Steven Gore - Final Target

Four hundred joggers and cyclists blocked the sloping intersection of Webster and Pacific. Uniformed officers ceded the street at Spike’s order and redirected traffic to the surrounding neighborhood. Television reporters with trailing camera crews worked the crowd, searching for anyone who knew Burch or Courtney, reaching for fragments of fact and grasping at rumors.

“Whoever shot him was looking for a fight,” a taut, middle-aged man wearing a black ASICS running suit told Gage and Spike.

“How do you figure?” Gage asked.

“I jog here every day. A lot of us run in the street to avoid the dog walkers and the strollers. Some of these asshole drivers go out of their way to force us off the road. I heard some people saying that the shooter had flipped off the runner.” The man scanned the throng, then pointed at a young couple in matching gray sweat suits standing next to a stroller. “There they are. I’ve got to get to the office. If you need anything else, you’ve got my number.”

As Gage and Spike started toward them, a local television reporter blocked their path. She jammed a microphone in Spike’s face, then looked at the camera.

“I’m with Lieutenant Spike Pacheco of the San Francisco Police Department…Lieutenant Pacheco”-she cocked her coiffured blond head toward the crowd behind her-“can you confirm the rumor that Jack Burch was shot because of a love triangle?”

Spike grabbed the top of the microphone and twisted it out of her hand, then glared at the cameraman. “Turn that fucking thing off.” Then toward the reporter, his brown face reddening with rage. “It’s not good enough for you that the guy’s lying in a coma? You’ve got to try to destroy his reputation, too? For what, Jane? For what?”

He looked over at Gage, who shook his head. Let it go. Don’t let her create a story where there isn’t one.

Spike tossed the microphone to the cameraman, then jabbed his forefinger at her face. “You do this kind of shit one more time and nobody at SFPD is ever gonna talk to you. You might as well go back to doing the farm report in Boise.”

Gage grabbed Spike’s arm and led him away. “Take it easy. Get the press officer out here to run interference for you. I don’t want your face showing up on television again, and mine ever. We can’t let the guy see us coming until it’s too late for him to get away.”

Spike glared back over his shoulder. “Asshole. Who the fuck does she think she is?”

His fury faded as they walked along the edge of the crowd toward the young couple. He displayed his badge as they approached.

“Thanks for coming out, Lieutenant,” the woman said. “We were hoping to speak with you.”

Gage pointed back from where they came. “A guy told us he overheard you two say something about the shooter flipping off Jack.”

“That’s not what I said.” The woman’s voice hardened, as if being misquoted was a personal assault. “I said that I saw a driver’s left hand, framed in his window. For all I know, he was scratching his nose. It was dark outside and his car was dark inside. The car was heading east, like us, but Jack was running the other direction. It was only a few minutes ago, when we overheard someone describing the car and its route, that it crossed our minds that the driver might’ve circled the block and went after him.”

Gage looked at Spike, who nodded. That’s what Burch was trying to communicate with his raised hand as he was wheeled into surgery. Graham. Tell Graham. For the first time Gage felt Burch’s dread that those words and that gesture would be his last-and no one would ever understand.

“Male or female?” Gage asked.

“Male. I’m sure about that.”

“Race?”

“White. Maybe Hispanic, but light-skinned.”

Spike obtained their telephone number, then he and Gage headed back into the crowd.

“I’m still thinking the guy was a helluva good shot,” Spike said. “Two trigger pulls and two hits. Side-by-side.”

“At least we know he’s left-handed.” Gage stopped and turned toward Spike. He held up his left hand, forefinger extended and bent. “I think they saw the shooter’s trigger finger.”

Spike grunted as he dropped into the driver’s seat of his car an hour later, then glanced over at Gage. “We’re just going through the motions. The guy who shot Jack is gone. Long gone. And the partial description we’ve got is all we’re ever going to get. And I know you’re thinking the same thing. I saw you checking out the street-lights, figuring how the shadows fell. There’s no way Jack could’ve seen the shooter.”

“We don’t know that yet. He was moving. The shooter was moving.”

“I know what you’re trying to do, Graham, but neither one of us has ever been good at wishful thinking.”

Gage watched Spike’s pupils flit side to side, as if he was torn by an inner conflict that extended beyond the morning’s frustrations. “What’s going on?”

Spike took in a long breath and exhaled. “Since I took your spot in homicide, I’ve been doing the same thing every day-gunshots, autopsies, and chingasas on dope. Most of my life doing the same damn thing.”

“But you’re the best-”

“Bullshit. There’s no best in police work, just degrees of failure. And I’ve had twenty-nine-point-nine-nine-nine years of it.”

Spike fell silent for a moment, then he sighed and looked at Gage. “You got out when you’d seen all there was to see around here. Your world is London, Hong Kong, Moscow. Me, I spent the whole time trapped in a few square miles, a place that looks like a crushed potato. And it’s like I’ve just been watching the same damn movie over and over and over, and the ending never gets any better.”

Gage crossed his arms over his chest, then settled a little in his seat. “You know why I really left? More than anything?”

“I thought you wanted to go to grad school, read some philosophy books, ponder the deep thoughts.”

“There were things I wanted to think through, and Cal was a good place to do it, but that wasn’t the real reason. I just never fit in. Most people in the department were there to prove something, get over something, or hide from something behind the badge.”

“What about me?”

“You were the exception. You were trying to save the world. Every day coming into the squad room, big smile on your face.”

“And you?”

“I didn’t have your optimism.”

“Well, I didn’t save much of it.”

Gage glanced toward four uniformed cops standing together by a patrol car, sipping coffee, ignoring the milling crowd. “More than your share, and more than any cop I ever knew.”

Spike’s eyes went vacant, then he nodded. “Now I get it.”

“Get what?”

“What you said just before you resigned. You said it was like we were all in different departments together.” Spike smiled to himself, then rotated his thumb toward Gage. “You know what we used to call you behind your back?”

“I never had a nickname.”

“You just didn’t know it because nobody had the guts to say it to your face. We called you Buddha. Like when you got your detective’s badge, the other guys beaming like the teacher gave them a gold star, you looking like somebody handed you a glass of water.”

Gage shrugged.

“But that wasn’t the truth.” Spike looked out at the intersection where Burch was shot down. “No cop ever felt the tragedy in a homicide scene more than you. You just didn’t show it. While the rest of us hid behind callousness and gallows humor-or even just the mechanics of how the thing happened-you’d immerse yourself in it, imagining what happened as if you’d been the guy lying inside the chalk marks.”

Spike fell silent, then shook his head. “I don’t know how you did it. If I’d tried to do it your way all these years, I’d have blown my brains out by now.”