Women's Murder Club [09] The 9th Judgment Read online

  Cindy sighed and relaxed in Rich’s arms, strumming his flat belly lightly with her fingertips.

  “You did everything you could do. I know what you mean, though. Lindsay winked at me outside the Chronicle Building on the way to her rendezvous with that freak. She was trying to assure me that she was going to be okay when there was no way she could know that. I felt utterly helpless.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I wanted to do something, but there was nothing I could do. Nothing.”

  Rich kissed her palm. “I’m always knocked out by the bravery of women,” he said. “Like you, Cin. Working ‘crime.’ Living here.”

  Cindy’s mind flashed over the “living here” part. She’d moved to this sunny apartment in the Blakely Arms, a great building in a borderline neighborhood, only to learn after her furniture arrived that someone was killing residents of the building.

  “I’m scared all the time,” Cindy said. “What you’re calling bravery, that’s me pushing back against my fear of everything. That’s how I take care of myself.”

  “Is that what you want? To take care of yourself?”

  “Sure. But that doesn’t mean I want to be alone.”

  “No, huh?”

  Rich pulled her tight, and she tilted her head back so she could look into his gorgeous face. She cared about him so much, it almost hurt.

  “We ought to bunk together, you know?” Rich said. “I’d feel better if you weren’t here at night by yourself.”

  “You want to move in so you can protect me?”

  “Wait, wait. What I mean to say is, I’m crazy about you, Cindy. Dating and so forth, it’s great. But I want to be with you. I want more.”

  “You do, huh?”

  Rich grinned at her. “Scout’s honor. I sure do.”

  Chapter 71

  SARAH’S ARMS BURNED so much, the pain was like fire, only worse. But she maintained the static hang from her chin-up bar until her muscles simply refused to obey any longer.

  She dropped to her feet and shook out her hands for five minutes. Then, workout over, she went into the living room and settled into Trevor’s ugly but incredibly comfortable recliner. She opened her laptop and was grading tests, half listening to the TV, when she heard Kathryn Winstead, Crime TV’s most appealing reporter, engaging Marcus Dowling in an emotional interview.

  Looking at Dowling, Sarah felt a shock of pure hatred. Still, she dialed up the sound and studied how much the monster had changed. Dowling had grown a beard and lost weight, and although he looked haggard, he still had the formidable presence of a movie star as he played the grieving husband role to the max.

  Dowling’s voice cracked and he even stammered as he told Kathryn Winstead that he was “empty inside.”

  “I wake up soaked with sweat,” Dowling told the reporter. “For a m-m-moment, I think I’ve had a nightmare and I turn to where Casey should be lying beside me, and then it all comes back and I remember her c-c-calling out to me, ‘Marc! Someone is in the room.’ And then the shots. Bang. Bang.”

  Sarah grabbed the remote and rewound the DVR.

  What did he say?

  She listened again as Dowling quoted Casey calling out to him. As far as Sarah knew, he had never gone public with Casey’s last words before. The funny thing was, Casey had screamed out for her husband. That was true.

  But there had been no shots.

  Sarah put her laptop aside and went to the kitchen. She washed her face under the faucet, got a bottle of tea out of the fridge, and gulped it down. That movie star had balls the size of coconuts. He was counting on her not to come forward because no one would believe her if she did. It would be Marcus Dowling’s word against hers—and she was a thief.

  Sarah returned to the TV, wound back the interview, and watched a sympathetic Kathryn Winstead say to Dowling, “And the police still have no suspects?”

  “I haven’t heard from them in several days, and mean-while Casey’s killer is still out there with a fortune in jewels.”

  Sarah snapped off the TV.

  This was classic Samson and Delilah.

  “Terror” wouldn’t be home for two hours, and if she used that time efficiently, she’d be able to give Marcus Dowling a haircut. She couldn’t allow him to get away with murder.

  Chapter 72

  SARAH HEADED TOWARD the phone kiosk at Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the largest tourist attractions in the state. Families and herds of students parted around her, surging toward the shops and restaurants at the Cannery, no one even glancing at the young woman in gangsta shorts and a pink “Life is good” sweatshirt pressing quarters into the pay phone.

