The 6th Target

He judges the distance.

It's a drop of four feet to the gangway substructure, then a pretty long leap to the dock.

Fred pockets Bucky and puts both hands on the rail. He vaults over and lands on the flats of his Nikes. A cloud crosses the sun, cloaking him, making him invisible.

Move quickly, sailor. Go.

And he does it – makes the leap to the dock and runs toward the farmer's market, where he dissolves into the throng filling the parking lot.

He walks, almost casually, a half block to Embarcadero.

He's humming when he jogs down the steps to the BART station, still humming as he catches the train home.

You did it, sailor.

Part One

DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN?

Chapter 3

I WAS OFF DUTY that Saturday morning in early November, called to the scene of a homicide because my business card had been found in the victim's pocket.

I stood inside the darkened living room of a two-family house on Seventeenth Street, looking down at a wretched little scuzzball named Jose Alonzo. He was shirtless, paunchy, slumped on a sagging couch of indeterminate color, his wrists cuffed behind him. His head hung to his chest, and tears ran down his chin.

I had no pity for him.

'Was he Mirandized?' I asked Inspector Warren Jacobi, my former partner who now reported to me. Jacobi had just turned fifty-one and had seen more homicide victims in his twenty-five years on the job than any ten cops should see in a lifetime.

'Yeah, I did it, Lieutenant. Before he confessed.' Jacobi's fists twitched at his sides. Disgust crossed his timeworn face.

'Do you understand your rights?' I asked Alonzo.

He nodded and began sobbing again. 'I shouldn'ta done it, but she made me so mad.'

A toddler with a dirty white bow in her hair, wet diapers sagging to her dimpled knees, clung to her father's leg. Her wailing just about broke my heart.

'What did Rosa do to make you mad?' I asked Alonzo. 'I really want to know.'

Rosa Alonzo was on the floor, her pretty face turned toward the flaking caramel-colored wall, her head split open by the iron her husband had used to knock her down, then take her life.

The ironing board had collapsed around her like a dead horse, and the smell of burned spray starch was in the air.

The last time I'd seen Rosa, she'd told me how she couldn't leave her husband because he'd said he'd hunt her down and kill her.

I wished with all my heart she'd taken the baby and run.

Inspector Richard Conklin, Jacobi's partner, the newest and youngest member of my squad, walked into the kitchen. Rich poured cat food into a bowl for an old orange tabby cat that was mewing on the red Formica table. Interesting.

'He could be alone here for a long time,' Conklin said over his shoulder.

'Call animal control.'

'Said they were busy, Lieutenant.' Conklin turned on the taps, filled a water bowl.

Alonzo spoke up.

'You know what she said, Officer? She said, 'Get a job.' I just snapped, you understand?'

I stared at him until he turned away from me, cried out to his dead wife, 'I didn't mean to do it, Rosa. Please. Give me another chance.'

Jacobi reached for the man's arm, brought him to his feet, saying, 'Yeah, she forgives you, pal. Let's take a ride.'

The baby launched a new round of howls as Patty Whelk from Child Welfare came through the open door.

'Hey, Lindsay,' she said, stepping around the victim, 'who's Little Miss Precious?'

I picked up the child, took the dirty ribbon out of her curls, and handed her over to Patty.

'Anita Alonzo,' I said sadly, 'meet the system.'

Patty and I exchanged helpless looks as she jostled the little girl into a comfortable position on her hip.

I left Patty rummaging in the bedroom for a clean diaper. While Conklin stayed behind to wait for the ME, I followed Jacobi and Alonzo out to the street.

I said, 'See ya,' to Jacobi and climbed into my three-year-old Explorer parked next to six yards of garbage out by the street. I'd just turned the key when my Nextel bleeped on my belt. It's Saturday. Leave me the hell alone.

I caught the call on the second ring.

It was my boss, Chief Anthony Tracchio. An unusual tightness strained his voice as he raised it over the keening sound of sirens.

'Boxer,' he said, 'there's been a shooting on one of the ferries. The Del Norte. Three people are dead. A couple more wounded. I need you here. Pronto.'

Chapter 4

I HAD A REALLY BAD FEELING, thinking ahead to whatever hell had brought the chief out of his comfy home in Oakland on a Saturday. The bad feeling mushroomed when I saw half a dozen black- and-whites parked at the entrance to the pier, and two more patrol cars up on the sidewalk at either end of the Ferry Building.

A patrolman called out, 'This way, Lieu,' and waved me down the south driveway leading to the dock.

I drove past the police prowlers, ambulances, and fire rigs, and parked outside the terminal. I opened my door and stepped out into the sixty-degree haze. About a twenty-knot breeze had whipped up a stiff chop on the bay, making the Del Norte rock at her mooring.

The police activity had excited the crowd, and a thousand people shifted between the Ferry Building and the farmer's market, taking pictures, asking cops what had happened. It was as if they could smell gunpowder and blood in the air.

I ducked under the barrier tape cordoning off the dock, nodded to cops I knew, looked up when I heard Tracchio call my name.

The chief was standing at the mouth of the Del Norte.

He was wearing a leather blazer and Dockers, and sporting his signature Vitalis comb-over. He signaled to me to come aboard. Said the spider to the fly.

I headed toward him, but before I got five feet up the gangway, I had to back up and let two paramedics pass