James Patterson - The 8th Confession

“He wore a really big cross, ” said a Mexican dishwasher who worked at a Thai restaurant. He sported an Adidas T-shirt and jeans under a dirty white apron. Had koi tattooed on his arms. “The cross was made of two, whatchamacallit, nails -”

“It was a crucifix, Tommy,” said a bent white-haired woman leaning against her shopping cart at the edge of the crowd, sores on her legs, her filthy red coat dragging in the street.

“’Scuuuuse me, boss. What I meant was, a crucifix. ”

“And they weren’t nails, they were bolts, about three inches long, tied together with copper wire. And don’t forget that toy baby on that cross. A little pink baby.” The old woman held a thumb and forefinger an inch apart to show Cindy how small that toy baby was.

“Why would someone take his crucifix?” the heavyset woman asked. “But his b-b-bag. That was a real leather bag! Lady, write this down! He was murdered for his s-s-stuff. ”

“We didden even know his real name,” said Babe, a big girl from the Chinese massage parlor. “He give me ten dollah when I had no food. He didden want nothing for it.”

“Bagman took care of me when I had pneumonia,” said a gray- haired man, his chalk-striped suit pants cinched at the waist with twine. “My name is Bunker. Charles Bunker,” he told Cindy.

He stuck out his hand, and Cindy shook it.

“I heard shots last night,” Bunker said. “It was after midnight.”

“Did you see who shot him?”

“I wish I had.”

“Did he have any enemies?”

“Will you let me through? ” said a black man with dreads, a gold nose stud, and a white turtleneck under an old tuxedo jacket who was threading his way through the crowd toward Cindy.

He slowly spelled out his name – Harry Bainbridge – so Cindy would get it right. Then Bainbridge held a long, bony finger above Bagman’s body, traced the letters stitched to the back of Bagman’s bloody coat.

“You can read that?” he asked her.

Cindy nodded.

“Tells you everything you want to know.”

Cindy wrote it down in her book.

Jesus Saves.

BY THE TIME Conklin and I got to Fourth and Townsend, uniforms had taped off the area, shunted the commuters the long way around to the station entrance, shooed bystanders behind the tape, and blocked off all but official traffic.

Cindy was standing in the street.

She flagged us down, opened my car door for me, started pitching her story before I put my feet on the ground.

“I feel a five-part human-interest series coming on,” she said, “about the homeless of San Francisco. And I’m going to start with that man’s life and death.”

She pointed to a dead man lying stiff in his bloody rags.

“Thirty people were crying over his body, Lindsay. I don’t know if that many people would cry if it was me lying there.”

“Shut up,” Conklin said, coming around the front of the car. “You’re crazy.” He gently shook Cindy’s shoulder, making her blond curls bounce.

“Okay, okay,” Cindy said. She smiled up at Conklin, her slightly overlapping front teeth adding a vulnerable quality to her natural adorableness. “Just kidding. But I’m real serious about Bagman Jesus. You guys keep me in the loop, okay?”

“You betcha,” I said, but I didn’t get why Cindy regarded Bagman Jesus as a celebrity, and his death as a major deal.

I said, “Cindy, street people die every day -”

“And nobody gives a damn. Hell, people want them dead. That’s my point!”

I left Cindy and Conklin in the street and went over to show my badge to K. J. Grealish, the CSI in charge. She was young, dark-haired, and skinny, and had nearly chewed her lips off from stress.

“I’ve been on my feet for the last twenty-seven hours straight,” Grealish told me, “and this pointless dung heap of a crime scene could take another twenty- seven hours. Tell me again. Why are we here?”

As the trains rumbled into the yard, dust blew up, leaves fell from the trees, and newspapers flew into the air, further contaminating the crime scene.

A horn honked – the coroner’s van clearing cops out of the way. It parked in the middle of the street. The door slid open, and Dr. Claire Washburn stepped out. She put her hands on her size-16 hips, beamed her Madonna smile at me – and I beamed back. Then I walked over and gave her a hug.

Claire is not only San Francisco ’s chief medical examiner but my closest friend. We’d bonded together a decade and a half back when she was a plump, black assistant medical examiner and I was a tall blonde with a 34D bra size, trying to survive my first savage year of on-the-job training in Homicide.

Those had been tough, bloody years for both of us, just trying to do our jobs in a man’s world.

We still talked every day. I was her new baby’s godmother, and I felt closer to Claire than I did to my own sister. But I hadn’t seen her in more than a week.

When we turned each other loose from the hug, Claire asked the CSI, “K.J.? You got your photos of the victim?”

Grealish said she had, so Claire and I ducked under the tape and, no surprise, Cindy came along with us.

“It’s okay,” I said to Grealish. “She’s with me.”

“Actually,” Cindy said under her breath, “you’re with me. ”

We stepped around the blood trail, skirted the cones and markers, then Claire put down her bag and stooped beside the body. She turned Bagman’s head from side to side with her gloved hand, gently palpated his scalp, probing for lacerations, fractures, or other injuries. After a long pause, she said, “Holy moly.”

“That’s enough of that medical jargon,” I said to my friend. “Let’s have it in English.”

“As usual, Lindsay” – Claire sighed – “I’m not making any pronouncements until I do the post. But this much I’ll tell you… and this is off the record, girl reporter,” she said to Cindy. “You hear me?”

“Okay, okay. My lips are sealed. My mouth’s a safe. ”

“Looks like your guy wasn’t just given a vicious beat-down, ” Claire murmured. “This poor sucker took multiple gunshots to his head. I’m saying he was shot at close range, probably until the gun was empty. ”

THE KILLING OF a street person has zero priority in Homicide. Sounds cold, but we just don’t have the resources to work cases where the killer will never be found.

Conklin and I talked it over while sitting in the car.

“Bagman Jesus was robbed, right?” said Conklin. “Some other homeless dude beat the crap out of him and, when he fought back, blew him away.”

“About those gunshots. I don’t know. Sounds more like gangbangers. Or a bunch of kids rolling a bum for kicks, then capping him because they could get away with it. Just look at that,” I said, indicating the crime scene: bloody footprints crisscrossing the pavement, tracking in nonevidentiary trace with every step.

And to add to that mess, there were no witnesses to the shooting, no handy video cam bolted to a streetlight, and no shell casings to be found.

We didn’t even know the victim’s real name.

Were it not for the drama Cindy was about to create in the Chronicle, this homeless man’s case file would have gone to the bottom of the stack until he was forgotten.

Even by me.

But those multiple gunshots fired “at close range” nagged at me.

“Beating and shooting is crazy for a robbery, Rich. I’m sensing a hate crime. Or some kind of crime of passion.”