The 9th Judgment Read online

  And as she sat in the windowless room, it finally became clear to her how much Pete actually did hate her and the children, and that if he had in fact killed all those mothers and their children, it was because they were stand-ins for her and for Steven and Sherry.

  She wondered where Pete was now and if he was tracking her, if he’d been watching her when she went into the FBI building, if he was waiting for her to leave. And now that she’d told the FBI everything, what was she supposed to do? Why hadn’t someone told her what to do?

  Heidi looked up as the door opened and Agent Benbow came back in with a tall blond woman. He introduced her as Sergeant Lindsay Boxer from the SFPD. Heidi’s eyes watered. She stood and shook Sergeant Boxer’s hand with both of hers.

  “You’re the one who found Stevie. Oh my God. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You’re very welcome, Heidi. May I call you Heidi?”

  “Sure.”

  Benbow left the room, and Sergeant Boxer pulled out a chair. She said, “Catch me up, okay? I haven’t been fully briefed. Where are Steven and Sherry now?”

  “They’re with my friend Sarah Wells. We work together at Booker T. Washington High.”

  “And where is Sarah?”

  “She’s driving around, waiting to pick me up. She can’t go home. Her husband… she’s left him. We have no place to go. Even if my house wasn’t bombed-out, I have to get far away from Pete.”

  “Let’s just talk for a little bit,” Sergeant Boxer said.

  “Sure. Whatever I can tell you.”

  “Have you spoken to your husband since the events at your house?” Sergeant Boxer asked.

  “He left me a voice mail. He said that when he was driving around, he was planning to kill Stevie, but then he saw something in Stevie’s face. He said, ‘He looks just like me. But you, Heidi. You look nothing like me at all.’ ”

  “That was pretty ugly. What else did he say?”

  “He said to tell the authorities that if he didn’t get the five million bucks, he was going to find me and the kids and shoot us. That’s when I contacted Agent Benbow. I gave him my cell phone with Pete’s message still on it.”

  Sergeant Boxer nodded and said, “Excellent,” and then asked, “Where do your parents live?”

  “My mother was a single mom. She passed away five years ago. Sergeant, what am I supposed to do?”

  The door to the interrogation room opened, and Agent Benbow returned. He had a precise haircut and a military bearing, but his expression was sympathetic, almost warm. He took a seat at the head of the table.

  “Heidi, you’ve heard of the Witness Protection Programs?” Benbow said. “We want to put you and your kids in the program. You’ll be given documents supporting new names, new identities, and you’ll be given a new place to live.”

  “But I’m no good as a witness. I don’t know anything.”

  “We’ve put people in the program for far less than being in Peter Gordon’s sights. You have to let us protect you, Heidi. If we can find him, you’ll do very well as a witness. He’s demonstrated violence against you. And you can give a firsthand account of that.”

  Heidi’s mind flooded with thoughts. Benbow was saying that, for her own protection, her life as Heidi Meyer was over. That for the safety of her kids, she had to disappear, delete her real life and start over as a new person. It was damned near inconceivable.

  Only Sarah could make this bearable.

  Heidi told Sergeant Boxer and Agent Benbow about Sarah Wells, her close friend and confidante, Stevie’s godmother. And she was adamant. Sarah had to come into the program with them.

  Benbow looked worried, maybe annoyed. “It’s a risk, Heidi. If Sarah contacts her husband or reaches out to anyone she knows, she’ll put you and your kids in mortal danger.”

  “I trust Sarah. I love her. She’s my only true family.”

  Benbow drummed his fingers on the table, then said, “Okay. We’ll take you to a safe house while we make arrangements. All of you have to leave now, Heidi. No phone calls. No good-byes. You can’t take anything with you but what you’re wearing.”

  Heidi was overwhelmed by the enormity of this imminent and complete break with her past-and with the idea of a future without Pete. What would it be like to live without fear, to be with Sarah every night and in the light of day?

  They could all have full lives.

  Tears filled Heidi’s eyes again and spilled down her cheeks. She covered her face with her hands and let the tears come. When she could speak again, she said to Boxer and Benbow, “Thank you. God bless you both. Thank you.”

