2nd Chance

by James Patterson

  “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! Goddamn it!”

  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.

  Chapter 46

  LORRAINE 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.”

  I turned to Lorraine and Chin. “What do you need to finish up here?”

  “I want to check along the escape route,” Chin said. “If he had a car parked, someone must’ve seen it. Otherwise, maybe someone saw him come out on Ocean.”

  “Fucking chief.” Jacobi sighed. “I always thought the guy would hold a news conference at his own funeral.”

  “We still classifying this as a hate crime, Lieutenant?” Cappy sniffed.

  “I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I hate this bastard pretty bad.”

  Chapter 47

  JACOBI WAS RIGHT about one thing. The next morning, everything had changed. A feeding frenzy of every news organization in the country was massing on the outside steps of the Hall of Justice, setting up their camera crews, clawing for interviews. Anthony Tracchio was named acting chief. He had been the chief’s administrative right hand, but had never come up through the ranks. On the Chimera case, I was now reporting to him. “No leaks,” Tracchio brusquely warned. “No contact with the press. All interviews go through me.”

  A joint task force was set up to handle Mercer’s homicide. It wasn’t until I got upstairs that I found out precisely what “joint” meant.

  When I got back to my office, two tan-suited FBI agents were waiting in the outer room. A polished, preppy black man named Ruddy in an oxford shirt and yellow tie, who seemed to be in charge, and the typical hard-nosed field agent named Hull.

  The first thing out of Ruddy’s mouth was how nice it was to be working with the inspector who had solved the bride and groom case. The second thing was a request for the Chimera files. All of them. Tasha. Davidson. Whatever we had on Mercer.

  Ten seconds after they left, I was on the phone to my new boss. “Guess I know what you meant by ‘joint,’ ” I said.

  “Crimes against public officials are a federal offense, Lieutenant. There’s not much I can do,” said Tracchio.

  “Mercer said this was a city crime, Chief. He said city personnel ought to see it through.”

  Tracchio sent my heart into a tailspin. “I’m sorry. Not anymore.”

  Chapter 48

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, I drove out to Ingle-side Heights to talk with Chief Mercer’s wife. I felt I needed to do it myself. A line of cars was already stretched along the street around the chief’s home. A relative answered the door and told me Mrs. Mercer was upstairs with family.

  I stood around, checking out faces I recognized gathered in the living room. After a few minutes, Eunice Mercer came down the stairs. She was accompanied by a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman who turned out to be her sister. She recognized me and walked my way.

  “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it,” I said, squeezing her hand first, then hugging her.

  “I know,” she whispered. “I know you’ve just gone through this yourself.”

  “I promise you, I know how tough this is. But I need to ask you a few questions,” I finally said to her.

  She nodded, and her sister floated back among the guests. Eunice Mercer took me into a private den.

  I asked her many of the same questions I had put forth to the relatives of other victims. Had anyone recently threatened her husband? Calls to the house? Anyone suspicious lately watching the house?

  She shook her head no. “Earl said this was the only place where he actually felt like he lived in the city, not just ran the police force.”

  I changed tack. “You ever come across the name Art Davidson before this week?”

  Eunice Mercer’s face went blank. “You think Earl was killed by the same man who did these other horrible things?”

  I took her hand. “I think these murders were all committed by the same man.”

  She massaged her brow. “Lindsay, nothing
makes sense to me right now. Earl’s murder. That book.”

  “Book…?” I asked.

  “Yes. Earl always read car magazines. He had this dream, when he retired… this old GTO he kept in a cousin’s garage. He always said he was gonna tear it down and build it up from scratch. But that book he had stuffed in his jacket…”

  “What book?” I was squinting at her hard.

  “A young doctor at the hospital returned it to me, along with his wallet and keys. I never knew he had such an interest in that sort of thing. Those old myths…”

  Suddenly my pulse was racing. “Can you show me what you’re talking about?”

  “Of course,” Eunice Mercer said. “It’s over here.” She left the den and in a minute came back. She handed me a paperback copy of a book every schoolkid reads. Mythology, by Edith Hamilton.

