2nd Chance (10 page)

“That’s all I have,” Lila Mckendree said. “The killer’s voice.”

T
HE
DAVIDSON
MURDER
changed everything.

A bold headline in the Chronicle shouted,
MURDERED
COP
THOUGHT
TO BE
THIRD
IN
TERROR
SPREE
.” The front-page article, with Cindy’s byline, cited the accurate, long-range rifle shots and also the symbol used by active hate groups that had been found at the scenes.

I headed down to the
CSU
lab and found Charlie Clapper curled up behind a metal desk, wearing a lab coat, munching on a breakfast of Doritos chips. His salt-and-pepper hair was oily and tousled, and his eyes sagged like heavy bags. “I’ve slept at this desk twice this week.” He scowled. “Doesn’t anyone get killed during the day anymore?”

“In case you didn’t notice, I haven’t been getting my normal beauty rest the last week either.” I shrugged. “C’mon, Charlie, I need something on this Davidson thing. He’s killing our own guys.

“I know he is.” The rotund
CSU
man sighed. He hoisted himself up and shuffled over to a counter. He picked up a small zip-lock sandwich bag with a dark, flattened bullet in it.

“Here’s your slug, Lindsay. Took it out of the wall behind where Art Davidson got dropped. One shot. Lights out. Check with Claire if you like. The sonofabitch can definitely shoot.”

I lifted up the shell and tried to pull a reading.

“Forty caliber,” Clapper said. “My first read is that it’s from a PSG-One.”

I frowned. “You’re sure about this, Charlie?” Tasha Catchings had been killed with an M16.

He pointed toward a scope. “Be my guest, Lieutenant. I figure ballistics must be a lifelong study of yours.

“I didn’t mean that, Charlie. I was just hoping for a match on the Catchings girl.”

“Reese is still working on it,” he said, grabbing a chip out of the Doritos bag. “But don’t bet on it. This guy was clean, Lindsay. Just like at the church. No prints, nothing left behind. The tape machine’s standard, could’ve been bought anywhere. Set off by a long-distance remote control. We even traced what we thought to be his route up there through the building and dusted everything from the railings to the window locks. We did turn up one thing… ”

“What’s that?” I pressed.

He walked me over to a lab counter. “Partial sneaker print. Off the tar on the roof where the shots came from. Looks like a standard shoe. But we did take out some traces of a fine white powder. No guarantees it even came from him.”

Powder?”

“Chalk,” Charlie said. “That narrows it down to about fifty million possibilities. If this guy’s signing his pictures, Lindsay, he’s making it tough to find.”

“He
signed
it, Charlie,” I said with conviction. “It was the shot.”

“We’re sending the nine-one-one tape out for a voice reading. I’ll let you know when we get it back.”

I patted him appreciatively. “Get some sleep, Charlie.”

He lifted the Doritos bag. “Sure, I will. After breakfast.”

I
WENT
BACK
to the office and sank disappointedly back behind my desk. I had to know more about that chimera. I was about to dial Stu Kirkwood at the hate crimes desk when a cadre of three men in dark suits came into the squad room.

One of them was Mercer. No surprise. He had been on the morning talk shows, pushing for calm. I knew facing tough questions without concrete results didn’t sit well with him.

But the other, accompanied by his press liaison, was a man I had never seen on the floor in seven years in Homicide.

It was the mayor of San Francisco.

“I don’t want the slightest bit of bullshit,” Art Fernandez, San Francisco’s two-term mayor, said. “I don’t want the standard protecting the ranks, and I don’t want any misplaced reflex to control the situation.” He shifted his eyes on a narrow track between Mercer and me. “What I want is an honest answer. Do we have a read on this situation?”

We were crammed into my tiny glass-enclosed office. Outside, I could see staffers standing around, watching the circus.

I fumbled under my desk to get my pumps back on. “We do not,” I admitted.

“So Vernon Jones is right.” The mayor exhaled, sinking into a chair across from my desk. “What we have is an out-of-control spree of hate-driven killings on which the police have no handle, but the
FBI
may.”

“No. that’s not it,” I replied.

“That’s not it?” he arched his eyebrows. He looked at Mercer and frowned. “What is it I don’t understand? You’ve got a recognized hate group symbol, this chimera, at two of the three crime scenes. Our own M.E. believes the Catchings girl was the intended target of this madman.”

