The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(79)

I brought myself back to the imminent Barkley takedown. Barkley was a dead shot, a proficient killer. His neighbor Marty Floyd was a transit cop and so had also been trained in the use of guns. I was glad to see that Brady had called in the FBI to back up our SWAT team. Commander Reg Covington had a high record of success, and he was in charge.

Conklin and I watched from our squad car. SWAT was using the hoods of their vehicles as gun braces. A BearCat ran up on Marty Floyd’s lawn, and twelve men in tactical gear swarmed out. Two took positions on either side of the front door. Others took posts near the windows and at the back and side doors.

I radioed Covington.

“It’s Boxer,” I said. “What can you tell me?”

Covington said, “Barkley’s not answering his phone. Neither is the house owner. We’re warning them, then going in.”

I watched from the relative safety of our squad car as Covington lifted the bullhorn. A high-pitched squeal that felt like an electric current connected every person in the unit as one.

Covington’s voice boomed toward the brown house.

“Mr. Barkley, this is Commander Covington, SFPD. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. You and Mr. Floyd open the door and show us your hands. Do not do anything stupid.”

I watched the door, waiting for it to crack open, for Barkley to step out with his hands above his head. I could almost see him, wearing fatigues and a new beard. Could see him limping from a wartime injury. I waited to hear him say, “Don’t shoot.”

That’s not what happened.

Someone panicked. An officer at the barricade twitched his trigger finger and fired a burst of bullets at the brown house. Automatic gunfire was returned from windows on the second floor.

Conklin and I ducked inside our vehicle as World War III broke out on Thornton Avenue.





CHAPTER 116





THE MISFIRE FROM our side was an epic error that had launched a firefight that could cost dozens of lives. It could continue until every last one of us was dead.

I clapped my hands over my ears and stayed down, actually shaking as I waited for it all to be over. During a brief break in the shooting, I lifted my head from under the dash to scope out the scene and glanced at the Barkley house, ahead and to our right.

I saw a side door open.

Randi Barkley darted out, and despite the recent gunfire, she streaked across her side yard toward the rear of the empty house armed with nothing but ragged jeans and a tank top.

She was trying to get to Barkley.

I knew that because she’d told me she and Barkley had a “pact with death” and that she expected to die with her husband—and clearly she was trying to make that dream come true.

Pointing through the windshield, I said to Conklin, “Look.” The BearCat, an armored vehicle resembling a prehistoric reptile, ran up over the curb, crossing the narrow lawn between Floyd’s brown house and the green one in front of our car. They were forming a barrier.

I heard Covington shout, “Hold your fire,” and the shooting on both sides stopped.

Conklin was out of the car before the bullhorn’s echo died. I followed. Predicting Randi’s trajectory, Conklin cut her off with a well-timed tackle to her knees. Chi, McNeil, and Hudson burst from the Barkley house and huddled around us.

In a well-practiced maneuver called a cuff-and-stuff, I got handcuffs on Randi, and Chi and McNeil grabbed her and stuffed her into the BearCat. The driver took off for the outer perimeter, where Randi would be transferred to a patrol car.

Chi was embarrassed by Randi’s escape. He said, “There were no doors or windows in that effing room, Boxer.”

McNeil said, “However, we didn’t do a microscopic inspection of the floor.”

I got it. And I didn’t doubt that Barkley’s entire house was swiss-cheesed with hidden shafts leading to Barkley’s beaten path to the Caltrain tunnel that ran under Silver Terrace. But Randi’s dash for the Floyd house hadn’t done her any good. I watched as Randi, cuffed in the back of a patrol car, cleared the barricades and headed to the Hall of Justice.

I returned to our car in time to hear Covington announce over his mic, “Five seconds. On my go.”

The front door split open before Covington had counted to five. The commando to the left of the door kicked it in, cracking it in half. A stout man with blood pouring down his face and arms cried out, “I give up. I give up.”

The commando on his right set down his shield, grabbed the stout man’s arm, and in one fluid move pulled him to the ground.

That man wasn’t Barkley.

I got out of the car again and went up to Covington, who was ordering his men to get the injured man into a police car. I touched Covington’s arm.

He said, “Boxer?”

“Let me talk to Barkley.”

Covington reached for and opened the closest armored car door. Then he gripped my upper arms, lifted and moved all five feet ten inches of me like I was a doll, until I was behind the hardened-steel door and as shielded as much as possible from oncoming gunfire.

Then he handed me the bullhorn.

I took a breath, then spoke, my voice bouncing off the surrounding houses.

“Mr. Barkley, this is Sergeant Lindsay Boxer. I’m in contact with Randi. Give yourself up, and you can tell her good-bye. Or in three seconds SWAT command is going to cut you down and take you out of that house alive or dead.”