The 9th Judgment (6 page)

Conklin laughed.

“I’M GOING TO see Claire,” I told my partner.

“Stay in touch,” he said.

I ran down three flights and worked my way through the Hall’s crowded lobby, out the back door, and down the breezeway to
the medical examiner’s office.

I found Claire in the autopsy suite. She was wearing a floral shower cap and an apron over her XXL scrubs—still carrying some
poundage from her pregnancy on her size-sixteen frame. I called out to her, and she looked up from the body of Barbara Ann
Benton, who was lying eviscerated on the table.

“You just missed Cindy,” Claire said, putting Barbara Ann’s liver onto a scale.

“No, I didn’t. She stormed the squad room. Got Conklin into a lip-lock. Promised him favors in exchange for a headline, and
he lapped it up. What’d she get out of you?”

“Breaking news. Casey Dowling was shot to death. Cindy has the best job, doesn’t she? She can focus on her one and only story
and still have time to get it on with Inspector Hottie.”

“Anything interesting on Barbara Ann Benton?” I asked, staring into the dead woman’s abdominal cavity, hoping to head off
a sore subject. To be precise, it was hard keeping Cindy out of confidential police business—and
I
wasn’t sleeping with her.

“No postmortem surprises,” said Claire. “Mrs. Benton took two slugs. Either one of them could have killed her, but the shot
to the chest is the cause of death.”

“And the baby?”

“Cause of death, a nine millimeter through the temporal lobe. Calling it a homicide. That’s signed, stamped, and official.
The slugs are at the lab.”

Claire asked her assistant to finish with Barbara Ann, then stripped off her gloves and mask and walked me out of the autopsy
suite and into her office. She took the swivel chair, and I slumped into the seat across from her desk. She pulled two bottles
of water out of the fridge and handed one to me.

Claire has a picture on her desk, and I turned it around so I could scrutinize the four of us on the front steps of the Hall
of Justice. There was Yuki, all suited up, her dark hair parted in the middle, falling in two glossy wings to her chin; Cindy
was grinning, her slightly overlapping front teeth drawing attention to how pretty she really is; and then there was Claire,
buxom and beautiful in her midforties.

And there I was, towering over them all at five ten, wearing my blond hair in a ponytail and sporting a dead-serious look
on my face. The thing is, I think of myself as lighthearted. I wonder where I got that idea.

“What’s wrong, Lindsay?”

“You don’t always get what you want,” I said, sort of smiling.

“The Benton case? Or the other thing?”

“Both. Listen, I’m supervising Chi on Benton, but he’s the primary.”

“I know. And you know Paul Chi will kill himself to solve the case.”

I nodded. “Tell me what you’ve got on Casey Dowling.”

“Her assailant used a forty-four.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I know. What’s a burglar doing with a cannon when a cute little nine would do? Lab didn’t get a hit from the database.”

“That was quick,” I said.

“I leaned on Clapper to rush it, and now I have to name my next child after him.”

“Clapper Washburn. Rough handle for a child.”

Claire laughed, then sobered. “Maybe I’ve got something.”

“Don’t make me beg.”

“When I did the rape kit on Casey Dowling, I found evidence of sexual intercourse. The little fishes were still swimming.”

WHEN I GOT back to my desk, Conklin said, “While you were out, seventy-two people called with tips about Casey Dowling’s murder.
Look.” Brenda came over and dropped several pink message squares on his desk. “Ten more.”

“What did I miss?”

“Dowling’s lawyer went on the air, said he’s putting up fifty grand for info leading to the arrest of Casey Dowling’s killer.”

“So here’s the question, Rich. Is Dowling completely right to offer a reward? Or is he jamming us up with wacko tipsters so
we can’t work the case?”

I called Yuki to discuss the possibility of getting a warrant for Dowling’s phone and computer records when Jacobi pulled
a chair into the center of the bull pen, straddled it, and called the squad to attention.

I was struck again by how crappy he looked. Jacobi is a veteran of the force: he’s served roughly twenty years in Homicide,
a survivor of both physical attacks and life’s vicissitudes. So what was so special that it was bothering the hell out of
him?

