Finally, she said, “If you feel good enough to go home, you get a pass.”
“I should be dead,” I said, my chattering teeth biting my words into syllables. “Those shits knew my movements. They waited for me and were determined to kill me. Why? And now I killed one of them.”
“Come home with me tonight,” Claire said.
“I can’t. I’ll be OK, Claire. Brady will keep eyes on me, put cars in front of my place. I’ll be fine.”
Brady was still on the phone when I returned to his office. I sat with Conklin, and as Brady talked to whomever, I sifted through the events of the last half hour. The best outcome would be if the man I crushed behind his car door was alive so that I could get him to talk. God knew, I wanted answers.
Brady took another call. He listened, said, “Thanks,” then hung up.
He said, “The guy you hit with your car, Boxer—”
“Yes?”
“He walked away. Or his friends scraped him up and threw him into the trunk. There was no corpse on Harriet.”
I had a moment of relief, and then the next thought rolled over me like a tidal wave.
We had no suspects or witnesses, no IDs, no plate numbers. The men who’d attacked me could be heading for LA or Mexico or points east, or hell, they could be idling their engines on Bryant, waiting to take another crack at me.
“Here’s your new gun,” Brady said, handing over a Glock identical to my old one. “The chief ’s on the way down.”
Damn it. Now I was going to have to tell this story to Jacobi.
CHAPTER 65
CHIEF OF POLICE Warren Jacobi is big and gray-haired and he walks with a limp because of two bullets he took to the hip on a bad night in the Tenderloin. I was also shot that night, but unlike Jacobi, I remained conscious and called for help. That night Jacobi and I bonded for life.
Over the last dozen years, Jacobi has been my partner, my subordinate, and now my boss. I stood up when he entered Brady’s small office. He reached out and folded me into a gentle hug.
My eyes welled up and I dried them on his jacket.
“I’m OK. I’m really OK.”
He released me and shook his head.
“Boxer, I want you to listen to me. You’re a target. I don’t know why, and from what I hear, you don’t know, either. And I know you weren’t careless or stupid. Regardless, you’ve been beat up and chased and shot at, and next time these guys get you in their sights—I don’t need to spell it out, do I? So don’t fight me. Don’t make me pull rank. Just do what I say. Take some time off. Leave town until we nail these guys.”
As I listened to Jacobi’s litany, something inside me heated up and boiled the hell over. I went off. I just blew.
“With all due respect, Jacobi, that’s a load of bull. It was bad, but I handled it. That’s what the job is. I hardly have a scratch on me. So stop treating me like a victim. I’m fully functional and absolutely sane. This is my case and I’m on it. OK? OK?”
I went to my desk and typed up a report. I handed it to Brady, then went down to the street and emptied my glove box and got my bag out of the front footwell before my fatally crippled Explorer was loaded onto a flatbed truck and taken out to the forensics lab.
Conklin drove me home. I didn’t talk during the ride, but I grabbed his hand and squeezed it before I got out of his car. And then he came around and opened the passenger door. I gave him a look that should have stopped him.
“Shut up,” he said. “I’m going in with you.”
Once inside my apartment, I greeted our nanny and said good night and good-bye to my partner. I showered, then ate something with tomato sauce, I don’t remember what.
I played blocks with my daughter and put her to bed. After that, I rechecked the locks and the security system and looked out at the patrol cars parked down on the street. I put my gun on the night table, and then I got into bed with Martha and fell asleep. I didn’t think and I didn’t dream.
When I woke up in the morning I was madder than I’d ever been before in my life. I understood now that I was being
treated like an orphaned kitten not just because I had been repeatedly attacked and almost killed. It was also because Joe had left me without a word.
The men who’d tried to kill me would answer for what they’d done if it was the last thing I did in my life.