The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

Were it not for the drama Cindy was about to create in the Chronicle, this homeless man’s case file would have gone to the bottom of the stack until he was forgotten.

Even by me.

But those multiple gunshots fired “at close range” nagged at me.

“Beating and shooting is crazy for a robbery, Rich. I’m sensing a hate crime. Or some kind of crime of passion.”

Conklin flashed his lady-killer smile.

“So let’s work it,” he said.

He turned off the engine and we walked down to the end of the block, where Cindy’s subjects still loitered outside the barrier tape.

We reinterviewed them all, then expanded our scope to include all of Townsend as well as Clyde Street and Lusk Alley. We talked to bodega cashiers, salesclerks at a gay men’s novelty sex shop, hookers and druggies hanging out on the street.

Together we knocked on apartment doors in low-rent housing and spent the afternoon questioning forklift operators and laborers in the warehouses along Townsend, asking about the shooting last night outside the Caltrain yard, asking about Bagman Jesus.

Admittedly, many people scattered when they saw our badges. Others claimed to have no knowledge of Bagman or his death.

But the people who knew of Bagman Jesus had anecdotes to tell. How he’d broken up a liquor-store holdup, sometimes worked in a soup kitchen, said that he always had a few dollars for someone who needed it.

He was the elite, king of the street, we were told, a bum with a heart of gold. And his loss was tragic for those who counted him a friend.

By day’s end, my attitude had shifted from skepticism to curiosity, and I realized that I’d caught Cindy’s fever — or maybe the fever had caught me.

Bagman Jesus had been the good shepherd of a wounded flock.

So why had he been murdered?

Had he simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Or had his death been specific and deliberate?

And that left us with two big questions no good cop could dodge with a clear conscience: Who had killed Bagman Jesus? And why?

Chapter 6

CONKLIN AND I got to the Hall around five, crossed the squad room to Lieutenant Warren Jacobi’s small glassed-in office that once had been mine.

Jacobi once had been mine, too — that is, he used to be my partner. And although we’d swapped jobs and disagreed often, we’d put in so many years and miles together, he could read my thoughts like no one else — not Claire, not Conklin, not Cindy, not Joe.

Jacobi was sitting behind his junkyard of a desk when we walked in. My old friend and boss is a gray-haired, lumpy-featured, fifty-three-year-old cop with more than twenty-five years’ experience in Homicide. His sharp gray eyes fixed on me, and I noted the laugh lines bracketing his mouth — because he wasn’t laughing.

Not even a little.

“What the hell have you two been doing all day?” he asked me. “Have I got this right? You’ve been working a homeless DOA?”

Inspector Hottie, as Conklin is known around the Hall, offered me the chair across from Jacobi’s desk, then parked his cute butt on the credenza — and started to laugh.

“I say something funny, Conklin?” Jacobi snapped. “You’ve got twelve unsolveds on your desk. Want me to list them?”

Jacobi was touchy because San Francisco’s homicide-solution rate was hovering at the bottom, somewhere below Detroit’s.

“I’ll tell him,” I said to Conklin.

I put my feet up against the front edge of Jacobi’s desk and said, “Time got away from us, Warren. This crime has a few odd angles, and the victim’s death is going to be written up in great big type in the Chronicle tomorrow. I thought we should get out in front of the story.”

“Keep talking,” said Jacobi, as if I were a suspect and he had me in the box.