The fat man who was driving the car gave an ugly laugh. He stared at her through the rearview mirror. “You better do what he says, kid. He’s been itching to fire that thing. If you’re not careful, he might use it on you.”
She climbed up onto the back seat and shoved herself into a corner. Her pulse was beating rapidly, as she tried to figure out what was happening to her. Who were these men? She thought she may have seen them somewhere around the church back in Indiana, but she couldn’t be sure.
The man driving the van was asking questions of the other one.
“Which way do I go?”
“Go up to Grove and turn right.”
“Should I turn on Franklin?”
“No, you want Gough, which is the street right before that—Franklin’s one-way in the wrong direction. Just ease up a little when you turn on to Hayes. Let’s see if we can get this done in one pass-by.”
“Do you know what you’re looking for?”
“I’ve seen the picture enough times. I know what she looks like.”
What were they doing? Her sense of alarm grew as they got closer and closer to the bookstore. She eased herself over toward the window on the right side, worrying that at any moment the bald man might reach over and slap her back into her seat.
They were three doors away from Hayes Street Books. Through the window of the van she could see Gina talking to one of their regular customers on the sidewalk just outside the door. The customer moved away, and Gina turned to her right, facing them, as she started to head into the store.
“That’s her,” the driver said.
“I know. I’ve got her.” The bald man pushed on the button to lower the window and brought the gun up so that it rested on his shoulder. His cheek was down against the stock, as he eased the muzzle out the window.
“Gina!”
The word came screaming out of her mouth before she even had a chance to think about it. At the same moment, she stuck her arm over the passenger-side seat, trying to reach the gun. Just as her hand touched his arm, she heard a loud, deafening crack. The noise stunned her. Then she heard the same sound again, as the gun was fired a second time.
“Okay, hit it! Let’s get out of here.”
As the driver sped up and turned sharply at the next corner, she was thrown against the side of the back seat. Images of the neighborhood went flying by the window, and she realized they had crossed Market Street and turned on to the freeway. Within minutes they had merged into another freeway heading south with the rest of the traffic. She stayed huddled in the corner, quietly shivering as she wondered whether either of the bullets had hit Gina. And if they missed, what else did they hit?
The bald man reached around and grabbed her by the arm until he had her face wedged up between him and the driver’s seat. He slapped her hard with his free hand. “I ought to kill you now, you little shit.” His breathe was so close she could almost taste it.
His cell phone rang, and he let go of her to answer it. He plugged in his headphones to listen.
“Yeah? Who said that?”
He listened again intently for a few seconds. “I don’t think they know what they’re talking about. I was there, remember, and there was no newscaster anywhere around.”
The person on the other end was talking loudly, but she couldn’t quite hear it. “Yeah.” The bald man was in an argument. “Yeah, I hear what you’re saying.”
“I just know that I had a good aim. If anything went wrong, it was because this Goddam kid hit my arm. You know what I’m saying?” There was another pause while he listened. “Yeah, I hear you.”
The driver turned off at the next exit and started driving down the city streets. As the fat man drove, the bald man grabbed her shoulder bag off the floor in front of him and began rummaging through it. He pulled out a sheet of paper that had caught his attention, and he began reading it. As he did so, he broke out into a short laugh. He picked up his cell phone and hit the return button, waiting as the person on the other end picked up the call.
“You’re going to love this.” He turned to the driver to let him in on the joke. “It turns out that the little bitch is pregnant.”
Davey
The fog had come pouring over the Hayes Street hill without warning, and it was unrolling itself down the street, bringing with it a cold that blanketed the shops in a drizzly mist. That cold was nothing compared to the icy chill that had settled in his soul. He should have been asking people around him what happened, but that would have meant opening his mouth and trying to utter words—or at least some meaningful sounds. He could barely function. All of his systems were turning themselves off one by one.
He could watch, and maybe listen—for the time being; he was capable of that. Even someone who was empty inside could do that much. He wandered the perimeter around the police lines, trying to piece together what had happened. Rumors were everywhere, many of them incoherent. There were a couple of people who claimed to have seen the shooting, and the police were talking to them. A pair of ambulances blocked the view of the store from most angles. He tried to peer around them and saw that one of the store windows had been shattered. The glass was strewn everywhere. Books that had been on display had apparently been tossed into the air and had landed on the sidewalk as the window exploded. The door itself had been split, and the EMT crews had yanked the rest of it off its hinges so that they could get their rescue gear through the doorway. A stretcher was loaded onto one of the ambulances. Then it pulled away. The siren got louder as it reached the intersection.
The forensic team was sifting through the debris in front of the store, hoping to find something. He knew how futile that could be. If it was a drive-by shooting, there would be no clues lying around—a couple of bullet casings, a possible skid mark, but that was about it. But like good police officers, they’d dig through the debris, bucking the odds, hoping something might show up. That was their job. That was what they were paid to do. But if they were burnt-out cops—like him—they would have no illusions. Maybe they would know that they were at the end of their rope.
