2nd Chance (Women's Murder Club 2)

He walked me over to a lab counter. “Partial sneaker print. Off the tar on the roof where the shots came from. Looks like a standard shoe. But we did take out some traces of a fine white powder. No guarantees it even came from him.”

“Powder?”

“Chalk,” Charlie said. “That narrows it down to about fifty million possibilities. If this guy’s signing his pictures, Lindsay, he’s making it tough to find.”

“He signed it, Charlie,” I said with conviction. “It was the shot.”

“We’re sending the nine-one-one tape out for a voice reading. I’ll let you know when we get it back.”

I patted him appreciatively. “Get some sleep, Charlie.”

He lifted the Doritos bag. “Sure, I will. After breakfast.”

Chapter 36

I WENT BACK to the office and sank disappointedly back behind my desk. I had to know more about that chimera. I was about to dial Stu Kirkwood at the hate crimes desk when a cadre of three men in dark suits came into the squad room.

One of them was Mercer. No surprise. He had been on the morning talk shows, pushing for calm. I knew facing tough questions without concrete results didn’t sit well with him.

But the other, accompanied by his press liaison, was a man I had never seen on the floor in seven years in Homicide.

It was the mayor of San Francisco.

“I don’t want the slightest bit of bullshit,” Art Fernandez, San Francisco’s two-term mayor, said. “I don’t want the standard protecting the ranks, and I don’t want any misplaced reflex to control the situation.” He shifted his eyes on a narrow track between Mercer and me. “What I want is an honest answer. Do we have a read on this situation?”

We were crammed into my tiny glass-enclosed office. Outside, I could see staffers standing around, watching the circus.

I fumbled under my desk to get my pumps back on. “We do not,” I admitted.

“So Vernon Jones is right.” The mayor exhaled, sinking into a chair across from my desk. “What we have is an out-of-control spree of hate-driven killings on which the police have no handle, but the FBI may.”

“No, that’s not it,” I replied.

“That’s not it?” he arched his eyebrows. He looked at Mercer and frowned. “What is it I don’t understand? You’ve got a recognized hate group symbol, this chimera, at two of the three crime scenes. Our own M.E. believes the Catchings girl was the intended target of this madman.”

“What the lieutenant is saying,” Mercer cut in, “is that this may not be simply a hate crime issue.”

My mouth was a little cottony, and I swallowed. “I think it’s deeper than a hate crime spree.”

“Deeper, Lieutenant Boxer? Just what is it you believe we have?”

I stared straight at Fernandez. “What I think we have is someone with a personal vendetta. Possibly a single assailant. He’s couching his murders in the MO of a hate crime.”

“A vendetta, you say,” Carr, the mayor’s man, chimed in. “A vendetta against blacks, but not a hate crime. Against black children and widows… but not a hate crime?”

“Against black cops,” I said.

The mayor’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

I explained that Tasha Catchings and Estelle Chipman had been related to cops. “There has to be some further relationship, though we don’t know what it is yet. The killer is organized, haughty in the way he’s leaving his clues. I do not believe a hate crime killer would leave their mark on the hits. The getaway van, the little drawing in Chipman’s basement, that cocky nine-one-one tape. I don’t think this is a hate crime spree. It’s a vendetta—calculated, personal.”

The mayor looked at Mercer. “You go along with this, Earl?”

“Protecting the ranks aside…” Mercer smiled tightly. “I do.”

“Well, I don’t,” Carr said. “Everything points to a hate crime.”

There was silence in the cramped room; the temperature suddenly felt like 120 degrees.