The 6th Target - James Patterson [11]
I could feel heat coming off Conklin’s body, making me too aware of his six-foot-one, perfectly proportioned frame, his light-brown hair falling over his brown eyes, his twenty-nine-year-old looks reminding me of a Kennedy cousin crossed with maybe a U.S. Marine.
Chi had brought the Sunday Chronicle and placed it on the desk in front of me.
The shooter’s photo, a fuzzy still shot taken from Jack Rooney’s low-resolution movie footage, was on the front page, and under it was the caption DO YOU KNOW THIS MAN?
We all leaned in to study that furred face again.
The shooter’s dark hair hung around to his jaw, and his beard hid everything from his top lip down to his Adam’s apple.
“Jesus Christ,” said Cappy. We all looked at him.
“What? I’m saying he looks like Jesus Christ.”
I said, “We won’t be getting anything back from the lab on a Sunday morning, but we have this.”
I took the photocopy of the brown-wrapped package of Turkish Specials out of my in-box.
“And we have all this.”
I put my hand on the two-inch pile of witness statements, phone messages, and e-mail printouts that our PA, Brenda, had taken off the SFPD Web site yesterday.
“We can divvy it up,” said Jacobi.
Loud discussion followed, until Chi said emphatically, “Hey. Cigarettes are big business. Any place that’s going to sell a brand like Turkish Specials is going to be one of your mom-and-pop stores. And one of those moms or pops might remember this shooter.”
I said, “Okay. You guys run with it.”
Jacobi and Conklin took two-thirds of the witness statements out to their desks in the squad room and got on the phones while Chi and McNeil made a few calls before hitting the streets.
Alone in my office, I looked over what Brenda had gathered on the victims — all solid citizens, every one.
Was there a connection between the killer and any of the people he’d shot?
I started dialing the numbers on the witness statements, but nothing in the first few calls lifted me out of my seat. Then I reached a fireman who’d been standing only ten feet from Andrea Canello when the shooter opened fire.
“She was yelling at her kid when the shooter popped her,” the witness said. “I was about to tell her to take it easy. The next minute, uh, she was dead.”
“What was she saying? Do you remember?”
“ ‘You’re driving me crazy, buddy.’ Something like that. Terrible to think . . . Did the boy make it?”
“I’m sorry to say, no, he didn’t.”
I made more notes, trying to fit fragments together into pieces, pieces into a whole. I slugged down the last of my coffee and dialed the next person on my list.
His name was Ike Quintana, and he had called late yesterday afternoon, saying maybe he’d been friends with the shooter some fifteen years before.
Now Quintana said to me, “It looks like the same guy for sure. If that’s him, we were both at Napa State Hospital in the late ’80s.”
I gripped the phone, pressing my ear hard against the receiver. Didn’t want to miss a syllable.
“You know what I mean?” Quintana asked me. “We were both locked up in the cuckoo’s nest.”
Chapter 15
I SCRIBBLED A STAR next to Ike Quintana’s phone number.
“What’s your friend’s name?” I asked him, pressing the receiver against my ear. But suddenly Quintana was evasive.
“I don’t want to say, in case it turns out not to be him,” he said. “I have a picture. You can come over and look, if you come now. Otherwise, I have a lot of things to do today.”
“Don’t you dare leave home! We’re on our way!”
I went out to the squad room, said, “We’ve got a lead. I have an address on San Carlos Street.”
Conklin said, “I want to keep working the phones. New videos of the shooting have been e-mailed to our Web site.”
Jacobi stood, put on his jacket, said, “I’m driving, Boxer.”
I’ve known Jacobi for ten years, worked as his partner for three before I was promoted to lieutenant. During the time Jacobi and I were a team, we’d developed a deep friendship and an almost telepathic connection. But I don’t think either of us acknowledged how close we