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

  “It’s not about you, handsome. It’s about the kids having dinner with their family.”

  “You guys can get along without me. Just wing it, princess,” Petey said, not quite believing it when she took the remote off the counter, jammed it down the disposal, and hit the switch.

  “Go to hell, Petey,” she said as the machine gnawed on the plastic. “No, I really mean it.”

  Pete shut off the grinder and watched his fucking wife flounce out of the room. He reran the last scene in his mind, only this time he put wifey’s hand into the grinder. Yeah. The metal teeth chomping through muscle and bone as she screamed her head off.

  He was going to get her.

  He was going to get her and Sherry and the stink bomb one day really soon.

  WCF, people. Wait for it.

  Chapter 26

  MY EYELIDS FLEW open at 5:52 a.m. exactly. I know because Joe has a projection clock, a high-tech gadget that shows the time and temperature in red digits on the ceiling.

  I like knowing this information by simply opening my eyes. But this morning, I saw the red numerals and thought, WCF.

  That goddamned baby-killing psycho had infiltrated my mind, and I didn’t hold it against Claire one bit that she was so incensed and freaked and practically murderous herself. The insidious lipstick letters—the clue that led to nothing—were like the freight train heading toward the house when there was no place to run.

  I wondered how Chi and McNeil were doing with the phone list that matched those initials. Man, it would be great if it led to the shooter, but a killer signing his work with his actual initials? Forget it.

  I closed my eyes, but Martha was on to me. She put her snoot on the mattress, pinned me with her gorgeous brown eyes, and started thumping her tail. Then Joe turned over. He wrapped his arms around me, brought me into a bear hug, and said, “Linds. Try to sleep.” It was now 6:14.

  “Okay,” I said, turning away from him so that he could hold me in the hollow of his body. He was breathing softly over my shoulder, so I sent my mind back to the days when I lived in my own place on Potrero Hill. My life had been very different then, jogging with Martha most mornings, running the squad, coming home to Martha at night. I remembered the microwaved, one-dish cooking, a little too much vino, wondering when I’d hear from Joe. Wondering when I’d see him.

  And then my apartment burned down.

  And now Joe was living here, and I was wearing his ring. At this moment it felt almost as though he were riding along with my thoughts. He held me closer and cupped my breasts. He got hard against me, and then he ran his hand down to my belly and pressed me to him.

  As his breathing sped up, so did mine, and then he was turning me as though I were a tiny thing—a feeling that I just love. I squirmed from his touch, heating up under this new kind of loving that felt so different from the roller-coaster craziness of the time before Joe and I finally committed to a shared life.

  I faced him and wrapped my arms around his neck, and he pulled my legs up to his waist, and this incredible, breathtaking moment bloomed. I waited through the tension of those long seconds before he entered me. I looked into his deep-blue eyes—and gave myself over to him.

  “I love you, Blondie,” he said.

  I nodded because I couldn’t speak. Tears were in my eyes and my throat ached as we joined together. He held me and rocked me, and I was happy. I loved this man. Our lives were finally blending in a delicious and balanced way.

  So what was nagging me from a cul-de-sac in my mind? Why did I feel that I was letting myself down?

  Part Two

  SHOWTIME

  Chapter 27

  SARAH WELLS FLIPPED the chicken-fried steak in the pan and removed the garlic bread from the oven, thinking that it was all heart-attack food—or was that just wishful thinking?

  The TV was on in the next room. Sarah could see it through the wall opening and could hear Helen Ross, the pretty, blond talk-show host, over the crackling of grease in the pan. Ross was sympathizing with Marcus Dowling about the pain of losing his wife.

  “Come on, Helen,” Sarah muttered. “Put him on the grill. Don’t be a jerk.”

  “She was so happy,” Dowling was saying. “We’d had this lovely dinner with friends. We were going on holiday, and then—this. The unimaginable.”

  “It is unimaginable,” Ross said. She reached out to touch Dowling’s hand. “Casey had such spirit, such charisma. We did a Red Cross fund-raiser together last year.”

