“When?”
“Soon.”
“Good. Because right now we have nada, nothing, goose egg,” I said. “I need help.”
Chapter 29
I WAS THINKING about the seven unidentified heads as I retraced my steps back upstairs to the squad room. I came through the gate, saw Conklin at his desk with a thin, lank-haired man of about forty sitting in a side chair talking to him.
Conklin introduced me to Richard Beadle, the headmaster of the Morton Academy. I shook his damp hand, took my desk chair, and joined the interview already in progress.
“I gave out my home number,” Beadle said. “I felt that I should do that, but now my phone rings constantly and at all hours. Parents are distraught. Kids are having nightmares, and I don’t know how to comfort them.
“Here’s the latest,” Beadle went on. “This is the prizewinner. Chaz Smith’s family is speaking to the school through lawyers. They’re suing us. Please tell me you’ve got something on that killer. Anything will do, anything I can tell the board and the parents.”
“We’re working this case hard,” Conklin said. “It’s our number one priority. Let’s look at pictures, okay?”
Beadle had printed out sixteen photos that had been taken at the spring recital. Most of them were impromptu family portraits that had been shot in the school lobby before the fire alarm had rung.
I scrutinized each shot, and as I looked at cute kids and proud folks, I asked myself if I could be wrong about an angry cop called Roddy Jenkins. Could he really have taken a stolen .22 to the Morton Academy and put two rounds into Chaz Smith’s forehead?
I didn’t see it. And I didn’t see Jenkins. Not in the foreground and not in the background, and I didn’t see anyone who looked out of place.
The headmaster put a name to every man, woman, and child in each picture. We tagged partial sleeves and collars and hairlines to the identified pictures, and every piece of clothing matched to a known person.
Except for one.
I stared at an unfocused picture of the back of a blue suit jacket worn by someone we couldn’t identify, and my throat tightened.
Was I looking at the only recorded image of the shooter?
I was pawing through photos in search of that blue jacket when Brady’s shadow crossed my desk. We all looked up.
Brady was menacing even when he wasn’t trying to be, like a linebacker primed to unload.
The lieutenant said hello to Beadle, then banged six photographs down in front of him, every one of them a picture of a cop who worked for the SFPD.
I knew all six of those men. Knew them well.
“Give them all a thorough inspection, Mr. Beadle,” Brady said, looking like he was going to shake the guy until he picked out the shooter.
What if, in his panic, Beadle picked someone out?
What if he fingered a good and innocent cop?
Beadle’s eyes bored in on each of the six photographs; he took Brady’s advice and didn’t rush.
“I don’t recognize anyone,” Beadle said, finally. “Is one of these men the killer?”
Brady’s relief was apparent.
“No,” he said. “You did fine.”
We wrapped up the interview and I said good night to the office. Or I tried to.
Reporters were waiting for me outside the Hall, a bunch of them surging up from Bryant Street, stampeding toward me as I stood on the top of the Hall’s front steps.
Now that I knew what Jason Blayney looked like, it was easy to pick him out of the crowd.