The 8th Confession

“I feel a five-part human-interest series coming on,” she said, “about the homeless of San Francisco. And I’m going to start with that man’s life and death.”

She pointed to a dead man lying stiff in his bloody rags.

“Thirty people were crying over his body, Lindsay. I don’t know if that many people would cry if it was me lying there.”

“Shut up,” Conklin said, coming around the front of the car. “You’re crazy.” He gently shook Cindy’s shoulder, making her blond curls bounce.

“Okay, okay,” Cindy said. She smiled up at Conklin, her slightly overlapping front teeth adding a vulnerable quality to her natural adorableness. “Just kidding. But I’m real serious about Bagman Jesus. You guys keep me in the loop, okay?”

“You betcha,” I said, but I didn’t get why Cindy regarded Bagman Jesus as a celebrity, and his death as a major deal.

I said, “Cindy, street people die every day -”

“And nobody gives a damn. Hell, people want them dead. That’s my point!”

I left Cindy and Conklin in the street and went over to show my badge to K. J. Grealish, the CSI in charge. She was young, dark-haired, and skinny, and had nearly chewed her lips off from stress.

“I’ve been on my feet for the last twenty-seven hours straight,” Grealish told me, “and this pointless dung heap of a crime scene could take another twenty- seven hours. Tell me again. Why are we here?”

As the trains rumbled into the yard, dust blew up, leaves fell from the trees, and newspapers flew into the air, further contaminating the crime scene.

A horn honked – the coroner’s van clearing cops out of the way. It parked in the middle of the street. The door slid open, and Dr. Claire Washburn stepped out. She put her hands on her size-16 hips, beamed her Madonna smile at me – and I beamed back. Then I walked over and gave her a hug.

Claire is not only San Francisco ’s chief medical examiner but my closest friend. We’d bonded together a decade and a half back when she was a plump, black assistant medical examiner and I was a tall blonde with a 34D bra size, trying to survive my first savage year of on-the-job training in Homicide.

Those had been tough, bloody years for both of us, just trying to do our jobs in a man’s world.

We still talked every day. I was her new baby’s godmother, and I felt closer to Claire than I did to my own sister. But I hadn’t seen her in more than a week.

When we turned each other loose from the hug, Claire asked the CSI, “K.J.? You got your photos of the victim?”

Grealish said she had, so Claire and I ducked under the tape and, no surprise, Cindy came along with us.

“It’s okay,” I said to Grealish. “She’s with me.”

“Actually,” Cindy said under her breath, “you’re with me.”

We stepped around the blood trail, skirted the cones and markers, then Claire put down her bag and stooped beside the body. She turned Bagman’s head from side to side with her gloved hand, gently palpated his scalp, probing for lacerations, fractures, or other injuries. After a long pause, she said, “Holy moly.”

“That’s enough of that medical jargon,” I said to my friend. “Let’s have it in English.”

“As usual, Lindsay” – Claire sighed – “I’m not making any pronouncements until I do the post. But this much I’ll tell you… and this is off the record, girl reporter,” she said to Cindy. “You hear me?”

“Okay, okay. My lips are sealed. My mouth’s a safe.”

“Looks like your guy wasn’t just given a vicious beat-down,” Claire murmured. “This poor sucker took multiple gunshots to his head. I’m saying he was shot at close range, probably until the gun was empty.”

Chapter 5

THE KILLING OF a street person has zero priority in Homicide. Sounds cold, but we just don’t have the resources to work cases where the killer will never be found.

Conklin and I talked it over while sitting in the car.

“Bagman Jesus was robbed, right?” said Conklin. “Some other homeless dude beat the crap out of him and, when he fought back, blew him away.”

“About those gunshots. I don’t know. Sounds more like gangbangers. Or a bunch of kids rolling a bum for kicks, then capping him because they could get away with it. Just look at that,” I said, indicating the crime scene: bloody footprints crisscrossing the pavement, tracking in nonevidentiary trace with every step.

And to add to that mess, there were no witnesses to the shooting, no handy video cam bolted to a streetlight, and no shell casings to be found.

We didn’t even know the victim’s real name.

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.