Second Chance

Chapter 74

MY NEXT MOVE was to dial up Madeline Akers, assistant warden at San Quentin prison. Maddie was a friend. She told me what she knew about Coombs. “Bad cop, bad guy, real bad inmate. A cold sonofabitch.” Maddie said she would ask around about him. Maybe Frank Coombs had told somebody what he planned to do once he got outside.

“Madeline, this absolutely can't leak out,” I insisted.

“Mercer was a friend, Lindsay. I'll do anything I can. Give me a couple of days.”

“Make it one, Maddie. This is vital. He's going to kill again.”

For a long time I sat at my desk trying to piece together just what I had. I couldn't place Coombs at a crime scene. I had no weapon. I didn't even know where he was. But for the first time since Tasha Catchings was killed, I had the feeling I was onto something good.

My instinct was to ask Cindy to troll through the Chronicle's morgue for old stories. These events had happened more than twenty years before. Only a few people in the department were still around from those days.

Then I remembered I had someone who'd been there staying under my own roof.

I found my father watching the evening news when I walked through the door. “Hey,” he called. “You're home at a decent hour. Solve your case?”

I changed my clothes, grabbed a beer from the fridge, then I pulled up a chair across from him.

“I need to talk to you about something.” I looked in his eyes. “You remember a guy named Frank Coombs?”

My father nodded. “There's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Sure, I remember him. Cop who choked the kid over in the projects. They brought him up on murder charges. Sent him away.”

“You were on the force, right?”

“Yes, and I knew him. Worst excuse for a cop I ever ran into. Some people were impressed with him. He made arrests, got things done. In his own way. It was different then. We didn't have review committees looking over our shoulder. Not everything we did got into the press.”

“This kid he choked, Dad, he was fourteen.”

“Why do you want to know about Coombs? He's in jail.”

“Not any longer. He's out.” I pulled my chair closer.

“I read that Coombs claimed he killed the kid in self-defense.”

“What cop wouldn't? He said the kid tried to cut him with a sharp object he took to be a knife.”

“You remember who he was partnered up with back then, Dad?”

“Jesus.” My father shrugged. “Stan Dragula, as I recall. Yeah, he testified at the trial. But I think he died a few years back. No one wanted to work with Coombs. You were scared to walk through the neighborhoods with him.”

“Was Stan Dragula white or black?” I asked.

“Stan was white,” my father answered. '“I think Italian, or maybe Jewish.”

That wasn't the answer I had been expecting. No one had backed Coombs up. But why was he killing blacks?

“Dad, if it is Coombs doing these things... if he is out for some kind of revenge, why against blacks?”

“Coombs was an animal, but he was also a cop. Things were different then. That famous blue wall of silence... Every cop is taught at the academy, Keep your yap shut. It'll be there for you. Well, it didn't hold up for Frank Coombs; it came tumbling down on him. Everyone was glad to give him up. We're talking, what, twenty years ago? The affirmative action thing on the force was strong. Blacks and Latinos were just starting to get placed in key positions. There was this black lobby group, the OFJ... ” “Officers for justice,” I said. “They're still around.”

My father nodded. Tensions were strong. The OFJ threatened to strike. Eventually, there was pressure from the city, too. Whatever it was, Coombs felt he was handed over, hung out to dry."

It started coming clear to me. Coombs felt he had been railroaded by the black lobby of the department. He had chewed on his hatred in prison. Now twenty years later, he was back on the streets of San Francisco.

“Maybe, another time, this kind of thing might've been swept under the rug,” I said. “But not then. The OFJ nailed him.”

Suddenly, a sickening realization wormed into my brain.

“Earl Mercer was involved, wasn't he?”

My father nodded his head. “Mercer was Coombs's lieutenant.”

Part III THE BLUE WALL OF SILENCE