  “There is no way to describe the agony,” Dowling said. “I keep thinking, If only I hadn’t done the washing up—”

  Trevor came into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and bent to take out a beer, his girth falling over the waistband of his underwear. He popped the top, took a swig of Bud, then walked behind his wife and grabbed her ass.

  “Hey,” she said, moving out of his reach.

  “What’s with you?”

  “Here,” she said, handing him the tongs. “Take over, okay?”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I’ve had a tough day, Trev.”

  “You ought to see a doctor, you know.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Because you’re on the rag all the time.”

  Sarah sank into the couch and turned up the volume. All she’d thought about since she stole the jewelry was Marcus Dowling, trying to understand what the hell had happened once she’d bailed out the window.

  “You couldn’t have known,” Helen Ross was saying.

  The pan slammed on the stove behind her, Trevor trying to get her attention. On the TV, Dowling was saying, “The police haven’t turned up anything, and meanwhile this killer is free.”

  Sarah finally got it. She didn’t know why he did it, but it was he. Dowling had killed his wife! There was no one else it could be. How convenient that Sarah had broken into his house so that he could set her up to take the fall.

  Trevor said, “Chow’s on, darlin’. Your Cheerios are just the way you like ’em.”

  Sarah turned off the TV and went to the dinette. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said, thinking it was better to apologize than to get him more wound up. Sometimes he could get physical. When she talked to Heidi about Trevor, they called him “Terror.” It was an apt nickname.

  Trevor grunted, sawed on his steak, and said, “Don’t worry about it. I just wonder sometimes what you did to the sweet little girl I married.”

  “One of life’s mysteries,” she said.

  “What you meant to say was, ‘I’ll make it up to you tonight, sweetie.’ Isn’t that right?”

  Sarah ducked Trevor’s glare and dipped her spoon into the bowl of cereal. She was going to have to step up the schedule. Maybe it wasn’t right, but she was going to get rich or go to jail.

  There really wasn’t any other choice.

  Chapter 28

  SARAH WENT THROUGH the yard. Everything was dark except for the twinkle of the small light on the back porch, and where moonlight filtered through the tree limbs. The light was a signal that the back door was unlocked behind the screen.

  The door swung open under Sarah’s hand, and she walked quietly up to the woman who was washing some dishes in the sink. Sarah put her arms around the woman’s waist and said, “Don’t scream.”

  “Wow. You got here fast,” Heidi said, spinning around.

  “Terror was passed out, as usual,” Sarah said, kissing Heidi, swaying with her in the dim light of the kitchen. “Where’s Beastly?” she asked, referring to Heidi’s husband.

  Heidi reached up to a cabinet, took out two glasses, and said to Sarah, “You know what he always says. ‘Anywhere but here.’ Want to get the bottle out of the fridge?”

  The staircase creaked under their feet, and so did the floorboards in the hallway that led past the kids’ room to a dormered bedroom at the back of the second floor.

  “How long can you stay?” Heidi asked. She turned up the baby monitor, then unbuttoned her pale-yellow sweater and st
epped out of her jeans.

  Sarah shrugged. “If he wakes up and finds me gone, what’s he going to do? Call the police?”

  Heidi undressed Sarah, carefully undid the oversize shirt one slow button at a time, unzipped the low-riding jeans, marveled as she ran her hands over Sarah’s lean runner’s body. Sarah was so strong.

  “Your body is the next best thing to having a body like this myself,” Heidi said.

  “You’re perfect. I love everything about you.”

  “That was my line. Get into the bed, now. Go on.”

  Heidi handed Sarah a glass and eased in next to her love, her sweetheart. The two women got comfortable in the iron bedstead under the eaves, Heidi putting a hand on Sarah’s thigh, Sarah drawing Heidi closer under her protective arm.

  “So what’s on our travelogue tonight?” Heidi asked.

  Sarah had a list of three places, but she had a special feeling about Palau. She told Heidi, “It’s so far from anywhere. You can swim naked in these amazing grottoes. Nobody cares about who you are,” she said.

