James Patterson - 11th hour

“It’s my duty to tell them the truth,” he said earnestly.

“What were you doing when you told your readers that six hundred and thirteen people had been killed?”

“Okay, that was my editor who did that,” Blayney said. “If I go a couple of days on a story without news, he’ll boost what I do have. So the number six thirteen becomes six hundred and thirteen victims. You can’t tell me otherwise, can you? Let me ask that another way — what does the number mean exactly?”

“Jason, that number is exactly the kind of detail we don’t release, and if it wasn’t for your story, I would not have mentioned it today. When the nutjobs start confessing to crimes they didn’t commit, details, like handwritten index cards, are how we exclude them. Do you understand? So, by putting six hundred and thirteen out there, you made our job much harder. Maybe six hundred and thirteen times harder.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I really am. I had to run with something. Give me something now. I can make you the heroine of this story,” Blayney said.

“I’m not looking for that, Jason. I’m not a hero. I’m not superhuman. My partner and I, all of the SFPD, we’re doing our best, working as hard as humanly possible. Print that, will you?”

I dug a five out of my pocket and put it down on the table.

I left the diner thinking it had been a mistake to go there. I’d wanted him to give the good guys a break, but that wouldn’t give him the brazen headlines that sold papers.

I could almost see his next story: a photo of my back as I went to my car and a quote, “Sergeant Boxer tells this reporter, ‘I’m doing the best I can.’”

By the time I got back to my desk, Cindy’s featured story about the press conference was the front page of the Chronicle online.

Cindy’s headline:

ONE ELLSWORTH VICTIM IDENTIFIED; SFPD STILL SCRAMBLING.

I scanned the article.

Cindy’s lede was about Marilyn Varick, her background, her triumphs. The second paragraph detailed her more recent decline. There was a picture of Marilyn coming out of the ocean with her surfboard, and then Marilyn Varick was left behind as the article steamed ahead.

Although Marilyn Varick has been identified, six victims remain unnamed. Sergeant Lindsay Boxer of Homicide admitted this morning that the SFPD still has no suspects and no leads to solving the crimes committed at the Ellsworth compound.

I finished reading Cindy’s irritating story and wondered if I was paranoid.

I said to Conklin, “I’m starting to pick up a bash-Boxer trend in the media. Do I look like a pinata to you?”

He glanced up, said, “A little bit. Your bangs, maybe. Why do you ask?”

He laughed. I stuck out my tongue and said, “Well then, I’m going to be the best pinata I can be.”

Just then, Brady’s door opened. He stood there and stared across the bullpen, then called the two of us into his office.

Brady looked like he’d been sleeping facedown on his desk. His skin was ashen and he had swollen bags under his eyes. Whatever was on his mind, I could tell it was bad.

Brady said, “I just got a heads-up that Chaz Smith’s society wife is going public. Big-time. Prime time. Her interview with Katie Couric is going to air tonight.”

I grabbed the one side chair and Conklin leaned his tail-bone against the credenza. He asked, “What’s the gist of the story?”

“Mrs. Smith says that her husband was an undercover cop. That the SFPD screwed up, of course. Narcotics is going to take the heat for Smith, but his murder is going to get connected to the ones last night in the hood, and therefore, Homicide will also take a beating.”

I looked at the stacks of personnel folders on his desk. Brady saw me looking and went on. “I asked for a rundown of all police personnel who have been suspended or canned. Or who have had some sort of major meltdown due to either a one-off incident or the cumulative wear and tear of being a cop.

“I went over every cop’s file in every department.”

He dragged his chair out from behind his desk and dropped into it. He sighed, then looked at me and Conklin. “It makes me sick to have to say it, but the person on the top of my list is your old partner, Boxer. Yours too, Conklin. Warren Jacobi.”

I almost had a meltdown myself.

Spots blinked on and off in front of my eyes and I thought for a minute that I was going to faint.

Jacobi was on medical leave. He hadn’t punched a time clock in months. He was tough, but he was not a vigilante. I refused to believe otherwise.

I finally managed to say, “Boss, that’s not possible. With all due respect, you don’t know Warren Jacobi. At all.”

My relationship with Jacobi went back ten years. He was my partner for most of that time, and we were nothing short of great together. We averaged fourteen hours a day sitting side by side in a car or face-to-face across our desks.

I laughed at his crude jokes and he told me I was brilliant, since I thought he was funny. We solved some terrible crimes together and became the closest of friends. It got so that we moved as though we were operating with the same brain.

Then something happened that brought us even closer together. In fact, it bonded us with blood.

We’d been watching a late-model Mercedes parked in a bad neighborhood. When it took off at seventy miles an hour, we followed. It was a chase that ended when the top-of-the-line luxury sedan crashed and flipped in a dark and desolate alley.

Two kids were in the car, both sky-high on meth. The older was a fifteen-year-old girl with a pixie haircut, a pink sweater, and I think some kind of sparkly makeup on her cheeks. Her brother was two years younger and he was injured.

Both of them were crying and bloody and afraid we would tell their father that they had taken his car. Jacobi and I put one and one together, got two scared teens, called for medics, and put our weapons down.

It was a mutual lapse of judgment and could have been the biggest mistake of our lives.

The girl went for her learner’s permit and pulled out a gun. She got off five shots, hitting me twice, and her brother put three rounds into Jacobi before I managed to take them down. Then we lay on the deserted street and almost bled to death before the ambulance came.

Jacobi’s injuries that night had slowed him down. He couldn’t run. He put on weight. He was in constant pain, and about ten months ago, Jacobi had been promoted to chief.

The pain got to him though, and recently, Jacobi had taken medical leave to have his damaged hip replaced.

“He’s been out for three months,” Brady said to me now. “Jacobi was either off duty or on leave when the first three shootings occurred. He was off the radar when Chaz Smith was taken out and when those three shits were wasted on Schwerin.”

Brady talked over my objections. Told me to hear him out.

“Jacobi can use his radio two ways: to gather intel and to create a distraction. He has street sources. He could go into the property room at any time. He’s chief of police, Boxer. Who’s gonna suspect him? He can hide in plain sight the way only a fifty-five-year-old white guy with a limp can.”

“He’s not a killer.”

“Let’s say you’re wrong,” Brady said.

“He’s like family to me,” I said.

“I don’t buy it either,” Conklin said. “He’s a great cop. He just wouldn’t go off the deep end and become a vigilante.”

Brady waved our comments away.

“I need you both to work closely with me. We’re not going to say anything to Jacobi or to anyone else. We’re just going to watch him.”

My mind drifted.

I hadn’t been in touch with Jacobi in months. I’d gone to the hospital after his operation. I’d brought flowers, but I’d called him only a couple of times after that. It was embarrassing to think about it. I wondered now how was he doing.