  It was an old dog-eared copy, looked as if it had been leafed through a thousand times. I rifled through the pages and spotted nothing.

  I ran down the table of contents. Then I saw it. Halfway down, page 141. It was underlined. Bellerophon Kills the Chimera.

  Bellerophon… Billy Reffon.

  My heart clenched. It was the name he’d used on the 911 call about Art Davidson. He had called himself Billy Reffon.

  I flipped to page 141. It was there. With an illustration. The lion rearing. The goat’s body. The serpent’s tail.

  Chimera.

  The bastard was telling us he had killed Chief Mercer.

  A surge rippled through me. There was something else on the page. A sharp, edgy script, a few words, scrawled above the illustration in ink:

  More to come… justice will be served.

  Chapter 49

  LEAVING MERCER’S HOME, I drove around in a sweat, terror filled at what I knew to be the truth.

  All my instincts had been right. This was no random, racist murder spree. This was a cold, calculating killer. He was taunting us, the same way he had with the white van. With that cocky tape. Billy Reffon.

  Finally, I said, Fuck it. I called the girls. I couldn’t hold back any longer. They were three of the sharpest law-enforcement minds in the city. And this bastard had told me there were going to be more killings. We set up a meeting at Susie’s.

  “I need your help,” I said, panning their faces in our usual booth at the restaurant.

  “That’s why we’re here,” Claire said. “You call, we come running.”

  “Finally.” Cindy chuckled. “She admits she’s nothing without us.”

  “This Kiss” by Faith Hill was drowning out a basketball game on the TV, but in the corner booth, the four of us were huddled in our own purposeful world. God, it was good to have everybody back together again.

  “Everything’s screwed up with Mercer gone. The FBI’s come in. I don’t even know who’s in control. All I know is that the longer we wait, the more people are going to be killed.”

  “This time there have to be some rules,” Jill said, tugging on a Buckler nonalcoholic beer. “This isn’t a game. That last case, I think I broke every rule I took an oath to uphold. Withholding evidence, using the D.A.’s office for personal use. If anything had gotten out, I’d be doing my cases from the tenth floor.”

  We laughed. The tenth floor of the Hall was where the holding cells were located.

  “Okay,” I agreed. It was the same for me. “Anything we find we take to the task force.”

  “Let’s not go overboard,” said Cindy with a mischievous laugh. “We’re here to help you, not to make the careers of some uptight, bureaucratic men.”

  “The Margarita Posse lives,” joked Jill. “Jesus, I’m glad we’re back.”

  “Don’t you ever doubt it,” said Claire.

  I looked around at the girls. The Women’s Murder Club. Part of me bristled with apprehension. Four people were dead, including the highest-ranking police officer in the city. The killer had proved he could strike anywhere he wanted to.

  “Each murder has become more high profile, and daring,” I said, filling them in on the latest, including the book stuffed in Mercer’s jacket. “He no longer needs the subterfuge of the racial MO. It’s racial, all right. I just don’t know why.”

  Claire took us through the chief’s autopsy, which she had finished up that afternoon. He was hit three times at close range with a .38 gun. “My impression is that the three shots were spaced at measured intervals. I could tell by the pattern that the wounds bled out. The last one was to the head. Mercer was already on the ground. It makes me think they may have confronted each other. That he was trying to kill him slowly. Or that they were even talking. I guess where I’m headed is that it’s likely Mercer knew his killer.”

  “You checked into the possibility that all these officers were somehow connected?” Jill cut in. “Of course you have. You’re Lindsay Boxer.”

  “Of course I have. There’s no record any of them had even met. Their careers don’t seem to have crossed. Tasha Catchings’s uncle is younger than the others by twenty years. We can’t find anything that puts them together.”

  “Somebody hates cops. Well, actually, a lot of people do,” Cindy said.

  “I just can’t find the link. This started out in the guise of a hate crime. The killer wanted us to view the murders in a certain way. He wanted us to find his clues. And he wanted us to find the chimera. His fucked-up symbol.”

