I left the waiting room and went down the corridor to the chapel, a sad-looking place that tried to give solace on a financially strapped city hospital’s budget. An ecumenical altar was backlit with subdued lights, and comforting sayings had been written in script along the walls.

Becky Randall sat in a pew with a little girl in her lap, three other kids hanging on to her arms, waist, and legs. She disentangled herself from her children, stood up, and said, “Willie, you’re in charge.”

She and I walked together into the hallway.

“No one will tell me anything,” she said. “Please, Sergeant. What happened? Tell me everything.”

Tell her everything?

I didn’t know everything yet myself, and considering what I did know, I had to edit my comments with compassion.

Could I tell Becky Randall that it looked like her husband had shot several people before he shot Chaz Smith dead in the men’s room of a school with a hundred kids all around? Could I tell her that following the shooting of Chaz Smith, her husband had shot and killed even more people and that because of him my lieutenant might lose his life?

Could I tell her that some of the five bullets inside her husband’s body had probably come from my gun?

Will Randall was alive, but he was on a ventilator and going into surgery. If he survived, he was looking at multiple charges of murder in the first degree.

Even if he lived, life as he had known it was over. “Your husband shot a drug dealer tonight, Becky. The man’s name was Jimmy Lesko. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“No,” she said. “Why did he shoot him? It must have been in self-defense.”

An hour later, all I knew from Becky Randall was that she had no idea about her husband’s secret life and in fact denied that he had one. What was it Joe had said?

Do we ever really know anyone?

I’ll never forget that hour in the corridor outside the chapel. Kids skated on the linoleum hallway on socked feet, asked for quarters for the vending machines, fooled around with wheelchairs while Becky sat in shock, denial, disbelief.

“Will is a wonderful, decent man,” Becky told me. “What’s going to happen if my husband dies?”

Chapter 101

Chapter 101

THE TV WAS on in the waiting room.

Jason Blayney was on the screen, standing outside Metropolitan Hospital in a smart jacket and tie, telling the network news what had gone down on Haight Street.

He looked and sounded authoritative, as if he knew what he was talking about. But Blayney was doing what he always did. He didn’t know what happened, so he made up the facts.

As Blayney told it, the cops had come onto Haight Street and started firing.