A van with the logo of a local news station came through one of the barriers, and the driver parked it in the center of the street behind the police vehicles. As soon as the van stopped, a young woman jumped out and headed straight over to the officers who were handling the investigation. They apparently knew her, because they began talking to her and gesticulating toward the bookstore. Finally, they let her through the police line. She pushed her way into the store with her cameraman in tow. After a few minutes, she reemerged and motioned for her cameraman to set his equipment up at an angle where she could use the bookstore as a backdrop.
This is Cheryl Lopez reporting live for KPIX news.
I’m standing in front of Hayes Street Books, a popular meeting spot in the Hayes valley, where a drive-by shooting this morning has left this neighborhood in a state of shock. Witnesses say that two men in a van drove by the store less than an hour ago. As they got near the building, they appeared to slow down while one of the occupants fired two shots into the store, killing one person and wounding another. Police are still trying to piece together a motive for the shooting.
As you can see from these images taken inside the building, the shots did quite a bit of damage. There are books strewn everywhere. This picture shows a guitar that had been propped up next to a bookcase. It was apparently shattered by a ricochet from one of the bullets.
In addition to the gunshot victims, the police are investigating the disappearance of a fifteen-year-old girl who worked in the store, and they’re trying to determine if it was related to the shooting. There’s at least one witness who saw what he described as a young girl in the back seat of the van wrestling with the shooter at the time the gun went off. Other witnesses described the shooter as a muscular bald man, while the driver was described as a man who appeared to be quite overweight. No one
got the make of the van, and the license plates appear to have been covered. So the police don’t seem to have much to go on.
The names of the victims have not been released. But as I talked to the very shocked employees, I got a strong idea of who they were. The injured woman is the general manager of the store and a well-known figure in the community. The man who was killed was a widower in his late sixties who ran the store’s popular children’s reading program.
www
It was calling him, and as he got closer he could hear it screaming.
It kept repeating his name, saying over and over that it was no longer going to be denied. The hotel room was just a few yards away, and he knew it was sitting on his dresser where he left it as he ran out of the room. It was waiting for him, insisting that he come back, demanding that it be allowed to finish the job that had to be done.
“A widower in his late sixties who ran the store’s popular children’s reading program.”
Somehow Morrie knew this would be his fate. The minute Morrie had stumbled into his life, his death was just around the corner.
“The general manager of the store, a well-known figure in the community.”
Gina had been shot because of him—there was no other way to explain it. If he hadn’t been so determined to find her and expose her, she wouldn’t be fighting for her life in an ambulance right now.
“A fifteen-year-old girl who worked in the store.”
He had set out to find Alexi, but thanks to him she might be lost for good.
“A muscular bald man.”
Curly.
“A man who appeared to be quite overweight.”
Slim.
No one mentioned John Blaiseck, the man who must have set everything in motion.
But it was he—Davey Fallon—who was the agent of disaster. He’d pinpointed the store, documented everyone’s movements, forwarded the pictures, and gave Blaiseck everything he needed in order to do what he had done. If it hadn’t been for his own toxic intervention in things, it never would have happened.
He had gone from being sad, to being lonely, to being useless. And now, finally, he’d become destructive. He could no longer tolerate himself. He couldn’t just sit and wait any longer while those walls closed in around him for the last few inches.
The pistol was where he left it. He pulled it out of the holster, as it kept screaming at him not to resist. It turned itself around, demanding that he let it do what it had to do.
The pistol and he stared at each other.
Gina
I awoke to the sight of a doctor looking down at me. He was still in his blue surgical cap as he hovered over me for a few seconds more. The stencil across his gown said University of California Medical Center. I had to blink a couple of times before I could remember where I was.
“You did fine,” he said. “The bullet missed your vital organs. We got the pieces out of your shoulder, so there should be no permanent damage. If all goes well, I think we can send you home tomorrow.”
Send me home.
As I thought about that, I wondered what was left of my home and everything else.
As the drug wore off, the vision of the shooting crept back into my head. I remembered a few things—they were confusing and terrifying but still vivid. And I also remembered other things that Sylvia told me when I was half awake and heading into surgery. My head was a collage of facts, pain, and paranoia all wrapped into one awful narrative. But one thing was certain: my life had fallen apart, and I didn’t know if I had the energy to put it back together.
I knew Morrie Richards was dead—that dear, sweet man didn’t deserve to be dragged into any of this. How did the others at the store tell the children what had happened? Some of the kids were probably walking up to the bookstore, just a few doors away, when he was gunned down. Sylvia didn’t want to tell me about Morrie—not as I was being wheeled down the hall on a gurney, heading into the operating room. But one of the nurses who walked by let it slip. Is this a patient from that shooting downtown—the one where someone was killed? I saw Sylvia wince. I knew what she was thinking: now that I knew someone had been killed, it was better that she tell me who it was. She didn’t want me to go into the netherworld of anesthesia with that question bouncing around in my brain.
