2nd Chance (11 page)

I
N
THE
SMALL
BLACKTOP
PARKING
LOT
adjacent to the La Salle Heights Church, Cindy Thomas climbed out of her Mazda. Her stomach growled, telling her that it didn’t quite know what she was doing here.

She took a breath and opened the large oak door into the main chapel. Just yesterday it had been filled with the choir’s resonating sound. Now it was eerily quiet, the pews empty. She walked through the chapel and into a connecting building.

A carpeted hallway led to a row of offices. A black woman, glancing up from a copy machine, asked, “Can I help you? What do you want?”

“I’m here to see Reverend Winslow.”

“He’s not seeing visitors now” the woman said.

Winslow’s voice rang out from one of the offices. “It’s all right” Carol.”

Cindy was led to his office. It was small, crowded with books. He was wearing a black T-shirt and khakis, and didn’t look like any minister she’d ever known.

“So, we managed to get you back after all,” he said. Then finally, he smiled.

He had her take a seat on a small couch and he sat in a well-worn red leather chair. A pair of glasses was resting on a book nearby, and she instinctively sneaked a peek.
A Heart-breaking Work of Staggering Genius.
Not what she would have expected.

“You mending?” she asked.

“Trying to. I read your story today It was terrible about that policeman. It’s true? Tasha’s murder might be tied up with two others?”

“The police think so,” Cindy answered. “The M.E. believes she was deliberately shot.”

Winslow grimaced and then shook his head. “I don’t understand. Tasha was just a little girl. What possible connection could there be?”

“It wasn’t so much Tasha” – Cindy held eye contact with Aaron Winslow – “as what she represented. All the victims apparently have a link to San Francisco cops.

Winslow’s eyes narrowed. “So tell me, what brings you back so soon? Your soul aching? Why are you here?”

Cindy lowered her eyes. “The service yesterday It was moving. I felt chills. It’s been a long time for me. Actually, I think my soul has been aching. I just haven’t bothered to notice.”

Winslow’s look softened. She’d told him a small truth, and it had touched him. “Well, good. I’m glad to hear you were moved.”

Cindy smiled. Incredibly, he made her feel at ease. He seemed centered, genuine, and she’d heard nothing but good things about him. She wanted to do a story on him, and she knew it would be a good one, maybe a great story.

“I bet I know what you’re thinking,” Aaron Winslow said.

“Okay.” she said, “shoot.”

“You’re wondering… the man seems together enough, not completely weirded out. He doesn’t seem like a minister. So what is he doing making his living working like this?”

Cindy flashed an embarrassed smile. “I admit, something like that did cross my mind. I’d like to do a story about you and the Bay View neighborhood.”

He seemed to be thinking it over. But then he changed the subject on her.

“What is it you like to do, Cindy?”

“Do… ?”

“In the big, bad world of San Francisco you cover out there. After you call in your story. What moves you besides your job at the
Chronicle?
What are your passions?”

She found herself smiling. “Hey, I ask the questions. I want to do a story on you. Not the other way around,” she said. “All right. I like yoga. I take a class twice a week on Chestnut Street. You ever do yoga?”

“No, but I meditate every day.”

Cindy smiled some more. She wasn’t even sure why. “I’m in a women’s book club. Two women’s clubs, actually. I like jazz.”

Winslow’s eyes lit. “What kind of jazz? I like jazz myself.”

Cindy laughed. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. What kind of jazz do you like?”

“Progressive. Interpretive. Anything from Pine-top Perkins to Coltrane.”

“You know the Blue Door? On Geary?” she asked.

“Of course I know the Blue Door. I go there Saturday nights, whenever Carlos Reyes is in town. Maybe we could go sometime. As part of your story. You don’t have to answer right now.”

“Then you agree to let me do a piece on you?” Cindy said.

“I agree… to let you do a piece on the neighborhood. I’ll help you with it.”

A half hour later, in her car, Cindy sat letting the engine run, almost too astonished to put it in gear.
I don’t believe what I just did…
Lindsay would rap her in the head. Question whether her gadgets were properly working.

But they were
working
. They were
humming
a little, actually. The tiny hairs on her arms were standing straight up.

She had the beginnings of what she thought might be a good story, maybe a prizewinner.

She’d also just accepted a date from Tasha Catchings’s pastor, and she couldn’t wait to see him again.

Maybe my soul has been aching,
Cindy thought as she finally drove away from the church.

I
T
WAS
CLOSE
TO
SEVEN
on Saturday. The end of a long, insane, incredibly stressful week. Three people had died. My only good leads had come and gone.

I needed to talk to somebody, so I went up to eight, where the D. A.’s staff was located. Two doors down from the big man himself was Jill’s corner office.

The executive corner was dark, offices empty, staff scattered for the weekend. In a way, though I needed to vent, I was sort of hoping Jill – the new Jill – would be at home, maybe picking through swatch books for her baby’s room.

But as I approached, I heard the sound of classical music coming from within. Jill’s door was cracked half open.

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 McGoey’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.”

O
N
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.

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 sweatshirt, 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.