huge planet, I was the only one left awake in the world. Sometimes my father would come in and try to rock me to sleep. He'd be downstairs in his study, preparing his cases, and he'd always check on me before he turned in. He called me his second chair. But even with him there, I still felt so alone.”
She shook her head at me, tears glistening in her eyes.
“Look at me. Steve's away for two nights and I turn into a fucking idiot,” she said.
“I don't think you're an idiot,” I said, stroking her pretty face.
'I can't lose this baby, Lindsay. I know it seems stupid.
I'm carrying a life. It's here, always in me, right next to me. How is it I feel so alone?'
I held her tightly by the shoulders. My father had never been there to rock me to sleep. Even before he left us, he worked the third shift and would always head to Mcgoey's for a beer afterward. Sometimes I felt like the heartbeat that was closest to me was the pulse of the bastards I had to track down.
“I know what you mean,” I heard myself whisper. I held Jill. “Sometimes I feel that way, too.”
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 41
ON THE CORNER of Ocean and Victoria, a man in a green fatigue windbreaker hunched chewing a burrito as the black Lincoln slowly made its way down the block. He had waited here dozens of nights, stalked his next prey for weeks.
The person he had watched for so long lived in a pleasant stucco house inside Ingleside Heights, just a short walk away.
He had a family, two girls in Catholic school; his wife was a registered nurse. He had a black Lab; sometimes it bounded out to greet him as his car pulled up. The Lab was named Bullitt, like the old movie.
Usually the car drove by around seven-thirty. A couple of times a week, the man got out to walk. It was always at the same spot, on Victoria. He liked to stop at the Korean market, chat with the owner as he picked out a melon or a cabbage. Playing the big man walking among his people.
Then he might mosey into Tiny's News, stuff his arms with a few magazines: Car and Driver, PC World, Sports Illustrated. Once, he had even stood behind him in the line as he waited to pay for his reading material.
He could have taken him out. Many times. One dazzling shot from a distance.
But no, this one had to be up close. Eye to eye. This murder would blow the lid off everything, the entire city of San Francisco. This would take the case international, and not many got that big.
His heart sprung alive as he huddled in the damp drizzle, but this time the black Lincoln merely passed by.
So it won't be tonight. He exhaled. Go home to your little wife and dog... But soon... You've grown forgetful, he thought, balling his burrito in the wrapper and tossing it in a trash bin. Forgetful of the past. But it always finds you.
I live with the past every day.
He watched as the black Lincoln, its windows dark, made its customary left turn onto Cerritos and disappeared into Ingleside Heights.
You stole my life. Now I'm going to take yours.
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 42
I TOOK SUNDAY MORNING OFF to run Martha by the bay and do my tai chi on the Marina Green. By noon I was in jeans and a sweatshirt, back at my desk. By Monday, the investigation was listing toward the dead zone, no new angles to work. We were putting out releases just to keep the press off our tail. Each stalled line of questioning, each frustrating dead end only narrowed the time to when Chimera would strike again.
I was returning some case files to Jill when the elevator door opened and Chief Mercer ambled in. He looked surprised when he saw me but not displeased.
“Come take a ride with me,” he said.
Mercer's car was waiting along the side entrance on Eighth Street. As the police driver leaned back, Mercer told him, “West Portal, Sam.”
West Portal was a diverse middle-class neighborhood out of the center of the city. I didn't know why Mercer would be dragging me out there in the middle of the day.
As we rode, Mercer asked a few questions but stayed mostly silent. A tremor shot through me: He's gonna take me off the case.
The driver pulled onto a residential street I had never been on before. He parked in front of a small blue Victorian across from a high school playground. A pickup basketball game was going on.
I blinked first. “What was it you wanted to talk about, Chief?”
Mercer turned to me. “You have any personal heroes, Lindsay?”
