I thanked Maddie profusely. Tasha, Mercer, Davidson... It was starting to fit together.
But how did Estelle Chipman fit in?
A force took hold of me. I went outside and dug through the case files. It had been weeks since I'd looked at them.
I found it buried at the bottom. The personnel file I'd called up from Records: Edward C. Chipman.
In his thirty unremarkable years on the force, only one thing stood out.
He had been his district's representative to the OFJ... the Officers for justice.
It was time to put this on the record. I buzzed Chief Tracchio. His secretary, Helen, who had been Mercer's, said he was in a closed-door meeting. I told her I was coming up.
I grabbed the Coombs file and headed up the stairs to five.
I had to share this. I barreled into the chief's office.
Then I stopped, speechless.
To my shock, seated around the conference table were Tracchio, Special Agents Ruddy and Hull of the FBI, the press flack Carr, and Chief of Detectives Ryan.
I hadn't been invited to the latest task force meeting.
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 76
“THIS IS BULLSHIT,” I said. “It's total crap. What is this - some kind of a men's club?”
Tracchio, Ruddy and Hull from the FBI, Carr, Ryan. Five boys seated around the table - minus me, the woman.
The acting chief stood up. His face was red. “Lindsay we were about to call you up.”
I knew what this meant. What was going on. Tracchio was going to shift control on the case. My case. He and Ryan were going to hand it over to the FBI.
“We're at a critical moment in this case,” Tracchio said.
“You're damn right,” I cut him off. I swept my gaze over the group. “I know who it is.”
Suddenly, all eyes turned my way. The boys were silent.
It was as if the lights had been cranked up, and my skin prickled as if it had been cauterized.
I leveled my eyes back on Tracchio. “You want me to lay it out for you? Or do you want me to leave?”
Seemingly dumbfounded, he pulled out a chair for me.
I didn't sit. I stood. Then I took them through everything, and I enjoyed it. How I had been skeptical at first, but then it began to fit. Chimera, Pelican Bay... Coombs's grudge against the police force. At the sound of Coombs's name, the departmental people's eyes grew wide. I linked the victims, Coombs's qualification as a marksman, how only a marksman could have made those shots.
When I finished, there was silence again. They just stared.
I wanted to pump my arm in victory.
Agent Ruddy cleared his throat. "So far, I haven't heard a thing that links Coombs directly to any of the crime scenes.
“Give me another day or two and you will,” I said.
“Coombs is the killer.”
Hull, Ruddy's broad-shouldered partner, shrugged optimistically toward the chief. “You want us to follow this up?”
I couldn't believe it. This was my case. My breakthrough. Homicide's. Our people had been murdered.
Tracchio seemed to mull it over. He pursed his thick lips as if he were sucking a last drop through a straw. Then he shook his head at the FBI man.
“That won't be necessary, Special Agent. This has always been a city case. We'll see it through with city personnel.”
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 77
ONLY ONE THING was standing in the way now. We had to find Frank Coombs.
Coombs's prison file mentioned a wife, Ingrid, who had divorced him while he was in prison and remarried. It was a long shot. The PO said he hadn't been in touch. But long shots were coming in right now.
“C'mon, Warren.” I nudged Jacobi. “You're coming with me. It'll be like old times.”
“Aww ain't that sweet.”
Ingrid Thiasson lived on a pleasant middle-class street off of Laguna.
We parked across the street, went up, and rang the bell.
No one answered. We didn't know if Coombs's wife worked, and there was no car in the driveway.
Just as we were about to head back, an old-model Volvo station wagon pulled into the driveway.
Ingrid Thiasson looked about fifty with stringy brown hair; she wore a plain, shapeless blue dress under a heavy gray sweater. She climbed out of the car and opened the rear hatch to unload groceries.
An old cop's wife, she ID'd us the minute we walked up.
“What do you people want with me?” she asked.
“A few minutes. We're trying to locate your ex-husband.”
“You got nerve coming around here.” She scowled, hoisting two bags in her arms.
“We're just checking all the possibilities,” Jacobi said.
She snapped back, “Like I told his parole officer, I haven't heard a word from him since he got out.”
“He hasn't been to see you?”
“Once, when he got out. He came by to pick up some personal stuff he thought I had held for him. I told him I threw it all out.” “What kind of stuff?” I asked.
“Useless letters, newspaper articles on the trial. Probably the old guns he kept around. Frank was always into guns. Stuff only a man with nothing to show for his life would find value in.”
Jacobi nodded. “So what'd he do then?”
“What'd he do?” Ingrid Thiasson snorted. “He left without a word about what life had been like for us for the past twenty years. Without a word about me or his son. You believe that?”
“And you have no idea where we could contact him?”
“None. That man was poison. I found someone who's treated me with respect. Who's been a father to my boy. I don't want to see Frank Coombs again.” I asked, “You have any idea if he might be in touch with your son?”
“No way. I always kept them apart. My son doesn't have any links to his father. And don't go buzzing around him. He's in college at Stanford.”
I stepped forward. “Anyone who might know where he is, Ms. Thiasson, it would be a help to us. This is a murder case.”
I saw the slightest sign of hesitation. “I've lived a good life for twenty years. We're a family now. I don't want anyone knowing this came from me.”
I nodded. I felt the blood rushing to my head.
“Frank kept up with Tom Keating. Even when he was locked away. Anyone knows where he is, it'd be him.”
Tom Keating. I knew the name.
He was a retired cop.
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 78
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, Jacobi and I pulled up in front of condo 3A at the Blakesly Residential Community down the coast in Half Moon Bay.
Keating's name had stuck in my mind from when I was a kid. He'd been a regular at the Alibi after the nine-to-four shift, where many afternoons I'd been hoisted up on a bar stool by my father. In my mind, Keating had a ruddy complexion and a shock of prematurely white hair. God, I thought, that was almost thirty years ago.
We knocked on the door of Keating's modest slatted-wood condo. A trim, pleasant-looking woman with gray hair answered.
“Mrs. Keating? I'm Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer of the San Francisco Homicide detail. This is Inspector Jacobi. Is your husband at home?” “Homicide...?” she said, surprised.
“Just an old case,” I said with a smile.
A voice called from inside, “Helen, I can't find the damned clicker anywhere.” “just a minute, Tom. He's in the back,” she said as she motioned us into the house.