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

  “Brown, what I could see of it. So after he buys the GoPhone, he leaves, and I tell my manager to take over for a couple of minutes.”

  “You followed the guy?” Brady asked.

  “Sure did. I kept back a few yards so he wouldn’t notice me, and pretty soon I see him talking to this pretty African-American woman with two kids in a double stroller. He was gesturing to her, like, asking if he could give her a hand with her packages.

  “Then, damn it, my manager called asking me to sign off on a personal check for a big sale. I turned around for a minute, and when I turned back, I’d lost him—the place was packed, you know? I go back to the store, and next thing, there’s sirens coming up the road. I turn on my police band and hear that there’s been a shooting.”

  “Could you ID this guy from photos?” I asked.

  “I can do better than that. Everything that guy did inside and in front of my store was recorded on high-quality digital media. I can make you a disk off my hard drive right now.”

  “Was he wearing gloves?”

  “No,” said Kennedy. “No, he wasn’t.”

  “How’d he pay for the phone?” Conklin asked.

  “Cash,” Kennedy said. “I gave him change.”

  “Let’s open your register,” I said.

  Chapter 89

  MY CELL PHONE rang at some bleary predawn hour. I fumbled with it in the dark and took it into the living room so Joe could sleep. My caller was Jackson Brady. Despite the weariness in his voice, I caught his excitement as he told me he’d been at the crime lab all night watching the CSU dust every bill from U-Tel’s cash drawer.

  “You’ve got something?” I asked, daring to hope.

  “Only some partial prints that match to a former marine.”

  “No kidding. That was your hunch.”

  “Captain Peter Gordon. Served in Iraq, two back-to-back tours.”

  I stood in my blue flannel pj’s looking down on the quiet beauty of Lake Street as Brady told me of this former marine officer who, after he was discharged, went off the radar. There was nothing unusual in his military record, no postduty hospitalizations—also no homecoming parades.

  “After Gordon’s discharge,” Brady told me, “he returned to Wallkill, New York, where he lived with his wife and little girl for a couple of months. Then the family moved to San Francisco.”

  “So what do you think, Brady? You like him as our killer?”

  “He sure looks like Lipstick,” Brady said. “Of course the garage videos are crap, and what we’ve got from U-Tel isn’t conclusive. Gordon bought a prepaid cell phone twenty minutes to an hour before Veronica Williams and her kids were killed—that’s all. Can’t do much with that.”

  “Wait a minute. Gordon was seen talking to Veronica Williams,” I said. “She had two children in a stroller. Christ!”

  “We don’t know if the woman Kennedy saw was Veronica Williams. We’ve got six people screening all of the Pier Thirty-nine surveillance videos,” Brady said. “Look, Lindsay, I’d love to pick him up, but when we do it, we want to nail him good.”

  Brady was right. I would’ve been giving him the same lecture if our positions were reversed.

  “Anything on Gordon since he moved to San Francisco?”

  “As a matter of fact, a neighbor called in a domestic disturbance twice, but no charges were filed.”

  “You have a picture of this guy?”

  “It’s old, but it’s coming at you now.”

  The picture on my cell phone was of a man with bland good looks, about thirty, brown hair, brown eyes, symmetrical features, nothing remarkable. Was this the man who’d worn a two-tone baseball jacket and had hidden his face from the security cameras at the Stonestown Galleria? Wishing didn’t make it so, but I felt it in my gut.

  Pete Gordon was the Lipstick Killer.

  I knew this was him.

  Chapter 90

  SARAH WELLS AND Heidi Meyer, along with a half dozen of their colleagues, huddled around the TV in the teachers’ lounge during their lunch break. On the screen was a jumpy video of Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Claire Washburn attempting to drive away from the scene of the terrible shooting at the Pier 39 garage the night before.

  The vehicle’s egress was blocked by a crowd of onlookers made up of looky-loos, reporters, and the police, who had sealed off the entrance to the garage. A video camera focused on Kathryn Winstead of Crime TV as she shouted to Dr. Washburn, “How many people were shot? Was it another mother and child? Were the shootings done by the same killer?”

