The 9th Judgment (12 page)

How had she screwed up?

Sarah’s mind churned and her heart nearly pounded out of her chest as she pulled over to the side of the road. She pushed
the duffel bag even farther under the seat, and then, keeping her eyes on the rearview mirror, Sarah Wells watched as the
police cruiser pulled up behind her and braked.

IN THE MOMENTS Sarah needed to construct an alibi, her mind foundered. She was far from her own neighborhood, and she was
sure she looked guilty of something. Her whole body filmed over with sweat as the cruiser door opened and the man with the
brimmed hat stepped out and walked toward her.

His eyes were shadowed by his hat, but Sarah took in the square jaw, the straight nose, the unsmiling mouth. He looked every
bit like an official with no slack to cut.

“License and registration, please.”

“Yes, sir,” Sarah said, fumbling in the glove box, finding her wallet on top of the maps, hands slippery from nerves, credit
cards shooting out of her fingers and onto the floor. Sarah picked up her driver’s license, dove back into the glove box to
retrieve the registration card, and handed one after the other to the officer.

“Sir, did I do something wrong? Was I speeding?”

The officer shined his light on the documents and, saying he’d be back in a moment, returned to his car to run her name through
the computer.

Cherry lights flashed in her mirror. Sarah’s only cogent thought was that the Morley burglary was the stupidest thing she’d
ever done. She imagined the officer ordering her out of the car, telling her to put her hands on the hood. She saw how easily
he would find Dorian Morley’s jewelry.

As time dragged on, she imagined other police cars coming, cops surrounding her, laughing at how she’d been caught red-handed.
She imagined the interrogation that would go on until she confessed—which would be immediately, because there would be no
explaining away the evidence.

The pain in Sarah’s ankle was excruciating, and along with it was a swooping dizziness that turned to nausea.

What would happen to her? What would happen to Heidi?

A beam hit her eyes; the officer had returned, one hand holding the flashlight, the other handing back her documentation.

“Your left taillight is busted,” he said. “You need to get that fixed right way.”

Sarah apologized, sounding ridiculously guilty to her own ears, saying she hadn’t realized the light was broken, promising
she’d go to the auto shop—and then it was over. As the cruiser sailed past her, Sarah opened the car door and vomited into
the street. Then she rested her forehead against the steering wheel.

“Thank you, God,” she said out loud.

Her hands were still shaking as she started up the car again and headed to Marina Boulevard. Skimming along the street, she
turned her eyes to the Golden Gate Bridge, the chains of lights blazing. It was a sign, that necklace of lights, and Sarah’s
optimism was reborn, this time as euphoria.

She hadn’t made any costly mistakes. She’d done her homework on the Morleys and had pulled off a first-class heist that brought
her that much closer to her goal. And now she had a brilliant idea.

Along with getting her taillight fixed as soon as possible, she was going to call Maury Green’s widow. She’d make Mrs. Green
an offer, a finder’s fee if she’d hook Sarah up with another fence.

And more thoughts came flooding in, those envelopes full of Dorian Morley’s everyday diamonds. She couldn’t wait to see what
else she’d taken from the safe.

SARAH OPENED THE door to the one-bedroom apartment she shared with her revolting, hair-trigger husband. She stood listening
for a moment in the small foyer, and when she heard snoring, she stepped into the living room. “Terror” was slumped in his
brown leather recliner, asleep in his wife beater and shorts, his plaid underwear not only showing but unsnapped and open.

She wrinkled her nose at the porn couple silently humping on the TV, then slipped past her husband and into the bedroom, where
she closed the door and quietly threw the lock.

Only then did she feel that it was safe to draw a real breath. She jerked the curtains closed and flicked on the overhead
light. Then she opened her duffel bag full of loot and spilled the bulging envelopes onto the bedspread.

Sarah’s breathing was shallow and her eyes were bright as she unsnapped each little packet and liberated the contents. Diamond
necklaces spilled out like streams of faceted ice. She touched each of the jewel-encrusted bracelets and brooches and pendants
and rings with the tips of her fingers, stunned by her audacity and at the same time mesmerized by each splendid work of art.

