Everyone Pays (21 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

MICHAEL

Waiting for the detective, I thought of my final morning at St. Boniface with Emily. After mass and giving out the Holy Sacrament, I heard confessions. The day’s visitors were a few worshippers, run of the mill, those who might actually be saved by their attempts to find His path. I gave His forgiveness as a matter of course, blessed them, and asked for simple acts of penance.

Their presence in His house and willingness to confess assured me they were worthy of His love.

When I was done, I went down to my room to see her.

As I entered, Emily sat at the small table, held herself quietly in a chair, stirring a spoon through her tea.

“Did you sleep well?” I asked.

She nodded. I saw pleasure in her face now that I had returned but also concern and worry at where I might have been in the night.

If only she knew.

I started making oatmeal for us both on the hot plate, adding dried fruit and shaved coconut, as she liked it.

“Where were you?” Her words were soft, short bursts of breath from her lips. I knew them without hearing, could understand them from her eyes.

“Out for a walk.” We met eyes, and I wasn’t sure what she believed, what she would want to know. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Was a long time.”

“Not
too
long.” I reached to touch her hand, but she moved it.

“Time?”

“I left around three,” I said, “three thirty.”

I turned my back, stirred our breakfast. The oats had soaked up water and risen to the right size. Steam rose. I turned off the hot plate and continued to stir.

Though my room was a small one, we made do. Emily didn’t mind; it was better than where she had been.

In a minute, I scooped the oatmeal into bowls, added milk to my own, a touch of cold water to hers.

We sat in the silence, and I said a prayer for the gift of the food.

She said, “Gone for so long. I woke up. Worried. Where were you?”

“You don’t need to worry. Don’t fear. I protect us. He watches over us. Nothing will reach you in His house.”

She was quiet again, for a time. I heard another priest enter the bathroom across the hall, shut the door, turn on the shower.

“How are your oats?”

She smiled.

I reached across the table and touched her arm, then her hand. Her fist stayed closed; there was something she was still keeping back. I touched her fingers, trying not to scratch her as I pushed her hand open.

“No,” she said, turning away.

I wasn’t sure what else to say then; I wanted to talk, tell her what I was doing for her. She knew I was taking back her sins but not the importance of the most recent names, that I’d found the four who had hurt her and left her on the street.

“Soon all of this will be over,” I said. “Anyone who caused your pain and sins will be gone from His earth, and you will be absolved. Ready to enter heaven for true salvation.”

“I want it,” she said. “I do.”

“You’ll have it.”

“My sins?”

I said, “He won’t judge you. His love is pure. As is mine.” After a time, I said, “I’ll return you to His arms. I promise.”

Her eyes probed my face, came to meet my own, and held them. She wanted what I offered. Knew the work I had to do.

“His love for you is pure.”

She touched my chest, tapped at my heart with one finger.

I bit my lips between my teeth until I could answer. I turned to the table, concentrated on its wood: the grain ran sideways; every few inches a fresh board made a line where it connected to the next. Here and there scratches on its surface.

I said, “All is for Him. He guides my path.”

I wanted to tell her I had found the four, that they were next.

My jaw tightened; I ground my teeth. I never spoke about what I did, would never tell her my own sins, where He led me. “You don’t need to worry. I am right with Him and safe.” I touched her hand—cold. “And I will make you the same.”

After a time, I stood and carried our bowls to the sink, threw away what was left of our food. She didn’t speak.

Before returning to the church, I bent to kiss her cheek. “You have love now,” I said, “mine and His own.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

DONNER

Hendricks’s chair stopped spinning. He gave me his intense look. “What’s going on here, Donner? Please tell me this isn’t going to be another Terranella, that you have a plan and Meaders won’t get hurt.”

“I do have a plan. I bring Meaders to our man, make a handoff, and you guys pop out when the priest shows. Does that sound clear enough for you? You’re practically the one who came up with it.”

He rubbed his face. It was a long shift and a crazy week. He could use some sleep. We both could.

“We need someone here to watch her.” He thumbed to where Emily was stashed. It occurred to me suddenly that Debbie Shine might be in danger as well. If the priest was true to his word, she’d wind up on his list and Dan Steele would be back on it, both for talking to us.

