The 8th Confession - James Patterson [49]
Conklin and I wondered if Wallis had keys to both the Bailey and Needleman houses. It seemed probable, even likely.
The photo we had of Wallis was four years old, but he was good-looking, even in the scathing high-contrast flash of the Polaroid camera.
He had muscular arms, jailhouse tats on his knuckles.
But what had sent me and Conklin out to the car was the tattoo on Wallis’s left shoulder: that of a snake twining through the vacant eyes of a skull.
Conklin was quiet as he drove, and I understood why.
We were both imagining the variety of ways the scene could play out in the Torchlight Bar: what we’d do if Wallis drew a weapon, if he ran, how we’d manage whatever came down without causing collateral damage.
Conklin parked on Fifteenth between Valencia and Guerrero in front of the Torchlight Bar and Grill, a white clapboard building surrounded by bookstores and cafés.
I unbuttoned my jacket, touched the butt of my gun. Conklin did the same. And we entered the dark atmosphere of the bar. There was a TV overhead, tuned to a recap of yesterday’s ball game — the A’s were getting pounded.
The bartender was six-foot-two, weighed one eighty, and was bald. It was gloomy in that bar — dim light cast by neon signs — but even so, I could see from thirty feet away that the bartender wiping beer mugs with a dirty towel wasn’t Henry Wallis.
I stood just inside the doorway as Conklin went to the bartender, flashed his badge, talked quietly under the television’s blare. The bartender’s eyes went to me, then back to Conklin.
Then he pointed to a man at the head of the bar who was sipping a beer and looking up at the TV screen, unaware that we’d come through the door.
Conklin signaled to me, and we approached Henry Wallis. Maybe he had eyes in the back of his head, or maybe the guy next to him saw us and gave Wallis a nudge, but he whipped his head around, saw my hand going for my piece, and made for the rear exit.
Conklin yelled, “Freeze! Wallis, stay where you are.”
But the man took a turn around the kitchen and kept running until he reached the back door, which banged shut behind him.
When we opened the door seconds later, Wallis was inside his rusty black Camaro and was shooting down Albion Street like a cannonball.
Chapter 64
I CALLED DISPATCH, requested backup as Conklin floored our car up the deserted street.
The no-nonsense voice of the dispatcher Jackie Kam came over the radio and declared a code 33 — silence on our wave band — and alerted all cars in the area that we were in pursuit of a black Camaro heading up Sixteenth toward Market.
This was bad.
School was out, the worst time for a high-speed chase, dangerous for me and Conklin, potentially lethal for other drivers and pedestrians.
I flipped on our sirens and grille lights. Wallis had at least thirty seconds on us, and as he pulled away going seventy, it was clear that he wasn’t slowing down for anything or anybody.
“I can’t read his plate,” I said to Dispatch. But we were almost close enough when the harsh screech of metal on metal, accompanied by panicky horns, preceded the sight of a taco van tipping over.
Wallis’s car backed up, then hauled ass, whipping around the fallen van, fishtailing across both lanes, and caroming off a parked station wagon. Then Wallis jammed down the pedal, leaving rubber on the asphalt and the disabled van in the middle of Market.
I called in the collision, urgently requested EMS. As we blew past the van, the driver staggered out into the street with blood on his forehead, trying to flag us down.
We couldn’t stop. I swore at the son of a bitch Wallis as Conklin floored our car toward the intersection of Market and Castro.
I had the plate number now, and I called it in: “Foxtrot Charlie Niner Three One Echo heading toward Portola.”
Portola is a twisting grade, and we were flying around those turns at fifty, the Camaro getting even farther out in front of us. All along Portola, vehicles ran up on the curb and bikes hugged the sides of buildings.
We assumed more patrol cars were on their way, but