Women's Murder Club [02] 2nd Chance

by James Patterson

  Where was he now? I peered through a gap in the grating. Brain freeze.

  There was Rusty Coombs. He was smiling at me, his father’s smug, hateful grin. I saw the rifle extended through the bell housing.

  In that instant, I saw a sudden flash, felt a recoil of brute force. Then the powerful impact of the shot hurled me backward.

  I landed hard on my back, scurried for cover as Coombs rushed around for a clear shot. My fingers groped for my Glock. Jesus, my gun… wasn’t there.

  Coombs had shot it out of my hand!

  He walked forward until he stood over me. His rifle was pointed at my chest. “You have to admit, I sure can shoot, huh?”

  Every lingering hope was gone. His eyes were green and held such a cold, impassive burn. I hated this bastard so much.

  “Don’t add any more deaths,” I said, my mouth completely dry. “SWAT teams are coming. Kill me, five minutes later, it’ll be you.”

  He shrugged. “At this point, it’s gonna be a bitch to square myself with the coach. People like you”—he stared blankly—“you don’t have the slightest idea what it’s like to lose your father. You bastards took my father.”

  I watched his finger move to the trigger and realized I was going to die. I said a silent prayer and I thought, I don’t want to die.

  Then the deepest, ear-splitting sound interrupted. It had the force of a building crashing down. One resounding gong was followed by another, then another. I had to grab my ears to keep from going deaf.

  It was the bells. They were going off, and it was the loudest noise I’d ever heard—by a lot. The entire tower shook with the thunderous sound.

  Coombs’s face twisted into a contortion of shock and pain. He staggered, reflexively crunching into a ball to protect himself.

  When I saw him coil up, I reached inside my pant leg. I pulled out the Beretta strapped to my ankle.

  Everything happened so quickly, like a film with the action running but the sound a high-pitched distortion.

  Coombs, seeing me, swung his rifle into firing position.

  I fired three times, spurts jerking back my hand. The bells continued to gong… over and over.

  Three crimson bursts spattered across Coombs’s broad chest. The force sent him tumbling backward.

  Then the bells again. Each earsplitting clang felt like a sledgehammer slamming into my skull.

  Coombs came to rest in a sitting position. He gazed down, saw his torn flesh. He blinked with a glazed, mystified look. He raised his rifle toward me. “You die, too, bitch!”

  I squeezed the trigger of the Beretta. The bells gonged as a final blast thudded into his throat. He grunted loudly and his eyeballs rolled back into his head.

  I realized that my hands were cupping my ears again. My head ached. I crawled to Coombs and kicked his rifle away. The bells continued to sound, a melody that was unidentifiable to me, maybe an answer to my prayer.

  My eye fixed on something as I knelt beside Coombs. “There it is,” I whispered.

  A curled, reptilian tail in red and blue, leading into the body of a goat with the fierce and proud heads of a lion and a goat. Chimera… One of my shots had pierced the wicked beast’s torso. It looked dead, too.

  I heard shouts coming from behind, but I continued to kneel over Coombs. I felt I had to answer what he’d said at the end. You don’t have the slightest idea what it’s like… to lose your father….

  “Oh, yes I do,” I told his still eyes.

  Chapter 120

  THIS TIME the newspapers had it right. Chimera was dead. The multiple-homicide case was closed.

  There was no great joy in the final outcome, at least not for me. Homicide didn’t get together and wipe the board clean. There were no toasts with the girls. Too many people had died. I was lucky not to have been among them. So were Claire and Cindy.

  I took a few days off, to give my side and hand some time to heal, and the IA teams a chance to piece together what had happened at the shooting scenes. I hung out with Martha, took some long walks along the Marina Green and Fort Mason Park as the weather turned damp and cold.

  Mostly, I replayed the events of the horrible case. It was the second time I’d had to fight a killer one-on-one. Why was that? What did it mean? What did it say about my life and what it had come to?