  “But if this is a personal vendetta,” Jill said, “it doesn’t make sense that it would lead back to some organized group.”

  “Unless he was setting someone up,” I said.

  “Or unless,” Cindy said, chewing her lip, “the chimera doesn’t lead back to a hate group at all. Maybe this book is his way of telling us it’s something else.”

  I stared at her. We all did. “We’re waiting, Einstein.”

  She blinked remotely, then shook her head. “I was just thinking out loud.”

  Jill said she would dig into any grievance cases against a black officer who had wronged or injured a white. Any act of vengeance that might explain the killer’s mind-set. Cindy would do the same at the Chronicle.

  It had been a long day, and I was exhausted. I had a task force meeting at seven-thirty the next morning. I looked each of my friends in the eye. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “We’re gonna solve this sucker with you,” Jill said. “We’re going to get Chimera.”

  “We’ve got to,” Claire said. “We need you to keep picking up the bar bill.”

  For a few more minutes, we chatted about what we all had going on the next day, when we could get together again. We were starting to cook now. Jill and Claire had their cars parked in the lot. I asked Cindy, who lived in the Castro section, near me, if she needed a ride.

  “Actually,” she said with a smile, “I have a date.”

  “Good for you. Who is your next victim?” Claire exclaimed. “When do we get to check him out?”

  “If you supposedly mature, talented women want to ogle like a bunch of schoolkids, I guess now. He’s picking me up.”

  “I’m always up for a good ogle,” Claire said.

  I snorted out a laugh. “You could be meeting Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe, and it wouldn’t rock my boat tonight.”

  As we pushed through the front door, Cindy tugged my arm. “Hold on to your oars, honey.”

  We all saw him at once. We all ogled, and my boat was rocked.

  Waiting outside, looking altogether sexy and handsome, dressed entirely in black, was Aaron Winslow.

  Chapter 50

  I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. I stood there gawking. I looked at Cindy, then back at Winslow, my surprise slowly giving way to a blushing smile.

  “Lieutenant.” Winslow nodded, cutting through the awkward murk. “When Cindy said she was meeting friends, I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I babbled back.

  “We’re headed to the Blue Door,” Cindy said to the crowd, going through the introductions. “Pinetop Perkins is in town.”
/>   “Terrific.” Claire nodded.

  “Beatific,” snipped Jill.

  “Anybody care to join?” Aaron Winslow asked. “If you haven’t heard it, there’s nothing like Memphis blues.”

  “I’m in the office at six tomorrow,” said Claire. “You two go along.”

  I leaned over to Cindy and whispered, “You know, when we were talking foxholes the other day, I was only joking.”

  “I know you were,” Cindy said, looping her arm around mine. “But I wasn’t.”

  Claire, Jill, and I stood with our jaws open and watched the two of them disappear around the corner. Actually, they looked kind of cute together, and it was only a date to hear some music.

  “Okay,” Jill said, “tell me I wasn’t dreaming.”

  “You weren’t dreaming, girl,” Claire replied. “I just hope that Cindy realizes what she’s getting herself into.”

  “Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “I hope he does.”

  Getting into my car, I entertained myself with the notion of Cindy and Aaron Winslow. It almost pushed out of my head the reason we had gotten together in the first place.

  I turned my Explorer onto Brannan and waved goodbye to Claire, who was heading over to 280. As I made the turn, I caught a glimpse of a white Toyota pulling out down the block behind me.

  My mind was wrapped up with what I had just done, getting the girls involved in this horrible case. I had just countermanded a direct order from the mayor and my commanding officer. This time, there was no one backing me up. No Roth, or Mercer.

  A Mazda with two teenage girls in it pulled up behind me. We had stopped at a light on Seventh. The driver was talking a mile a minute on her cell phone, while her companion obliviously sung along to the stereo.

  As we started up, I kept my eye on them for a block, until they veered onto Ninth. A blue minivan took the Mazda’s place.