  Chapter 104

  I WALKED WITH Heidi out to the street. She looked up at me, puffy-eyed and dazed, and said, “I don’t know what to tell the kids.”

  “I know you’ll find the words. Heidi, do you understand what happens next?”

  “We spend the night at the FBI safe house in LA while arrangements are made. Then we fly out-”

  “Don’t tell me where you’re going. Don’t tell anyone.”

  “We’re dropping off the edge of the earth.”

  “That’s right. Is that your friend Sarah?” I asked as a red Saturn pulled up to the curb.

  “Yes. There she is.”

  Heidi stepped away from me and leaned into the car through the passenger-side window. She spoke to the driver, then said, “Sergeant Boxer, meet my friend Sarah Wells.”

  Sarah was a pretty brunette, no makeup, late twenties, wearing oversize clothes. She put a pink rubber ball down on the seat and reached across to shake my hand. She had an impressive grip. She said, “Listen, it’s good to meet you at last. Thanks for everything.”

  There was an odd expression on Sarah’s face-as though she were afraid of me. Had she had run-ins with the police?

  “Meet me at last?”

  “I meant, since you found Stevie.”

  “Of course.”

  Stevie was in a car seat in the back, sitting beside a little girl. The boy put the flat of his hand on the window and said gravely, “Hi, lady.”

  “Hey, Stevie,” I said, putting my hand on the other side of the glass, overlapping his small palm. The girl announced, “Stevie is in love with you.”

  I grinned at the two children, then Heidi gave me an effusive and tearful hug. She settled into the car, then reached out her hand to take mine.

  “Be happy,” I said.

  “You, too.”

  A black sedan pulled alongside the Saturn, and Agent Benbow leaned out of the car window. He told Sarah that he’d be in the lead. A second car positioned itself behind the Saturn, and then the three-car caravan drove away, escorting Heidi, Sarah, and the children to the next chapter of their new lives.

  I hoped they were going to have good ones.

  I watched until the cars were out of sight. I thought about Heidi and wondered how Pete Gordon would react to her disappearance with his children. And I wondered how in God’s name we would find him before he killed again.

  Chapter 105

  LEONARD PARISI LOOKED particularly ragged the next morning when Yuki and I came to his office requesting a search warrant. Parisi, known as “Red Dog” for his dark-red hair and his tenacity, pawed through the pictures of approximately four million dollars’ worth of stolen jewelry and a copy of the letter from Hello Kitty.

  “Do you have any leads on this Kitty person?”

  “She buried herself in a crowd coming through the front door. The security camera picked up the mob scene, but we couldn’t see who left the case,” Yuki said.

  “Sergeant?”

  “We have nothing on her identity,” I told him. “The jewelry is at the lab. So far, we haven’t found prints on anything. All we have is that Kitty returned every last piece. I think that gives her some credibility when she says she didn’t kill Casey Dowling.”

  “What the hell do we have security cameras for?” Parisi groused.

  Like the rest of us, Parisi had taken vast quantities of crap for his depar
tment’s low conviction record in the face of San Francisco’s rising crime rate. That would be our fault-the police, who didn’t bring the district attorney’s office enough evidence for them to build airtight cases.

  “So that leaves us with what, Sergeant? The unsubstantiated statement of an anonymous self-confessed jewel thief that she’s not a murderer? You actually think Dowling did it?”

  “Kitty was adamant the two times I spoke with her, and I found her convincing.”

  “Never mind her. She’s nobody. She’s a ghost. What about Dowling?”

  I told Parisi what we had on Caroline Henley, Dowling’s girlfriend of two years. I explained that Dowling’s net worth was in the tens of millions and that since a divorce would cost him plenty, there was a pretty good motive for killing his wife. I said that Dowling’s story had been inconsistent. That his explanation of the sounds, the shots, whether or not his wife had called out to him, had changed over time.

  “What else?”

  “His hair was wet when we interviewed him right after the shooting.”

  “So he showered to get rid of evidence.”

  “That’s what we think.”

