2nd Chance (12 page)

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, ‘ 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.” “All right.” He paused. “He was a good cop then. A damned good cop. A lot of us looked up to him.”

“Before he bagged out.”

Mercer looked at me. “You must know by now, things happen in a cop’s life that don’t always break down so easily into choices the rest of us can understand.”

I shook my head. “I haven’t spoken to him in twenty-two years.”

Mercer nodded. “I can’t speak for him as a father, or as a husband, but is there a chance that as a man, or at least a cop, you’ve judged him without knowing all the facts?”

“He never stuck around long enough to present the facts,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Mercer said. “I’ll tell you some things about Marty Boxer, but another time.”

“Tell me what? When?”

He drew down the privacy barrier and instructed his driver that it was time to head back to the Hall. “When you find Chimera.”

L
ATER
THAT
NIGHT
, as his Town Car slowed in the evening traffic near his home, Chief Mercer spoke up from the backseat. “Why don’t I get out here, Sam.”

His driver, Sam Mendez, glanced back. The mandate from the Hall was no unnecessary risks.

Mercer was firm on the matter. “Sam, there’s more cops on patrol in a five-block radius here than there are back at the Hall.” There was usually a patrol car or two cruising on Ocean and one stationed across from his home.

The car eased to a stop. Mercer opened the door and thrust his heavy shape onto the street. “Pick me up tomorrow, Sam. Have a good night.”

As his car pulled away, Mercer lugged his thick briefcase in one hand and threw his tan raincoat over his shoulder with the other. He experienced a surge of freedom and relief. These little after-work excursions were the only times he felt free.

He stopped at Kim’s Market and picked out the sweetest-looking basket of strawberries, and some choice plums, too. Then he wandered across the street to the Ingleside Wine Shop. He decided on a Beaujolais that would go with the lamb stew Eunice was making.

On the street, he glanced at his watch and headed toward home. On Cerritos, two stone pillars separated Ocean from the secure enclave of Ingleside Heights. The traffic disappeared behind him.

He passed the low stone house belonging to the Taylors. A noise rustled out from a hedge. “Well, well, Chief… ?”

Mercer stopped. His heart was already pounding.

“Don’t be shy. I haven’t seen you in years,” the voice said again. “You probably don’t remember.”

What the hell was going on?

A tall, muscular man stepped out from behind the hedge. He was wearing a cocky smirk, a green windbreaker wrapped around him.

A vague recognition came over Mercer, a familiarity in the face he couldn’t quite place. Then all at once it came back to him. Suddenly, everything made sense, and it took his breath away.

“This is such an honor,” the man said. “For
you
.”

He had a gun, heavy and silver. It was extended toward Mercer’s chest. Mercer knew he had to do something. Ram him. Get to his own gun somehow. He needed to act like a cop on the street again.

“I wanted you to see my face. I wanted you to know why you were dying.”

“Don’t do this. There are cops everywhere around here.”

“Good. That makes it even better for me. Don’t be scared, Chief. Where you’re going, you’ll be running into a lot of your old friends.”

The first shot struck him in the chest, a burning, clothes-searing thud that buckled his knees. Mercer’s first thought was to shout. Was it Parks or Vasquez stationed in front of his house? Only precious yards away. But his voice died inaudibly in his chest.
Jesus God, please save me
.

The second shot tore through his throat. He didn’t know if he was up or down. He wanted to charge the killer. He wanted to take this bastard down. But his legs felt – paralyzed, inert.

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.

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 shot Chief Mercer.”

W
E
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.”

“Claire, I’ve got to get in there to see him.”

She shook her head. “He’s barely alive, Lindsay. Besides, he’s under anesthesia.”

I had this mounting sense that I owed it to Mercer, each unresolved death. That he knew, and if he died the truth would die with him. “I’m going in there.”

I pushed through the doors leading to the ER, but Claire held on to me. As I looked into her eyes, the last glimmer of hopefulness drained out of my body. I had always fought with Mercer, battled him. He was someone to whom I felt I always had something to prove, and prove again and again. But in the end, he had believed in me. In the strangest of ways, I felt as if I were losing a father all over again.

Barely a minute later, a doctor in a green smock came out, peeling off latex gloves. He said a few words to one of the mayor’s men, then to the assistant chief, Anthony Tracchio.

“The chief’s dead,” Tracchio uttered.

Everyone stood staring blankly ahead. Claire put an arm around me and hugged.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said, holding tightly on to her shoulder.

“Yes, you can,” she said.

I caught Mercer’s doctor as he headed back to the ER. I introduced myself. “Did he say anything when he was brought in?”

The doctor shrugged. “He held on for a while, but whatever he said was incoherent. Just reflexive. He was on life support from the moment he came in.”

“His brain was still working, wasn’t it, Doctor?” He had faced his killer head-on. Taken three shots. I could see Mercer holding on just long enough to say something. “Anything you remember?”

His tired eyes searched for something. “I’m sorry, Inspector. We were trying to save his life. You might try the
EMS
techs who brought him in.

He went back inside. Through the windows in the ER doors, I caught a glimpse of Eunice Mercer and one of their teenage daughters, tearfully hugging in the corridor.

My insides felt as if they were ripping apart, a knot of nausea building.

I ran into the ladies’ room. I bent over the sink and splashed cold water all over my face. “Goddamn it! Goddamnit!”

When my body calmed, I looked up in the mirror. My eyes were dark, hollow and blank; voices drummed loudly in my head.

Four murders,
they tolled…
Four black cops
.

L
ORRAINE
STAFFORD
walked me down from the stone gate on Cerritos. “The chief was on his way home.” She bit her bottom lip. “He lived a couple of houses down that way. No witnesses, but his driver’s over there.”

I went to the spot where Mercer’s body had been found. Charlie Clapper’s team was already combing all around it. It was a quiet, residential street, the sidewalk guarded by a high hedge that would’ve blocked anyone from seeing the killer.

The spot had already been chalked off. Blotches of blood soaked the pavement inside the outline of the body. The remains of his last moments, some plastic bags containing magazines, fruit, and a bottle of wine, were scattered around.

“Didn’t he have a car stationed in front of his house?” I asked.

Lorraine nodded toward a young uniformed officer leaning against the hood of a blue-and-white. “By the time he got down here, the perp had fled and the chief was bleeding out.”

It became clear the killer had been lying in wait: He must’ve hidden in the bushes until Mercer came by. He must’ve known. Just like he knew with Davidson.

From up on Ocean, I saw Jacobi and Cappy coming toward us. The sight of them made me exhale with relief.

“Thanks for coming down,” I whispered.

Then Jacobi did something totally uncharacteristic. He grasped my shoulder and looked firmly into my eyes. “This is gonna get big, Lindsay; Feds are gonna come in. Anything we can do, anything you need, anytime you need to talk about it. You know I’m here for you.”