“What the lieutenant is saying,” Mercer cut in, “is that this may not be simply a hate crime issue.”

My mouth was a little cottony, and I swallowed. “I think it’s deeper than a hate crime spree.”

“
Deeper,
Lieutenant Boxer? Just what is it you believe we have?”

I stared straight at Fernandez. “What I think we have is someone with a personal vendetta. Possibly a single assailant. He’s couching his murders in the MO of a hate crime.”

“A vendetta, you say,” Carr, the mayor’s man, chimed in. “A vendetta against blacks, but not a hate crime. Against black children and widows…
but not a hate crime?”

“Against black
cops
,” I said.

The mayor’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

I explained that Tasha Catchings and Estelle Chipman had been related to cops. “There has to be some further relationship, though we don’t know what it is yet. The killer is organized, haughty, in the way he’s leaving his clues.” I do not believe a hate crime killer would leave their mark on the hits. The getaway van, the little drawing in Chipman’s basement, that cocky nine-one-one tape. I don’t think this is a hate crime spree. It’s a vendetta – calculated,
personal
.”

The mayor looked at Mercer. “You go along with this, Earl?”

“Protecting the ranks aside… ” Mercer smiled tightly. “I do.”

“Well, I don’t,” Carr said. “Everything points to a hate crime.”

There was silence in the cramped room; the temperature suddenly felt like 120 degrees.

“So it seems I have two choices,” the mayor said. “Under the Hate Crimes Legislation, Article Four, I can call in the
FBI
, who, I believe, keep a close watch on these groups.”

“They have no fucking idea how to run a homicide investigation,” Mercer protested.

“Or… I can let the lieutenant do her job. Tell the Feds we got it all handled ourselves,” the mayor said.

I met his eyes. “I went to the academy with Art Davidson. You think you want to catch his killer any more than I do?”

“Then catch him,” the mayor said and rose. “Just so we know what’s at stake,” he added.

I was nodding glumly when Lorraine burst through my door. “Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant, but it’s urgent. Jacobi called in from Vallejo. He said make the place up nice and neat for an important guest. They found the biker from the Blue Parrot.

“They found Red.”

A
BOUT
AN
HOUR
LATER
, Jacobi and Cappy entered the squad room. They were pushing a large redheaded biker type, his hands cuffed behind his back.

“Look who decided to drop in.” Jacobi smirked.

Red jerked his arms defiantly out of Cappy’s grip as the policeman shoved him into Interrogation Room 1, where he tripped over a wooden chair and crashed to the floor.

“Sorry, big fella.” Cappy shrugged. “Thought I warned you about that first step.”

“Richard Earl Evans,” Jacobi announced. “
AKA
Red, Boomer, Duke. Don’t feel insulted if he doesn’t stand up and shake hands.”

“This is what you thought I meant by no contact?” I said, looking cross but inside delighted that they had brought him in.

“The guy’s got a
CCI
sheet so long it begins with ‘ me Ishmael.’” Jacobi grinned. “Theft, aggravated mischief, attempted murder, two weapons charges.”

“Behold,” exclaimed Cappy, producing a dime bag of marijuana, a five-inch hunter’s blade, and a palm-sized Beretta.22-caliber pistol out of a Nordstrom’s shopping bag.

“He know why he’s here?” I asked.

“Nah,” Cappy grunted. “We busted him on the gun charge. Let him cool his jets in the backseat.”

The three of us crowded into the small interrogation room facing Richard Earl Evans. The creep leered up at us with a smug grin, sleeves of tattoos covering both arms. He wore a black T-shirt with block letters on the back: “If You Can
Read
This… the Bitch Must’ve Fallen Off!”

I nodded, and Cappy freed him from the cuffs. “You know why you’re here, Mr. Evans?”

“I know you guys are in deep shit if you think I’m talking to you.” Evans sniffed a mixture of mucus and blood. “You got no teeth in Vallejo.”

I raised the bag of dope. “Santa seems to have brought you a lot of naughty toys. Two felonies… still on parole for a weapons charge. Time at Folsom, Quentin. My sense is you must like it there, ‘ next time up, you qualify for the thirty-year lease.”

