Everyone Pays (23 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

In the dark courtyard, I landed on both feet and felt a sudden pain in my shins, bent my knees on the impact, and rolled over one shoulder, knowing that my flats wouldn’t help any with my landing. I came up onto one knee and one foot with my gun in both hands, checking for movement, any sight of him.

Both knees and ankles felt fine. I was still young enough to pull off a stunt like this and run away.

Slowly, I turned from my left to my right, scanning the schoolyard for anything that moved. I saw nothing, started gathering myself to get up. I turned from the fence to run and try to catch him but saw nothing. Maybe Hendricks or the others had seen something. I started to radio them, when the priest jumped at me from out of the vines.

He tackled me, grabbing my forearms, holding the gun away from us both, aiming it into the night. We rolled forward and down to my right, falling to the asphalt, and I came down onto my side with his body on top of me. I tried to free my arms to throw an elbow, but he was heavy. He jerked my arms over my head and rolled me onto my chest, then he landed on top of me, smothered me with his weight. I was sprawled out, flattened underneath.

“Don’t move,” he said, “and I promise not to hurt you.”

I struggled, tried to move my arms and legs, working to control the gun, point it at him, or get any parts of myself free. Nothing worked; he had me pinned.

I wanted to scream. “They’re coming,” I said through my teeth. “They’ll be right here.”

“For now it is just us. So listen to me.”

“I can’t help you. You should know that by now. You’re better off running.”

My breath raced, not only from his weight but from a sudden claustrophobia, a sense of being trapped that I’d only known one other time, when I’d tried spelunking as a child with my father, crawling through narrow caves half filled with water. I had screamed my head off until my father pulled me out. Now I couldn’t even scream, couldn’t gather enough air into my lungs to make a sound above a whisper, a low whine.

His face brushed my hair, his voice coming from way too close to my ear. “Take me to Emily,” he said. “I must bring her home.”

“No.” I closed my eyes, rested my left cheek against the cold, rough ground, and tried to calm myself, regain my breathing. The last thing I could do was hyperventilate. I said, “Let me go.”

“She needs me. You know this. I will help her pass through His gates into heaven. Guide her. The both of us. We are ready to go home.”

“I know it.”

I heard sirens coming, patrol cars and an ambulance. It would all be over soon. I let go of the gun, flattened both hands against the ground.

“Donner!” Hendricks’s voice came through the fence. He rattled it, shaking the ivy and the vines. I hoped he was starting to climb. It sounded that way.

The priest moved his head, making room for me to push up, even just a little. I drew a big breath in through my nose, calmed my heart. It was only a second, two, but it made a difference. I brought myself back to my body, back from the brink of panic.

Lowering my cheek to the ground again, I made room for a move. “Father,” I whispered.

“Yes, my child.”

That was when he turned his attention back to me. I said, “I sin,” right when I jerked my head up as hard as I could, knocking the hard part of my temple into his face.

I caught him flush on the nose, and he called out.

Suddenly I could push him off, his weight shifting from the pain and shock. I rolled, rolled him onto my side so he was next to me, then I bucked my legs to create space.

I tried to crawl away, but his strength returned fast. He regained control, caught my wrists, and held me there. Then he pushed me onto my back. We rolled, and this time I came up facing him from below. He held my wrists, crawled up until he sat on my chest, straddling my hips with his legs; I was pinned but had the breath and strength to fight. I tried raising a knee but couldn’t connect. I tried another head butt; he was too far away.

“Why fight?” he asked. “Don’t you see this is His way? Relax, my child. Let go.” He leaned down close to me, close enough for me to see wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. I could smell his breath.

“I’m not your child.”

“They were all sinners. Piper, Farrow, the others. Don’t you know what I did was right?”

I gave up fighting with my arms and legs and stared into his face. The face of a murderer. This was the man who’d done things I might have wanted to do, hurt the men I dreamed about hurting. I saw only pain and fear in his eyes.

Nothing there rang familiar to me. His world was one of notions and thoughts unlike my own. Something in me would never let myself do these things—the actions he carried out. The two of us were nothing alike in the end. Seeing him like this, I had no doubt.

