2nd Chance (Women's Murder Club 2)

“I know.” I nodded. “That’s why you’ll change some things in your life and get her back.”

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Dee Collins had her arms around Angela, a cloth wrapped around the girl’s bleeding hand. The DCF worker was trying unsuccessfully to hush the crying infant.

I went up and said to her, “That baby gets placed somewhere nearby with daily visitation rights. And by the way, I didn’t see anything going on here that was worth putting on file…. You?” The caseworker gave me a disgruntled look and turned away.

Suddenly, my beeper sounded, three dissonant beeps punctuating the tense air. I pulled it out and read the number. Jacobi, my ex-partner in Homicide. What did he want?

I excused myself and moved into the staff office. I was able to reach him in his car.

“Something bad’s happened, Lindsay,” he said glumly. “I thought you’d want to know.”

He clued me in about a horrible drive-by shooting at the La Salle Heights Church. An eleven-year-old girl had been killed.

“Jesus…” I sighed as my heart sank.

“I thought you might want in on it,” Jacobi said.

I took in a breath. It had been over three months since I’d been on the scene at a homicide. Not since the day the bride and groom case ended.

“So, I didn’t hear,” Jacobi pressed. “You want in, Lieutenant?” It was the first time he had called me by my new rank.

I realized my honeymoon had come to an end. “Yeah,” I muttered. “I want in.”

Chapter 2

A COLD RAIN STARTED to fall as I pulled my Explorer up to the La Salle Heights Church on Harrow Street, in the predominantly black section of Bay View. An angry, anxious crowd had formed—a combination of saddened neighborhood mothers and the usual sullen homeboys huddled in their bright Tommys—all pushing against a handful of uniformed cops.

“This ain’t goddamn Mississippi,” someone shouted as I forced my way through the throng.

“How many more?” an older woman wailed. “How many more?”

I badged my way past a couple of nervous patrolmen to the front. What I saw next absolutely took my breath away.

The facade of the white clapboard church was slashed with a grotesque pattern of bullet holes and lead-colored chinks. A huge hole gaped in a wall where a large stained-glass window had been shot out. Jagged edges of colored glass teetered like hanging ice. Kids were still scattered all over the lawn, obviously in shock, some being attended to by EMS teams.

“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered under my breath.

I spotted medical techs in black windbreakers huddled over the body of a young girl by the front steps. A couple of plainclothesmen were nearby. One of them was my ex-partner, Warren Jacobi.

I found myself hesitating. I had done this a hundred times. Only months ago I had solved the biggest murder case in the city since Harvey Milk, but so much had happened since then. I felt weird, like I was new at this. Balling my fists, I took a deep breath and went over to Jacobi.

“Welcome back to the world, Lieutenant,” Jacobi said with a roll of the tongue on my new rank.

The sound of that word still sent electricity surging through me. Heading Homicide had been the goal I had pursued throughout my career: the first female homicide detective in San Francisco, now the department’s first female lieutenant. After my old L.T., Sam Roth, opted for a cushy stint up in Bodega Bay, Chief Mercer had called me in. I can do one of two things, he’d said to me. I can keep you on long-term administrative leave and you can see if you find the heart to do this job again. Or I can give you these, Lindsay. He pushed a gold shield with two bars on it across the table. Until that moment, I don’t think I had ever seen Mercer smile.

“The lieutenant’s shield doesn’t make it any easier, does it, Lindsay?” Jacobi said, emphasizing that our three-year relationship as partners had now changed.

“What do we have?” I asked him.

“Looks like a single gunman, from out in those bushes.” He pointed to a dense thicket beside the church, maybe fifty yards away. “Asshole caught the kids just as they came out. Opened fire with everything he had.”

I took a breath, staring at the weeping, shell-shocked kids scattered all over the lawn. “Anybody see the guy? Somebody did, right?”

He shook his head. “Everyone hit the deck.”

Near the fallen child, a distraught black woman sobbed into the shoulder of a comforting friend. Jacobi saw my eyes fix on the dead girl.