Jacobi nodded at me, then swung his head and took in the rest of the day shift: Inspectors Chi, McNeil, Lemke, Samuels, and
Conklin, and a couple of guys from the swing shift who’d been drafted to help us out. I guessed Jacobi was thinking about
how few of us there were, how many cases we were working, and how small a number of those cases we would ever solve.

Jacobi asked Chi to make his report on Benton.

Chi stood, five feet eleven inches of canny brainiac. He reported that he and his partner had done a follow-up with Richard
Benton, that Benton’s alibi checked out, and that Barbara Ann Benton’s life insurance wouldn’t pay out enough to bury her.

Said Chi, “The surveillance tape from the garage is grainy. The shooter was wearing a cap. He kept his head down, but from
what we can see of his neck, we think he’s white. Seems like he said something to the victim before he shot her and the baby.
He took nothing, but maybe he panicked. It still looks like a holdup that went wrong.”

Jacobi asked him the questions that were on all our minds: “Why did the shooter kill the kid? And, Jesus, Paul, what’s WCF?”

“There’s no WCF in the database, Lieutenant. It’s not a gang or a known terrorist organization. Found about thirty phone listings
for first names starting with ‘W,’ last names starting with ‘F,’ and six with the middle initial ‘C.’ We’re running them down.”

Next into the buzz saw was me.

I briefed the squad on the whole nine yards of the nothing we had on the death of Casey Dowling, saying that we were looking
at five recent burglaries with the same MO.

“In all six incidents, the homeowners were home, and no one ever saw the burglar. This time there’s a fatality,” I said, “and
maybe a witness. A ten-year-old neighbor saw someone in black running from the scene. Right now, it looks like the victim
surprised the burglar, and he shot her.”

Jacobi nodded, and then he dropped the bomb.

“The chief called me in this morning and said it would be more efficient to combine our unit with the Northern Division Homicide
Section.”

“What does that mean, ‘combine’?” I asked, dumbfounded at the idea of doubling up in our twenty-by-thirty-foot work space.

“The thinking upstairs is to have more bodies working the cases, more collaborative problem solving, and, hell, probably a
new chain of command.”

So that’s why Jacobi looked like he’d been dragged behind a truck. His job was in danger, and that would affect us all.

“It’s not a done deal,” Jacobi said. “Let’s close these cases. I can’t fight if we’re losing.”

The meeting ended with a collective sigh, after which Jacobi invited me and Conklin to join him in what we jokingly call his
corner office: a small, glass-walled cell with a window overlooking the freeway.

Conklin took the side chair and I leaned against the door frame, assessing the horizontal grooves that had appeared overnight
on Jacobi’s forehead.

“Dowling didn’t have a heart attack,” Jacobi told us. “Chest pains. Rapid breathing. It’s being called a stress attack. Could
be. It fits. Or maybe he was acting. Maybe this time he’ll get that Oscar. Meanwhile, he’s just been released from the hospital.”

I told Jacobi that the ME’s report said Casey Dowling had had sex before she died. “We’re on our way to see Dowling.”

“I’ll be waiting by the phone,” Jacobi said.

MARCUS DOWLING OPENED his door and showed us to a sitting room decorated to the hilt with English-style roll-arm sofas, Flow
Blue platters on the walls, and Foo dogs on the mantel. Mayfair meets the City on the Bay.

A woman in a black dress, not introduced, offered beverages and quietly left the room, returning with bottled water for Conklin
and me, Chivas for our host.

I said, “Mr. Dowling, tell us again what happened last night.”

He said, “Jesus Christ, I told you everything, didn’t I? I thought you were coming here to tell
me
something.”

Conklin, who is a sensational good cop to my badass bitch, said, “We apologize, sir. The thing is, your telling us what happened
again might trigger a memory or a new thought about who did this.”

Dowling nodded, leaned back in his leather chair, and put down a healthy swig of scotch. “The Devereaus had gone,” he said.
“As I told the other officer, I was putting things into the sink—”

“The lady who brought the beverages,” I interrupted. “She wasn’t here to help?”

“Vangy only works days. She has a child.”

Dowling repeated how his wife had gone upstairs before him, how he heard shots, how he found his wife on the floor, not breathing,
and how he’d called the police.

I said, “Mr. Dowling, I noticed last night that your hair was wet. You took a shower before the police came?”

