2nd Chance (Women's Murder Club 2)

Coombs… I wrote down the name. I couldn’t remember anything about the case except that he had choked and killed this black kid.

“What makes you think this Coombs might fit?” I asked.

“As I said…” Estes cleared his throat. “I don’t much care about Weiscz’s ravings. What made me call was that I asked some of our staff. When he was here, Coombs was a charter member of that little group of yours.”

“My group?”

“That’s right, Lieutenant. Chimera.”

Chapter 73

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 scre

wed 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.

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.”