Be Mine (38 page)

Ida’s attention went to her television. It had flashed a BREAKING
NEWS BULLETIN, then broadcast a terse report on the murders of the homicide
detectives.

“My word.”

The station cut to San Francisco’s police chief with newspeople, and
Ida abruptly felt the earth shift. The face of her upstairs tenant stared at
her from her TV. Alarm rang in her ears. Good Lord. She fumbled with her remote
to increase the volume in time to hear:

“... Police Department is asking the public’s assistance in locating
Frank Gregory Yarrow. He’s regarded as a witness to the murders ...”

Murders! Ida gasped.

Her first reaction was to go upstairs and inform Mr. Yarrow the
police were looking for him when she heard:

“... cautioned not to approach him, but to immediately contact law
enforcement authorities ...”

Her mouth went dry as she lifted her head to the ceiling. “Dear
Lord. Oh, dear Lord, Clemie.”

Ida patted her thighs. Clementine, sensing her unease, padded from
the window and leaped into Ida’s lap. She slid her arms around her cat, hugging
its warm body to battle her sudden chill.

“Dear Lord,” Ida repeated, transfixed by the news conference. When
it ended she collected herself, reached for her telephone, whispered a prayer,
then pressed three digits.

In the
San Francisco Star
newsroom Tom and Acker hunched alongside the intern listening to the emergency
scanners.

Acker’s face was taut. Tom was jotting notes fast.

“That’s a lock on Yarrow’s address,” Acker said. “It’s a good one.
They’re calling for the Tac unit.”

“Alert photo! Get Della, Simon, everyone you can spare,” Tom called,
heading for the elevator. “Every shooter we’ve got before they seal the
neighborhood. Call me with any updates.”

Across town in the Western Addition, the tactical unit’s equipment
truck lumbered through the neighborhood as every available officer in the
district and from across the city offered to help with the takedown.

Everyone moved quickly without lights or sirens. Marked units set up
an outer perimeter around the hot zone, shutting off all traffic a few blocks
away. Plainclothed female officers quietly escorted Ida and Clementine from her
building. They walked several blocks to the far end of a cross street, where
the equipment van had squeaked to a halt next to a clutch of police vehicles
that stood as the command post.

The officer in charge, TAC Lieutenant George Horn, spoke with Ida.
Between talking on his radio and his cell phone, he studied street maps,
blueprints, and the detailed floor plan sketches he’d asked Ida to make of her
Victorian home not far from Alamo Square.

“And Yarrow lives alone in your two-bedroom apartment, on the top
floor?”

Looking at photos, Ida nodded and hugged Clementine.

“And he has no phone, correct?”

“He told me it hasn’t been connected yet.”

“What about a cell phone?”

“If he has one, I don’t have the number. Please, Lieutenant. This is
all so frightening.”

“I know, I’m sorry, ma’am,” Horn said as Sydowski and Turgeon
arrived.

“How’s it look, George?” Sydowski asked.

“Just setting up. His landlady, Mrs. Lyndstrum here, is certain he
hasn’t left his apartment. His car’s still there and she heard him making
noises last night, then only a few hours ago.”

“What kind of noises?” Sydowski withdrew his notebook.

After evacuating every resident within the line of fire of
Lyndstrum’s building, Horn’s tactical team set up an inner perimeter around the
house. Armed with copies of Ida’s sketch, scouts went in first, to determine
safety points for other team members. They were followed by the utility man,
the breacher, the gas team, and sharpshooters. Without making a sound, they
used an aluminum extending pole to place a fully operational cell phone at the
rear entrance to Yarrow’s apartment.

The large rear window came into sharp focus, filling the rifle scope
of the sniper on the roof of the house nearby. He’d taken cover behind a brick
chimney, while in front another sharpshooter put Yarrow’s front window in his
crosshairs.

“No movement inside,” the rear sniper said through his headset.

“Nothing in front,” the second sharpshooter radioed.

The third sniper, who had his rifle trained on Yarrow’s south-facing
window, also picked up his car in the driveway. He recited the Illinois tag to Horn, who relayed it to dispatch, to run through NCIC. It came back
registered to Frank G. Yarrow of Chicago.

“Okay, it’s time to talk to him,” Horn said over the radio to
Sergeant Dave Davis, his team leader, who was near the house. He’d taken cover
by a neighbor’s garage.

Davis
raised his bullhorn, which crackled at the
Lyndstrum building.

“Frank Yarrow, this is Sergeant Davis of the San Francisco police.
We want to talk to you about an important matter. For your own safety, would
you exit from the rear with your hands raised, palms forward, please.”

A long moment of silence passed.

Davis
radioed a nearby unit to sound his siren
loud by giving it three yelps.

“Mr. Yarrow, this is Sergeant Davis of the San Francisco police ...”
Davis began again. He repeated this request four times over the next ten
minutes, informing Yarrow to use the phone that police had placed by his door
if he wanted to communicate privately. Nothing happened.

