Second Chance

Chapter 24

LATE THAT AFTERNOON, I sat at my desk as one by one my staff called it quits for the day. I couldn't leave with them.

My mind tried over an dover to put together the parts. Everything I had was based on assumptions. Was the killer black or white? Was Claire right, that Tasha Catchings was intentionally killed? But the lion symbol had definitely been there. Link the victims, my instincts said. There's a connection.

But what the hell is it?

I glanced at my watch and placed a call to Simone Clark in personnel, catching her just as she was preparing to leave.

“Simone, I need you to pull a file for me tomorrow.”

“Sure, whose do you need?”

“A cop who retired maybe eight, ten years ago. His name was Edward Chipman.”

“That's a while back. It would be out on the docks.” The department outsourced its old records to a document storage company. “Early afternoon, okay?”

“Sure, Simone. Best you can do.”

I was still bristling with nervous energy. I took out another stack of Kirkwood's hate files and plopped them on my desk.

I opened one at random. Americans for Constitutional Action... Ploughs and Fifes, another hayseed militia group.

All these assholes, they seemed like such a bunch of right-wing jerk-offs. Was I wasting my time? Nothing jumped out.

Nothing gave me any hope that this was the right track.

Go home, Lindsay, a voice urged. Tomorrow new leads might develop. There's the van, Chipman's file.... Call it a night. Take Martha for a run.

Go home... I stacked the files, about to give in, when the top one caught my eye. The Templars. A Hells Angels offshoot out of Vallejo. The original Templars were Christian knights from the Crusades. Immediately I noticed the FBI's assessment of threat. Their rating was High.

I took the file off the pile and leafed further in. There was an FBI report outlining a series of unsolved felonies the Templars had been suspected of involvement in, bank robberies, hits for hire against Latino and black gangs.

I leafed on, case files, prison records, surveillance photos of the group. Suddenly, the breath emptied out of my lungs.

My eyes fixed on a surveillance shot: a bunch of heavy muscled, tattoo-covered bikers huddled outside a Vallejo bar they used as a headquarters. One of them hunched over his bike, back to the camera. He had a shaved head, a bandanna, and a sleeveless denim jacket over massive arms.

It was the embroidery on the back of the denim jacket that caught my eye.

I was staring at a two-headed lion with the tail of a snake.