The 8th Confession (16 page)

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 for now we were still alone following Wallis.

"Dispatch! Any casualties?"

"Walking wounded only, Sergeant. What's your location?"

I told Kam we were on Twin Peaks Boulevard, the top of a small mountain in the center of the city. I'd busted teenagers making out under our main radio tower on that spot, but now I was hanging on to the dashboard as Conklin screamed, "Bastard!" and sped up the insanely treacherous road lined with two-foot-high guardrails, dented where cocky drivers had gone ballistic.

We were closing in on Wallis as he began his high-speed descent toward Clayton, a snaky and steep slide that sent my guts into my throat. I clenched the microphone so hard I put fingernail marks in the plastic.

I called in our location again: we were heading into the Upper Haight, a residential area of Tudor and Victorian houses occupied by young families who lived on the genteel tree-lined streets.

A child, a woman, and a dog appeared in our windshield. I screamed,
"Noooo!"
Conklin leaned on the horn and the brakes, took us up on the sidewalk, our wheels flying over the curb, our siren wailing like a wounded banshee as we slammed back onto the street.

Conklin grunted. "Everything's under control."

Who was he kidding?

I looked behind us and saw no bodies in the street, but still my heart was airborne. Were we going to survive this joyride? Would we kill people today?

"Where is this asshole taking us?" I asked the air.

"To
hell.
He's taking us to
hell,
" Conklin said.

Did he know?

I think he did. Somehow Conklin instinctively knew where Henry Wallis was heading.

It took me another minute to get it.

I
GRIPPED THE dashboard, stared out as the streets blew by and we played dodge 'em with innocent bystanders, wondering if Henry Wallis was our man. Had he killed three people last week?

Had he killed a total of seven?

How many more would he kill before we stopped him?

"Hang on, Linds," Conklin said, wrenching the steering wheel hard. We squealed onto Haight Street, where the likelihood of mowing down punks, retired flower children, old people getting in or out of their cars, was close to 100 percent.

"Haight dead-ends at Stanyan!" I shouted.

We followed the fool in the Camaro, speeding a hundred feet in front of us, sparks coming off his right rear bumper, which now dragged in the street.

Wallis still outran us because he simply didn't care what he hit—and he refused to be boxed in. He made the right turn down Stanyan, drove nearly a block before pulling an illegal left across two lanes of traffic to go into Golden Gate Park.

The imposing Conservatory of Flowers, a giant greenhouse originally from another century, rose up on our right. I envisioned a colossal spinout in my mind, a James Bond-worthy scene of that greenhouse exploding into a trillion shards.

But Wallis skidded and avoided a crash.

I yelled,
"Rich, look out!"

We followed the Camaro into a cacophony of horns and squealing tires, the bumper-car chase carrying us forward because we had no choice.

In the heart-stopping minutes we'd been on the Camaro's tail, I hadn't seen another cop car, marked or otherwise. I could hear sirens in the distance, but we were alone, powering our Crown Vic at warp speed, Wallis's junker a half block ahead of us as he took the park drive toward Ocean Beach.

We drafted behind him as the terrain sloped sharply downward. Runners with dogs jumped out of the way. My God, I wanted to cover my eyes, but I couldn't.

The boat pond was on our right, filled with seniors and kids driving remote-control ships, and then our two cars screamed past soccer fields with high-school teams standing openmouthed as we passed.

We were climbing again, the road heading straight up to Sutro Heights, almost to land's end, when Wallis veered out of the park and onto Point Lobos Avenue, four fast-moving lanes.

As I yelled our location into the mic, Wallis took a hard left over the median strip and pointed his car like a rocket up toward the Cliff House, a landmark restaurant perched on the western edge of the continent over a rocky cliff that plunged straight down to the Pacific.

I could see it now: Wallis was going for a dramatic
Thelma & Louise
exit, but his would be a solo flight. As the Camaro crashed through guardrails and left the road, I saw the frankly unbelievable: the driver's-side door opened and Wallis jumped out.

But he'd mistimed his jump.

As the Camaro made its wobbly one-way passage off the cliff toward the gray water below, Wallis plummeted alongside his car, both vehicle and man dropping in slow-motion, as if in a dream.

Rich braked our car in front of the broken wall, and we peered over the promontory in time to see the Camaro explode in flames.

"There," I said. "He's there!"

Wallis's body was fifty feet below us, a tangle of bloodied flesh. It was an impossible climb down, a straight 180 degrees over wet and jagged rocks. Conklin took my hand and I gripped his, stood hypnotized as the fire crackled and burned.

I heard Jackie Kam's voice behind me, calling over the car radio,
"Sergeant Boxer, what is your location? Lindsay? Lindsay, please answer me."

Rich let go of my hand and leaned over the cliff, facing into the wind as he called down to Henry Wallis's fresh corpse.

"Did you enjoy yourself, asshole? Get what you wanted?"

I used my cell phone to call Dispatch, but the cars were already screaming to a halt all around Point Lobos.

Jacobi jumped out of one of them before it came to a stop. He ran toward us, calling,
"You okay? You okay?"

I was so shaken I couldn't talk.

"Take it easy, Boxer," Jacobi said, putting his hands on my shoulders. My good friend. "Try to breathe."

Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes, but I wasn't sad. It was something else—surprise and relief that I was alive.

I breathed in the smoke-filled air and said, "I don't get it, Warren. Wallis jumped out of his car! Was he trying to escape? Or was that how he wanted to die?"