  For a moment, I’d had an important piece of my own past given back, a father I never really knew. Then, that gift was taken away. My father had disappeared into the dark hole from which he had crept. I knew I might never see him again.

  In those days, if I could have come up with one meaningful thing I wanted to do with my life, I might have said, Let’s give it a ride. If I could paint, or had some secret urge to open a boutique, or the stick-to-itiveness to write a book… It was so hard to find even the thinnest slice of affirmation.

  But by the end of the week, I just went back to work.

  Late that first day, I got a buzz from Tracchio to come up to his office. As I walked in, the chief stood up and shook my hand. He told me how proud he was, and I almost believed him.

  “Thanks.” I nodded, and even smiled. “That what you wanted to say?”

  Tracchio took off his glasses. He shot me a contrite smile. “No. Sit down, please, Lieutenant.”

  From the edge of his large walnut desk, he picked up a red folder. “Preliminary findings on the Coombs shooting. Coombs Senior.”

  I regarded it tentatively. I didn’t know if some IAB bureaucrat had found something suspicious.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Tracchio assured me. “Everything checks out. A perfectly clean shooting.”

  I nodded. So what was this all about?

  “There is one thing outstanding, though.” The chief stood and leaned against his palms on the front of his desk. “The M.E. lifted nine rounds out of Coombs’s body. Three belonged to Jacobi’s nine millimeter. Two came from Cappy’s. One from your Glock. Two twenties from Tom Perez out of Robbery. That’s eight.”

  He stared down at me. “The ninth bullet didn’t match up.”

  “Didn’t match?” I raised my eyes. It didn’t make sense. The commission had every gun from every cop who was involved, including mine.

  Tracchio reached into a desk drawer. He came back with a plastic baggie containing a flattened, slate gray round, about the same color as his eyes. He handed it to me. “Take a look…. Forty caliber.”

  A jolt of electricity surged through me. Forty caliber…

  “Funny thing is”—his eyes bore in—“it did match up to these.” He produced a second baggie containing four more rounds, nicked, flattened.

  “We took these out of the garage and trees outside that house in South San Francisco where you followed Coombs.” Tracchio kept his eyes fixed on me. “That make any sense to you?”

  My jaw hung like a dead weight. It didn’t make sense, except… I flashed back to the scene on the steps of the Hall.

  Coombs rushing toward me, his arm extended; that frozen moment before I fixed on his face. From behind him, the thing I always remembered, couldn’t put away: a voice, someone shouting my name.

  In the melee there was a pop…. Then Coombs lurched.

  The bullets didn’t match up. Coombs had been shot with a .40 caliber handgun…. My father’s gun…

  I thought of Marty, his promise as he stood in my doorway that last time.

  Lindsay, I’m not running anymore…. My father had shot Frank Coombs on those steps. He had been there for me.

  “You didn’t answer, Lieutenant. That make any sense to you?” Tracchio asked again.

  My heart seemed to be bouncing side to side in my chest. I didn’t know what Tracchio knew, but I was his hero cop. Catching Chimera would erase the “Acting” in front of his title. And like he said, it was a clean shooting.

  “No, Chief,” I answered. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Tracchio fixed on me, weighing the file in his hand, then nodded, placing it at the bottom of a heavy pile of other report
s.

  “You did a good job, Lieutenant. Nobody could have done better.”

  Epilogue

  I’LL FLY AWAY

  FOUR MONTHS LATER…

  It was a sparkling, clear March afternoon when we all went back to the La Salle Heights Church.

  Almost five months after that first bloody attack, every chink in its exterior walls had been sanded and painted over with fresh white paint. The arched opening where the church’s beautiful stained-glass window had shone was draped with a white curtain erected for today’s event.

  Inside, VIP’s from the city government sat shoulder to shoulder with proud parishioners and families gathered for the occasion. News cameras rolled from the side aisles, recording the proceedings for the evening news.

