11th hour

Chapter 48

Room 200 at City Hall is arranged like a courtroom. There’s the dais and the built-in wooden chairs, then a railing that sets the audience apart from the main action. The walls are painted cream, and there are video screens so that even those in the back of the room can see you sweat.

I stood on the dais and watched the gallery fill with press. Cindy took a seat in the third row and immediately bent her head over her laptop.

When the rear doors closed, the mayor stepped forward, adjusted the mike, greeted the press. Then he filled them in on an OIS, an officer involved in a shooting, that had happened last night in the Mission.

He played a 911 tape, then showed a dash-cam video of a man running at the cops with a sword, refusing to back away until he was finally, fatally, gunned down.

There was a brief silence in room 200, then hands shot up. The mayor fielded questions about the shooting, then took questions about the SFPD, specifically about the crime rate and why so many crimes were unsolved.

When the mayor had had enough, he introduced Lieutenant Jackson Brady and left the stage.

Brady advanced to the podium with his crib sheet and, holding it rigidly in front of him, began his prepared remarks.

“Three known drug dealers were shot last night on Schwerin Street and their car was set on fire. The men were dead when the fire started and the blaze pretty much obliterated all forensic evidence.”

Brady listed the victims’ names and said that the police were looking for the shooter; he said that the preliminary ballistics tests of the slugs found in the dead men’s bodies showed they were a match to the ones removed from the body of drug dealer Chaz Smith.

“We still have no leads to the shooter’s identity, but he does have a pattern. His victims are all drug dealers. The investigation is on the front burner. And that’s all I have for you now.”

Hands went up like an acre of beans sprouting in time-lapse photography, but Brady ignored them and said, “Sergeant Boxer will brief you on the case involving the remains at the Ellsworth place. Sergeant?”

And then he took a place to my right and all I could do was step forward.