  “Move aside. I’m not joking. Step back from the vehicle!” Dr. Washburn shouted back.

  “Recently you told women to carry guns,” Winstead continued. “The public needs to know.”

  “I meant what I said,” Washburn answered, then blew a hole through the crowd with her horn and pulled out onto the street.

  The scene switched back to the studio, Kathryn Winstead saying, “For those just joining us, we’ve obtained a security video from a Mr. Daniel Kennedy, the owner of U-Tel, a shop at Pier Thirty-nine. The man you see in this video appears to be the same one we’ve seen in the surveillance tape from the Stonestown Galleria garage. Sources close to the SFPD confirm that he may very well be the Lipstick Killer.”

  Heidi’s mouth dropped open as she watched her husband buying a cell phone.

  But there was a mistake. Pete wasn’t the Lipstick Killer.

  How could he be?

  Sarah took Heidi’s arm and walked her away from the TV, out of the lounge, and into the hallway. She asked, “Where was Pete last night?”

  “Pete? We went shopping and then I went out to the Blue-Jay Café with my neighbor…,” Heidi said, her face blanched, her eyes wide with horror. “Pete said he was going home to watch the game. He was on the couch when I got there. He couldn’t have done what they say.”

  “It’s a short drive from your house to Pier Thirty-nine.”

  “We were at dinner for a while—oh my God. But it couldn’t be him. I would know, wouldn’t I?”

  “Heidi, he’s mean. He’s abusive. He treats you and the kids… look, where does Pete go when he says he wants to be ‘anywhere but here’ and then disappears for hours? Do you know?”

  “God. You’re serious.” Heidi looked into Sarah’s resolute face, then her knees buckled. Sarah steadied her and said, “Heidi, Heidi, are you all right?”

  “What if this is true? What am I going to do?”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “Sherry’s in school. Stevie’s at day care—unless, oh God. What time is it? Pete picked Stevie up. I’ve got to call the police. Where’s my bag? I need my phone. I’ve got to call the police now.”

  Chapter 91

  PETE GORDON WAS cleaning his gun in front of the TV, watching that video of him buying a phone at the mall.

  The video had been all over the news for the last thirty minutes, and now a CNN talking head was saying, “sources close to the FBI have confirmed that this man is a person of interest in the recent killings in parking garages around our city. His name has not been released, and if you know or see him, do not confront him. He is classified as armed and very dangerous…”

  “Why, thank you,” Pete said, screwing his suppressor onto the barrel of his Beretta. He put the gun into his waistband and went out to the garage. His go-bag was already in the trunk, along with the emergency kits and a case of bottled water.

  He got into the car, buzzed up the garage door, and immediately heard the sound of props twirling overhead. He couldn’t see if the helicopter belonged to the Feds or if it was a news chopper, but either way its crew knew who he was and was coming after him.

  He had to go to Plan B. And Plan B was a damned fine plan.

  Pete buzzed down the garage door. He got out of the car, took a Styrofoam cooler from a high shelf, and brought the cooler into the house. He dismantled the doorbell and deftly rejiggered the wiring. The blasting caps were in a small taped box marked PAPER CLIPS at the
back of the junk drawer. He dropped the bell ringer and one of the caps into the cooler, walked it outside to the curb, and put it next to the mailbox.

  Back inside the house, Pete put another of the blasting caps into a cardboard box, covered it with a sheaf of old newspaper, and took the box out to the back porch, leaving it right outside the rear door.

  He returned to the living room and peered out through the curtains. A black SUV drove up and parked in front of his walkway. Five or six identical vehicles were now pouring onto the street from both directions. No doubt now. It was the Feds.

  Pete pulled back the curtains so he was clearly visible, letting them see that he saw them. Then he plucked the kiddo out of his crib. “Let’s go, stink bomb.”

  Stevie cried out, wriggling in Pete’s arms, so Pete shook him and told him to stop. He grabbed a box of juice and a bag of Cheerios from the countertop. Then he headed out to the attached garage and got inside the car with the stink bomb on his lap.