Dorian Morley’s taste was wonderful. The diamond necklaces were new but the packets of finely worked antiques seemed to be
part of a personal collection. And so Sarah wondered if this treasure had been inherited or collected piece by piece by Dorian
Morley herself.

And for the first time since she’d started stealing from the rich, Sarah knew that the woman who had owned these jewels was
going to be grief-stricken when she discovered the loss.

This was not a good thought for a jewel thief, so she scrubbed it from her mind, reminding herself that the Morleys of this
world had insurance and means, while she and Heidi had no fallback, no rescuers but themselves, and that each day they lived
with their husbands was one of loathing and terrible risk.

Sarah returned the pieces to their packets and opened the bottom drawer of her dresser. She pushed the T-shirts and sweatpants
aside, lifted the thin board of the false bottom, and deposited the tool bag.

Before she stowed the Morley jewels, Sarah had to see
it
one more time. She reached into the back right corner of the secret stash and felt for the little leather box shaped like
a round-topped trunk.

The box fit perfectly in her closed hand. She opened the lid and stared at Casey Dowling’s wonderful ring. It glittered under
the light as if it were alive.

That yellow stone. Wow. It was
magnificent.

CONKLIN MUTTERED TO me as he parked the squad car in front of the Tudor-style mansion on Russian Hill.

“What a coincidence, huh? Hello Kitty does a job the same night the Lipstick Killer attacks Elaine Marone and her child.”

“Rich, when my eyes flash open, you know? After three hours of sleep, I think it’s all too much, that the Job is getting to
me, that I should quit before it kills me. And then I ask myself what the hell I would do after that.”

“When I get those thoughts, I think of opening a scuba shop in Martinique.”

“Well, be nice to the Morleys. They can probably help you out with that.”

Conklin stifled his laugh as the massive front door opened. Dorian Morley was tall, about forty, an attractive woman in a
flowered tunic and black pants, her brown hair twisted up and pinned with a clip. She was also red-eyed and looked shaken.
She invited us into the kitchen—a vast, well-lit space with sea-green glass counters and stainless-steel everything else.
Her husband was sitting at the table with a mug of coffee in his large hand. He stood as she introduced us.

“I feel like an ass,” Jim Morley said when we’d taken seats at the table. “The bedroom door was locked. That was weird. I
said, ‘Hello Killy? Is that youuuu?’” He made a gagging noise and shook his head. “Why is it you never think it could happen
to you?”

Morley went on to say that he’d gone through the guest room and gotten into the bathroom that way.

“You saw the burglar?” I asked, hoping against disbelief.

“Nah, the lights were out in the bedroom,” Morley said. “She pleaded with me, asked me to give her some privacy, and that’s
what convinced me it was a friend of ours, Laura Chenoweth. She and her husband, Jesse, are going through a rough patch, and
I thought they were making up, you know, in private.

“Anyway, the newspapers keep referring to Hello Kitty as a man, right?”

I was reeling from this new information.

If Hello Kitty was a woman, it was our first real lead. A blind lead to be sure, but something!

“I just tossed the jewelry from the party on top of the dresser,” Dorian Morley said. “I didn’t even know we’d been robbed
until I went to put my jewels in the safe.”

She lowered her head into her hands and began to cry softly. Her husband said to us, “A lot of the jewelry belonged to Dorian’s
mom. Some of it was her grandmother’s. What are the chances of getting it back?”

I was still stuck on the idea that our cat burglar was a woman. I heard Conklin say that so far none of the stolen goods had
surfaced from the previous Hello Kitty burglaries, and then Dorian Morley lifted her head and said, “It’s not just about the
jewelry, Jim. It’s about the fact that a murderer was inside our house. Inside our bedroom.

“What if you had challenged her instead of walking away? My God, Jim, she could have shot you!”

BEING SUMMONED TO Tracchio’s office is always an adventure. You never know if you’re going to get a high five or a front-row
seat on a meltdown.

Tracchio hung up the phone as Jacobi, Chi, and I took seats around the curve of his mahogany desk and watched him pat his
comb-over. I don’t dislike Tracchio, but I never forget that he’s a bureaucrat doing a job only a real cop should do.

