“I don't know. But there's starting to be a lot of circumstantial evidence linking both crimes. I have to know.”
She hesitated. “Precisely what the hell would I be looking for?” I told her about the skin specimens they had found under the victim's nails and their M. E.'s conclusion.
“Teitleman's a good man,” Claire responded. "I'd trust his findings like I would my own.
“I know, Claire, but he's not you. Please. This is important.”
“I want you to know,” she shot back, “that if Art Teitleman asked to poke his nose into one of my preliminary investigations, I'd have his parking ticket stamped and politely tell him to go back to his side of the bay. I wouldn't do this for anyone else, Lindsay.” “I know that, Claire,” I said with a grateful tone. “Why do you think I've been working this friendship all these years?”
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 24
LATE THAT AFTERNOON, I sat at my desk as one by one my staff called it quits for the day. I couldn't leave with them.
My mind tried over an dover to put together the parts. Everything I had was based on assumptions. Was the killer black or white? Was Claire right, that Tasha Catchings was intentionally killed? But the lion symbol had definitely been there. Link the victims, my instincts said. There's a connection.
But what the hell is it?
I glanced at my watch and placed a call to Simone Clark in personnel, catching her just as she was preparing to leave.
“Simone, I need you to pull a file for me tomorrow.”
“Sure, whose do you need?”
“A cop who retired maybe eight, ten years ago. His name was Edward Chipman.”
“That's a while back. It would be out on the docks.” The department outsourced its old records to a document storage company. “Early afternoon, okay?”
“Sure, Simone. Best you can do.”
I was still bristling with nervous energy. I took out another stack of Kirkwood's hate files and plopped them on my desk.
I opened one at random. Americans for Constitutional Action... Ploughs and Fifes, another hayseed militia group.
All these assholes, they seemed like such a bunch of right-wing jerk-offs. Was I wasting my time? Nothing jumped out.
Nothing gave me any hope that this was the right track.
Go home, Lindsay, a voice urged. Tomorrow new leads might develop. There's the van, Chipman's file.... Call it a night. Take Martha for a run.
Go home... I stacked the files, about to give in, when the top one caught my eye. The Templars. A Hells Angels offshoot out of Vallejo. The original Templars were Christian knights from the Crusades. Immediately I noticed the FBI's assessment of threat. Their rating was High.
I took the file off the pile and leafed further in. There was an FBI report outlining a series of unsolved felonies the Templars had been suspected of involvement in, bank robberies, hits for hire against Latino and black gangs.
I leafed on, case files, prison records, surveillance photos of the group. Suddenly, the breath emptied out of my lungs.
My eyes fixed on a surveillance shot: a bunch of heavy muscled, tattoo-covered bikers huddled outside a Vallejo bar they used as a headquarters. One of them hunched over his bike, back to the camera. He had a shaved head, a bandanna, and a sleeveless denim jacket over massive arms.
It was the embroidery on the back of the denim jacket that caught my eye.
I was staring at a two-headed lion with the tail of a snake.
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 25
SOUTH OF MARKET, in a run-down warehouse section of the city a man in a green windbreaker ducked along a shadowy curb. The killer.
This time of night, in this decrepit neighborhood, no one was around, only a couple of scum-bums huddled over a blazing trash can. Abandoned warehouses, daytime businesses with shorted-out electrical signs: CHECKS CASHED TODAY... METAL WORKS... EARL KING, CITY'S MOST TRUSTED BAIL BONDSMAN.
His eyes drifted across the street, toward Seventh, to the dilapidated shell of an abandoned residential hoteclass="underline" 303. He had carefully staked the place out over the past three weeks.
Half the apartments were vacant, the other half the nightly resting place for homeless bums with nowhere else to go.
Spitting onto the trash-littered street, he threw a black Adidas sport bag over his shoulder and headed around the block onto Sixth and Townsend. He crossed the dingy street toward a boarded-up warehouse marked only by scratched-out sign: AGUELLO'S... COMIDAS ESPANOL.
Making sure he was alone, the killer pushed in the paint-chipped metal door, then he ducked inside. His heart was starting to pump pretty good now. He was addicted to the feeling, actually.
A foul odor met him in the lobby, a fire trap that was littered with old newspapers and oily corrugated boxes.
He hit the stairs, hoping not to run into any of the homeless scum camped out in the halls.
He climbed all the way to five, where he quickly made his way to the end of the hall. He pushed through a grating and stepped out onto the fire escape. From there, it was only a quick flight up to the roof.
Up here, the desolate streets gave way to the luminous aura of the city's skyline. His position was in the shadow of the Bay Bridge, which loomed over him like a hulking ship.
He rested the black sport bag on an air-conditioning vent, unzipped it, and carefully removed the parts of a customized PSG-1 sniper rifle.
At the church, I needed maximum saturation. Here I only get one shot.
As traffic rumbled over him on the Bay Bridge freeway, he screwed the long barrel of the rifle to the shaft and locked it in place. Handling guns was like handling a fork and knife to him. He could do this in his sleep.
He fastened on the infrared sight. He squinted through it, amber-colored shapes coming into focus.
He was so much smarter than them. While they were looking for white vans and silly-ass symbols, he was here, about to blow the lid wide open. Tonight, they would finally begin to understand.
His heart slowed as he aimed across the street, at the rear of the transient hotel marked 303. On the fourth floor, a dimly lit apartment shone through the window.
This was it. The moment of truth.
He calmed his breath to a whisper and licked his dry lips.
He aimed at a picture in his mind he had held for so long. He feathered the sight.
Then, when it was just right, he squeezed.
Click... This time he wouldn't even have to sign it. They'd know from the shot. From the target.
Tomorrow, every person in San Francisco would know his name.
Chimera.
Part II.
JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 26
I KNOCKED on Stu Kirkwood's glass office door, interrupting his morning coffee and bagel. I tossed the surveillance shot of the biker wearing the lion with the tail of a snake in front of him. “I need to know what this is. I need it ASAP, Stu.”
I followed the shot up with two other versions of the same image: the decal on the rear of the white van and a Polaroid of the basement wall where Estelle Chipman had been killed.
Lion, goat, tail of a snake or lizard.
Kirkwood stiffened. “I don't have any idea,” he looked up and said.
“This is our killer, Stu. So how do we find him? I thought this was your specialty.”
“I told you, gay bashing's more my bag. We could e-mail the pictures to Quantico.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “How long will it take?”
Kirkwood straightened up. “I know a chief researcher down there I took a seminar with. Let me put in the call.”