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He stared down at me. “The ninth bullet didn’t match up.”
“Didn’t match?” I raised my eyes. It didn’t make sense. The commission had every gun from every cop who was involved, including mine.
Tracchio reached into a desk drawer. He came back with a plastic baggie containing a flattened, slate gray round, about the same color as his eyes. He handed it to me. “Take a look…. Forty caliber.”
A jolt of electricity surged through me. Forty caliber…
“Funny thing is”—his eyes bore in—“it did match up to these.” He produced a second baggie containing four more rounds, nicked, flattened.
“We took these out of the garage and trees outside that house in South San Francisco where you followed Coombs.” Tracchio kept his eyes fixed on me. “That make any sense to you?”
My jaw hung like a dead weight. It didn’t make sense, except… I flashed back to the scene on the steps of the Hall.
Coombs rushing toward me, his arm extended; that frozen moment before I fixed on his face. From behind him, the thing I always remembered, couldn’t put away: a voice, someone shouting my name.
In the melee there was a pop…. Then Coombs lurched.
The bullets didn’t match up. Coombs had been shot with a .40 caliber handgun…. My father’s gun…
I thought of Marty, his promise as he stood in my doorway that last time.
Lindsay, I’m not running anymore…. My father had shot Frank Coombs on those steps. He had been there for me.
“You didn’t answer, Lieutenant. That make any sense to you?” Tracchio asked again.
My heart seemed to be bouncing side to side in my chest. I didn’t know what Tracchio knew, but I was his hero cop. Catching Chimera would erase the “Acting” in front of his title. And like he said, it was a clean shooting.
“No, Chief,” I answered. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Tracchio fixed on me, weighing the file in his hand, then nodded, placing it at the bottom of a heavy pile of other reports.
“You did a good job, Lieutenant. Nobody could have done better.”
Epilogue
I’LL FLY AWAY
FOUR MONTHS LATER…
It was a sparkling, clear Ma
rch afternoon when we all went back to the La Salle Heights Church.
Almost five months after that first bloody attack, every chink in its exterior walls had been sanded and painted over with fresh white paint. The arched opening where the church’s beautiful stained-glass window had shone was draped with a white curtain erected for today’s event.
Inside, VIP’s from the city government sat shoulder to shoulder with proud parishioners and families gathered for the occasion. News cameras rolled from the side aisles, recording the proceedings for the evening news.
The choir, dressed in white gowns, belted out “I’ll Fly Away,” and the chapel seemed to swell and resonate with the triumphant power of the raised voices.
Some people clapped with the music, others tearfully wiped their eyes.
I stood in the back with Claire and Jill and Cindy. My body tingled with awe.
As the choir concluded, Aaron Winslow stepped up to the pulpit, proud and handsome as ever in a black suit and dress shirt. He and Cindy were still together, and we all liked him, really liked them. The crowd quieted down. He looked around the packed house, smiling peacefully, and in a composed voice began. “Only a few months ago, the play of our children was rocked by a madman’s nightmare. I watched as bullets desecrated this neighborhood. This choir that sings for you today was gripped with terror. We all wondered, Why…? How was it possible that only the youngest and the most innocent of us was struck?”
Cries of “Amen” echoed from the rafters. Cindy whispered against my ear, “He’s good, isn’t he? Best of all, he means it.”
“And the answer is…,” Winslow declared to the hushed room, “the only answer can be, so that she could pave the way for the rest of us to follow.” His eyes scanned the room. “We are all linked. Everyone here, the families who have suffered loss, and those who have simply come to remember. Black or white, we are all diminished by hate. Yet somehow, we heal. We carry on. We do carry on.”
