The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(19)

Since then, according to his sheet, Barkley had been on a kind of mad tear and had racked up several arrests: two for brandishing a weapon, several for drunk and disorderly, and the cherries on top, two DUIs. Each time he’d gone to court, he’d told the judges that he was sorry as all hell. Abject repentance, promises it would never happen again, plus good looks and a bad limp from the broken hip and thigh he’d sustained while fighting for our country worked in his favor.

He was fined, given warnings, and released.

“But wait,” Richie said, “there’s more.”

I scrolled down and brought up the next page of Barkley’s sheet, dated only three months ago. He’d been arrested and charged for firing a handgun through a window of a bar.

That mention of shooting through a window stopped me cold.

Richie reached across me and keyed the down arrow, pulling up Barkley’s statement to the arresting officer.

He’d told the officer that he had been drinking at the bar, called Willy’s Saloon, on Third Street. He happened to look out the front window and saw a known junkie trying to jimmy open the door to his vehicle. Barkley threw a shot through the plate glass but didn’t hit the guy.

Still, firing at another person, not in self-defense, was illegal. Leonard M. Barkley was arrested, pleaded guilty at his arraignment—not to firing on a person, but to shooting out the blinking beer sign in the window.

He brought a witness to court, the same person who’d called the police. But now this witness altered his story, telling Judge Crosby that he’d been mistaken, that in fact Barkley had only been shooting out the beer sign. Barkley told the judge how sorry he was. That the sign’s blinking lights made him think that Willy’s was taking on enemy fire.

“I have a touch of PTSD, Your Honor. It comes and goes.” Barkley was found guilty of the destruction of private property, and his gun was confiscated. He was given a stern lecture, fined a thousand bucks, and given forty hours of community service at a local food bank. He also had to replace the window and beer sign, all of which he did.

His car was relegated to a detail of the shootout, and the junkie was forgotten. But I was interested in that Ford, same model, same color, same tag number, as the one we’d seen in the photo of Barkley with a rifle scope to his eye, staring down San Anselmo Avenue toward the Barons’ back windows.

Barkley was acting like a man with PTSD, all right. He was drinking, fighting, carrying a gun, and firing it, all of which confirmed my opinion that he was armed and dangerous. If he was our guy, he had enough brainpower and a steady enough hand to fire a rifle from three hundred yards through a window and hit his targets. Two shots. Two fatalities.

Barkley’s last known address was Thornton Avenue near the intersection at Apollo Street in Silver Terrace. I pulled up a map of that area with a street view. Rich and I homed in on the brown stucco house on this residential block.

“Let’s pay a call,” I said to my partner.

We high-fived, and I called Reg Covington, our SWAT commander. I filled him in and gave him Barkley’s address.

“We’ll be there in forty minutes,” he said.

Conklin and I jogged down the fire stairs, and when we reached the curb at the front of the Hall of Justice, we signed out a car.





CHAPTER 31





CONKLIN AND I watched from our unmarked car at the crest of a hill where two roads met in a Y-shaped intersection; Apollo to the left, Thornton straight ahead.

The house where Leonard Barkley lived with his wife was one of dozens of small, plain stucco-and-wood-slat houses on both sides of Thornton Avenue.

We saw movement in the Barkley house as the occupants walked past their ground-floor windows. Mercifully, there were no pedestrians. No one was out mowing the lawn, washing the car, or engaging in other activities that would put bystanders in the way of gunfire.

Covington and his team were in an armored vehicle on Thornton. Others of the SWAT team had set up a perimeter ringing the house, extending the line down the hill.

We didn’t want to enter the house—yet.

A man like Barkley would have access to firearms as well as improvised explosives, booby traps, God only knew what else. We’d put a spike strip in front of his vehicle. If he tried to make a run for it, he’d blow his tires and we’d have him.

I had Barkley’s home and cell numbers. I checked in with Joe, who told me he was still with Dave Channing. He told me that he’d spoken with Julie’s nanny, Gloria Rose, who was now in charge of our darling and our home.

I asked myself, as I always did when my gun was in my hand, why I thought I had the right to take chances like this when I had a child. But I didn’t take time to search for an answer. A very dangerous man, likely a killer with an agenda, was inside his house only thirty yards away.

I looked at Richie. He said, “I prayed. We’re covered.” I grinned at the man I loved like a brother and trusted with my life, just as he trusted me with his.

We gripped hands for a second or two, then I spoke to Covington over our channel. I waited until his BearCat pulled up next to our car and in front of Barkley’s house. Then I called the subject on his landline.

I let the phone ring until a man’s voice spoke on the outgoing recording. Same thing happened when I called Barkley’s cell.

I did as requested and left a message.