Twenty minutes after kissing my child, my husband, and my border collie good-bye, I parked my Explorer under the overpass on Harriet Street.
It was only a half block to the medical examiner’s office. I wanted to see my best friend, and I thought coffee with Claire would be a nice, soft entry to my Monday-morning return to work.
I pulled on the heavy glass doors, said “Hey” to Patrick, Claire’s new receptionist, who told me, “Dr. Washburn said go into her office. She’ll be there in a second.”
Five minutes later Claire and Cindy came through the office door, Claire looking harried, Cindy wearing her deep-in-a-story face. I stood up and put my arms around them both and gave them a group hug.
“Your hair smells wonderful,” Claire said.
“I got a hair mask. Me! What’s going on, you two? What’d I miss?”
Cindy said, “The day you left, did you hear about it? Roger Jennings gets shot in his car leaving the Taco King on Duboce Avenue.”
“I missed it.”
“Okay, well, he survives the shooting for a few days, unconscious, never says a word before he passes away late last night. You know who he is? Roger Jennings?”
“Sure. He was a catcher. Released by the A’s and picked up by the Giants, what—about a year ago? Was the shooter caught?”
Cindy filled me in. “No one saw the shooter, not even Jennings’s pregnant wife, who was in the seat beside him.”
Claire said, “The bullet entered through the center of the victim’s neck, severing multiple vertebrae and arteries, before exiting through the left side of his neck.”
Cindy said, “And someone, the shooter or an accomplice maybe, uses the chaos as cover to write the word Rehearsal on the back window of his Porsche Cayenne.”
“Rehearsal,” I said, thinking out loud. “The shooting was a trial run. Could be that Jennings was a random person in the wrong place.”
“Maybe,” said Cindy. “But I’ve been digging into Roger Jennings. I’m thinking he was lining up his next career. A little more dangerous than baseball.”
“How so?”
“He was dealing,” she said.
I said, “That’s a fact?”
“Trusted sources tell me that Jennings was selling MDMA to his teammates. There may be others. Chi and McNeil are on it. And now,” said Cindy, “I’ve got to get back and file the story.”
She blew kisses.
Then she was gone.