But there was something else too, something enviable in his expression, his eyes: I saw a calm there; he was at peace—whether granted by his religion or guidance from above or through his own acts. He believed. In his acts, in Him, in what he’d done. Emily or not, whether he saved her or didn’t, he believed in heaven, believed he was going there, and that meant more to him than anything he could get on earth.

In that, he was saved in a way I would never be.

He had all he wanted, even if his work wasn’t done.

“She’ll figure it out,” I said. “Emily. I’ll help her get through.”

“His salvation is what she needs. And to go home.”

Up above and behind the priest, I saw Hendricks crest the fence and turn toward us with his gun in his hands. It was a tough shot, one he couldn’t take without risk of hitting me. “Take your hands off her!” he called.

The priest didn’t move. “I saved her. Cleansed her sins.”

“Take your hands off her, or I’ll shoot!”

Hendricks didn’t wait. His eyes met mine, and I nodded.

“I’ll take care of her,” I said.

Hendricks took aim on the preacher from above.

I said, “I promise.”

And then he fired.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

The sound rang out in the night, and I felt an immense pain roll through me, there on the asphalt courts behind Mission Dolores Church. I sighed, felt a new warmth spreading across my right side. In truth, it wasn’t all that bad. I welcomed it.

The priest’s face registered surprise at first. Then confusion. And then
he knew
.

He knew as well as I did that he had just been shot by my partner.

And so had I.

“Hendricks!” I called out, even as the pain in my side doubled. I coughed. “Get him off me.”

“Donner!” Behind the priest, Hendricks came all the way up over the fence and started down, hand over hand and foot over foot in the vines—his movements impossibly slow.

“Saved her,” Father Michael whispered right above me, his face close enough to kiss. Metallic-smelling blood darkened his lips.

He said, “She has His absolution. Tell her she is saved.”

I would tell her, but it wouldn’t help any, not in the real world.

Emily’s life wouldn’t be easy, with or without “salvation” and “absolution.” She had a lot of digging to do to crawl back to the surface. It wouldn’t be easy, even if she committed to it. But she had more life ahead of her, its joys and its falls. I would do my best to ensure that.

“I’ll take care of her.” I tried pushing him off me, but he had gotten heavier, his body going slack, his left side growing wet.

I wanted him to stay with us, to have plenty of time in a concrete cell to find his own absolution or the opposite.

He said, “Listen for Him. He will guide you.”

I knew who he meant, knew too, what world I walked in, the feel of the hard ground below me. I pushed him off, said, “I’ll take care of her, but she isn’t getting saved. None of us get saved in this life. Not a one.”

The priest had his way, and I had mine. He groaned as he hit the hard ground by my side.

“I’m coming, partner,” Hendricks said from above. He wasn’t far away.

I felt my blood pumping, knew I’d get patched up and live. We’d invent a story to fit this all together in a way Lieutenant Bowen could swallow, get the brass to believe we did right.

They had to.

We had gotten our man.

Then Hendricks hit the ground, and I saw his face above me. I laughed. Cold air rushed into my side, and I breathed it in too. Down through my throat and nose, the air rushed in and woke me like new.

“Put the cuffs on him, Danny. We want this priest to live to see a cell.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

I rode to the hospital in a separate ambulance with Hendricks beside me, holding my hand. My partner, the man who shot me, and my friend—all rolled into one. “You’re going to make it,” he said.

I told him I knew it, reminded him that I’d just walked across the school yard and helped direct ambulances inside to the real target of his shot. I’d have sat up on the stretcher, but the EMTs insisted on strapping me down. One of them worked my side, doing what his profession advised him to do in these situations.

They said the bullet ricocheted off something inside the priest—his spine or another bone set—and from there it had passed through one or a couple of my ribs.

“You did the right thing, Danny.”

He squeezed my hand. “It’ll be okay, C.”

“Get someone with Emily. Don’t leave her all night in the box.”

“Roger that,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Call Ibaka if you have to. She can help.”

“Okay.”

“And no homeless shelters or drug rehabs. We need to keep her where we can. I want to help.”