If we did this right though, did it fast, the end could justify the means. We’d get the priest before he got to anyone else. That was at least worth a roll of the dice. Despite the risks, it could cut off a lot of hard angles, bad outcomes if we acted now.

“Call it in. Get someone up here to watch her.”

“But that’s not all that bothers me about this.” His level gaze hung on me. I’d only seen him like this once before.

“What else?”

“I don’t want you going out on this alone. It’s not safe.”

I turned and looked behind me, making sure the room was clear. “Who else is there? I’m the one who has the connection with this perp. He asked for me. What’s our other option?”

“Not to do this. We’ll get him some other way.”

I laughed at that straight out. “You’re afraid I’m going to get hurt because I’m a woman. Admit that if you had a male partner, you wouldn’t be worried in the least.”

“That’s not true.” He got up, came around the desk to where I stood, then seemed to feel awkward standing tall over me, so he sat down on my desk. He looked uncomfortable but stuck with it. Finally, he said, “I’d be worried about any partner of mine going into this.”

“Come on.” I started toward the elevators, waving for him to follow. “Tell me the rest of this in the car.”

Outside, driving southwest on Harrison, Hendricks made his case, and I made mine. His consisted of pulling back now, going in a new, better-planned direction with more backup, and mine was all about going in, having Coggins, Bennett, and Hendricks behind me, and getting this done before our priest had anything else flash across his mind, before he went back into the wind.

To Hendricks’s credit, he was more worried about my safety than the protocols. That much I would have to thank him for—but not until later, when this all was done.

He said, “Give us an hour. At least let me call and get a few snipers on the roofs. We’ll take him out.”

I sat in the passenger seat, dreading the fact that soon I’d have to drive. Growing up in New York, I’d never learned to drive, chose to settle in San Francisco partly because you
could
live in this city without a car. And I did. I had my license, got it to make patrol and be a cop, but driving was definitely not my thing. I did my best to avoid it until now. It would only be a few blocks, I told myself. And at night. The traffic would be minimal.

Hendricks had other concerns. “What’s Bowen going to say?”

“He’ll commend us for moving so quickly and catching our suspect, for not letting snipers take shots at the city’s oldest church or killing a priest in the process.”

“What if this goes sideways and someone gets hurt? Then what’s he say?”

“I don’t know. Let’s call him now.”

Hendricks laughed. He looked over at me with his poker face blown, both of us knowing it was either worth a call in to Bowen at this stage or it wasn’t. Here was the place where the rubber met the road: if we called Bowen, he could squelch the whole thing, pull us off the priest by a mile, get Meaders to a safe house, and send it all back to the Clip, a citywide search and days of inactivity. Or he could give us the green light for what we were doing, let us fly by the seat of our pants and take a risk that could pay big rewards, but it could also get us all in deep trouble, even risk him losing his job.

We both knew there was no way Bowen would green-light this plan if we called.

I said, “You got me there, partner. We do this by your book. How does it go down?”

We had reached Thirteenth Street, the freeway overpass where 101 ran east-west across the city. If Hendricks wanted to take us back to the Hall, here’s where he could turn left, bring us back up Bryant toward downtown. He didn’t. Instead, he kept straight on, passed the Office Depot, and stopped at a stop sign across from Best Buy. A long taco truck served late-night patrons on the other side of the street. When we crossed Fourteenth, he put his blinker on, steered into the right lane, heading toward a right turn on Fifteenth, the best way to cross west to Dolores Street.

“We try this,” he said, “but we do it according to
my
plan.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY

At Fifteenth and Dolores, Hendricks took a right to go north. The chapel and the park were both behind us. In the middle of the block, he pulled over, shifted the car into park.

“Okay. This is how it’s going to work.” He turned to me, his voice dry and serious. “You drive. Take the car, meet Coggins and Bennett. Once you have Meaders, have them come around and find a low-key spot to set up by the church. We all watch the street. Tell them I’ll be in touch.

“Watch for my texts, or I’ll call you.”

He turned for the handle, ready to open his door before I stopped him. “What are
you
going to do?”

“I’m going out there. I’m going to get our guy or find him when he comes up on you at the church.”

“Get there early, get the drop,” I said. It was a psalm from the Gospel of Hendricks, one he’d taught me in our first week together.

He nodded, added a wink. “Be careful.”

Then he opened his door and was gone into the night.