  Red Dog pushed the folder of photos across the desk in my direction. “A shower is not probable cause. Before you search the screen legend’s house and the news media gets hold of it and that gets us sued for defamation, you’d better have something stronger than the burglar says she didn’t do it and Dowling took a shower.

  “It’s not probable cause for a warrant, Yuki,” Parisi said. “It’s not going to fly.”

  Chapter 106

  I YANKED OUT my desk chair and crashed it hard into my trash can, then did it again for the satisfying effect of the clamor. I said to Conklin, “Red Dog won’t ask for a warrant without a damned smoking gun.”

  Conklin stared up at me and said, “Funny you should say that. I was watching some old Dowling movies last night. Look at this.”

  Conklin rotated his computer screen around to face me.

  I sat, wheeled my chair up to the desk, and looked at Conklin’s monitor. I saw what appeared to be a movie-studio publicity still for an old spy flick.

  “Night Watch,” Conklin said. “He made this decades ago with Jeremy Cushing. Terrible film, but it was what they called ‘camp.’ It became a cult favorite. Check this out.”

  There was Dowling: black suit, sideburns, and a sun-lined squint. And he was holding a gun. “You’re kidding me. Is that a forty-four?”

  “A Ruger Blackhawk. It’s a single-action revolver, a six-shooter,” my partner said, clicking on another picture. The famous and now-deceased Jeremy Cushing was giving the gun to Dowling as a keepsake in a handshake photo op. You could almost hear the flashbulbs popping.

  Conklin hit a key, and the printer chugged out hard copies of the photos. I picked up the phone and called Yuki. “Grab Red Dog before he goes anywhere. I’m coming back down.”

  We arrived at Dowling’s magnificent mansion in Nob Hill before lunch, three cars full of Homicide cops dying to make a collar. I rang the doorbell, and Dowling came to the door in jeans and an unbuttoned white dress shirt.

  “Sergeant Boxer,” he said.

  “Hello again. You remember Inspector Conklin. And I’d like to introduce Assistant DA Yuki Castellano.”

  Yuki handed Dowling the search warrant. “I went to school with Casey, you know,” she said, stepping past Dowling into the vast gilded foyer.

  “I don’t think she ever mentioned you. Hey, you can’t-”

  Chi, McNeil, Samuels, and Lemke poured into the house right behind us with the determination of cops raiding a speakeasy during Prohibition. I had a flash of panic. Despite what I’d told Parisi-that Dowling would never ditch a souvenir of the last film Jeremy Cushing ever made-now I wasn’t so sure.

  “Wait,” Dowling said. “What are you looking for?”

  “You’ll know it when we see it,” I said.

  I took the winding staircase up toward the master bedroom as the rest of my squad fanned out through the house. I heard the phone ring, then Dowling shouted, his voice throbbing with indignation.

  “Well, Peyser, this is what lawyers are for. Come back from Napa right now.”

  I entered the movie star’s room. Fifteen minutes later, there wasn’t a drawer or a shelf that hadn’t felt my hand.

  I was pulling the mattress off the bed when I sensed more than heard another person in the room. I looked up to see a dark-skinned woman in a black housekeeper’s dress.

  I remembered her. The day after Casey Dowling was killed, the day Conklin and I came here to interview Marcus, this woman had served us bottled water.

  “You’re Vangy, right?”

  “I’m an illegal alien.”

  “I understand. I… that’s not my department. What do you want to tell me?”

  Vangy asked me to follow her to the laundry room in the basement. When we got there, she turned on a light over the washer and dryer. She put her hands on either side of the dryer and pulled it away from the wall.

  She pointed to the exhaust hose, a four-inch-wide flexible tube that vented hot air from the dryer to the outside.

  “That’s where he hid it,” she told me. “I heard it rattle. I think what you’re looking for is in there.”

  Chapter 107

  WE WERE IN Interview Room Number Two, the larger of our interrogation spaces, the one with the better electronics. I’d checked the camera and made sure the tape was rolling before bringing Dowling in and offering him the chair facing the glass.

  I wanted a full confession-for me, for Conklin, for Yuki, and for Red Dog Parisi. I wanted swift and certain justice for Casey Dowling. And I wanted to close the case for Jacobi.

