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The man with the gun was standing over him now. The bastard was still talking to him, but he couldn’t hear a word. His face kept melting in and out of focus. A name flashed in his mind. It seemed impossible. He said it twice just to be sure, his breath pounding in his ears.
“That’s right,” the killer said, leveling the silvery gun. “You’ve solved the case. You figured out Chimera. Congratulations.”
Mercer thought he should close his eyes—when the next bright orange flash exploded in his face.
Chapter 44
I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER what I was doing when I heard the news. I was home, tending a pot of farfalle on the stove. “Adia” by Sarah McLachlan was playing on the stereo.
Claire was coming over. I’d lured her for dinner with my famous pasta with asparagus and lemon sauce. Not lured her, actually… begged. I wanted to talk about something other than the case. Her kids, yoga, the California Senate race, why the Warriors sucked. Anything…
I will never forget…. Martha sat toying with a headless San Francisco Giants mascot bear that she had appropriated to her side of the property list. I was chopping basil; I checked on the pasta. Tasha Catchings and Art Davidson had drifted out of my mind. Thank God.
The phone rang. A selfish thought knifed through me, hoping that it wasn’t Claire bagging out of our date at the last minute.
I cradled the phone in the nape of my neck and answered, “Yo…”
It was Sam Ryan, the department’s chief of detectives. Ryan was my administrative superior in the chain of command. At the sound of his voice
, I knew something had to be seriously wrong.
“Lindsay, something terrible has happened.”
My body went numb. It was like someone had reached inside my chest and squeezed my heart in their indifferent fist. I listened to Ryan speak. Three shots from point-blank range… Only a few yards from his house. Oh, my God… Mercer…
“Where is he, Sam?”
“Moffitt. Emergency surgery. He’s fighting.”
“I’ll be right down. I’m on my way.”
“Lindsay, there’s nothing you can do here. Get out to the scene.”
“Chin and Lorraine will cover it. I’ll be right down.”
The doorbell buzzed. As if in a trance, I rushed over, opened it.
“Hey,” said Claire.
I didn’t say a word. In an instant, she recognized the pallor on my face. “What’s happened?”
My eyes were wet. “Claire… he’s shot Chief Mercer.”
Chapter 45
WE RACED DOWN THE STEPS, climbed into Claire’s Pathfinder, and made the dash from Potrero to the California Medical Center all the way over in Parnassus Heights. The entire ride, my heart pumped madly and hopefully. The streets blurred by—Twenty-fourth, Guerrero, then across the Castro on Seventeenth to the hospital atop Mt. Sutro.
Barely ten minutes after I got the call, Claire spun the Pathfinder into a restricted parking space across from the hospital entrance.
Claire ID’d herself to a nurse at the front desk, asking for an up-to-date report. She looked worried as she charged inside the swinging doors. I ran up to Sam Ryan. “What’s the word?”
He shook his head. “He’s on the table now. If anyone can take three bullets and make it through, it’s him.”
I flipped open my cell phone and patched into Lorraine Stafford at the scene. “Things are crazy here,” she said. “There’s people from Internal Affairs, and some goddamn city crisis agency. And the fucking press. I haven’t been able to get close to the radio cop who was first on the scene.”
“Don’t let anyone other than you or Chin get close to that scene,” I told her. “I’ll be out there as soon as I can.”
Claire came back out of the ER. Her face was drawn. “They’ve got him open now, Lindsay. It doesn’t look good. His cerebral cortex was penetrated. He’s lost a ton of blood. It’s a miracle he’s hung on as long as he has.”
