Second Chance

Chapter 42

I TOOK SUNDAY MORNING OFF to run Martha by the bay and do my tai chi on the Marina Green. By noon I was in jeans and a sweatshirt, back at my desk. By Monday, the investigation was listing toward the dead zone, no new angles to work. We were putting out releases just to keep the press off our tail. Each stalled line of questioning, each frustrating dead end only narrowed the time to when Chimera would strike again.

I was returning some case files to Jill when the elevator door opened and Chief Mercer ambled in. He looked surprised when he saw me but not displeased.

“Come take a ride with me,” he said.

Mercer's car was waiting along the side entrance on Eighth Street. As the police driver leaned back, Mercer told him, “West Portal, Sam.”

West Portal was a diverse middle-class neighborhood out of the center of the city. I didn't know why Mercer would be dragging me out there in the middle of the day.

As we rode, Mercer asked a few questions but stayed mostly silent. A tremor shot through me: He's gonna take me off the case.

The driver pulled onto a residential street I had never been on before. He parked in front of a small blue Victorian across from a high school playground. A pickup basketball game was going on.

I blinked first. “What was it you wanted to talk about, Chief?”

Mercer turned to me. “You have any personal heroes, Lindsay?”

“You mean like Amelia Earhart or Margaret Thatcher?” I shook my head. I had never grown up with those. “Maybe Claire Washburn.” I grinned.

Mercer nodded. “Arthur Ashe was always one of mine. Someone asked him if it was hard to cope with AIDS, and he answered, ' nearly as hard as it was to deal with growing up black in the United States.'”

His expression deepened. “Vernon Jones tells the mayor that I've lost sight of what's really at stake in this case.” He pointed toward the blue Victorian across the street. "You see that house? My parents' house. I was raised there.

“My father was a mechanic in the transit yards, and my mother did the books for an electrical contractor. They worked their whole lives to send me and my sister to school. She's a trial litigator now, in Atlanta. But this is where we're from.”

“My father worked for the city, too.” I nodded.

“I know. I never told you, Lindsay, but I knew your father.”

“You knew him?”

“Yeah, we started out together. Radio cops, out of Central. Even shifted together a few times. Marty Boxer... Your father was a bit of a legend, Lindsay, and not necessarily for exemplary duty.”

“Tell me something I don't know.” “All right.” He paused. “He was a good cop then. A damned good cop. A lot of us looked up to him.”

“Before he bagged out.”

Mercer looked at me. “You must know by now, things happen in a cop's life that don't always break down so easily into choices the rest of us can understand.”

I shook my head. “I haven't spoken to him in twenty-two years.”

Mercer nodded. “I can't speak for him as a father, or as a husband, but is there a chance that as a man, or at least a cop, you've judged him without knowing all the facts?”

“He never stuck around long enough to present the facts,” I said.

“I'm sorry,” Mercer said. “I'll tell you some things about Marty Boxer, but another time.”

“Tell me what? When?”

He drew down the privacy barrier and instructed his driver that it was time to head back to the Hall. “When you find Chimera.”