The 6th Target (Women's Murder Club 6)

“He shot at Willie after that,” Edmund said.

And then, there I was on the TV screen, my hair tangled from my race through the farmer’s market, Claire’s blood transferred from Willie’s T-shirt to my jacket, a wide-eyed look of shocked intensity on my face.

My voice was saying, “Please call us with any information that could lead to this man.”

My face was replaced with a freeze-frame shot of the killer. The SFPD phone number and Web address crawled under a title in big letters at the bottom of the screen.

DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN?

Edmund turned to me, his face stricken. “Have you got anything yet, Lindsay?”

“We have Jack Rooney’s video,” I said, stabbing my finger at the TV. “We have nonstop media coverage and about two hundred eyewitnesses. We’ll find him, Eddie. I swear we will.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking: If this guy gets away, I shouldn’t be a cop.

I stood, gathered up my shopping bag.

Eddie said, “Can’t you wait a few minutes? Claire will want to see you.”

“I’ll be back later,” I told him. “There’s someone I have to see right now.”

Chapter 10

I LEFT CLAIRE’S ROOM on the fifth floor and took the stairs to the Pediatric ICU on two. I was bracing myself for what was sure to be an awful, heart-wrenching interview.

I thought about young Tony Canello, watching his mother taking a bullet an instant before being shot himself. I had to ask this child if he’d ever seen the shooter before, if the man had said anything before or after firing the gun, if he could think of any reason why he and his mom had been targeted.

I shifted my shopping bag from my right hand to my left as I took the last flight of stairs, knowing that how I handled this interview was going to stay with this little boy forever.

The police department keeps a stash of teddy bears to give to children who’ve been traumatized, but those small toys seemed too cheap to give to a kid who’d just seen his mother violently killed. I’d stopped off at the Build-A-Bear Workshop before coming to the hospital and had a bear custom-made for Tony. Before it was dressed in a soccer outfit, a fabric heart had been stitched inside the bear’s chest, along with my wish that Tony would get well soon.

I opened the door to the second floor and stepped into the pastel-painted corridor of the Pediatric Unit. Cheery murals of rainbows and picnics lined the walls.

I found my way to the Pediatric ICU and flashed my badge for the nurse at the desk, a woman in her forties with graying hair and large brown eyes. I told her that I had to talk to my witness and that I wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.

“You’re talking about Tony Canello? The little boy who was shot on the ferry?”

I said, “I have about three questions. I’ll make it as easy on him as possible.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” the nurse said, holding my eyes with hers. “His surgery was touch and go. The gunshot wound involved several major organs. I’m sorry to tell you we lost him about twenty minutes ago.”

I sagged against the nurses’ station.

The nurse was speaking to me, asking if she could get me anything or anyone. I handed her the shopping bag with the Build-A-Bear inside and asked her to give it to the next kid who came into the ICU.

Somehow, I found my car in the lot and headed back to the Hall of Justice.

Chapter 11

THE HALL IS A GRAY granite cube of a building that takes up a full block on Bryant Street. Its grungy and dismal ten floors house the superior court, the DA’s offices, the southern division of the SFPD, and a jail taking up the top floor.

The medical examiner’s office is in an adjacent building, but you can get there by way of a back door in the Hall’s ground floor. I pushed open the steel-and-glass doors at the rear of the lobby, exited out the back of the building, and headed down the breezeway that led to the morgue.

I opened the door to the autopsy suite and was immediately enveloped by frosty air. I walked through the place as if I owned it, a habit encouraged by my best friend, Claire, the chief medical examiner.

But of course Claire wasn’t on the ladder taking overhead shots of the deceased woman on the table. The deputy chief, a fortysomething white man, five eight or so with salt-and-pepper hair and black horn-rimmed glasses, had taken her place.

“Dr. G.,” I said, barreling into the autopsy room.