Brady was waiting for me and Conklin inside his office. He closed the door, put the Post on his desk, and turned it so we could read Jason Blayney’s headline: “Revenge vs. the SFPD.”
Conklin hadn’t yet seen the story. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and began reading as I started talking.
“How does Blayney know so much about the Chaz Smith shooting?” I asked Brady. “Is a cop tipping him off?”
“Absolutely,” Brady said.
“Don’t look at me,” said Conklin. “My in-house crime reporter didn’t have either one of those stories. What does that tell you?”
“I’m the unnamed source on this one,” Brady said. “It was me.”
Conklin and I said, “What?” in unison.
“Blayney waylaid me. I told him that Chaz Smith’s killer was a pro. That’s all I gave him, but I like it. It puts this Revenge guy on notice. Gives him something to worry about.”
Chapter 17
After Jason Blayney’s story about Chaz Smith’s murder appeared, the phone lines lit up with calls from tipsters, hoaxers, and reporters from all corners of the Inter-Web. People were afraid and they were also titillated. A professional shooter had killed a drug dealer inside a school.
Whose side was the shooter on? Would he kill again?
Was it safe to send your kid to school?
While Brady fielded phone calls in his office, Conklin and I sat across from each other in the squad room, pecking at our keyboards.
If Revenge was a cop, the clues were in the paperwork. Conklin and I worked a page at a time, comparing hundreds of time sheets with the four drug dealers’ times of death, stamping our feet at square one.
Up to a point, the premise was valid — separate out the cops who were off duty when all four shootings went down and check their alibis.
But the flaw in the premise was obvious. A cop’s being off duty when a dealer was killed was not a smoking gun. We were using a very large-holed sieve. It was all we had.