The 6th Target

with a rolling stretcher bouncing between them.

I dropped my eyes to the victim, a large African American woman, her face mostly covered with an oxygen mask, an IV line running into her arm. Blood soaked the sheet tucked tightly over her body.

I felt a pain in my chest, my heart catching on a full second before my brain put it together.

The victim was Claire Washburn!

My best friend had been shot on the ferry!

I grabbed the gurney, stopping its forward motion and causing the brassy blond paramedic bringing up the rear to bark at me, 'Lady, out of the way!'

'I'm a cop,' I said to the paramedic, pulling open my jacket to show her my badge.

'I don't care if you're God,' said the blonde. 'We're getting her to the ER.'

My mouth was hanging open and my heart was pounding in my ears.

'Claire,' I called out, walking quickly now alongside the stretcher as the gurney rumbled over the gangway and onto the asphalt. 'Claire, it's Lindsay. Can you hear me?'

No answer.

'What's her condition?' I asked the paramedic.

'Do you understand that we have to get her to the hospital?'

'Answer me, goddamn it!'

'I don't freaking know!'

I stood helplessly by as the paramedics opened the ambulance doors.

More than ten minutes had passed since I'd gotten Tracchio's call. Claire had been lying on the deck of the ferry all that time, losing blood, trying to breathe with a bullet hole ripped into her chest.

I gripped her hand, and tears immediately filled my eyes.

My friend turned her face to me, her eyelids fluttering as she forced them open.

'Linds,' she mouthed. I moved her mask aside. 'Where's Willie?' she asked me.

I remembered then – Claire's youngest son, Willie, was working for the ferry line on the weekends. That's probably why Claire had been on the Del Norte.

'We got separated,' Claire gasped. 'I think he went after the shooter.'

Chapter 5

CLAIRE'S EYES ROLLED UP, and she slipped away from me. The knees of the gurney buckled, and the paramedics slid the stretcher out of my grasp and into the ambulance.

The doors slammed. The siren started up its blaring whoop, and the ambulance carrying my dearest friend headed into traffic toward San Francisco General.

Time was working against us.

The shooter was gone, and Willie had gone after him.

Tracchio put his hand on my shoulder. 'We're getting descriptions of the doer, Boxer -'

'I have to find Claire's son,' I said.

I broke away from Tracchio and ran toward the farmer's market, scanning faces as I pushed past the slow- moving crowd. It was like walking through a herd of cattle.

I looked into every fricking produce stall and in between them, raked the aisles with my eyes, searching desperately for Willie – but it was Willie who found me.

He shoved his way toward me, calling my name. 'Lindsay! Lindsay!'

The front of his T-shirt was soaked with blood. He was panting, and his face was rigid with fear.

I grabbed his shoulders with both hands, tears welling up again.

'Willie, where are you hurt?'

He shook his head. 'This isn't my blood. My mom's been shot.'

I pulled him to me, hugged him to my chest, felt some of my terrible fear leaving me. At least Willie was okay.

'She's on her way to the hospital,' I said, wishing I could add, She'll be fine. 'You saw the shooter? What does he look like?'

'He's a skinny white man,' Willie said as we bumped through the mob. 'Has a beard, long brown hair. He kept his eyes down, Lindsay. I never saw his eyes.'

'How old is he?'

'Like, maybe a few years younger than you.'

'Early thirties?'

'Yeah. And he's taller than me. Maybe six foot one, wearing cargo pants and a blue Windbreaker. Lindsay, I heard him say to my mom that she was supposed to stop the shooting. That it was her job. What's that supposed to mean?'

Claire is chief medical examiner of San Francisco. She's a forensic pathologist, not a cop.

'You think it was personal? That he targeted your mom? Knew her?'

Willie shook his head. 'I was helping to tie up the boat when the screaming started,' he told me. 'He shot some other people first. My mom was the last one. He had a gun right up to her head. I grabbed an iron pipe,' he said. 'I was going to brain him with it, but he shot at me. Then he jumped overboard. I went after him – but I lost him.'

It really hit me then.

What Willie had done. My voice was loud, and I grabbed his shoulders.

'What if you'd caught up with him? Willie, did you think about that? That 'skinny white man' was armed. He would have killed you.'

Tears jumped out of Willie's eyes, rolled down his sweet, young face. I relaxed my grip on his shoulders, took him into my arms.

'But you were very brave, Willie,' I said. 'You were very brave to stand up to a killer to protect your mom.

'I think you saved her life.'

Chapter 6

I KISSED WILLIE'S CHEEK through the open patrol-car window. Then Officer Pat Noonan drove Willie to the hospital and I boarded the ferry, joining Tracchio in the open front compartment of the Del Norte's top deck.

It was a scene of unforgettable horror. Bodies lying where they'd fallen on the thirty or forty square yards of bloody fiberglass deck, footprints leaving tracks in all directions. Articles of clothing had been dropped here and there – a red baseball cap was squashed underfoot, mixed with paper cups and hot dog wrappers and newspapers soaked in blood.

I felt a sickening wave of despair. The killer could be anywhere, and evidence that might lead us to him had been lost every time a cop or a passenger or a paramedic walked across the deck.

Plus, I couldn't stop thinking about Claire.

'You okay?' Tracchio asked me.

I nodded, afraid that if I started to cry, I wouldn't be able to stop.

'This is Andrea Canello,' Tracchio said, pointing to the body of a woman in tan pants and a white blouse lying up against the hull. 'According to that fellow over there,' he said, pointing to a teenager with spiky hair and a sunburned nose, 'the doer shot her first. Then he shot her son. A little kid. About nine.'

'The boy going to make it?' I asked.

Tracchio shrugged. 'He lost a lot of blood.' He pointed to another body, a male Caucasian, white haired,