Second Chance

Chapter 40

IT WAS CLOSE TO SEVEN on Saturday. The end of a long, insane, incredibly stressful week. Three people had died. My only good leads had come and gone.

I needed to talk to somebody, so I went up to eight, where the D. A.'s staff was located. Two doors down from the big man himself was Jill's corner office.

The executive corner was dark, offices empty, staff scattered for the weekend. In a way, though I needed to vent, I was sort of hoping Jill - the new Jill - would be at home, maybe picking through swatch books for her baby's room.

But as I approached, I heard the sound of classical music coming from within. Jill's door was cracked half open.

I knocked gently and pushed it in. There was Jill, in her favorite easy chair, knees tucked to her chest and a yellow legal pad resting on them. Her desk was piled high with briefs.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Snagged.” She sighed, raising her hands in mock surrender. “It's just this goddamn Perrone thing. Closing arguments Monday morning.” Jill was at the end of a high-profile case in which a derelict landlord was being charged with manslaughter after a faulty ceiling caved in on an eight-year-old child.

“You're pregnant, Jill. It's after seven o'clock.”

“So is Connie Sperling, for the defense. They're calling it the Battle of the Bulge.”

“Whatever they're calling it, so much for the shift of gears.”

Jill turned down the CD player and extended her long legs. “Anyway, Steve's out of town. What else is new? I'd only be doing the same thing if I were at home.” She cocked her head and smiled. “You're checking up on me.”

“No, but maybe someone should.”

“Good lord, Lindsay, I'm just preparing notes, not running a ten-k. I'm doing fine. Anyway.” - she glanced at her watch - “since when did you turn into the poster girl for keeping everything in perspective?”

“I'm not pregnant, Jill. All right, all right - I'll stop lecturing.”

I stepped inside her office - eyed her women's final four soccer photo from Stanford, framed diplomas, and pictures of her and Steve rock climbing and running with their black Lab, Snake Eyes.

“I still have a beer in the fridge if you want to sit,” she said, tossing her legal pad on the desk. “Pull a Buckler out for me.”

I did just that. Then I shifted the black Max Mara suit jacket hastily thrown over a cushion and sank back in the leather couch. We tilted our bottles, and both of us blurted in the same breath, “So... how's your case?”

“You first.” Jill laughed.

I spread my thumb and index finger barely a half inch apart to indicate basically zip. I took her through the maze of dead ends: the van, the chimera sketch, the surveillance photo of the Templars, that CSU had come up with nothing on, the Davidson ambush.

Jill came over and sat beside me on the couch. “You want to talk, Linds? Like you said, you didn't come up here to make sure I was behaving myself.”

I smiled guiltily then placed my beer on the coffee table.

“I need to shift the investigation, Jill.” “Okay,” she said. “I'm listening This is just between us.”

Piece by piece, I laid out my theory that the killer was not some reckless, hate-mongering maniac but a bold, plotting pattern killer acting out a vendetta.

“Maybe you're overreaching,” Jill replied. “What you do have is three terror crimes aimed at African Americans.”

“So why these victims, Jill? An eleven-year-old girl? A decorated cop? Estelle Chipman, whose husband has been dead for five years?”

“I don't know, honey. I just nail ' to the wall when you turn them over.” I smiled. Then I leaned forward. “Jill, I need you to help me. I need to find some connection between these victims. I know it's there. I need to check out past cases in which a white plaintiff was victimized by a black police officer. That's where my gut leads me. It's where I think these killings might start. It has something to do with revenge.”

“What happens when the next victim never had anything to do with a police officer? What are you gonna do then?”

I looked at her imploringly. “Are you going to help me?”

“Of course I'm going to help you.” She shook her head at me. “Duh... Anything you can give me that will help me narrow it down?”

I nodded. “Male, white. Maybe a tattoo or three.”

“That oughtta do it.” She rolled her eyes.

I reached out and squeezed her hand. I knew I could count on her. I looked at my watch. Seven-thirty. “I better let you finish up while you're still in your first trimester.”

“Don't go, Lindsay.” Jill held my arm. “Stick around.”

I could see something on her face. That clear, professional intensity suddenly weakened into a thousand-yard stare.

“Something wrong, Jill? Did the doctor tell you something?”

In her sleeveless vest, with her dark hair curled around her ears, she looked every bit the power lawyer, number two in the city's legal department. But there was a tremor in her breath. “I'm fine. Really physically, I'm fine. I should be happy, right? I'm gonna have a baby. I should be riding the air.”

“You should be feeling whatever you're feeling, Jill.” I took her hand.

She nodded glassily. Then she curled her knees up to her chest. “When I was a kid, I would sometimes wake up in the night. I always had this little terror, this feeling that the whole world was asleep, that around this whole, huge planet, I was the only one left awake in the world. Sometimes my father would come in and try to rock me to sleep. He'd be downstairs in his study, preparing his cases, and he'd always check on me before he turned in. He called me his second chair. But even with him there, I still felt so alone.”

She shook her head at me, tears glistening in her eyes.

“Look at me. Steve's away for two nights and I turn into a fucking idiot,” she said.

“I don't think you're an idiot,” I said, stroking her pretty face.

"I can't lose this baby, Lindsay. I know it seems stupid.

I'm carrying a life. It's here, always in me, right next to me. How is it I feel so alone?"

I held her tightly by the shoulders. My father had never been there to rock me to sleep. Even before he left us, he worked the third shift and would always head to Mcgoey's for a beer afterward. Sometimes I felt like the heartbeat that was closest to me was the pulse of the bastards I had to track down.

“I know what you mean,” I heard myself whisper. I held Jill. “Sometimes I feel that way, too.”