You’re lucky, Doc. But you were target practice anyway.
It was the next one that mattered.
Chapter 70
I HAD TAKEN OFF MY MAKEUP and curled up to watch the late news when Edmund’s call came.
Claire’s husband was frantic, stammering. The impossibility of what he was struggling to describe slammed into me with the force of a train. “She’ll be all right, Lindsay. She’s at Peninsula Hospital now.”
I yanked a fleece pullover over my head, tugged on some jeans, and, throwing a top hat on the roof of the car, raced down to Burlingame. I made the forty-minute drive in under twenty minutes.
I found Claire still in one of the treatment rooms, sitting upright, dressed in the same rust-colored suit I had left her in only three hours before. A doctor was applying a bandage to her neck. Edmund and Willie were by her side.
“Jesus, Claire…” was all I could manage, my eyes hot and moist. I melted into Edmund, resting my head on his shoulder, and gave him my warmest, most grateful hug. Then I threw my arms all over Claire.
“Go easy on the TLC, honey.” She winced, jerking her neck. Then she managed a smile. “I always told you one day these fat cells would come in handy. It takes a helluva shot to reach anything vital in me.”
I was still squeezing her. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”
“Yeah.” She exhaled. I could see it in her eyes. “Believe me, I know.”
The bullet had only grazed her. The ER doctor had cleaned the wound, bandaged it, and was releasing her without even keeping her overnight. Another inch, and we wouldn’t have been talking now.
Claire reached out for Edmund’s and Willie’s hands and smiled. “My men did okay, didn’t they? Both of them. Edmund’s car scared the sniper away.”
Edmund grimaced. “I should’ve chased that bastard myself. If I’d caught him…”
“Down, tiger.” Claire smiled. “Let Lindsay be the heat. You stay a drummer. I always told you,” she said, squeezing his hand, “Rachmaninoff might be in his head, but when it comes to his heart, the man’s all Doggy Dogg.”
Almost at once, the reality of what had almost happened seemed to overwhelm him. Edmund’s bravado melted away. He sat down, just leaned against Claire for a while, and as he tried to speak, put a hand over his eyes. Claire held his hand without speaking.
A little more than an hour later, after going through the story with the Burlingame Police, we walked the grounds outside her house.
“It was him, wasn’t it, Claire? It was Chimera.” She nodded her head, yes.
“He’s a real cold sonofabitch, Lindsay. I heard him say, ‘Lean a little to the left, Doc.’ Then he started firing.”
Local cops and the San Mateo County sheriff’s office were still scrambling all over the house and yard. I had already called Clapper to come down and lend a hand.
Claire said, “Why me, Lindsay?”
“I don’t know, Claire. You’re black. You work in law enforcement. I don’t understand it myself. Why would he change his pattern?”
“We’re talking calm and deliberate, Lindsay. It was like he was toying with me. He made it sound… personal.”
I thought I saw something I had never seen in her before. Fear. Who could blame her? “Maybe you should take some time off, Claire,” I told her. “Stay out of sight.”
“You think I’m gonna let him push me under a rock? That’s not a possibility, Lindsay. No way I let him win.”
I gave her a gentle hug. “You’re okay?”
“I’m okay. He had his chance. Now I want mine.”
Chapter 71
I FINALLY DRAGGED MYSELF back to my apartment at sometime after two in the morning.
The events of the long, horrible day—Jill losing her child, Claire’s terrifying ordeal—flipped by like some old-time nightmare film sequence. The man I was tracking had almost killed my best friend. Why Claire? What could it mean? Part of me felt responsible, dirtied by the crime.