Horn checked with his sharpshooters. None reported any movement,
none had a clear shot.

After half an hour had passed, Horn made a decision.

“Throw in some chemicals, flash-bang, then assault and extraction.
You time it, Dave.”

Davis
alerted his team, who took their positions.
Sixty seconds later the pop-pop and shattering glass sounds of tear gas
canisters echoed down Lyndstrum’s street. White clouds billowed from the upper
floor, followed by a deafening crack-crack and lightning flashes of stun
grenades as the tactical team rushed the rear entrance and kicked in the door
to Yarrow’s apartment.

Flashlight beams and red-line laser sights pierced the acrid fog.
Darth Vader breathing of the heavily armed and gas-masked squad filled the
small apartment in its pursuit of an ex-cop turned cop killer. The living room:
empty. Bedroom number one: empty. Kitchen: empty. Halls: empty. Closets: empty.
The ceiling, floors, and walls were tapped for body mass. Empty. Bedroom number
two: empty.

Bathroom. Bingo.

Islands of bloodied pulpy brain matter adhered to the walls, from
which ribbons of blood cascaded down the tiles to the tub where the corpse of a
man was crumpled inside. His face was a wide-eyed death mask. A .40-caliber
Berretta was in the tub by his right leg. No visible entrance wound. The mother
must’ve swallowed a round, because the back of his head was gone, the team
figured, as Davis called it in to Horn.

After Tac secured the Lyndstrum building, garage, and yard, and
after the air had cleared in Yarrow’s apartment, Horn turned it over to
Homicide. Several marked units cordoned off the property. Sydowski and Turgeon
slipped on shoe covers, pulled on gloves, then stepped inside.

Sydowski went to the tub and began inspecting the brain matter up
close for any traces of a spent bullet. It was too messy for him to determine
if the round was in the wall, or in Yarrow. He saw a shell casing in the tub.

Turgeon was at Yarrow’s computer where she found a half-composed
letter to Molly Wilson.

Molly:

I have no right to ask your forgiveness for all the pain I’ve
caused. But as I look back upon my life and all my failures, your forgiveness
is the only thing in this world I have left before I

“Better have a look at this,” Turgeon said from the computer.

Squinting at the screen, Sydowski slipped on his glasses.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yes, it ends like that. Wonder why.”

“Maybe he couldn’t find the words.” Sydowski indicated the bathroom.
“Actions speak louder.”

As a seasoned investigator, Turgeon knew that not every suicide note
was completed, or coherent. “Yeah, maybe.”

Sydowski took out his small camera and photographed the screen, as
he’d done with Yarrow’s corpse in the tub. “Linda, can you check the time this
note was created?”

“I’ll print it first.”

After they’d secured a hard copy, Turgeon displayed the time the
file was created. A few hours ago. “That would be after he assaulted Molly.”

Sydowski moved from room to room, taking stock of Yarrow’s
apartment. Orderly and clean. Bare walls, except for one large landscape of the
Pacific coast. On a bookshelf he saw a framed photograph. It was Yarrow and
Molly Wilson, taken years ago. They looked like kids. Sydowski stared into it
for a long, sad time. Nothing in their bright faces foretold the monumental
tragedy that would eclipse them.

“Jesus,” Turgeon said. “Jesus.”

Sydowski popped a Tums into his mouth.

“What do you think, Walt?”

He removed his glasses, folded them, slipped them into his pocket.

“We’ll get Crime Scene to scour the place, then wait for the medical
examiner to pry out the round from Yarrow, so we can compare it to the rounds
from Cliff and Ray. Then we’ll clear this thing.”

“Fingerprints and dental records
confirm
the victim’s identity as Frank Gregory Yarrow,” Julius Seaver, the medical
examiner, said.

Sydowski and Turgeon were in Seaver’s office where he was going over
his preliminary findings of the autopsy he’d done earlier that morning.

Cause of death was from a single gunshot wound to the head. The
round recovered was a .40 caliber. It looked like an SXT Talon. Ballistics
would conduct further tests. No other apparent trauma or injuries.

Sydowski and Turgeon then delivered the recovered bullet to
ballistics, which already had the Beretta and the spent casing. Then they
waited at Nick’s Diner where Sydowski stared at the television above the
counter and picked at his BLT. Turgeon chewed on a carrot muffin and looked
glumly into the street.

“You’re thinking hard on something. What is it?” Turgeon asked.

“We’ve got a loose end somewhere, but I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Like what? The case is a slam dunk. We’re going through
formalities.”

“I don’t know. Some little thing I missed.”

Sydowski’s cell phone rang.

“Walt, it’s Chico in Ballistics.”

Sydowski took out his notebook.

“The kill-shot round from Yarrow is a .40-cal SXT Talon.”

“We figured.”

“Just like the rounds from Hooper and Beamon, .40-cal SXT Talons.
Comparing all of them, by the twists and lands, I’d swear in court that all
were fired from the same weapon, the .40-cal Beretta recovered from Yarrow. All
of the recovered bullets came from the same gun.”