  The choir, dressed in white gowns, belted out “I’ll Fly Away,” and the chapel seemed to swell and resonate with the triumphant power of the raised voices.

  Some people clapped with the music, others tearfully wiped their eyes.

  I stood in the back with Claire and Jill and Cindy. My body tingled with awe.

  As the choir concluded, Aaron Winslow stepped up to the pulpit, proud and handsome as ever in a black suit and dress shirt. He and Cindy were still together, and we all liked him, really liked them. The crowd quieted down. He looked around the packed house, smiling peacefully, and in a composed voice began. “Only a few months ago, the play of our children was rocked by a madman’s nightmare. I watched as bullets desecrated this neighborhood. This choir that sings for you today was gripped with terror. We all wondered, Why…? How was it possible that only the youngest and the most innocent of us was struck?”

  Cries of “Amen” echoed from the rafters. Cindy whispered against my ear, “He’s good, isn’t he? Best of all, he means it.”

  “And the answer is…,” Winslow declared to the hushed room, “the only answer can be, so that she could pave the way for the rest of us to follow.” His eyes scanned the room. “We are all linked. Everyone here, the families who have suffered loss, and those who have simply come to remember. Black or white, we are all diminished by hate. Yet somehow, we heal. We carry on. We do carry on.”

  At that moment, he nodded toward a group of young children dressed in their Sunday best, flanking the large white curtain. A girl in braids, no more than ten, tugged on a cord, and the canvas fell to the floor with a loud whap.

  The church became awash in brilliant light. Heads turned, followed by a collective gasp. Where once shards of fallen glass had left a jagged hole, a stunning stained-glass window shone intact. Cries of acclamation rang out, then everyone began to clap. The choir started up softly in a hymn. It was so damn beautiful.

  As I listened to the moving voices, something stirred inside me. I glanced at Cindy, Claire, and Jill, thinking, reliving just how much had happened since I’d last stood in this place, since Tasha Catchings had been killed.

  Tears welled in my eyes, and I felt Claire’s fingers at my side. She probed for my hand, squeezing me by the fingertips. Then Cindy cradled her arm through mine.

  From behind, I felt Jill bracing my shoulder. “I was wrong,” she whispered in my ear. “What I said when they were wheeling me into the OR. The bastards don’t win. We do. We just have to wait to the end of the game.”

  The four of us stared at the beautiful stained-glass window. A sweet and gentle robed Jesus was motioning to disciples, a yellow nimbus around his head. Four or five followers were trailing behind. One of them, a woman, had turned to wait for someone else, her arm extended….

  She was reaching toward the outstretched hand of a young black girl.

  The girl looked like Tasha Catchings.

  TWO WEEKS LATER, a Friday night, I’d invited the girls over for dinner. Jill said she had big news that she wanted to share.

  I was coming back from the market, grocery bags in hand. In the vestibule of my walk-up, I fumbled for the mail. The usual catalogs and bills. About to move on, I noticed a thin white envelope, the standard air mail variety with red and blue arrows, the kind they sell you at the post office.

  My heart jumped as I recognized the script.

  It was postmarked Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

  I put the grocery bags down, then I sat on the steps and split the envelope open. I lifted out a folded piece of lined paper. Inside, a small Polaroid photo.

  “My beautiful daughter,” the letter began in an edgy scrawl,

  By now, you must know everything. I’ve come a long way down here, but I have stopped running.

  You no doubt have some idea of what happened that day at the Hall. You modern cops have it all over old slugs like me. What I wanted you to know was that I wasn’t afraid to have it come out. I hung around for a few days to see if the story broke. I even called you at the hospital once. That was me… I knew you didn’t want to hear from me, but I wanted to hear that you were all right. And of course—you are just fine.

  These words are not enough to let you know how sorry I am for having disappointed you again. I was wrong about a lot of things: one of them was, you can’t leave everything behind. I knew that the moment I saw you again. Why has it taken me my whole life to let such a simple lesson sink in?