“The mayor has me on his speed dial,” he was saying as his assistant brought him a fresh cup of tea. “I’m in his ‘favorites’
list, you understand, one of the top five. This morning, I made it to number one—when he saw this.”

Tracchio flashed the morning’s
Chronicle
with its photo of Claire leaning out her car window under the headline “Get a Gun.”

I flushed, both scared and embarrassed for my best friend.

“One of our own said this,” Tracchio said, his voice rising. “Told our citizens to carry guns, and the mayor says that all
of us, and that includes you, you, and especially you,” he said, stabbing a pudgy finger at Jacobi, “don’t know your ass from
a lemon tart.”

Jacobi half rose to his feet in defense, but Tracchio put out a hand to silence and seat him.

“Don’t say anything, Jacobi. I’m not in the mood. And I’ve got something else to show you.”

Tracchio opened a folder on his desk, took out a sheet of newsprint, turned it around, and pushed it toward us. “This is going
to run in tomorrow morning’s
Chronicle.
The publisher sent an advance copy out to the mayor, who passed it around.”

I read the headline: “An Open Letter to the Residents of San Francisco.” Tracchio leaned back and said, “Go on, Boxer. Read
that out loud.”

“‘An open letter to the residents of San Francisco,’” I read obediently. “‘I have a proposition to make. It’s very simple.
I want two million dollars in cash and a contact person I can trust. Once I have the money, I will leave San Francisco for
good and the killings of the women and children will stop. I expect a published reply and then we’ll work out the details.
Have a nice day.’ It’s not signed, but I guess we know who wrote this.”

My head throbbed at the idea of it.

“Sir, you’re not really thinking we’re going to pay off the Lipstick Killer?” I asked Tracchio.

“Not out of our budget, of course, but a private citizen has already stepped forward with the cash, yes.”

“Chief, we can’t let anyone pay off a murderer. It opens the way for every freak with a gun and a sick idea—”

“She’s right,” Jacobi said. “You know that, Tony. Giving in to him is the worst thing we can do.”

Tracchio leaned forward, smacked the flat of his hand down on the newsprint, and said, “You all listen to me. Several innocent
people have been shot dead in the last couple of weeks. Forty men and women are working this case around the clock, and we’ve
got nothing. Nothing. Except the chief medical examiner saying that people should start packing.

“What choice do I have? None. This letter is going to run,” the chief said, glaring at each of us in turn, “and I can’t stop
it. So figure out how to catch this psycho. Set a trap. How you do it is up to you. I know it’s hard. That’s why it’s called
‘work.’ Now, I need my office. I’ve got to call the mayor.”

I JOGGED BACK down the stairs with Chi and Jacobi, the three of us wrapped in our own mortified silence. Yes, Tracchio’s drubbing
was humiliating, but far worse was the fact that the city was being held hostage by a psychopath. And Tracchio was in such
a bind, he was giving in to a terrorist.

Apparently the giving-in was already in motion. Someone in the mayor’s inner circle had stepped forward with two million dollars
to pay off the Lipstick Killer before his letter even ran. It was insane, completely magical thinking to believe that if we
handed the killer his millions, he would leave town. And even if he did, where would he go? What would he do when he got there?
And how many more crazies would be inspired to commit murder for pay?

When Jacobi, Chi, and I walked into the squad room, all eyes turned to us, the silent question hanging in the air like a thundercloud.

What did the chief say?

Jacobi stopped at the head of the room. He was livid, biting off each word as he said to the six men staring up at him, “The
Lipstick Killer wants two million bucks to stop the killings. The chief wants us to set a trap.”

The gasping and commentary were as loud as that thundercloud breaking into a downpour. “That’s enough,” Jacobi said. “Boxer’s
in charge. Sergeant, keep me posted. Every hour. On the hour.”

I sat down at my desk across from Conklin, and Chi dragged up a chair. I filled Conklin in on the beat-down we’d taken from
Tracchio as I dialed Henry Tyler. I was passed from automatic menu to Tyler’s personal assistant, then to Muzak as I was put
on hold.

Henry Tyler is a powerful man, the associate publisher of the
San Francisco Chronicle.
His daughter, Madison, had been kidnapped a while ago, a sweet, precocious little girl, some kind of musical prodigy.