  She tapped the buttons. The tip-line operator answered and switched the call to the Southern District Police Station, and Sarah asked to be connected to a Homicide inspector.

  “What should I say this is about?”

  “Casey Dowling,” Sarah said. “I know who shot her.”

  “One moment, please. Sergeant Boxer is getting off the phone.”

  Sarah thought that the pay-phone call could be traced, but she’d be brief, and from her vantage point, she could melt into the crowd before a cop got anywhere near her.

  “This is Sergeant Boxer,” a woman’s voice said.

  “I’m the one who robbed the Dowling house. I didn’t shoot Casey Dowling, but I know who did.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Sarah said.

  “Now there’s a shock.”

  “Hello? Are you talking to me?” She put another quarter into the slot.

  “Tell me something I can believe,” said the cop, “or I’m hanging up.”

  “Listen,” Sarah said, “I’m telling you the truth. I’m the burglar. I was looting the safe in the closet when Marcus and Casey came into the bedroom. They had a fight. Then they had sex. I waited for about twenty minutes until Marcus Dowling was snoring, and then I was bailing out the window when I knocked over a table. No one knows about the table, right? Is that proof enough? Because Marcus Dowling keeps saying that Hello Kitty killed Casey—and I didn’t do it.”

  “Okay. Okay, I hear you,” Sergeant Boxer said, “but I need more than your anonymous say-so. Come in and make a statement. Then I can help you out of this jam so we can get whoever killed Mrs. Dowling.”

  Sarah could almost see that cop signaling to someone to trace the call. She’d already been on the line too long.

  “Are you kidding? Come in so you can arrest me?”

  “You don’t have to come in. I’ll come to you. Name the place, and we can talk there.”

  “Marcus Dowling killed his wife. There. Now we’ve talked.”

  Sarah disconnected the line.

  Chapter 73

  CONKLIN AND I hung up our phones at the same time and stared at each other over the wall of flowers on my desk.

  “That was Hello Kitty,” Conklin said. “That was for real.”

  “Why didn’t we do a GSR test on Dowling?” I asked him.

  “Because, damn it, I didn’t order it,” said Conklin.

  “I was there, too,” I said, throwing my stale tuna on rye into the trash. “So was Jacobi. We all blew it.”

  “We had orders,” Conklin said. “Handle the movie star with kid gloves, and Dowling was having a heart attack, remember?”

  “So-called heart attack,” I muttered.

  “And, by the way, he took a shower. And now we know why. Wash off the gunshot residue.”

  I gathered my hair up to the roots, found a rubber band, and made a ponytail. The last time I’d felt this incompetent, I was a rookie.

  Last night Tracchio put out a statement that the Lipstick Killer hadn’t shown up at the drop and that the letter from the killer that ran in the Chronicle had been a hoax. Cindy had written an editorial that ran in this morning’s paper. In a spare Hemingway style, she called the Lipstick Killer a coward, and she said I was a hero. Since then, a truckload of flowers had arrived and filled up the squad room.
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  I didn’t feel heroic. I felt like I’d done my best and even that wasn’t enough.

  Down at Golden Gate Avenue, the FBI was now working on the Lipstick Killer case along with a liaison from our squad—our troubleshooter and floater, Jackson Brady. He was perfect for the job, freshly rested, hot to prove himself to Tracchio. He couldn’t have dreamed up a better showcase for his years in the Miami PD. And, no kidding, I hoped he and the FBI had some fresh ideas about how to catch that psycho—because I was 100 percent sure that if he wasn’t stopped, the Lipstick Killer would murder again.

  Meanwhile, Jacobi was pressuring me to close the Dowling case, and that was okay. For the sake of our sanity and self-esteem, Conklin and I had to do it. The call from Kitty was our first and only break since Casey Dowling had been shot two weeks before. We finally had something to work with.