  Dowling had buttoned his shirt and put on a jacket, and he looked completely in control. I had to admire his cool, since his gun was in a clear plastic evidence bag on the table.

  Conklin, too, looked completely at ease. I thought he was doing his best not to grin. He’d earned the right, but I wasn’t doing high fives just yet. Dowling loved himself so much, he’d probably convinced himself that no one could touch him.

  “My lawyer is on the way,” Dowling said.

  There was a knock on the door. I opened it for Carl Loomis, a ballistics tech at the crime lab. I pointed to the bagged gun, and he picked it up, turned to Dowling, and said, “I really enjoy your work, Mr. Dowling.”

  “Loomis, the ballistics test is top priority,” I said.

  “You’ll have the results in an hour, Sergeant,” he said as he took the evidence bag out of the room.

  I turned to Dowling, who was showing me how nonchalant he was by leaning back in his chair, rocking on its hind legs.

  “Mr. Dowling, I want to make sure you understand your situation. When the lab fires your gun, the test bullet is going to match the slugs removed from your wife’s body.”

  “So you say.”

  Conklin said, “Believe this guy? Let’s just book him on suspicion of murder. We’ve got him. He’s done.”

  “Tell us what happened,” I said to Dowling. “If you save us the time and cost of a trial, the DA will take your cooperation into consideration-”

  “Oh. Cross your heart?”

  “Just so you know, the DA goes home at five. That’s in fifteen minutes. Your window to make a deal is closing fast.”

  Dowling snorted derisively, and Conklin laughed.

  He went out of the room and came back with three containers of coffee, making a big show of adding milk and sugar to his cup, all the while humming the theme song from Night Watch. It was a catchy little ditty that had made the charts even when Dowling and Cushing’s shoot-’em-up movie had bombed.

  I saw something come over Dowling’s face as Richie hummed. The nonchalance evaporated. The chair legs came down. Seemed to me that hearing that tune had focused Dowling as nothing else had.

  Chapter 108

  DOWLING’S CELL PHONE rang. He looked at the caller ID, opened the phone, and said,
“Peyser? Where are you? What are you doing? Walking here?”

  Dowling paused for his lawyer’s response, then said, “You’re useless. Useless.” He snapped the phone shut and looked at his watch. It was five on the nose.

  “Call the DA. I’m talking to you of my own free will,” Dowling said. “I have nothing to hide. Do I need something in writing from you or the DA?”

  “Nope,” I said. I pointed to the camera in the corner over my head. “You’re on the record.”

  Dowling nodded. He was on camera. A place he liked to be.

  “I lied to protect Casey’s reputation,” he said. “Casey found out that I had a girlfriend. She pulled the gun on me. I wrestled it out of her hands, and the gun went off.”

  “Before or after the burglar went out the window?” I asked him.

  “The burglar left. That’s what gave her the idea. Casey saw an opportunity to shoot me. She grabbed the gun from the night table and started screaming at me. I tried to take it away from her, and it went off. That’s the truth.”

  “Mr. Dowling, are you sure you want to tell it that way? Your wife took two bullets, remember? One to her chest. The other to her neck. She was naked and unarmed. There was no gunpowder stippling on her skin. That means you were standing at least five feet away. The angle of those shots is going to bear that out.”

  “That’s not how it happened-”

  “It’s exactly how it happened, Mr. Dowling,” I said. “Your Ruger is a single-action revolver. You had to pull the hammer each time before you fired.”

  I made a gun of my hand. I pulled back the “hammer” I made with my thumb. I said, “Bang.” Then I repeated the action and said, “Bang,” again. “You want to try to convince a jury that was self-defense?”

  “It was. It happened just like I said,” Dowling insisted. He was sputtering now, a lisp coming into his speech, but he clung to his story. “She tried to kill me. I got the gun away from her and it went off. Maybe I panicked and fired it twice. I don’t remember. I was frightened,” he said, tears coming now. “I’m sorry,” he pleaded. “I loved her. Ask anyone. I should never have cheated on her. It’s hard, don’t you see? Women come on to me all the time. Casey didn’t understand that.”