“One thing I do know,” – Evans rolled his eyes – “is you didn’t drag me all this way for some two-bit weapons rap. The sign on the door says Homicide.”

“No, big fella, you’re right,” Cappy injected. “Tossing your sorry ass in jail on a gun charge is only a hobby for us. But depending on how you answer a few questions, that weapons rap could determine where you spend the next thirty years.”

“Pupshit,” the biker grunted, leveling his cold, hard eyes in his face. “That’s all you assholes got on me.

Cappy shrugged, then brought the flat end of an unopened soda can down hard on the biker’s hand.

Evans yelped in pain.

“Damn, I thought you said you were thirsty,” Cappy said contritely.

Red leered at Cappy, no doubt imagining running over the cop’s face with his bike.

“But you’re right, Mr. Evans,” I said. “We didn’t ask you down here to go over your current possessions, though it wouldn’t take much to hand your sorry ass right over to the Vallejo police. But today could work out lucky for you. Cappy, ask Mr. Evans if he’d like another drink.”

Cappy feinted, and Evans jerked his hand off the table.

Then the big cop opened the can and placed it in front of him, grinning widely. “This all right, or would you prefer a glass?”

“See,” I assured him, “we can be nice. Truth is, we don’t give a shit about you. All you have to do is answer a few questions and you’ll be headed home, compliments of the
SFPD
. You never have to see us again. Or we can lock your three-time-loser ass on the tenth floor for a few days until we remember we got you here and notify the Vallejo police. And, when it comes to a third felony offense, we’ll see about just how much teeth we really have.”

Evans ran his hand across the bridge of his nose, dabbing at the blood. “Maybe I will take a swig of that soda, if you’re still offering.”

“Congratulations, son,” Jacobi said. “That’s the first thing you’ve done that makes sense since we set eyes on you.”

I
LAID
OUT
A
BLACK-AND-WHITE
surveillance photo of the Templars in front of Red’s startled face. “First thing we need to know is where can we find your buddies?”

Evans looked up grinning. “So that’s what this is all about?”

“C’mon, sharp-as-nails,” pressed Jacobi,” the lieutenant asked a question.”

One by one, I spread on the table three more photos showing various members.

Evans shook his head. “Never ran with those guys.”

The last photo I put down was a surveillance shot of
him.

Cappy reached out, all two hundred fifty pounds of him, and raised the biker by the shirt, lifting him out of his seat. “Listen, codshit, you’re only lucky we’re not concerned here with what you sorry bunch of losers got off doing. So act smart and you’ll be outta here, and we can go on to what we do give a shit about.”

Evans shrugged. “Maybe I did run a bit with them. But no more. Club’s disbanded. Too much heat. I ain’t seen these guys around here in months. They split. You wanna find them, start with Five South.”

I looked at the two inspectors. As much as I doubted whether Evans would actually turn over on his buddies, I believed him.

“One more question,” I said. “A big one.” I laid down the photo of the biker with the chimera jacket. “What does this mean to you?”

Evans sniffed. “The dude’s got bogus taste in attire?”

Cappy leaned forward.

Evans recoiled. “It’s a symbol, man. Means he’s in the movement. A patriot.”

“A patriot?” I asked him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“An advocate of the white race, the self-determination of a free and orderly society.” He smiled at Cappy “Present company excluded, of course. Course, none of this shit necessarily reflects my personal views.”

“Did this guy head off to the Sun belt, too?” Jacobi asked.

“Him? Why? What do you think he’s done?”

“There he goes” – Cappy stood over him – “answering questions with questions again.”

“Look.” Evans swallowed. “The brother only hung with us a short while. I don’t even know his real name. Mac. Mcmillan, Mcarthur? What’d he do?”

I figured there was no reason not to tell him what we thought. “What’s the word about what happened in La Salle Heights?”

Red finally flinched. His pupils widened. All of a sudden, it was falling into place. “You think my old dudes lit up that church?
This guy… Mac?”

“You know how we could talk to him?” I said.

Evans grinned. “That’s a tough order. Even for you.”

“Try us,” I said. “We’re resourceful.”

“I’m sure you are, but this fucker’s dead. Back in June. He and a partner blew themselves up, in Oregon. Sonofabitch must’ve read somewhere you could turn cowshit into a bomb.”