  I said to Conklin, “Dowling told us he had sex with his wife before dinner, right? Now Kitty says they did it while she was looting the safe. That would be after dinner. So if that caller was for real”—I fit the pieces together as I talked—“we know why Dowling’s clothes were negative for gunpowder and blowback. Marcus Dowling was naked when he shot his wife.”

  “You thought Dowling did it from the beginning,” Rich said miserably.

  “Doesn’t matter. I dropped the ball.”

  Chapter 74

  I CROSSED THE floor to Jacobi’s office and stood in the doorway. He looked up, gray-faced, gray-suited, black-tempered. I told him about Hello Kitty’s call.

  “We found her story believable,” I said.

  “Did you put a trace on the call?”

  “Warren, that’s going to get us nothing. I heard a coin dropping into the box. She was at a public phone.”

  “Just do it, okay?” Jacobi growled. “What’s wrong with you, Boxer?”

  “I dunno,” I said, throwing up my hands. “Stupid, I guess.”

  I went back to my desk. Conklin was looking past me, rocking in his chair, and when I snapped my fingers and called his name, he said, “Okay, we know what to do. Bear down on Marcus Dowling. He won’t be expecting it.”

  My phone rang, and Brenda said, “Line one, Sergeant. That woman again. Says she was disconnected.”

  I stared at the blinking red button, then stabbed it and said, “This is Sergeant Boxer.”

  “Sergeant, don’t write me off as a crank. I’m being falsely accused of murder. Do you know what was stolen from the Dowlings?”

  “I have a list.”

  “Good. Then check it out. I took two opera-length diamond chains, three sapphire-and-diamond bracelets, a large diamond brooch in the shape of a chrysanthemum, and some other stuff, including an ornate ring with a big yellow stone.”

  “The canary diamond.” There was silence. Then…

  “It’s a diamond?”

  “What am I supposed to do with this information, Kitty? I need your statement, or I’ve got nothing.”

  “You’re a Homicide inspector. Do your job and leave me out of it,” she said, and she hung up again.

  Chapter 75

  YUKI WAS PULLING into the garage under her apartment building when her mobile rang. The caller ID read “Sue Emdin,” the woman she and Casey Dowling had both known at Boalt Law. Emdin was the “tough beans” type, but when she spoke now, Yuki thought her voice was strained to cracking.

  “Sue. What’s wrong?”

  “Plenty. I saw Marcus having dinner with a woman in Rigoletto’s. It’s a dark, six-table Italian place on Chestnut, home-style cooking and not Zagat rated. They were in the back corner, laughing and canoodling. It wasn’t a consolation dinner. Not in my book anyway.”

  Yuki nosed the car into her spot, turned off the engine, got out, and headed to the elevator. Sue was filling in her report with color commentary.

  “I wish you could’ve seen this girl. Tight little skirt, V-neckline down to her navel, showing off her great big bouncy boobs.”

  “Dowling had a hot date, you’re saying?”

  “Hot and a half with whipped cream on top. My husband would kill me for doing this, Yuki. He would say it’s none of my business, but after the funeral? After that eulogy Marcus gave? Well, it was a performance, and ever since I swore to you that he didn’t do it, I’ve been worried that I was wrong about him. For God’s sake, what if he did kill Casey and I vouched for him? Makes me sick just thinking about it.”

  “Okay, I understand. Still, Marcus having a date is poor form, but it’s not criminal.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “What does that mean, Sue?” Yuki’s voice went up an octave. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “I’ve been following Marc since the funeral. I follow him all the time. Yuki, I had to do it. I was hoping he was the man I said he was, but another part of me was saying that he did kill Casey and that I was so under his spell, I didn’t see it. Casey told me she thought he was seeing someone, remember? Oh my God, I can’t stand it. Tell me I’m crazy and put me out of my misery, or do something for poor Casey.”

  Yuki juggled her handbag and briefcase. What had she created by talking to Sue Emdin? Her hands were shaking as she got out her keys and opened her front door. “Where are you now?”