“Roger, partner.” He stroked my forehead, sweeping the hair out of my eyes. “I’m on it. You get some rest now.” He squeezed my hand. “Trust me.”

The EMT said, “This will pinch for a second.”

I felt a bump under the wheels, and then the ride went smooth. My arm got warm and fuzzy, sounds started to blur. Then I couldn’t hear anymore. I just saw the solid white lights of the ambulance above me and the paramedic moving.

Hendricks would take care of Emily for the time being, but so would I. She was safe.

We could tell Bowen a story about Meaders acting on his own, running to the church to seek Father Michael himself. We’d get it cleared up.

We got our man, and that was what mattered.

He was in custody. We were coming home.

EPILOGUE, SATURDAY

Ibaka picked me up at the hospital the following day. Just after lunch. The doctors wanted me to taste one final sample of their cardboard-laced food before sending me back out into the world. This was their strategy for keeping cops safe, ensuring we wouldn’t be back.

Ultimately, my medical needs and their work on me were minimal: just closing up the wound, making sure no metal was left inside, and wrapping my broken rib.

Hendricks had called that morning to tell me he had a briefing with Bowen at noon. The plan was to tell him that Meaders went rogue, tried to play vigilante, that we were never sure after interviewing him whether he might be a potential accomplice or a victim. He’d say we tracked him from his home to the chapel, with Coggins and Bennett assisting, and then rushed to pursue and contain the suspect once we saw Meaders slip inside the church with him.

We hoped Bowen would roll with this, figured the least we could do was get our stories straight and make sure Coggins and Bennett did the same. If it all fell apart, I told Hendricks to assure Bowen that he had
not
fired a shot on church property but rather the school’s.

“Like that’s any better,” he had said.

And he was right. First, it wasn’t better, and second—as he reminded me—the school was parochial and actually part of the church’s property after all.

So we had neither of those things going for us and would rely strictly on the plausibility of our story and whether Bowen thought we’d done a good job on the case. It wasn’t the most exemplary work SFPD homicide had ever done, but it was effective. We had gotten our man, and what else did they really want? As our fine government might point out, civilian casualties were minimal.

I wouldn’t lose sleep over it, not that the painkillers would be leaving any doubt about that in the next weeks.

Ibaka and I rode down in the elevator together at UCSF, a straight shot from the fifth floor to the ground—none of the public-hospital elevator shenanigans like at SF General here at privately owned UCSF.

“You’re going to have to rest up for a couple weeks,” Ibaka said.

“I heard that when they told me upstairs.”

“Yeah, well. Bears repeating so I know you understand.”

The doors opened into a bright hallway full of people, and I braced myself for the pain of walking on my own. When I took three steps and had to rest against the wall, Ibaka held my arm.

“You see what I’m saying, right?”

I nodded. “Loud and clear.”

“What about that guy?” she asked. “Maybe he can come make you chicken soup.”

I laughed, but that hurt, sent me into a chain of coughs, and she apologized.

“Where’s Hendricks?” I asked.

“Still meeting with Bowen and the others. Talking it all through in the debriefing. He said it’ll all work out, told me to tell you you’ll still have a job.”

Now she laughed, didn’t stop for coughing either.

“Enough,” I said.

“Guess you two tied things up, didn’t you? Maybe went a little rogue?”

I shrugged. If the rest of the department was an indication, this wasn’t unusual.

I started to walk again, hoping the car would stop her from discussing the realities of my life. I was ready for some time in the ether of painkillers. Taking a long weekend or longer to rest and recuperate wasn’t going to be a problem. Nothing would get me out of bed, not even exercise, for at least . . . two weeks. I decided it then and there, based on the simple formula of taking the doctor’s prognosis for my recovery, four weeks, and cutting it in half.

Simply mind over matter.

Then I’d be out on the courts again, just shooting by myself, if nothing else.

Ibaka stared at me hard, making me realize she had been talking the whole time. She knew I wasn’t listening.

“You thinking about exercise, basketball, or that guy?” She wouldn’t break eye contact, held me in place until I answered.

“What guy?”

