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.”
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 41
ON 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.
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 42
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.
I was returning some case files to Jill when the elevator door opened and Chief Mercer ambled in. He looked surprised when he saw me but not displeased.
“Come take a ride with me,” he said.
Mercer's car was waiting along the side entrance on Eighth Street. As the police driver leaned back, Mercer told him, “West Portal, Sam.”
West Portal was a diverse middle-class neighborhood out of the center of the city. I didn't know why Mercer would be dragging me out there in the middle of the day.
As we rode, Mercer asked a few questions but stayed mostly silent. A tremor shot through me: He's gonna take me off the case.
The driver pulled onto a residential street I had never been on before. He parked in front of a small blue Victorian across from a high school playground. A pickup basketball game was going on.
I blinked first. “What was it you wanted to talk about, Chief?”
Mercer turned to me. “You have any personal heroes, Lindsay?”
“You mean like Amelia Earhart or Margaret Thatcher?” I shook my head. I had never grown up with those. “Maybe Claire Washburn.” I grinned.
Mercer nodded. “Arthur Ashe was always one of mine. Someone asked him if it was hard to cope with AIDS, and he answered, ' nearly as hard as it was to deal with growing up black in the United States.'”
His expression deepened. “Vernon Jones tells the mayor that I've lost sight of what's really at stake in this case.” He pointed toward the blue Victorian across the street. "You see that house? My parents' house. I was raised there.
“My father was a mechanic in the transit yards, and my mother did the books for an electrical contractor. They worked their whole lives to send me and my sister to school. She's a trial litigator now, in Atlanta. But this is where we're from.”
“My father worked for the city, too.” I nodded.
“I know. I never told you, Lindsay, but I knew your father.”
“You knew him?”
“Yeah, we started out together. Radio cops, out of Central. Even shifted together a few times. Marty Boxer... Your father was a bit of a legend, Lindsay, and not necessarily for exemplary duty.”
“Tell me something I don't know.” “All right.” He paused. “He was a good cop then. A damned good cop. A lot of us looked up to him.”
“Before he bagged out.”
Mercer looked at me. “You must know by now, things happen in a cop's life that don't always break down so easily into choices the rest of us can understand.”
I shook my head. “I haven't spoken to him in twenty-two years.”
Mercer nodded. “I can't speak for him as a father, or as a husband, but is there a chance that as a man, or at least a cop, you've judged him without knowing all the facts?”
“He never stuck around long enough to present the facts,” I said.
“I'm sorry,” Mercer said. “I'll tell you some things about Marty Boxer, but another time.”
“Tell me what? When?”
He drew down the privacy barrier and instructed his driver that it was time to head back to the Hall. “When you find Chimera.”
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 43
LATER THAT NIGHT, as his Town Car slowed in the evening traffic near his home, Chief Mercer spoke up from the backseat. “Why don't I get out here, Sam.”
His driver, Sam Mendez, glanced back. The mandate from the Hall was no unnecessary risks.
Mercer was firm on the matter. “Sam, there's more cops on patrol in a five-block radius here than there are back at the Hall.” There was usually a patrol car or two cruising on Ocean and one stationed across from his home.
The car eased to a stop. Mercer opened the door and thrust his heavy shape onto the street. “Pick me up tomorrow, Sam. Have a good night.”
As his car pulled away, Mercer lugged his thick briefcase in one hand and threw his tan raincoat over his shoulder with the other. He experienced a surge of freedom and relief. These little after-work excursions were the only times he felt free.
He stopped at Kim's Market and picked out the sweetest-looking basket of strawberries, and some choice plums, too. Then he wandered across the street to the Ingleside Wine Shop. He decided on a Beaujolais that would go with the lamb stew Eunice was making.