  “Outside his house. I’ve been here for over an hour. Babe-a-licious is still with him, and if you ask me, she’s not going home. Not tonight anyway.”

  “Tell me again. What does this prove?”

  “It proves that all of Marc’s talk about how heartsick he is over losing Casey is bullshit. If he’s lying about that, it means he could be lying about everything.”

  “What kind of car are you driving?” Yuki asked.

  “Gold Lexus. I’m parked right across the street from his house.”

  “Nobody would notice a car like that.”

  “His neighborhood is full of them.”

  Yuki put down her briefcase, kicked off her heels, and looked for a pair of flats. She was as crazy as Sue.

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said.

  Chapter 76

  MY THIRD CUP of coffee was still hot when Yuki walked through the gate in the squad room at nine thirty a.m. and made a beeline to where I sat behind my floral barricade.

  “I might have something on Marcus Dowling,” she said.

  Conklin got up, gave her his chair, and said, “You have our complete attention.”

  Yuki told us in one long run-on sentence that Casey’s school friend, Sue Emdin, had been tailing Dowling for more than a week and had seen him last night in a restaurant made for clandestine meetings, having dinner with a woman who was more friendly than friend.

  “Sue followed them from the restaurant, then called to tell me she was staking out Dowling’s house. I went to sit with her.”

  “Jesus, Yuki.”

  “Just listen, okay? No laws were broken. At about eleven last night, Dowling and this woman came out of the house, falling all over each other. She’s in her late twenties, early thirties, Pilates body, long cover-girl hair. Totally gorgeous.”

  “You’re saying, totally his girlfriend,” Conklin said.

  “So it would seem. Dowling helps said blonde into his car and then off they go.”

  “And you’re following them?” I said.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Really, Yuki,” I said, flipping my ballpoint into the air. “That was nuts and dangerous and you know it. Everyone wants to be a cop, but it beats the hell out of me why.”

  “It’s a glamour job, right?” Yuki cracked, waving a hand to indicate the splendor of our grimy, gray-on-gray bull pen.

  “So you’re outside his house. What happened after that?” I asked.

  “Okay, so we followed Dowling’s car to Cow Hollow,” Yuki said. “The car stops, and we have to drive past it, of course. We take a spin around the block, and on the return lap, I see Totally Gorgeous walking by herself to this extremely nice house. Dowling stayed in his car. He didn’t leave until his girlfriend went inside, but t
he point is, he didn’t walk her to the door. Clearly he didn’t want to be seen.”

  Yuki paused for breath, took out a business card, and flipped it over so I could see the address she’d written on the back.

  Conklin said, “We have his phone log.”

  I typed the address Yuki gave me into the computer and came up with a name and a phone number.

  “Graeme Henley,” I said to Conklin, and read him the number.

  My partner scrolled down his computer screen. “It’s here. He called that number three or four times a day all last month.”

  “Graeme Henley is probably not a woman,” I said.

  “So the girlfriend is married,” Yuki said. “That’s why he stayed in the car. Lindsay, Casey thought Marc was seeing someone. If he was, if he was serious, if he couldn’t get rid of Casey… the girlfriend could be a motive.”

  “There’s something else,” I told Yuki. “I’ve got a witness who says Casey Dowling was alive when Hello Kitty left the Dowling house.”

  “You’ve got a signed statement?”

  “It’s an anonymous source but credible.”

  “Huh,” said Yuki. “You have an anonymous but credible source who says Casey was alive when Kitty left the Dowling house. Who could that be? Oh my God. Kitty called you?”

  “Uh-huh, and she told me things only Kitty could know. Have we got probable cause for a wiretap warrant?”

  “It’s a stretch,” Yuki told us. “I’ll go to work on Parisi. I’m not promising, but I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”

  Chapter 77

  YUKI GOT IT done.

  A signed warrant for a wiretap was in my hands by lunch the next day, and within hours there was a tap on a phone circuit a couple of blocks from Dowling’s house. Effective three o’clock in the afternoon, Dowling’s phone calls were being routed through a small, windowless room on the fourth floor of the Hall.