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"Just my daughter," the frightened woman shrieked.
"She's two."
The black-vested SWAT team barged past her into the house as if they were
searching for Elian Gonzalez.
"Is that your van?" jacobi barked.
The woman's eyes darted toward the street. "What is this about?"
"Is that your van?" Jacobi's voice boomed again.
"No," she said, trembling. "No.."
"Do you know who it belongs to?"
She looked again, terrified, and shook her head. "I've never seen it before in
my life."
It was all wrong; I could see that. The neighborhood, the plastic kid's slide
on the lawn, the spooked mom in the work-out clothes. A disappointed sigh was
expelled from my chest.
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The van had been dumped here.
All of a sudden, a green Audi knifed its way up to the curb, followed by two
police cars. The Audi must have gone right through our roadblock. A
well-dressed man in a suit and tortoiseshell glasses jumped out and ran toward
the house. "Kathy, what the hell's going on?"
"Steve... " The woman hugged him with a sigh of relief.
"This is my husband. I called him when I saw all the police outside our
house."
The man looked around at the eight cop cars, SWAT backup, and the SFPD
inspectors standing around with weapons drawn. "What are you doing at my
house? This is insane! This is nuts!"
"We believe that van was the vehicle used in the commission of a homicide," I
said. "We have every right to be here."
"A homicide... ?"
Two of Arbichaut's men emerged from the house, indicating that there wasn't
anyone else inside. Across the street, people were starting to file outdoors.
"That van's been our number one priority for two days. I'm sorry to have upset
you. There was no way to be sure.
The husband's indignation rose. His face and neck were beet red. "You're
thinking we had something to do with this? With a homicide?"
I figured I had upset their lives enough. "The La Salle Heights shooting."
"Have you people lost your minds? You suspected us in the strafing of a
church?" His jaw dropped, and he fixed on me incredulously. "Do you idiots
have any idea what I do?"
My eyes fell on his pinstriped gray suit, his blue button-down-collar shirt. I
had the humiliating feeling I had just been made a fool of.
"I'm chief counsel for the Northern California chapter of the Anti-Defamation
League."
Chapter 21.
WE HAD BEEN made fools of by the killer. No one on the block knew anything
about or had any connection to the stolen van. It had been dumped there,
purposely, to show us up. Even as Clapper's CSU went over it inch by inch, I
knew it wouldn't yield shit. I studied the decal and I was sure it was the
same thing I had seen in Oakland. One head was a lion's, one seemed to be a
goat's, the tail suggested a reptile. But what the hell did it mean?
"One thing we learned." Jacobi smirked. "The SOB's got a sense of humor." "I'm
glad you're a fan," I said.
Back at the Hall, I said to Lorraine, "I want to know where that van came
from; I want to know who it belonged to, who had access to it, every contact
the owner had a month prior to its theft."
I was fuming mad. We had a vicious killer out there but not a single clue as
to what made him tick. Was it a hate crime or a killing spree? An organized
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group or a lone wolf?
We knew the guy was fairly intelligent. His strikes had been well planned, and
if irony was part of his plan, dumping the getaway car where he had was a real
beaut.
Karen buzzed in, informing me that Ron Vandervellen was on the line. The
Oakland cop came on chuckling. "Word is you managed to subdue a dangerous
threat to our society masquerading as a legal watchdog in the Anti-Defamation
League."
"I guess that makes our investigations about equal, Ron," I retorted.
"Relax, Lindsay, I didn't call to rub it in," he said, shifting his tone.
"Actually, I thought I would make your day."
"I won't argue, Ron. I could use anything about now. What do you have for us?"
"You knew Estelle Chipman was a widow, right?"
"I think you mentioned that."
"Well, we were doing some standard background on her. We found a son in
Chicago. He's coming to claim the body. Given what's been going on, I thought
what he told us was too coincidental to ignore."
"What, Ron?"
"Her husband died five years ago. Heart attack. Want to guess what the dude
did for a living?"
I had the rising feeling Vandervellen was about to blow this thing wide open.
"Estelle Chipman's husband was a San Francisco cop."
Chapter 22.
CINDY THOMAS parked her Mazda across from the La Salle Heights Church and let
out a long sigh. The church's white clapboard front had been defaced by a
pattern of ugly chinks and bullet holes. A gaping hole where the beautiful
stained-glass window had been was sealed with a black canvas tarp.
She remembered seeing it the day the window was first unveiled, on her old
beat at the paper. The mayor, some local dignitaries, Aaron Winslow all made
speeches about how the beautiful scene had been paid for through community
work. A symbol. She remembered interviewing Winslow and being impressed with
his passion, and also his unexpected humbleness.
Cindy ducked under the yellow police tape and stepped closer to the
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