The 6th Target

"Those were her last words, Mama. 'I'm going to tell Mom.'

"When she turned away from me, I pulled back on the boom and gave it a shove. It smacked her across the back of the head, and -"

There was the sound of breaking glass, followed by a deafening concussion and a blaze of light.

Fred Brinkley thought that the world had blown apart.

Chapter 132

I WATCHED THROUGH THE SMALL kitchen window, horrified, as Brinkley held a sharpened knife to the side of his mother's neck.

We were armed and ready, but what we needed was a clear line of fire, and Mrs. Brinkley was blocking our shot. Breaking in through either door would give him time enough to kill her.

Fear for the woman climbed up my spine like a lit fuse. I wanted to scream.

Instead, I turned toward Ray Quevas, head of our SWAT team. He shook his head – no – again telling me he couldn't take the shot. This situation could go south in an instant no matter what we did, so when he asked for a green light on the flashbang, I said go ahead.

We pulled on our masks and goggles, and Ray jabbed the window with the launcher barrel, breaking the glass – and then he fired.

The grenade bounced off the far wall of the kitchen and exploded in an ear-shattering, blinding concussion.

The SWAT team had the door down in a half second, and we were inside the smoke-filled room, wanting only one thing: to incapacitate Brinkley before he could get his head together and grab his gun.

I found Brinkley on the floor, facedown, legs under the table. I straddled his back and bent his arms behind him.

I had the cuffs nearly closed when he flipped over and shoved me off his body. He was as strong as a freaking bull. As I struggled to right myself, Brinkley grabbed his gun, which had fallen onto the floor.

Conklin ripped off his mask and yelled, "Keep your hands where I can see them."

It was a standoff.

Chapter 133

LASERS WERE POINTED AT BRINKLEY'S HEAD – but he had two hands on his gun grip, prone position, his military training kicking in. His Beretta was aimed at Conklin. And Rich's gun was on Brinkley.

I was right there.

I screwed my Glock into Brinkley's first vertebra hard enough so that he could really feel it, and I yelled through my mask, "Don't move. Don't you move an inch, or you're dead."

Richie kicked out at Brinkley's gun, sending it skittering across the floor.

Six weapons were trained on Brinkley as I cuffed him, exhilaration flowing through me – even as Brinkley laughed at us.

I pulled off my mask, gagging a little from the phosphorus still in the air. I didn't know what Brinkley found so fu

We had him. We had him alive.

"He was going to kill me!" Elena Brinkley shouted at Jacobi. "Can't you keep him locked up?"

"What happened?" Brinkley said, looking over his shoulder into my face.

"Remember me?" I said.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "My friend, Lindsay Boxer."

"Good. You're under arrest for your prison break," I said. "And I think we've got a reckless endangerment charge to go with it. Maybe attempted murder, too."

Behind me, Jacobi was telling Elena Brinkley to hold still and he'd get her out of that chair.

"You have the right to remain silent," I said to Brinkley.

Elena freed herself – ripped the fabric loose on one sleeve and, tearing open her blouse, released the other arm. She walked over to her son.

"I hate you," she said. "I wish they'd killed you." Then she struck him hard across the face.

"Wow. What a shock," he said slyly to me.

"Anything you say can and will be used against you," I continued.

"Who are you kidding?" Brinkley shouted at me, seeming oblivious to the roomful of pumped-up law enforcement officers who'd love nothing more than to kick the crap out of him.

"All you can do is take me back to Atascadero," Brinkley said. "Nothing you charge me with is going to stick."

"Shut up, asshole," I said. "Be glad we aren't zipping you into a body bag."

"No, you shut up!" Brinkley said, shouting me down, spit flying, a hellish brightness lighting his face. "I'm not guilty of anything. You know that. I'm legally insane."

And suddenly I heard Elena Brinkley scream, "No!" – as the dishwasher started its run.

Epilogue

Chapter 134

I DIDN'T KNOW THE POOR MAN laid out in his birthday suit on Claire's table, only that his death might have been related to the Del Norte tragedy. Claire had peeled and folded the patient's scalp down over his face like the cuff of a sock, sawed off the top of his skull, and removed his brain.

She now held a shard of a bullet in the grip of her thumb and forefinger.

"It passed through something first, sugar," Claire told me. "Piece of wood, maybe. Whatever it was, it reduced the velocity and the impact but finally killed this guy anyway."

I called Jacobi, who said, "You know what to do, Boxer. Tell him your story, but keep it simple."

Then he patched me through to the chief.

I told Tracchio the cut-to-the-chase version – that Wei Fong, a thirty-two-year-old construction worker, had just died that morning. That he'd been in a persistent vegetative state for months at Laguna Honda Hospital long term care because of an inoperable gunshot wound to the head. That he'd taken that bullet the day Alfred Brinkley shot up the passengers on the Del Norte.

"Brinkley's sixth round went wild," I said. "And it finally killed Wei Fong."

"You've got my cell phone number?" Tracchio asked.

Claire's normally steady hands shook as she put the fragment into a glassine envelope. Then we both signed the paperwork, and I called the crime lab.

I heard Claire say to the dead man on her table, "Mr. Fong, honey, I know you can't hear me, but I want to say thank you."

Claire's Pathfinder was just outside the ambulance bay. I moved her dry cleaning from the passenger seat and strapped myself in.

"Kind of like in the Manson killings," I said as we pulled out onto Harriet Street. "Two sets of murders – Tate and LaBianca. Two sets of cops working side by side for weeks before they realized that the same perps did the killings. And now this. Macklin's crew working Wei Fong's case, coming up with nothing."

"Until he died. You've got everything?" Claire asked.

"Yep. I do."

The bullet fragment was resting within my breast pocket. The gun was inside a sealed paper bag between my feet. We took the 280 to Cesar Chavez, and from there went to Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, where the crime lab was housed inside a blue-and-gray concrete building.

Claire parked in a spot under one of the three Phoenix palms standing sentry in the parking lot.

I was out of the car an instant before Claire set the hand brake.