Second Chance

Chapter 45

WE RACED DOWN THE STEPS, climbed into Claire's Pathfinder, and made the dash from Potrero to the California Medical Center all the way over in Parnassus Heights. The entire ride, my heart pumped madly and hopefully The streets blurred by - Twenty-fourth, Guerrero, then across the Castro on Seventeenth to the hospital atop Mt. Sutro.

Barely ten minutes after I got the call, Claire spun the Pathfinder into a restricted parking space across from the hospital entrance.

Claire ID'd herself to a nurse at the front desk, asking for an up-to-date report. She looked worried as she charged inside the swinging doors. I ran up to Sam Ryan. “What's the word?”

He shook his head. “He's on the table now. If anyone can take three bullets and make it through, it's him.”

I flipped open my cell phone and patched into Lorraine Stafford at the scene. “Things are crazy here,” she said.

“There's people from Internal Affairs, and some goddamn city crisis agency And the fucking press. I haven't been able to get close to the radio cop who was first on the scene.”

“Don't let anyone other than you or Chin get close to that scene,” I told her. “I'll be out there as soon as I can.”

Claire came back out of the ER. Her face was drawn.

“They've got him open now, Lindsay. It doesn't look good. His cerebral cortex was penetrated. He's lost a ton of blood. It's a miracle he's hung on as long as he has.”

“Claire, I've got to get in there to see him.”

She shook her head. "He's barely alive, Lindsay.

Besides, he's under anesthesia."

I had this mounting sense that I owed it to Mercer, each unresolved death. That he knew, and if he died the truth would die with him. “I'm going in there.”

I pushed through the doors leading to the ER, but Claire held on to me. As I looked into her eyes, the last glimmer of hopefulness drained out of my body. I had always fought with Mercer, battled him. He was someone to whom I felt I always had something to prove, and prove again and again.

But in the end, he had believed in me. In the strangest of ways, I felt as if I were losing a father all over again.

Barely a minute later, a doctor in a green smock came out, peeling off latex gloves. He said a few words to one of the mayor's men, then to the assistant chief, Anthony Tracchio.

“The chief's dead,” Tracchio uttered.

Everyone stood staring blankly ahead. Claire put an arm around me and hugged.

“I don't know if I can do this,” I said, holding tightly on to her shoulder.

“Yes, you can,” she said.

I caught Mercer's doctor as he headed back to the ER. I introduced myself. “Did he say anything when he was brought in?”

The doctor shrugged. “He held on for a while, but whatever he said was incoherent. Just reflexive. He was on life support from the moment he came in.”

“His brain was still working, wasn't it, Doctor?” He had faced his killer head-on. Taken three shots. I could see Mercer holding on just long enough to say something. “Anything you remember?”

His tired eyes searched for something. "I'm sorry, Inspector. We were trying to save his life. You might try the EMS techs who brought him in.

He went back inside. Through the windows in the ER doors, I caught a glimpse of Eunice Mercer and one of their teenage daughters, tearfully hugging in the corridor.

My insides felt as if they were ripping apart, a knot of nausea building.

I ran into the ladies' room. I bent over the sink and splashed cold water all over my face. “Goddamn it! Goddamnit!”

When my body calmed, I looked up in the mirror. My eyes were dark, hollow and blank; voices drummed loudly in my head.

Four murders, they tolled... Four black cops.