  Pete imagined the chatter going on between the SUV teams and a command post, which by now would have been set up a block away. As he waited in the dark of his garage, enemy troops gathering around his house, Captain Pete’s mind rolled back several years to a day when he and his command had been traveling just outside Haditha.

  It was the day the only person he cared about in the world had been murdered.

  Chapter 92

  PETE GORDON HAD been in the lead car at the head of a caravan of six vehicles transporting equipment and stores into the Green Zone. Riding shotgun beside Corporal Andy Douglas, he’d been busy on the walkie-talkie with Base Command when the world cracked open.

  The explosion shocked every sense in his system, turning him deaf and smoke-blind, the concussive waves jolting his vehicle, lifting the chassis and dropping it down hard. He’d staggered out onto the chaotic roadside, his hearing coming back only to reveal the heartrending shrieks of the dying and wounded.

  Working his way over the litter of smoldering steel and rock, Pete found the last vehicle in his caravan. It had been overturned by the blast and was on fire. He saw three of his men: Corporal Ike Lennar was lying on the ground, twitching. Private Oren Hancock was holding his guts as they spilled into the dust. The other marine was Kenny Marshall, from Pete’s hometown, his legs blown off above the knees.

  Pete’s eyes watered up now as he remembered that day.

  He’d dropped beside his dear friend, ripped off Kenny’s helmet, and cradled his bare head. The picture of Jesus inside Kenny’s helmet appeared to shake its head as the helmet rolled on its rim. Pete had murmured empty words of comfort to Kenny, the boy who’d said he’d be ready whenever the Lord called him. Kenny had looked up at Pete—surprise in his eyes—and then the life had fled from him.

  Pete had felt emptied of life himself, and then a torrent of rage flowed into that void. He tore off his shirt and covered Kenny’s face, then shouted to his troops that the IED had been set off remotely by the car behind the caravan. What was left of his company, ten good men, had swarmed around the nondescript gray car and yanked open the doors.

  There were two cowards in the front seat, and a woman and a child screamed in the back. Pete dragged the woman out of the car, her arms wrapped around the baby. He didn’t understand what she said, and he didn’t care. When the insurgents were facedown on the ground, Pete had shouted at them while aiming his weapon at the black sack of woman and baby at his feet.

  “Do you love these people?” he’d screamed at the men. “Do you?”

  He aimed his gun at the bitch, and she turned to look at him, her hands coming out from her shroud of a garment, palms up to stop the bullets. He fired his automatic, watching her jerk and flutter, and as she died he shot her squalling kiddo. He then turned his weapon on the enemy insurgents, but his troops tackled and disarmed him, put him down, and sat on him until he stopped sobbing.

  Nothing was ever said about the incident. But in his mind Gordon still lived on the dusty road outside Haditha. It was the last time he’d had a tender feeling.

  The roar of the descending chopper brought Pete back to the moment. He was inside the car in his garage, the enemy all around, but he was eager for the action to commence. He patted the stink bomb’s stomach, tap tap tap, and waited to make his move.

  Chapter 93

  BRADY’S CALL REACHED me at my desk at 1:30 p.m. He was shouting into the phone, telling me that our witness had blown the whole thing and that Peter Gordon was in an armed standoff with the FBI. “The bastard is holding his son hostage. Agent Benbow needs you on the scene, Lindsay. Pete Gordon says he’ll talk only to you.”

  Jacobi hovered behind me. I brought him up to speed in ten words or less and saw the conflict in his face.

  “Get going. Keep me posted,” he barked. “Be careful,” he shouted after us as Conklin and I left the squad room.

  It took an agonizingly long time to get from the Hall through the traffic around the Civic Center and then to where Gordon lived. We passed through the cordon at the end of the street and saw a herd of black SUVs in front of a mud-brown two-story house with attached garage set back on a patch of dry lawn.

  Agent Benbow flagged us down with his hand, came up to the passenger-side window, and said to me, “You’ve got experience in hostage negotiation?”

  “Not enough,” I said.