  But I was right about one thing. And it’s more important than anything else. No one is ever so big not to need help every once in a while… even from their father.

  The letter was signed, “Your stupid Dad,” then below it, “who truly loves you…”

  I sat reading the note a second time, holding back a rush of tears. So Marty had finally found a place where nothing would follow him. Where no one would know him. I choked with the sad realization that I might never see him again.

  I flipped the grainy photograph.

  There was Marty… in a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt, posing in front of some dilapidated fishing boat, raised on a scaffold, maybe twelve feet long. There was a little note on the bottom: “New start, new life. I bought this boat. Painted it myself. One day, I’ll catch you a dream…”

  At first, I laughed…. What a jerk, I thought, shaking my head. What the hell did he know about boats? Or fishing? The closest my father ever got to the ocean was when he was assigned to crowd control on Fisherman’s Wharf.

  Then something grabbed my eye.

  In the background of the photo, past the proud countenance of my father, against the masts and hulls of the blue marina and the beautiful sky…

  I squinted hard, trying to make out the lettering on the freshly painted hull of his new boat.

  The single word scrawled there, in plain, white letters, in his own simple hand.

  The name of the boat: Buttercup.

  More

  James Patterson!

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  THE JESTER

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  hardcover available wherever books are sold.

  Prologue

  THE FIND

  WEARING A BROWN TWEED SUIT, and his customary dark, tortoise-shell sunglasses, Dr. Alberto Mazzini pushed through the crowd of loud and agitating reporters blocking the steps of the Musee de Histoire in Blois.

  “Can you tell us about the artifact? Is it real? Is that why you’re here?” a woman pressed, shoving a microphone marked CNN in his face. “Have tests been performed on the DNA?”

  Dr. Mazzini was already annoyed. How had the press jackals been alerted? Nothing had even been confirmed about the find. He waved off the reporters and camera operators. “This way, Dottore,” one of the museum aides instructed. “Please, come inside.”

  A tiny, dark-haired woman in a black pantsuit was waiting for Mazzini inside. She looked to be in her mid-forties and appeared to almost curtsey in the presence of this prestigious guest.

  “Thank you for coming. I am Rene Lacaze, the director of the museum. I tried to control the press, but….” she shrugged. “They smell a big story. It is as if we’ve found an atom bomb.”

  “If the artifact you’ve found turns out to be auth
entic,” Mazzini replied, flatly, “you will have found something far greater than a bomb.”

  As the National Director of the Vatican Museum, Alberto Mazzini had lent the weight of his authority to every important find of religious significance that had been unearthed over the past thirty years. The etched tablets presumed to be from the disciple John dug up in western Syria. The first Vericotte Bible. Both now rested among the Vatican treasures. He had also been involved in the investigation of every hoax, hundreds of them.

  Rene Lacaze led Mazzini along the narrow fifteenth century hall inlaid with heraldic tile.

  “You say the relic was unearthed in a grave?” Mazzini asked.

  “A shopping mall….” Lacaze smiled. “Even in downtown Blois, the construction goes night and day…. The bulldozers dug up what must have once been a crypt. We would have completely missed it, had not a couple of the sarcophagi split open.”

  Ms. Lacaze escorted her important guest into a small elevator and then up to the third floor. “The grave belonged to some long-forgotten Duke who died in 1098. We did acid and photoluminescence tests immediately. Its age looks right. At first we wondered, why would a precious relic from a thousand years earlier, and half the world away, be buried in an eleventh century grave?”

  “And what did you find?” Mazzini asked.

  “It seems our Duke actually went to fight in the Crusades. We know he sought after relics from the time of Christ.” They finally arrived at her office. “I advise you to take a breath. You are about to behold something truly extraordinary.”

  The artifact lay on a plain white sheet across an examiner’s table, as humble as such a precious thing could be.

  Mazzini finally removed his sunglasses. He didn’t have to hold his breath. It was completely taken away. My God, this is an atom bomb!