2nd Chance (Women's Murder Club 2)

I had arranged to meet Lieutenant Joe Kimes of the Palo Alto Violent Crimes Detail at the dean of students’ office in the Main Quad. As we closed in on Palo Alto, Kimes called back. He reported that Coombs couldn’t be found. He had no scheduled classes that afternoon. He wasn’t at his residence or the stadium, where the Stanford football team had finished practice about an hour ago.

“Does he know there’s an APB out on him?” I asked. “What’s happening down there, Joe?”

“It’s hard to keep a low profile here,” Kimes said. “He could’ve seen our cars.”

I was starting to worry. I’d hoped we could get to Coombs before he knew we were coming. He liked attention—he wanted to be a star.

“What do you want us to do?” Kimes asked.

“I want you to put the local SWAT team on alert. Meanwhile, try to find the big creep, Joe. Don’t let him out of our trap. And Joe, this guy is extremely dangerous. You have no idea.”

Chapter 115

THE ELEVATOR ASCENDED RAPIDLY and when it opened, Chimera looked out on the observation deck of the Hoover Tower, more than two hundred and fifty feet over Stanford’s Main Quad.

There was no one up there on the deck. No one to bother him, no one to kill right away. Just the flat blue sky, the concrete WPA-style dome, the giant carillon bells that tolled thunder across the campus.

Rusty Coombs flicked off the elevator power switch, freezing the doors open.

Then he slung the black nylon duffel bag he was carrying onto the floor and leaned against the concrete wall, his back to one of the eight barred windows. He opened the bag, removing his disassembled PSG-1, the sniper’s scope, and two additional pistols, along with clips of ammunition.

This was something else—breathtaking, actually. The bomb, right? He could see mountains to the south and west, the outline of San Francisco to the north. It was a clear day. Everything was calm, perfect. The Stanford campus stretched out before him. Students crept like ants down below. The best and the brightest.

He began to hook together the rifle, clicking the barrel seamlessly into the stock, fitting on the customized shoulder rest, until the assembled piece rested in his arms like a prized musical instrument.

A sparrow perched on the carillon bells. He aimed and squeezed the trigger in a dry run. Click.

Then he screwed the sniper’s sight onto the stock. He snapped in a twenty-round clip.

He crouched behind the cement wall. The wind rattled by, sounding like a gust snapping a canvas sail. The sky was a gorgeous turquoise blue. I’m going to die, and you know what? I really don’t care.

Students were casually traversing crosswalks, lounging and reading on benches. Who knew…? Who suspected any danger? He could have his pick. He could immortalize any of them.

Rusty Coombs swung the barrel of his rifle through the metal bars in one of the dome’s six-foot-high windows. He squinted through the sight and searched out the first target. Students popped into view: a pretty Japanese girl with auburn hair and dark glasses nuzzling her Caucasian boyfriend on the green. A geek in a bright yellow sweatshirt riding a yellow bicycle. He shifted the sight. A black student with long corn braids walking toward the student bookstore. Coombs smiled. Sometimes it even amazed him how much hatred he had inside. He was smart enough to know that he didn’t just despise them, he despised himself. Despised his buffed-up body, the imperfections only he knew about, but most of all he hated his thoughts, his obsessions, the way his goddamn mind worked. He’d felt so alone, for so goddamn long. Like right now.

In the distance, he caught sight of a blue Explorer with flashing lights. It pulled up in front of the administration building. The tight-assed bitch from San Francisco jumped out. His heart pounded.

She was here. He’d have his chance at her after all.

He fixed the sight on the pretty Oriental girl smooching her boyfriend on the lawn. Christ, he hated both of them. Disgraces to their races.

Then, as a second thought, he swung the rifle over to the jig girl with the cornstalks, a gold heart-shaped pendant bobbing on her neck, a glint in her brown eyes.

It’s just my nature. He smirked, coiling his finger around the cold metal trigger.

Chimera was back in business.

Chapter 116

THE EXPLORER screeched to a stop outside the administration building. Jacobi and I got out and cut through the Spanish loggia overlooking the Main Quad.

We ran right into Kimes, barking orders into a handheld radio. He was with the grim-faced dean of students, Felix Stern. “We still haven’t found Rusty Coombs,” Kimes told me. “He was seen on the Quad twenty minutes ago. Now he’s disappeared again.”

“How are we doing with that SWAT team?” I asked him.

“They’re on their way now. You think we’ll need them?”

I shook my head. “I hope not. We won’t need them if Coombs got spooked and split.”