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I grinned, climbed out of bed a little stiffly. “You guys are the heroes. All I did was dive out of the way to save my butt.”
“Shit.” Cappy shrugged. “We just wanted to say that despite the fact the mayor’s recommending you for the Medal of Honor, we still love you.”
I smiled, tugged at my green hospital gown, and slowly lowered myself into a chair. “You guys got a bead on what happened?”
“Chimera came at you is what happened,” Jacobi said. “He shot, we took him out. End of story.”
I tried to remember the sequence of events. “Who got off the shots?”
“I got four,” Jacobi said. “Tom Perez, from Robbery, was next to me. He got off two.”
I looked at Cappy.
“Two,” he added. “But shots were coming from all around. IAB’s taking statements.”
“Thanks.” I smiled gratefully. Then my expression changed. I looked hard at the two of them. “How do you figure this? The same guy who takes out Tasha Catchings and Davidson from a hundred yards like it’s a layup only grazes me from point-blank range?”
Jacobi looked at me a little confused. “Is there something you’re trying to tell us, Lindsay?”
I sighed. “All along, we were looking for a guy with a tattoo, right? The same man who killed Estelle Chipman. Linchpin of the case.”
They nodded blankly.
“There was none on Coombs. Not a mark.”
Jacobi shot a glance at Cappy, then back at me. “What’re you trying to say? That Coombs isn’t our man? That we tied him in to each of the murders, found those clippings in his room, that he tried to pop you not once but twice. But that it wasn’t him?”
My mind wasn’t working clearly. The events of the day, the medication. It was chickenshit compared to everything that pointed clearly at him. “I guess what I mean is, you ever know Claire Washburn to be wrong?”
“No.” Jacobi shook his head. “But I don’t know you to be wrong too often, either. Jeez, I can’t believe I said that.”
They told me to get a good night’s sleep.
“My gut feeling,” Jacobi said, turning back on his way out the door, “is that when the medication wears off and you have a chance to look at everything in the light of day, you’ll see you made a pretty good bust.”
I smiled at them. “We all did.”
That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my back, my side throbbing, but I was also feeling the blurry warmth of a couple of Percocets. I looked around the dark room, strange, unnatural, and the truth sank in about how lucky I was to be alive.
Jacobi was right; it was a good bust. Coombs was a murderer. All the facts played out. He had been trying to kill me at the end.
I shut my eyes and tried to drift off, but the tiniest voice tolled in my head. One voice, sneaking through all that was certain, all that seemed plausible.
I tried to force myself to sleep, but the voice got louder.
How could he have missed?
Chapter 104
I WAS RELEASED the following morning.
Jill came and got me, pulling her BMW up to the curb outside San Francisco General as they wheeled me out in a chair. The press was there. I waved to all my new pals, but I refused to talk to them. The next stop was home, a hug for Martha, a shower, a change of clothes.
By the time I walked into room 350 at the Hall with a slightly stiff gait Monday morning, it was as if it were business as usual: The entire detail gave me a round of applause.
“Game ball belongs to you, Lieutenant,” Jacobi said, handing me the brush.