And I knew Alexi was missing. As chaotic as that scene was in front of the store, I would have known if she were there. By the time Sylvia arrived at the hospital, I had to blurt out what my intuition was telling me: “They took Alexi, didn’t they?” Sylvia hemmed around her answer a bit, conceding that Alexi was missing but not willing to admit that she’d been kidnapped by the people who shot me. By the time I was out of surgery, however, Sylvia had more information. But it wasn’t anything she was happy to pass on to me. The police found a witness who saw a girl matching Alexi’s description being forced into the back of a van similar to the one seen on Hayes Street minutes later. The police hadn’t yet confirmed her identity. But I didn’t really need any more proof of that, because in my heart I already knew she was in the van. The last thing I remember before the bullet hit me was Alexi’s voice. It was muffled, but still she was screaming my name at the top of her lungs. I turned to see where she was, and that slight movement allowed me to avoid a direct hit from the bullet. In that moment, Alexi had saved my life.
An orderly wheeled me from the recovery room back into the room where I would be spending the night. It had a partial view of Twin Peaks, but I didn’t feel like looking at the scenery. Sylvia was there when they brought me in, and she helped the nurse get me off of the gurney and onto the bed. I thought then, as I’ve thought ever since: What the hell would I do without her? She made herself as comfortable as she could in the room with her notebook computer in her lap and her cell phone next to her on the table. Sylvia wasn’t in her go-to-court clothes, but she still looked very good. As stupid as it was at that moment, I was envious of what she was wearing.
Sylvia said she had news about the investigation into the God’s Children Foundation. She promised she’d spell it out for me when I felt up to hearing it. From the look on her face, I guessed it was something important. But she wanted to give me a few more minutes to clear my head.
I had a long list of worries. My fears about Alexi were at the top, and they were getting worse by the minute. There was no hint of where they’d taken her. The longer it took to come up with a solid lead, the colder the trail might get. The future of the bookstore didn’t rise to that level of anxiety, but it was a worry nonetheless. What was going to happen to it? The store had been closed since the shooting, but the staff was planning to open it the next day. Miriam called and left a message, telling me not to worry about anything because they would take care of it. I didn’t see how they could. If my memory of the shattered glass lying on the sidewalk near my face was any indication, the front of the store would have to be boarded up. I could only imagine what the inside looked like. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if the owners resurfaced and fired me, once they realized that the shooting was prompted by someone out to get me.
Why did the reverend and his pals try to kill me? It had to have been them. If it had been anyone else, why would they have kidnapped Alexi? Sylvia and I had expected the reverend to go to the police, but I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised that he and his friends would take the law into their own hands and just grab her. There was a certain kind of logic to that from their point of view. The reverend would get Alexi back and keep the police out of the case entirely.
But why did they decide to shoot me? Once they had Alexi, was I still that much of a threat to them? I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t know anything about them other than what Alexi had told me, so it was all secondhand information. Did the idea of shooting me come from the reverend or from those around him? Either way, it didn’t make much sense. The only hint I had about what they might be doing was when that sad-eyed
investigator stopped me at the Ferry Building and asked me about Alexi. Did he have a role in this?
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I think I must have dozed off. I don’t know how long I was out, but it could have been a few minutes. As I fell asleep I’d been thinking about that investigator who had tracked me down and about our conversation out by the ferry terminal. And for that reason, I guess, I was startled out of my wits when I woke up. I had to blink a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. That same man with the same doleful eyes was standing there in the doorway of my hospital room, looking like a ghost of himself.
“Can I come in?”
“What are you doing here?”
I almost barked out the question. There was enough debris from the medications and congestion in my throat to make my tone sound harsher than I intended. Still, it was frightening to see him there.
“Please, I just want to talk to you for a minute.”
His tone and his gestures were as abject as he could make them.
Sylvia sat up in her chair in alarm, as she looked from him to me and then back at him. She seemed ready to pounce.
“Gina, who is this?”
“It’s the man I told you about. He’s the one that approached me at the Ferry Building and asked me all the questions about Alexi.”
Sylvia was out of her chair in an instant, heading toward him. “How did you get in here?”
She turned and reached for the call button. “I’m going to get security in here. I can’t believe they let this guy past the nurses’ station.”
“Don’t, please. I’ll go soon, but there’s just something I need to tell you.”
I’m not sure why, but I was willing to listen to him.
“Sylvia, let him stay for a few minutes. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
Sylvia looked at me skeptically but then relented. I motioned for him to sit down in the empty chair near the door. I wasn’t just being hospitable. He looked so frail that I was afraid he was going to fall down.
Through the Bookstore Window Page 18