“Basketball then,” she said. “Know that’s going to affect your shooting arm, no matter what it did to your insides.” She pointed at my chest. “You’re not gonna move on that side as easy for a long time.”

“I can run.”

“Sure you will. Stay in shape, girl. Keep those young boobs perky.”

She reached for my right one, and I pulled back. Some nurses walking the other way saw us and laughed.

Ibaka said, “Don’t want her to lose them.”

When they had passed, I said, “They’re going to be just fine. And I will too.” I saw the gift shop coming up in front of us, beyond that the family waiting room and the sliding doors out to the oval driveway.

I asked, “Where’s a good spot to get coffee around here?” Ibaka was getting my ire up, likely by design. She had me feeling a little better already.

“We’ll get to that. First some real food and getting you home to bed. I’ve got strict orders from HQ.”

“What happened to Emily? Where’d she stay last night?”

“All under control. Hendricks got her into a drug rehab that will monitor her progress. She’ll keep. We both know it’s important to you.”

“Thanks.”

We walked out through the lobby, past the waiting room and a couple of beat cops who nodded at us, recognizing us for their sisters, even if only by the way we walked, met their eyes.

I was a homicide cop just like my father, recognizable by sight. I had stopped a spree killer with five murders behind him. Sure, I’d had help, but also made a few good moves of my own along the way. If I didn’t have my partner’s respect already, I was well on my way to getting it.

Ibaka reached into my coat pocket. “Where’s that celly?”

I took it out and gave it up, but not before seeing the most recent texts from Hendricks, that all was good at the Hall. Bowen was buying in.

Hell of a job, Donner,
the last text read. I wanted to text back my thanks—for that, for everything—but Ibaka pulled away the phone.

“Let me see that wrist ID.” She pulled my arm out and snapped a photo of the ID with my phone. “Now where is he?” She started thumbing through my messages, looking for Alan’s last text.

“Oh no,” I said, pulling the phone back. “I’ll handle it. Don’t worry.”

“Do it this weekend, all right? Hendricks and I don’t want to be the only ones taking care of you.” She winked.

I laughed, though it still hurt. “I got it. He’ll hear from me. I think I just had a whole lot of dinner dates wiped clear in my schedule.”

“Good.” Then she put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. “I want you to be okay, Clara. You hear me? A lot of us do. You’re our girl.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” It meant something to hear this, felt good to know I wasn’t alone. Maybe Alan would join the picture, maybe not. But yes, maybe he would.

Even without him, I had more than just a job. I had friends. Ibaka kept her arm around my shoulder as she led me out toward her car.

“He better be good at ordering takeout too,” she said, “because you ain’t going nowhere for a while.”

“I hear you. Rest and television. That’s the doctor’s orders.”

“Not only television,” she said. “Text him. Go ahead.” She stopped walking and tapped the phone in my hand.

“I will.”
I pulled her forward. “Let’s get out of here and get some real food.”

As we walked, I composed a quick text to Alan in my head: something like,
Just had some date nights open up. Still interested?

I smiled, feeling some rare late-January sun on my face. Ibaka supported me, led the way with her arm.

I felt good about the case, my job, and the work I’d done: no regrets or fears. Everything had worked out all right.

And some things were even good in my world.

Though they’d clipped the locks and gotten the ambulance in through the school gates as fast as possible, loaded the priest onto a gurney, and given him medical treatment, by the time he reached the hospital, he was gone.

I would never know if he chose that route, got help from God, or if it was all just Hendricks’s bullet doing the things that bullets do inside a human being. Maybe God let Father Michael leave this existence and ascend to heaven—or whatever happened when you died—or maybe the priest just gave up living, knowing that his work, as he considered it, was done.

Done or as close as he’d get to it before I stopped him.

Hendricks’s bullet had hit a major artery, severed one of the main pathways to the heart. That was the scientific explanation for his death, the reason that made sense to the medical world.

But I would never know the extent of God’s role. Maybe He had let the priest off the hook in the end, called him home, back up to heaven.

Maybe some part of me believed then. Believed in Him or had started to by then, if even just a little.