Second Chance

Chapter 12

THE SHOCKING POSSIBILITY that Tasha Catchings might not have been a random victim after all dogged me all the way back to the office. Upstairs, I ran into a wall of detectives anxiously awaiting me. Lorraine Stafford informed me there was a positive from the auto search, a '94 Dodge Caravan reported stolen three days ago down the peninsula in Mountain View. I told her to see if any of the characteristics matched.

I grabbed Jacobi and told him to wrap up his bagel and come with me.

“Where we headed?” he groaned.

“Across the bay. Oakland.”

“Mercer's still looking for you,” Karen shouted as we hit the hall. “Whaddaya want me to say?”

“Tell him I'm investigating a murder.”

Twenty minutes later, we had crossed the Bay Bridge, woven through the drab, antiquated skyline that was downtown Oakland, and pulled up in front of the Police Administration Building on Seventh. Oakland's police headquarters was a short gray panel-and-glass building in the impersonal style of the early sixties. On the second floor was Homicide, a cramped, dreary office no larger than our own. Over the years, I'd been here a few times.

Lieutenant Ron Vandervellen stood up to greet us as we were led into his office. “Hey I hear congratulations are in order, Boxer. Welcome to the world of sedentary life.”

“I wish, Ron,” I replied.

“What brings you here? You looking to check out how the real world works?”

For years, the San Francisco and Oakland homicide departments had maintained a kind of friendly rivalry, they believing all we dealt with across the bay was the occasional computer parts salesman found naked and dead in his hotel room.

“I saw you on the news last night.” Vandervellen cackled.

“Very photogenic. I mean her.” He grinned at Jacobi.

“What brings you celebrities out here?”

“A little bird named Chipman,”"I replied. Estelle Chipman was the elderly black woman Cindy told me had been found hung in her basement.

He shrugged. “I got a hundred unsolved murders if you guys don't have enough to keep you busy.”

I was used to the Vandervellen barbs, but this time he sounded particularly edgy. “No agenda, Ron. I just want to look at the crime scene, if that's okay.”

“Sure, but I think it's gonna be tough to tie it into your church shooting.”

“What's that?” I asked.

The Oakland lieutenant got up, went out into the outer office, and came back with a case file. “I guess I'm having a hard time putting together how a homicide as obviously racially motivated as yours could be committed by one of their own.” “What are you saying?” I asked. “Estelle Chipman's killer was black?”

He donned a pair of reading glasses, leafed through the file until he came to an official document marked “Alameda County Coroner's Report.”

“Read it and weep,” he muttered. “If you'd called, I could've saved you the toll... ' specimens found under the victim's fingernails suggest a hyperpigmented dermis consistent with a non-Caucasian.' Slides are out being tested as we speak.”

“You still want to check out the site?” Vandervellen asked, seemingly enjoying the moment.

“You mind? We're already here.”

“Sure, yeah, be my guest. It's Krimpman's case, but he's out. I can take you through. I don't get out to the Gus White projects much anymore. Who knows? Riding with you two super cops, I might pick something up along the way.”