At the end was a five-foot-high chain-link fence dividing the church grounds from the surrounding neighborhood. The fence wasn't high. I planted my flats and hoisted myself over.
I found myself facing penned-in backyards and tiny row houses. A few people had gathered, watching the show. To the right, the playgrounds of the Whitney Young projects.
Jacobi finally caught up with me. “Take it easy, Loo,” he huffed. “There's an audience. You're making me look bad.”
“This is how he must've made his way out, Warren.” We looked in both directions. One way led toward an alley, the other toward a row of homes.
I shouted to a group of onlookers who had gathered on a back porch, “Anyone see anything?” No one responded.
“Someone was shooting at the church,” I shouted. “A little girl's been killed. Help us out. We need your help.”
Everyone stood around with the unconfiding silence of people who don't talk to the police.
Then slowly a woman of about thirty came forward. She was nudging a young boy ahead of her. “Bernard saw something,” she said in a muffled voice.
Bernard appeared to be about six, with cautious, round eyes, wearing a gold-and-purple Kobe Bryant sweatshirt.
“It was a van,” Bernard blurted. “Like Uncle Reggie's.” He pointed to the dirt road leading to the alley. “It was parked down there.”
I knelt down, gently smiling into the scared boy's eyes.
“What color van, Bernard?”
The kid replied, “White.”
“My brother's got a white Dodge minivan,” Bernard's mother said.
“Was it like your uncle's, Bernard?” I asked.
“Sorta. Not really though.”
“Did you see the man who was driving it?”
He shook his head. “I was bringing out the garbage. I only saw it drive away.”
“Do you think you would recognize it again if you saw it?” I asked.
Bernard nodded.
“Because it looked like your uncle's?”
He hesitated. “No, because it had a picture on the back.”
“A picture? You mean like an insignia? Or some kind of advertising?”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head; his moon-like eyes were searching around. Then they lit up. “I mean like that.” He pointed toward a pickup truck in a neighbor's driveway.
There was a sticker of a Cal Golden Bear on the rear bumper.
“You mean a decal?” I confirmed.
“On the door.”
I held the boy softly by the shoulders. “What did this decal look like, Bernard?” “Like Mufasa,” the boy said, “from The Lion King.”
“A lion?” My mind raced through anything that seemed likely. Sports teams, college logos, corporations... “Yeah, like Mufasa,” Bernard repeated. “Except it had two heads.”
Womans Murder Club 2 - Second Chance
Chapter 5
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, I was pushing through a surging crowd that had built up on the steps of the Hall of Justice. I felt hollowed out and terribly sad, but knew I couldn't show it here.
The lobby of the tomb-like granite building where I worked was packed with reporters and news crews, shoving their microphones at anyone who came in wearing a badge.
Most of the crime reporters knew me but I waved them off until I could get upstairs.
Then a set of hands grasped my shoulders and a familiar voice chimed, 'Linds, we need to talk.
I spun to face Cindy Thomas, one of my closest friends, though it also happened she was the lead crime reporter at the Chronicle. “I won't bother you now,” she said above the din. “But it's important. How about Susie's, at ten?”
It had been Cindy who, as a stringer buried on the paper's Metro desk, had sneaked into the heart of the bride and groom case and helped blow it wide open. Cindy who, as much as any of us, was responsible for the gold on my shield today.
I managed a smile. “I'll see you there.”
