The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

Conklin signaled to me, and we approached Henry Wallis. Maybe he had eyes in the back of his head, or maybe the guy next to him saw us and gave Wallis a nudge, but he whipped his head around, saw my hand going for my piece, and made for the rear exit.

Conklin yelled, “Freeze! Wallis, stay where you are.”

But the man took a turn around the kitchen and kept running until he reached the back door, which banged shut behind him.

When we opened the door seconds later, Wallis was inside his rusty black Camaro and was shooting down Albion Street like a cannonball.

Chapter 64

I CALLED DISPATCH, requested backup as Conklin floored our car up the deserted street.

The no-nonsense voice of the dispatcher Jackie Kam came over the radio and declared a code 33 — silence on our wave band — and alerted all cars in the area that we were in pursuit of a black Camaro heading up Sixteenth toward Market.

This was bad.

School was out, the worst time for a high-speed chase, dangerous for me and Conklin, potentially lethal for other drivers and pedestrians.

I flipped on our sirens and grille lights. Wallis had at least thirty seconds on us, and as he pulled away going seventy, it was clear that he wasn’t slowing down for anything or anybody.

“I can’t read his plate,” I said to Dispatch. But we were almost close enough when the harsh screech of metal on metal, accompanied by panicky horns, preceded the sight of a taco van tipping over.

Wallis’s car backed up, then hauled ass, whipping around the fallen van, fishtailing across both lanes, and caroming off a parked station wagon. Then Wallis jammed down the pedal, leaving rubber on the asphalt and the disabled van in the middle of Market.

I called in the collision, urgently requested EMS. As we blew past the van, the driver staggered out into the street with blood on his forehead, trying to flag us down.

We couldn’t stop. I swore at the son of a bitch Wallis as Conklin floored our car toward the intersection of Market and Castro.

I had the plate number now, and I called it in: “Foxtrot Charlie Niner Three One Echo heading toward Portola.”

Portola is a twisting grade, and we were flying around those turns at fifty, the Camaro getting even farther out in front of us. All along Portola, vehicles ran up on the curb and bikes hugged the sides of buildings.

We assumed more patrol cars were on their way, but for now we were still alone following Wallis.

“Dispatch! Any casualties?”

“Walking wounded only, Sergeant. What’s your location?”

I told Kam we were on Twin Peaks Boulevard, the top of a small mountain in the center of the city. I’d busted teenagers making out under our main radio tower on that spot, but now I was hanging on to the dashboard as Conklin screamed, “Bastard!” and sped up the insanely treacherous road lined with two-foot-high guardrails, dented where cocky drivers had gone ballistic.

We were closing in on Wallis as he began his high-speed descent toward Clayton, a snaky and steep slide that sent my guts into my throat. I clenched the microphone so hard I put fingernail marks in the plastic.

I called in our location again: we were heading into the Upper Haight, a residential area of Tudor and Victorian houses occupied by young families who lived on the genteel tree-lined streets.

A child, a woman, and a dog appeared in our windshield. I screamed, “Noooo!” Conklin leaned on the horn and the brakes, took us up on the sidewalk, our wheels flying over the curb, our siren wailing like a wounded banshee as we slammed back onto the street.

Conklin grunted. “Everything’s under control.”

Who was he kidding?

I looked behind us and saw no bodies in the street, but still my heart was airborne. Were we going to survive this joyride? Would we kill people today?

“Where is this asshole taking us?” I asked the air.

“To hell. He’s taking us to hell,” Conklin said.

Did he know?

I think he did. Somehow Conklin instinctively knew where Henry Wallis was heading.