call Coggins and Bennett. Tell them to get Meaders ready.” I picked up my phone to call them myself.

Hendricks spun in his chair with his legs up, looking like a cowboy eager to get on a bull.

On my phone, Coggins picked up. I told him to get Meaders ready to roll.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Bring him to the Mission. Meet me on the south side of Dolores Park, at Twentieth Street.” I knew the chapel stood at Sixteenth and Dolores. The park would be an easy place for us to stage out of sight, and Twentieth Street was its quietest side. Twentieth Street was a place we could talk things through.

I said, “Be there in ten.”