  “No problems with a quartet of two women, two kids?”

  “We’ll say we’re sisters. You’re widowed.”

  “Oh, because the family resemblance is so strong?”

  “Sisters-in-law, then.”

  “Okay. And about the language? What is it?”

  “Palauan, of course. But they speak English, too.”

  “All right, then. To life in Palau,” Heidi said, touching Sarah’s glass with hers. They sipped and kissed with their eyes open, then the glasses were put aside and they reached for each other, Heidi listening to the baby monitor, Sarah with an eye to the window, fear driving their passion into high gear.

  As Heidi stripped off Sarah’s panties, Sarah was thinking, We can escape as soon as the last jobs are done. As soon as the jewels are sold.

  “Sarah?”

  “I’m here, Heidi. Thinking of the future.”

  “Come to me now.”

  Sarah had a sudden thought. She should tell Heidi about that woman and child she’d heard about who were killed in a parking garage, warn her to be very careful—but a second later, the thought faded and another came into focus.

  She would sell everything but that yellow stone. One day soon, she’d give it to Heidi.

  Chapter 29

  IT WAS EIGHT in the morning when Jacobi dragged his chair into the center of the room and called us together. Yuki sat beside me. Claire stood behind Jacobi, arms crossed over her chest, just as emotionally invested in the young, deceased Darren Benton as Yuki was in Casey Dowling.

  I noticed the stranger sitting in a metal chair in the corner: suntanned white male, midthirties, narrow blue eyes, sun-bleached blond hair pulled back and knotted with a rubber band. He was maybe five ten, 160 pounds, and he looked buff from the way his blazer stretched across his biceps.

  This guy was a cop. A cop I didn’t know.

  Jacobi picked up where we’d left off the day before. Chi reported on the Benton case, saying that there was no match to the slugs found in the Bentons’ bodies. He noted that the stippling pattern was still unidentified but that Dr. Washburn had sent photos out to the FBI.

  Chi jiggled the coins in his pocket and looked uncomfortable when he said that the lipstick used to write the letters “WCF” was a common, inexpensive drugstore brand.

  Bottom line: they had nothing.

  I stood and briefed the squad, saying that we were going over the Dowlings’ phone records and that there were many dozens of numbers that came up repeatedly on both lists. I said that we had found nothing unusual in either of the Dowlings’ bank-account records.

  “Casey Dowling owned a very distinctive piece of jewelry,” I continued. “We’re working on that, and we haven’t turned up anything at all on Hello Kitty. All bright ideas are welcome. Anyone wants to work the psycho tip line, raise your hand.”

  Of course, no one did.

  The meeting was wrapping up when Jacobi said, “Everyone say hello to Sergeant Jackson Brady.”

  The cop sitting in the back lifted his hand in a wave and looked around as he was introduced.

  “Jack Brady is a new transfer,” Jacobi said. “He’s put in a dozen years with Miami PD, most of those in Homicide. Chief Tracchio has attached him to our unit as a pinch hitter in the short-term, pending his permanent assignment. God knows we need the help. Please make him feel welcome.”

  Jacobi dismissed us, and Jackson Brady came over to my desk and put out his hand. I shook it, told him my name, and introduced him to Conklin.

  Brady nodded and said he’d heard about the firebugs, a case involving two boys who set fire to houses, killing the residents—a case Conklin and I had closed.

  I saw Brady’s sharp blue eyes raking the small squad room as I talked. I turned to see Claire speaking with Jacobi, Cindy huddling with Yuki, the TV in the corner of the room showing Marcus Dowling still chatting up the press.

  “The more they talk, the less I believe them,” Brady said, jutting his chin toward the images of Dowling.

  “We’ve been working the case for a few days,” I said. “We’re just getting our teeth into it.”

  “I heard your report, Sergeant,” Brady said. “You don’t have a clue.”

  Chapter 30

  ERNIE COOPER’S PAWNSHOP is wedged between a Chinese fast-food restaurant and a smoke shop on Valencia, at the heart of the Mission. Casey Dowling’s high-ticket jewelry was out of Ernie Cooper’s league, but Cooper was retired from the SFPD and had offered help anytime we needed him.