Hendricks was a career cop in the SFPD, going on ten years of homicide, the furthest thing from a ninja with his ample belly and tweed jacket, but still, if our priest was out there and had some kind of a plan to hide from or play us, Hendricks would find him. I thought of the few ways this could go down, and none of them were good for the priest.

There was something else though too. A feeling I kept trying to shake. It felt like something was behind me, just out of my line of sight. I knew it was there, that it could do me harm, but if I stopped to turn around and look, it would be gone.

I slid over into the driver’s seat and tested the gas and the brakes. Before I shifted the car into drive, I adjusted the seat forward, changed the angles of the mirrors. I wanted clear vision all around.

I went slow, driving to Fourteenth Street and making a U-turn. It felt quiet and lonely in the car with only the sound of the fan blowing heat. The other cars sped through this stretch of Dolores, all heading to other parts of the city, first from south to north and then, after I turned, the opposite direction. Dolores and Guerrero were the fastest routes through this section of town.

As I approached Fifteenth, I slowed even more, scanning the sidewalks for Hendricks all the way to Sixteenth then beyond. I passed the big church and then the smaller old chapel along my right side. Hendricks was somewhere out there, invisible; either hiding behind a tree or a car or some other long-term trick he’d come upon during his years. I didn’t see the priest, didn’t expect him to have any dramatic tricks or sleights of hand. Perhaps he thought God would grant him a miracle to help him on his path. I didn’t know what to expect, only to be on my toes.

I picked up speed after the chapel, feeling some sense of comfort in driving. At Eighteenth I saw the park and got caught at the light. They’d been working on the whole north half of Dolores Park for over a year now, it seemed, and this after an epic period of redoing the playground at the southern end. But the clientele of the park never changed or seemed to mind; even in the cold of this January night, they’d found their benches and scored drugs. Every day in the sun or the fog, people were out having parties on the grass, carving up the territory with blankets, drum circles, towels, each section getting smaller and smaller on the weekends, when the crowds reached their max.

The light changed, and I drove on, climbed the hill, and took a right onto Twentieth, where I double-parked behind Coggins and Bennett. Bennett stood against the trunk, smoking. At the sight of me, he flipped his butt against a parked car. The cherry sparked, showed bright for a moment, and then went out.

I shifted into park and rolled down my window as Bennett came around.

“Where’s your partner?”

“Out in the night,” I said, “setting up to get the drop. You’re supposed to do the same. You and Coggins. Park near Mission Dolores and see if you can spot Father Michael on his approach.”

“That’s the idea here? Turning this turd over to his maker?”

I shifted in my seat, tilted my head toward the door to see up into Bennett’s eyes. “More or less. You don’t like that?”

He smiled. “Listen, Donner. I got no love for that bald-headed bastard in there, but this goes wrong, it’s all our asses. Where’s our backup?”

I bit my lip, wondering how clearly he’d hit the nail on the head, called out my mysterious concern hiding out of my sight. Hendricks and I were stepping out of the mold, going far out on our own, and it was mainly my drive that was making it happen. In truth, if things shook down wrong, it would be my ass.

And I didn’t want it any other way. This priest was going down tonight—by any means necessary—if it was my call to make.

As I’d seen my father and some of the key players around the Hall conclude before me, stepping out of bounds was a necessity once in a while. It was how crimes got solved. We had our pencil pushers like Bowen and his bosses, the ones who posed as political saints and mainly served to cross t’s and dot i’s, and we had the blessed rest, the rank and file who got things done. That was how it had always worked.

Based on my father’s experiences on the opposite coast, this went back one hell of a long way and across the nation.

I took it from my father, one of the best. It was the first thing he’d taught me—before anything else.

What else would a single father teach his daughter, his only child? I wasn’t a son, but as my dad told me too many times growing up, “There’s the world, and then there’s its ways.”

I searched Bennett’s face for any signs.

“You with us?”

He nodded. “Let’s get her done.”

I exhaled a sigh. We’d pushed past our boundaries, Hendricks and I, and now we had our backup support out on the fringe too. But this killer was coming down. It was possible Meaders might get a little nicked up in the process. We were all aware of that, okay with it. A turd claiming a turd, so to speak.

The results? They’d come out in the wash.

I pushed back in my seat and opened the door. “Time to get Meaders and go catch our priest.”