James Patterson: The 8th Confession

Conklin flashed his lady-killer smile.

“So let’s work it,” he said.

He turned off the engine and we walked down to the end of the block, where Cindy’s subjects still loitered outside the barrier tape.

We reinterviewed them all, then expanded our scope to include all of Townsend as well as Clyde Street and Lusk Alley. We talked to bodega cashiers, salesclerks at a gay men’s novelty sex shop, hookers and druggies hanging out on the street.

Together we knocked on apartment doors in low-rent housing and spent the afternoon questioning forklift operators and laborers in the warehouses along Townsend, asking about the shooting last night outside the Caltrain yard, asking about Bagman Jesus.

Admittedly, many people scattered when they saw our badges. Others claimed to have no knowledge of Bagman or his death.

But the people who knew of Bagman Jesus had anecdotes to tell. How he’d broken up a liquor-store holdup, sometimes worked in a soup kitchen, said that he always had a few dollars for someone who needed it.

He was the elite, king of the street, we were told, a bum with a heart of gold. And his loss was tragic for those who counted him a friend.

By day’s end, my attitude had shifted from skepticism to curiosity, and I realized that I’d caught Cindy’s fever – or maybe the fever had caught me.

Bagman Jesus had been the good shepherd of a wounded flock.

So why had he been murdered?

Had he simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Or had his death been specific and deliberate?

And that left us with two big questions no good cop could dodge with a clear conscience: Who had killed Bagman Jesus? And why?

CONKLIN AND I got to the Hall around five, crossed the squad room to Lieutenant Warren Jacobi’s small glassed-in office that once had been mine.

Jacobi once had been mine, too – that is, he used to be my partner. And although we’d swapped jobs and disagreed often, we’d put in so many years and miles together, he could read my thoughts like no one else – not Claire, not Conklin, not Cindy, not Joe.

Jacobi was sitting behind his junkyard of a desk when we walked in. My old friend and boss is a gray-haired, lumpy-featured, fifty-three-year-old cop with more than twenty-five years’ experience in Homicide. His sharp gray eyes fixed on me, and I noted the laugh lines bracketing his mouth – because he wasn’t laughing.

Not even a little.

“What the hell have you two been doing all day?” he asked me. “Have I got this right? You’ve been working a homeless DOA?”

Inspector Hottie, as Conklin is known around the Hall, offered me the chair across from Jacobi’s desk, then parked his cute butt on the credenza – and started to laugh.

“I say something funny, Conklin?” Jacobi snapped. “You’ve got twelve unsolveds on your desk. Want me to list them?”

Jacobi was touchy because San Francisco ’s homicide-solution rate was hovering at the bottom, somewhere below Detroit ’s.

“I’ll tell him,” I said to Conklin.

I put my feet up against the front edge of Jacobi’s desk and said, “Time got away from us, Warren. This crime has a few odd angles, and the victim’s death is going to be written up in great big type in the Chronicle tomorrow. I thought we should get out in front of the story.”

“Keep talking,” said Jacobi, as if I were a suspect and he had me in the box.

I filled him in on the reported good works and the varying theories: that Bagman Jesus was a missionary or a philanthropist, that the baby on his crucifix was a pro-life statement or that it symbolized how we’d all once been innocent and pure – like Baby Jesus.

“The guy had a way with people,” I concluded. “Very charismatic, some kind of homeless person’s saint.”

Jacobi drummed his fingers. “You don’t know this saint’s name, do you, Boxer?”

“No.”

“And you have no clue as to who killed him or what the motive was?”

“Not a hint of a clue.”

“That’s it, then,” Jacobi said, slapping the desk. “It’s over. Finished. Unless someone walks in and confesses, you’re done wasting department time. Get me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Conklin.

“Boxer?”

“I hear you, Lieutenant.”

We cleared out of Jacobi’s office and punched out for the day. I said to Conklin, “You understood that, right?”

“What’s not to understand about ‘finished’?”

“Rich, Jacobi was clear as day. He told us to work Bagman Jesus on our own time. I’m going down to see Claire. You coming?”

CLAIRE WAS WEARING a surgical gown with a butterfly pin at the neckline, apron stretched across her girth, flowered shower cap covering her hair. On the stainless autopsy table in front of her lay a naked Bagman Jesus, his terrible bashed- in features facing up at the lights.

A Y incision ran from clavicles to pubis and had been sewn up in baseball stitches with coarse white thread. He had bruises all over his body and overlapping lacerations and contusions.

Bagman Jesus had been worked over with a vengeance.

“I got back the X-rays,” Claire said. As she talked, I looked over at where they were pinned to the light box on the wall.

“Broken right hand, probably took a swing at his attacker or it was stomped on when he was down. He’s got a lot of fractures involving his facial bones, as well as multiple skull fractures. Broken ribs, of course, three of them.

“All this multiple blunt-force trauma might have killed him, but by the time someone took a bat to him, he was already dead.”

“Cause of death? Give it to me, Butterfly. I’m ready.”

“Jeez,” she said. “Working as fast as I can and still not up to Lindsay time.”

“Please?” I said.

Resigned, Claire reached behind her, held up a bunch of small glassine bags with what looked like distorted slugs inside.

“Those are twenty-twos?” Conklin asked her.

“Right you are, Rich. Four of the shots to the head did the old internal ricochet. Went in here, here, right here, and back here, whizzed around under the scalp, and laid there like bugs under a rug.

“But I suppose there’s an outside chance Mr. Jesus could’ve survived those four slugs.”

“And so?” I asked. “What killed him?”

“Soooo, baby girl, the shooter plugged Mr. Jesus through the temple, and that was likely your murder round. Shot him again at the back of his neck for good measure.”

“And then his killer beat his face in? Broke his ribs?” I asked, incredulous. “Talk about crime of passion. ”

“Oh, someone hated him, all right,” Claire told us. She called out to her assistant. “Put Mr. Jesus away for me, will you, Bunny? Get Joey to help you. And write ‘John Doe number twenty-seven’ and the date on his toe tag.”

Conklin and I followed Claire to her office.

“Got something else to show you,” Claire told us. She tore off her shower cap and peeled off her surgical gown. Underneath, Claire wore blue scrubs and her favorite T-shirt, the one with the famous quote on the front: “I may be fat and I may be forty, but here I is.”

That line cracked Claire up, but since she’s now forty-five, I was thinking she might be getting a new favorite T-shirt one of these days.

Meanwhile, she offered us seats, sat down behind her desk, and unlocked the top drawer. She took out another glassine evidence bag, put it on the desk, and bent her gooseneck lamp down to throw light directly on it.

“That’s Bagman’s crucifix, ” I said, staring at a piece of tramp art that had the patina of an ancient and valuable artifact.