YOU KNOW THE SAYING: when one door slams in your face, another one opens. Half an hour later, I rapped on my window for Jacobi. “What do you know about Frank Coombs?” I asked when he came into my office.
Warren shrugged. “Dirtbag street cop. Got some teenager in a stranglehold during a drug bust years ago. The kid died. Major departmental scandal when I was in uniform. Didn't he get a dime up in Quentin?”
“Uh-uh, twenty.” I slid Coombs's personnel file toward him. “Now tell me something I can't find in here.”
Warren opened the file. “As I remember, the guy was a tough cop, decorated, a solid arrest record, but at the same time, I figure this file's got enough OCC reprimands for excessive force to rival Rodney King.”
I nodded. “Keep going.”
“You read the file, Lindsay. He busted up a basketball game in one of the projects. Thought he recognized one of the players as some kid he put away for drugs but was spit back out. The kid said something to him, then he took off. Coombs went after him.”
“We're talking about a black kid,” I injected. “They gave him fifteen to twenty, second-degree manslaughter.”
Jacobi blinked. “Where're we going with this, Lindsay?”
“Weiscz, Warren. At Pelican Bay I thought he was just ranting, but something he said stuck. Weiscz said he'd given me something. He said it sounded like an inside job.”
“You dredged up this old file because Weiscz said it was an inside job?” Jacobi screwed his brow.
“Coombs was Chimera. He spent two years in the SHU's. Take a look. The guy had SWAT training. He was qualified for marksman status. He was an avowed racist. And he's out. Coombs was released from San Quentin a few months ago.”
Jacobi sat there stone-faced. “You're still short a motive, Lieutenant. I mean, granted, the guy was a major asshole. But he was a cop. What would he have against other cops?”
"He pleaded self-defense, that the kid was resisting. No one backed him, Warren. Not his partner, not the other officers on the scene, not the brass.
“You think I'm reaching?” I grabbed the file, skimmed through, and stopped where I had circled something in red marker. “You said Coombs killed this kid in the projects?”
Jacobi nodded.
I pushed the page at him.
“Bay View, Warren. La Salle Heights. That's where he choked that kid. Those projects were torn down and rebuilt in nineteen ninety. They were renamed... ”
“Whitney Young,” Jacobi said.
Near where Tasha Catchings had been killed.
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 74
MY NEXT MOVE was to dial up Madeline Akers, assistant warden at San Quentin prison. Maddie was a friend. She told me what she knew about Coombs. “Bad cop, bad guy, real bad inmate. A cold sonofabitch.” Maddie said she would ask around about him. Maybe Frank Coombs had told somebody what he planned to do once he got outside.
“Madeline, this absolutely can't leak out,” I insisted.
“Mercer was a friend, Lindsay. I'll do anything I can. Give me a couple of days.”
“Make it one, Maddie. This is vital. He's going to kill again.”
For a long time I sat at my desk trying to piece together just what I had. I couldn't place Coombs at a crime scene. I had no weapon. I didn't even know where he was. But for the first time since Tasha Catchings was killed, I had the feeling I was onto something good.
My instinct was to ask Cindy to troll through the Chronicle's morgue for old stories. These events had happened more than twenty years before. Only a few people in the department were still around from those days.
Then I remembered I had someone who'd been there staying under my own roof.
I found my father watching the evening news when I walked through the door. “Hey,” he called. “You're home at a decent hour. Solve your case?”
I changed my clothes, grabbed a beer from the fridge, then I pulled up a chair across from him.
“I need to talk to you about something.” I looked in his eyes. “You remember a guy named Frank Coombs?”
My father nodded. “There's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Sure, I remember him. Cop who choked the kid over in the projects. They brought him up on murder charges. Sent him away.”
“You were on the force, right?”
“Yes, and I knew him. Worst excuse for a cop I ever ran into. Some people were impressed with him. He made arrests, got things done. In his own way. It was different then. We didn't have review committees looking over our shoulder. Not everything we did got into the press.”
“This kid he choked, Dad, he was fourteen.”
“Why do you want to know about Coombs? He's in jail.”
“Not any longer. He's out.” I pulled my chair closer.
“I read that Coombs claimed he killed the kid in self-defense.”
“What cop wouldn't? He said the kid tried to cut him with a sharp object he took to be a knife.”
“You remember who he was partnered up with back then, Dad?”
“Jesus.” My father shrugged. “Stan Dragula, as I recall. Yeah, he testified at the trial. But I think he died a few years back. No one wanted to work with Coombs. You were scared to walk through the neighborhoods with him.”
“Was Stan Dragula white or black?” I asked.
“Stan was white,” my father answered. '“I think Italian, or maybe Jewish.”
That wasn't the answer I had been expecting. No one had backed Coombs up. But why was he killing blacks?
“Dad, if it is Coombs doing these things... if he is out for some kind of revenge, why against blacks?”
“Coombs was an animal, but he was also a cop. Things were different then. That famous blue wall of silence... Every cop is taught at the academy, Keep your yap shut. It'll be there for you. Well, it didn't hold up for Frank Coombs; it came tumbling down on him. Everyone was glad to give him up. We're talking, what, twenty years ago? The affirmative action thing on the force was strong. Blacks and Latinos were just starting to get placed in key positions. There was this black lobby group, the OFJ... ” “Officers for justice,” I said. “They're still around.”
My father nodded. Tensions were strong. The OFJ threatened to strike. Eventually, there was pressure from the city, too. Whatever it was, Coombs felt he was handed over, hung out to dry."
It started coming clear to me. Coombs felt he had been railroaded by the black lobby of the department. He had chewed on his hatred in prison. Now twenty years later, he was back on the streets of San Francisco.
“Maybe, another time, this kind of thing might've been swept under the rug,” I said. “But not then. The OFJ nailed him.”
Suddenly, a sickening realization wormed into my brain.
“Earl Mercer was involved, wasn't he?”
My father nodded his head. “Mercer was Coombs's lieutenant.”
Part III THE BLUE WALL OF SILENCE
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 75
THE NEXT MORNING, the case against Frank Coombs, which only a day ago had seemed flimsy, was bursting at the seams. I was pumped.
First thing, Jacobi rapped at my door. “One for your side, Lieutenant. Coombs is looking better and better.”
“How so? You make any progress with Coombs's PO?”
“You might say He's gone, Lindsay. According to the PO, Coombs split from this transient hotel down on Eddy. No forwarding address, hasn't checked in, hasn't contacted his ex-wife.”
I was disappointed that Coombs was missing, but it was also a good sign. I told Jacobi to keep looking.
A few minutes later, Madeline Akers called from San Quentin.
“I think I've got what you want,” she announced. I couldn't believe she was responding so soon.
“Over the past year, Coombs was paired with four different cell mates. Two of them have been paroled, but I spoke with the other two myself. One of them told me to stuff it, but the other, this guy Toracetti... I almost didn't even have to tell him what I was looking for. He said the minute he heard on the news about Davidson and Mercer, he knew it was Coombs. Coombs told him he was going to blow the whole thing wide open again.”