  “Give it your best, Sergeant,” he said. “Be his friend. Don’t antagonize him. Try to get him to come out with the boy.”

  “What have I got to offer?”

  “Whatever he wants. Once we have the child, he’s ours.”

  Benbow held out a Kevlar vest. I put it on and took the bullhorn. I called out to Gordon, “Peter, this is Lindsay Boxer. I’m here because you asked for me and I want this to turn out right for everyone. Open the front door slowly, put your hands on your head, and come out, okay? No one is going to shoot.”

  There was no reply, so I tried again, varying my request. Then, taking a phone number from Benbow, I called Gordon’s home. Five rings. No answer. Then the machine picked up, and a little girl’s voice said, “This is the Gordon house. Please leave a message.”

  I was out of moves, wondering why Gordon had even asked for me, when my own cell phone rang. I pulled it off my belt and stared at the faceplate. The caller ID was blocked, but I knew.

  “Boxer.”

  “Well, hello, sweetmeat,” said the Lipstick Killer.

  Chapter 94

  THE SOUND OF Gordon’s voice in my ear bypassed reason and went straight to my adrenal glands. I broke into an instant sweat, feeling it roll down my sides, between my breasts, across my brow. I was having déjà vu of some of the most terrifying hours of my life, but somehow I forced myself to keep my voice steady.

  “Gordon, no one wants to hurt you. We know you’ve got your son, and he’s very important to all of us.”

  “He’s important to you. I don’t give a crap about him. Ask my wife. Odds are, he’s not even mine.”

  “How can we all get what we want?”

  “There’s only one way, and it’s my way. Drop your weapon,” Gordon said. “Call off the choppers. If I hear rotors, this conversation is over. My house is wired to explode. I have trip wires inside and out. There’s one safe path, and it’s the walkway to the front door. Come on down, Lindsay, come onnn downnnn.”

  I told Gordon to hold, and I briefed Benbow, who shook his head and said, “No frickin’ way.”

  I said, “I’m not coming in, Gordon. I need you to come out with Steven. I guarantee your safety. My word of honor, no one will shoot.”

  “Lindsay, you want the kiddo, you have to come to me. I’ll use you and the kid as a shield. We get into your car, and no one follows. If I see a gun, I shoot the kid and myself. If I hear a chopper, I shoot. If anyone breaks a window or steps on the lawn, the house blows. Do you copy?”

  Benbow took the phone out of my hand and said, “Gordon, this is Special Agent Richard Benbow, FBI. I can’t let Sergeant Boxer go in, but I�
��ll come to your door unarmed and escort you to safety. Give us the child, and I’ll personally drive you to Mexico. How’s that for a deal?”

  Benbow listened to Gordon’s response, then snapped the phone closed. “He told me he wants Boxer. Otherwise it’s over and I can go fuck myself. He hung up.”

  There was only one option, the killer had told us. His way, or he would blow up everything, including his own child.

  I took my Glock out of its holster and put it down on the grass. I asked God for protection, then headed up Peter Gordon’s front walk.

  Chapter 95

  I KEPT MY eyes on the front door of a dreary house on an old shoe of a block that might be the last thing I’d ever see. I rapped on the door—no answer. I rapped even harder. No answer again.

  What the hell was this?

  I turned to look at Conklin and shrugged. Then I reached out and pressed the doorbell.

  I heard Conklin shout, “No, Lindsay, NO!” and at that moment there were two loud explosions, a nanosecond apart.

  The air cracked open. The ground lurched, and I was knocked off my feet. It was as if I’d been hit by a truck. I fell hard to the ground and was lost in a dense cloud of black smoke. I inhaled the bitter taste of cordite, coughing until my guts spasmed. Men shouted from the street, and there was the loud static of car radios. I heard Conklin calling my name.

  I peered through the smoke and saw my partner lying fifteen feet away. I screamed, “Richie,” scrambled up, and ran to him. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead.

  “You’re hit!”

  He put a hand to his head and said, “I’m okay. Are you?”

  “Fucking perfect.”

  I helped Rich to his feet. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Jesus Christ, Linds, I thought he’d killed us.”