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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.
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 sweatsh
irt, 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, ‘Not 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.”