He grunted and gripped his glass. I was watching for a tell—a guilty look—and I thought I saw it. “I was devastated. I stood
weeping in the shower because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“And your clothes, sir?” Conklin asked.

“My clothes?”

“Mr. Dowling, let me be honest with you,” Conklin said. “We know you’re a victim here, but there are certain protocols. We
take your clothes to the lab, and it puts down any questions that might come up later.”

Dowling gave Conklin a furious look and called out, “Van-gy! Take Inspector Conklin upstairs and give him whatever he wants.”

When Conklin and the housekeeper left the room, I asked, “Mr. Dowling, when was the last time you had intimate relations with
your wife?”

“My God. What are you getting at?”

“Someone had sex with your wife,” I said, pressing on. “If it was her killer, he left evidence that could help us—”

“Casey had sex with
me!
” Dowling shouted. “We made love before dinner. Now what exactly does that tell you?”

Fifteen minutes later, Conklin and I left Dowling’s house with a printout of his phone contact list, a cheek swab, and all
the unlaundered clothing he owned. Presumably that included what he was wearing when his wife was shot.

“I took everything in the clothes hamper and whatever was on the hook behind the bathroom door,” Conklin said as we walked
out to the car. “If he shot her, we’ll have gunpowder. We’ll have blood spatter. We’ll have
him.
”

IT WAS THE end of a very long day when Claire and I came in from the dark street into Susie’s, with its splashy sponge-painted
walls, spicy aromas, and the plinking drumbeat of the steel band.

Cindy and Yuki were holding down our favorite table in the back room, Yuki in her best go-to-court suit while Cindy had swapped
out her denims for something flirty in baby-blue chiffon under a short, cream-colored jacket. They were putting away plantain
chips and beer and were in deep conversation about the Dowling case.

Claire and I slid into the booth as Cindy said, “Casey Dowling owned a twenty-karat canary diamond ring worth a million bucks.
Known as the Sun of Ceylon. Maybe she fought to keep it. What do you think, Linds? Possible motive for Hello Kitty to go ballistic?”

“Casey didn’t have any defensive wounds,” said Claire.

“And she didn’t scream for her husband,” I added.

I poured beer from the pitcher for Claire and myself, then asked Cindy, “Where’d you get that info about the diamond?”

“I’ve got my sources. But I wouldn’t get too excited, Linds. That rock will have been chopped into pebbles by now.”

“Maybe,” I said to Cindy. “Listen, I have a thought. Since you know who’s who, maybe you could run your fingers through the
social register, flag anyone young and athletic enough to do second-story jobs.”

Yuki asked, “You’re thinking Hello Kitty is high-society?”

“Rich does,” Cindy and I said in unison.

Yuki tucked her hair behind her ears. “If Kitty travels with that crowd, he’d know Casey had this huge yellow diamond, and
if she recognized him—”

“Yeah, I admit, it makes sense,” I said. “There was a forced-window entry into the Dowling bedroom, identical to the other
five break-ins. There’s a witness who saw someone making a getaway on foot. Clapper says there’s no gunpowder or blood spatter
on Dowling’s clothing. So if Casey knew Kitty—”

And then Claire thumped the table with her fist. Chips jumped. Beer sloshed. She got everyone’s complete attention.

“I’m sorry, but the Benton killings give me the creeps. WCF. What’s that? It’s crazy. Sinister crazy. Mystery gunpowder stippling.
Mystery motive. Dead baby, shot execution-style.

“So let me be clear: I don’t care whose case it is, and I know it’s not right to care more about one murder victim over another.
I said I’m sorry, and I am, but this dead baby hurts me. Deeply. And now I’m going home to my man and my little girl.”

YUKI PAID THE tab and told Lorraine to keep the change. She realized suddenly that she’d never given the others her news.
Usually girls’ night out at Susie’s was laughing and venting and dinner. But tonight everyone got intense and then—they were
gone.

Yuki stood up, buttoned her jacket, and walked past the kitchen and into the main room. Her hand was on the front door handle
when, on impulse, she turned and walked back to the bar.

The bartender had dark curly hair, an easy smile, and a name tag stitched onto the fabric of his wild-printed shirt.

“Miles?”

“That’s my name,” he told her. “Wait. I’ve seen you before. You and your friends—beer and margaritas, right?”