The 9th Judgment (16 page)

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honest to God, I didn’t kill anybody, never in my entire life. You’ve got the wrong
guy.”

IT TOOK HOURS of interrogation—me and Jacobi and Conklin calling people at their homes, going over papers in dark offices—in
order to check out Bosco’s credentials and alibi.

Yes, Roger Bosco was employed by the Yacht Club. His time was fully accounted for. He’d punched the clock and was seen at
work when the Bentons, Kinskis, and Marones were slaughtered.

I took Bosco out of a holding cell and put him back in the box, this time with coffee, a ham sandwich, and a package of Oreos.

And he told Jacobi and me his story from the top: how a man had approached him at the dock, saying that he was a movie producer
shooting an action film and needed a real, live stunt guy to pluck a package out of the bay.

Bosco told us that he was excited.

He said he told the guy that he could get a day off work and could use the Boston Whaler and would love to be in a film. So
the “producer” instructed Bosco to idle the boat around Fort Baker and watch for a case that would be thrown from the bridge
sometime in the afternoon.

He gave Bosco $250 in advance with a promise of the other half on delivery of the gun case, and he said that he’d be waiting
for Bosco outside Greens Restaurant at Fort Mason.

Did Bosco seriously believe that this setup was for real? Was he dirty, or was he dim?

“This producer gave you his name?” I asked.

“Of course. Tony-something, starts with a ‘T.’ He was a regular-looking guy,” Bosco continued. “He was about six feet tall
and fit. I didn’t even notice what he was wearing. Hey. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I have his card.”

Bosco’s soaking-wet wallet was retrieved from booking, and the card was extracted from the billfold section and shown to me.

It was of the instant, do-it-yourself variety, prepunched and printed on an ink-jet. It wouldn’t have passed the credulity
test of most people in this town, but Roger Bosco was very pleased that he could back up his story. He was grinning as if
he’d found oil in his backyard.

“Look,” Bosco said, stabbing the runny red logo with a callused forefinger. “Anthony Tracchio. WCF Productions.”

Jacobi and I took it outside the room.

“The chief will love this,” Jacobi said wearily, bagging the card. “I’m going to call him and tell him the Lipstick Freak
is still out there. And, oh yeah, we’ve got the money.”

THEY WERE IN Cindy’s bedroom, the light from the street coming through the blinds, painting bold stripes across the blanket.
Cindy snuggled up against Richie and threw her arm across his waist.

“Oh man,” Rich said. “I never thought I’d say this, but this has never happened to me before. I’m sorry, Cin.”

“Hey, it’s nothing. Don’t worry, please,” Cindy said, shaking him gently, kissing his cheek. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t think so. I’m barely past thirty.”

“You know what I think? You’re preoccupied. What’s on your mind, Rich? Quick. First thing that comes to you.”

“Lindsay.”

“I’ll give you a million bucks if you take that back,” Cindy said. She rolled away from Rich and stared up at the ceiling.
Was Rich in love with Lindsay? Or was being her partner the same as being in love but in a different form?

This, she knew: Rich and Lindsay were tight. And she wondered again if their relationship was a red flag telling her that
the tracks were out and she should get off the train.

“Ahh, that came out wrong.” Richie pulled her back to him. “I wasn’t thinking of her like that. It’s about the Lipstick Sicko
making her strip down. That, and how he could’ve killed her at any time. I’m her partner, Cindy, and I completely failed her.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”