Chapter 122
WITHIN MINUTES, two blue-and-whites screeched to a stop outside. I directed the patrol officers upstairs to the grisly body of Joanna, but my thoughts had turned to Chris. And whoever he wos/oHowing. I had been up in the apartment for ten, maybe twelve minutes, without a word from him. I was worried. He was following a murderer, and a murderer who had just killed Joanna Wade. I ran downstairs to an open patrol car. `:21' I called in what had happened to Command Central. A riot of doubts was crashing in my mind. Could it somehow have beenjenks after all? Could Jill have been right? Was he manipulating us, right from the start? Had he set everything up, even the sighting in Pacific Heights? But if it was him, why? Why, after I had told him I believed him? Why would he kill her now? Was Joanna's death some404 thing I could have prevented? What in hell was going on? Where was Chris, damn it? My cell phone finally beeped. To my relief it was Chris. "Where are you? You had me scared to death. Don't do that to me." "Down by the marina. The suspect's in a blue Saab." "Chris, be careful. It's not Joanna. Joanna's dead. She was stabbed a bunch of times in her apartment." "Dead?" he repeated. I could feel the frantic question slowly sinking into his mind. "Then who the hell is driving the Saab up ahead of me?" "Tell me where you are exactly." "Chestnut and Scott. The suspect just pulled up to the curb. The suspect is getting out of the car." Somehow, this sounded familiar. Chestnut and Scott? What was down there? In the tumult of blue-and-whites screeching up in front of Joanna's building and reporting in, I raked my mind for a connection. "He's heading away from the car, Lindsay. He's starting to run." Then it hit me. The photo I had picked up at Jenks's house. The beautiful and unmistakable moonlit dome. The Palace of Fine Arts. It was where he had been married. "I think I know where he's going!" I shouted. "The Palace of Fine Arts."
Chapter 123
I TOOK OFF IN THE RADIO CAR with the siren blaring all the way to the Presidio. It took me no more than seven minutes, with traffic wildly shifting out of my way, to speed down Lombard over to Richardson to the south tip of the Presidio. Up ahead, the golden rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts loomed powerfully above a calm, gleaming pond. I saw Chris's blue Taurus pulled up diagonally across from the tip of the park and jackknifed the patrol car to a halt next to it. I didn't see a sign of any other cops. Why hadn't any backup arrived? What the hell was going on now? I clicked my gun off safety and made my way into the park underneath the giant rotunda. No way I was waiting. I was startled by people running toward me, away from the rotunda grounds. "Someone's shooting," one of them screamed. Suddenly, my legs were flying. "Everyone out! I'm San Francisco police!" I screamed as I bumped through the people rushing by. "Maniac with a gun," one of them yelled. I ran around the pond alongside a massive marble colonnade. There was no sound up ahead. No more shots. Leading with my gun, I rounded corners until I was in sight of the main rotunda. Huge Corinthian columns soared above me, capped with ornate heroic carvings. I could hear voices in the distance: a woman's mocking tone: "It's just you and me, Nick. Imagine that. Isn't it romantic?" And a man's voice, Jenks's: "Look at you, you're pathetic. As always." The voices echoed out of the huge dome of the main rotunda. Where was Chris? And where was our backup? Cops should have been here by now. I held my breath, straining to hear the first police siren. Every step I took, I heard my own footsteps echoing to the roof. "What do you want?" I heard Jenks's cry reverberating off the stone. Then the woman shouting back, "I want you to remember them. All the women you fucked." Still no sign of Chris. I was tight with worry. 1 decided to go around the side of a row of low arches that ran down to where the voices were coming from. I ducked around the corner of the colonnade. Then I saw Chris. He was sitting there, propped against a pillar, watching everything unfold. My first reaction was to say something like, Chris, get down, someone will see you. It was one of those slow-motion perceptions where my eyes were faster than my mind. Then I was seized with horrible fright, nausea, and sadness. Chris wasn't watching, and he wasn't hiding. The front of his shirt was covered with blood. All my police training nearly gave way. I wanted to scream, to cry out. It took everything I had to hold it in. Two dark bloodstains were soaking through Chris's shirt. My legs were paralyzed. Somehow I forced myself over to him. I knelt down. My heart was pounding. Chris's eyes were remote, his face as gray as stone. I checked for a pulse and felt the slightest rhythm of a heartbeat. "Oh, Chris, no." I stifled a sob. When I spoke, he looked up, eyes glimmering as he saw my face. His lips parted into a weak smile. His breath wheezed, heavy and labored. My eyes filled with tears. I applied pressure to the holes in his chest, trying to push back the blood. "Oh, Chris, hang in there. Hang in there. I'll get help." He reached for my arm. He tried to speak, but it was only a weak, guttural whisper. "Don't talk. Please." I raced back to the patrol car and fumbled with the transmitter until I heard Dispatch. "Officer down, officer down," I shouted. "Four-oh-six. I repeat, four-oh-six!" The statewide call for alarm. "Officer shot, rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts. Need immediate EMS and SWAT backup. Possible Nicholas Jenks sighting. Second officer on the scene inside. Repeat, four-oh-six, emergency." As soon as the dispatcher repeated the location back to me with a "Copy," I threw down the transmitter and headed back inside. When I got to him, Chris was still holding on to small breaths. A bubble of blood popped on his lip. "I love you, Chris," I whispered, squeezing his hand. Voices rang out ahead in the rotunda. I couldn't make them out, but it was the same man and woman. Then there was a gunshot. "Go," Chris whispered. "I'm holding on." Our hands touched. "I've got rear," he muttered with a smile. Then he pushed me away. I scurried ahead, my gun drawn, glancing back twice. Chris was watching- watching my back. I ran in a low crouch all the way down the length of the row of columns closest in, clear up to the side of the main rotunda. The voices echoed, intensified. My eyes were riveted. They were straight across the basilica. Jenks, in a plain white shirt. He was holding one arm, bleeding. He'd been shot. And across from him, holding a gun and dressed in a man's clothes, Chessy Jenks.