14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 59

THE FUNERAL OF the Calhoun family was held at Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma. It was one of the most emotionally devastating events I’d ever attended.

Marie Calhoun’s father, Tom Calhoun’s father, the boys’ Little League coach, and their homeroom teacher all gave eulogies. The SFPD was also represented at the service by Chief Jacobi, Sergeant Phil Pikelny from Robbery, and Inspector Ted Swanson, who choked out a few words about “what a good kid” Calhoun had been.

Hundreds of cops in dress blues packed the chapel and spilled outside, many of them crying, and they formed a thick blue wall behind the broken family at the graveside, where four caskets, two of them child-size, were slowly lowered into the ground.

The pervasive grief was cut with anger that these hideous, nauseating deaths had happened—and had happened to a cop and his family.

I’d hardly known Calhoun, but I vividly remembered his optimism that morning at the check-cashing store where three copycat Windbreaker cops had been gunned down by passing patrolmen.

And that thought nagged me and wouldn’t quite let me go.

Finally, the funeral was over.

Conklin and I climbed up into his Bronco and crept along with the traffic moving out of the cemetery. We slowly passed the block where my mother was buried and then the place where Yuki’s hilarious mother, Keiko, had been laid to rest. Washed over by images of so many other funerals, we left Colma and took 101 back to San Francisco.

When we were within the city limits, I wanted to hit a saloon, a quiet one where old barflies would be watching a ball game and where no one knew my name. I wanted time and space to get my feelings under control before I went home to my family.

But Conklin said, “I want to look at the Calhoun house again.”

“Why, Rich?”

“I just do.”

I sighed. “OK. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll do.”