"Whatever," Conklin said beside me.

I nodded.
Whatever.
Henry Wallis, the man with the snake-and-skull tattoo on his shoulder, was dead.

J
ACOBI TOOK ME and Conklin out to dinner at Restaurant LuLu,
the
place for homey Provençal cooking, rich casseroles and pizzas grilled in a hickory-wood oven. The sunken dining room was packed, conversation was humming all around us, and our waiter really knew the wine list, long considered one of the best in town.

I knew why Jacobi was celebrating.

The chief and the mayor had given him a big ol' "attaboy." TV newscasters were brimming with the drama: the chopper shots and the news that life was safe again for the rich and famous.

But I couldn't stand this, and I had to say it. "Warren, is everyone crazy? You feel comfortable saying that Henry Wallis is the guy who killed our millionaires?"

Jacobi answered with a question: "Can't you let something good into your life, Boxer?" And then another: "Can't you just be happy for an hour?"

"I guess not," I said, scowling at him. "What's wrong with me? Or am I just too smart for this charade?"

Conklin nudged me under the table with his knee, and I didn't know what the hell was wrong with him either.

A man had died.

We'd almost followed him off a cliff.

We were lucky we weren't looking up at Claire from her table or seeing a story on TV of dead children, their tearful parents threatening to sue the city for another fatal high-speed chase, the sad-faced anchorperson saying, "The funeral services for the little Beckwith children will be at Our Sisters of the Sacred Heart on Sunday."

The waiter poured the wine, and Jacobi tasted it, pronounced it excellent, and, over the clamor of fat-walleted diners chatting happily all around us, raised his glass to me and Conklin.

"Thanks," he said, "from the chief, the mayor, and especially from me. I love you guys."

Jacobi smiled, something I've seen him do maybe twice in the last ten years, and he and Conklin tucked into their pan-roasted mussels and rotisserie duck.

I had no appetite.

The muscles in my face had gone rigid, but my mind was whirling around on its brain stem.

Was Henry Wallis really the high-society killer?

Or was he just some loser of an ex-con with something to hide—so he'd freaked out and ended his life?

Did anyone care but me?

A
GAINST EVERYONE'S good judgment, I found an ADA in her office at nine that night, the indefatigable Kathy Valoy. She called a judge and got us a search warrant for Henry Wallis's apartment, and now, at midnight, Conklin and I were there.

Wallis had lived in a three-story walk-up on Dolores Street, a few blocks from the Torchlight Bar.

We rang the buzzer until we woke up the building's owner, a squat man by the name of Maury Silver. He was balding, with loose dentures, bad breath, and a stained work shirt hanging long over his boxers.

Silver looked at our warrant through the cracked door, read every page back and front, and then let us enter the building.

"What happened to Henry?" he asked. "Oh
no.
You telling me he's the one who drove off the cliff? Henry's a
killer?
"

Wallis's apartment was on the ground floor, rear.

We flicked on the ceiling lights, closed the door on Mr. Silver, and simply tossed the place. Didn't take long.

Like a lot of ex-cons, Henry Wallis kept his furniture minimal and his few possessions neat.

Conklin took the bedroom and bath while I searched the small living room and kitchen. We called out to each other from time to time: when Conklin found the plastic-wrapped bricks of pot in the kitty-litter box and when I found a book on tattoos, corners folded down on the pages featuring snakes.

But that was it.

No
old
newspaper clippings, no
new
newspaper clippings, no shrines to himself, no trophies from rich people. And most of all no snakes.

No snake figurines, no snake artifacts, no books on snakes.

"No reptiles other than these," I said, showing Conklin the tattoo book.

He said, "Take a look at this."

I followed him into the bedroom and checked out his find: a drawerful of XL women's underwear.

"Unless he had a big girlfriend, and I don't see any pictures, cosmetics, anything that would indicate that," Conklin said, "Henry Wallis was a cross-dresser."

"A cross-dressing drug dealer. Kudos to Sara Needleman for dumping him. Let's lock this joint up," I said.

"I live only a few blocks from here," said Rich as we closed and padlocked the door. "Come have a drink. Talk all this out."

I said, "Thanks anyway. This has been the longest day of my life, Rich. I need to go home. Get naked. Go to bed."

Conklin laughed. "Is that an order, Sergeant?"

I laughed along with him as I walked to my car, feeling just a little silly, thinking maybe Dr. Freud was having the
real
laugh.

"Okay," I said, one hand on my door, being very careful when I stepped up on the running board. "One drink only."

T
HE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Conklin's place and Henry Wallis's dump was extreme. Conklin lived on a similar block, both streets lined with unremarkable two- and three-story houses from the '50s made of cheap and ordinary materials, but once we were inside, Conklin's place felt lived-in and warm.

His living room was welcoming: good lighting, deep couches grouped around a fireplace, and the requisite bachelor must-have—a fifty-two-inch plasma-screen TV.

Rich stooped down near the entertainment unit, flipped through a stack of CDs, said, "Van Morrison okay with you?"

I said, "Sure," and looked at the photos on the wall, black-and-white blowups of sailboats on the bay, their spinnakers full of summer wind, light spangling the waves, three different shots, all of them breathtaking.

"You take these, Rich?"

" Uh-huh."

"They're wonderful."

Van Morrison was singing "Brown Eyed Girl," a tune that made me want to sing along. I smiled when Rich handed me a glass of wine, and I watched him sit down on the far end of the couch, put his feet up on a burnished hatch cover he'd turned into a coffee table.