  Today, the hulking ex-cop’s frame was filling up a faded art deco fan chair on the sidewalk outside his shop. His gray hair was braided down his back, iPod cords dangled from his ears, an open racing form was on his lap, and there was the bulge of a handgun under his aloha shirt.

  Cooper grinned when he saw us and stood up to shake Conklin’s hand and mine.

  “We’re working a burglary that turned into a murder,” I told him.

  “Movie star’s wife? I read about that,” he said. “Have a seat.”

  I pulled up a toy trunk, and Conklin balanced his rump on a bamboo bar stool. Cooper said, “Fill me in.”

  I handed him the folder of insurance photos, and he flipped through them, stopping often to take in the sapphires in platinum settings, the chains of diamonds, and then the real showstopper—the yellow diamond ring looking like a pasha’s cushion set in a throne of pavé diamonds.

  “Man alive,” Cooper said. He flipped the photo over and read the specs of the piece. “Appraised at a million. And I’m betting it’s worth every penny.”

  “It’s one of a kind, right?” Conklin asked him.

  “Oh, sure,” Cooper said. “A twenty-karat diamond of any kind is rare. But a canary diamond? The setting alone says it’s an original. I wonder why it’s not signed.”

  “So what would you do if you stole this?” I asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t shop it here, that’s for sure. I’d hand it off to a flying fence, take my ten percent, and be done.”

  “Flying fence” was a new term for me. I asked Ernie to explain.

  “A flying fence is like the regular kind, except he takes possession of the goods immediately, catches a flight to LA or New York or another jewelry-laundering hub, and is in the air within an hour or so of the robbery.”

  “And then what?”

  “The route fans out to anywhere. In the case of this ring, maybe it’s been sold as is, but not in this country. Probably on the finger of a young lady in Dubai as we speak.”

  Cooper drummed his fingers on the folder. I thought I could see a lightbulb going on over his head.

  “You know, there was a flying fence who took a bullet in New York a couple of months ago. Yeah, Maury Green. He specialized in high-priced gems. Normally he’d be the guy you’d go to with a hot rock like this.”

  “He was killed?”

  “Yep, on the spot. Green was taking possession of a haul, and the cops tag
ged the guy who was making the drop. Can’t remember his name, but he was wanted for armed robbery. So anyway, the mope pulled a gun, and Maury Green got caught in the cross fire. That put a break in the supply chain.

  “You know,” Cooper said, “if your Hello Kitty was using Green to fence his goods, he may be stuck with this million-dollar chunk of yellow ice for a while. Could be your cat’s up a tree, doesn’t know how to get down.”

  Chapter 31

  YUKI HUGGED THE tanned, graceful woman who opened the door.

  “God, it’s been what, six years? You look the same!” Sue Emdin said to Yuki, the whole time looking at her like Gee, I haven’t heard from you since graduation, so what’s this about?

  As they walked through the house, Yuki and Sue chatted about their days at Boalt Law, and once they were comfortably seated outside on the wraparound porch with iced tea and cookies, Yuki brought up Casey Dowling and how she’d died.

  “You want to talk about Casey officially?” Sue asked.

  “Uh-huh. But what’s the difference, Sue? Casey is dead, and we owe it to her to help catch her killer.”

  “Understand, both Marc and Casey are my friends,” Sue said. “I don’t want to say anything behind Marc’s back.”

  “I do understand, and right now, this is between us,” Yuki said. “If you know something, you have to tell me, and you have to let me use my judgment. You’d expect the same from me.”

  “All right, all right. But try to keep me out of it, okay? When was the last time I asked you for a favor?”

  Yuki laughed, and Sue joined her, saying, “Never, right?”

  “This is the first time.”

  “Between you and me, Casey told me she thought Marcus was having an affair. There. I said it.”

  “Did she have any proof? Did she suspect someone in particular? Did she confront Marcus?”