2nd Chance (Women's Murder Club 2)

My body ached. I wanted to sleep; I needed to wash away the day. Suddenly, the door to the guest bedroom opened, and my father shuffled out. In the madness of the day, I had almost forgotten he was here.

He was wearing a long white T-shirt and boxers with a seashell pattern. Somehow, with the deprivation of sleep, I found this funny.

“You’re wearing boxers, Boxer,” I said. “You’re a witty old bastard.” Then I told him what had happened. As a former cop, he would understand. Surprisingly, my father was a good listener. Just what I needed right about then.

He came around to my side of the couch. “You want coffee? I’ll go make it, Lindsay.”

“Brandy would do the trick better. But there’s some Moonlight Sonata tea on the counter there if you’re up to it.” It was nice to have someone here, and he seemed eager to calm me.

I sank back in the couch, shut my eyes, and tried to figure out what I was going to do next. Davidson, Mercer, and now Claire Washburn… Why would Chimera come after Claire? What did it mean?

My father came back with a cup of tea and a snifter of Courvoisier two inches full. “I figure you’re a big girl. So why not both.”

I took a sip of tea, then drank about half the brandy in a gulp. “Oh, I needed that. Almost as much as I need a break on this case. He’s leaving clues, but I still don’t get it.”

“Take it easy on yourself, Lindsay,” my father said in the gentlest voice.

“What do you do,” I asked, “when everyone in the world is watching and you have no idea what to do next? When you realize that whatever you’re fighting isn’t giving in, that you’re fighting a monster?”

“That’s about where we usually called in Homicide,” my father said with a smile.

“Don’t try to make me laugh,” I begged. But my father had me smiling in spite of everything. Even more surprising to me, I was starting to think of him as my father.

His tone suddenly changed. “I can tell you what I did when it really got tough. I took off. You won’t do that, Lindsay. I can tell. You’re so much better than me.”

He was looking squarely at me, no longer smiling.

What happened next, I would never have believed. My father’s arms just sort of parted, and almost without resistance, I found myself burrowing into his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around me, a little tentatively at first, then, just like any father and any daughter, he squeezed me with tender care. I didn’t resist. I could smell the same cologne he wore when I was a child. It felt both strange and, at the same time, like the most natural thing in the world.

Having my father hold me unexpectedly, it felt like layers of pain were suddenly stripped away.

“You’re going to catch him, Lindsay,” I heard him whisper, squeezing me and rocking. “You will, Buttercup….”

It was just what I needed to hear.

“Oh, Daddy,” I said. Nothing more, though.

Chapter 72

“LIEUTENANT BOXER.” Brenda buzzed me early Monday. “Warden Estes from Pelican Bay. Line two.” I picked up the phone, not expecting much.

“You asked if we had ever had a policeman imprisoned here,” Estes said.

I perked up immediately. “And?”

“Mind you, I don’t give a shit about some lunatic ravings from Weiscz. But I did go back through the old files. There was a case here that might have some relevance. Twelve years ago. I was the warden at Soledad when this scum arrived here.”

I took the phone off speaker, pressing the receiver to my ear.

“They had him here for five years. Two of them in iso. Then they shipped him back to Quentin. A special case. You may even remember the name.”

I picked up a pen and started racking my brain. A cop at Pelican? Quentin?

“Frank Coombs,” Estes said.

I did recognize the name. It was like a headline flashing back from my youth. Coombs. A street cop, he had killed a kid in the projects some twenty years before. Got run up on charges. Sent away. To any San Francisco cop, his name was like a warning bell for the use of excessive force.

“Coombs turned into more of a bastard in prison than he was on the outside,” Estes went on. “He choked a cell mate blue down in Quentin, which is why they shipped him here. After a stay in the SHU’s, they were able to cure him of some of his antisocial tendencies.”