The 9th Judgment

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 stepped 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 tagged 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?”

“Slow down. One question at a time,” Sue said.

“Sorry. Backing up, now. Did Casey have any proof that Marcus was screwing around?”

“No, but she was suspicious. Marc’s always been a letch. He put his hand on my butt once or twice. Hell, he’s a movie star. But Casey said, and I quote, ‘He’s gone off me.’ Meaning he didn’t have the hots for her anymore. That’s all the proof she had-none-and at the same time, she was alarmed.”

“Did she confront him?”

“Yuki, you’re not thinking Marc shot Casey?”

“Not at all. He’s clean. But it helps to know if there was trouble in the marriage.”

“I’m a lawyer, too, remember, and I’m telling you Marcus didn’t do it. Marc totally loved Casey. He thought she was a riot. He said he’d never had a boring moment in the four years he was married to her. Ben and I went over to Marc’s house last night, and he was devastated. He said he was dying from grief. And even if he was fooling around, he wouldn’t have left Casey. He certainly wouldn’t have-I can’t even say it.”

“Would Casey have divorced him?”

Sue Emdin sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe. She told me that if she found out he was cheating, she’d leave him.”

“When did she say that?”

“Tuesday night.”

“Sue, Casey was killed on Wednesday.”

“Look somewhere else, Yuki. Trust me on this. It was that cat burglar. Marcus didn’t do it.”

Chapter 32

PETE GORDON WAS hunting along the Embarcadero, the eastern roadway that fronts the bay, running from 2nd and King, past the Ferry Building, and north under the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, an artery traveled by locals and tourists alike. People flowed around him on foot, on bike, on skateboard, as the setting sun licked at the indigo sky.

Pete had picked his target outside the Ferry Building, a reed-thin blonde wearing a hooded black Windbreaker over her long black skirt, her clothes billowing and snapping in the breeze. Made him think of a woman in a burka.

The thin blonde was pushing a kiddo in a stroller, a calm child in pink who seemed to be taking in the travelers getting off the ferry and fanning out through the marketplace.

Pete followed the black-cloaked blonde through the farmer’s market, watching her pick out one loaf of bread, one head of lettuce, and one fish fillet. He stayed on her tail as she left the market, plastic bags looped over her wrists, not talking to her daughter, who in some way seemed to be in charge.

When his target got to the intersection of Market and Spear, she headed toward the BART entrance. She tilted the stroller up and stepped onto the down escalator, and Pete knew it was time. He gripped his gun in his right hand, the whole of it buried in his pocket, and followed her off the moving stairway.

“Miss? Ma’am?” he shouted. The third time he called her, she whipped her head around and shot him a look: What is it?

He ducked his head and gave her a shy smile. “I’m supposed to meet a friend at the corner of California. I’ve, uh, gotten lost.”

The woman stared at him and said, “I can’t help you,” and pushed the stroller out from the arch toward the entrance to the underground.

“Hey, thanks, lady!” Pete yelled out. “I appreciate the fucking time of day.”

Hands jammed in his pockets, Pete continued north. It wasn’t over yet. He wondered if his expression had given him away. Had he looked too eager? Too raw?

It hadn’t been this way in Iraq. And he wouldn’t mess up here.

He was steady. He was focused. He had a mission.

And he would accomplish it.

Chapter 33

AS PETE WALKED into the crosswind, he was remembering PFC Kenneth Marshall’s last day.

Pete had been in the lead vehicle on the dusty road just outside Haditha, his men in a caravan behind him. They were within forty meters of a cluster of houses when the car bomb exploded, blowing Corporal Lennar out of the last vehicle in the line, separating Kenny Marshall from his legs.

Pete loved Kenny like a brother. He was a smart kid with dimples and a picture of Jesus inside his helmet. He played kick-the-can with the enemy kiddos, gave them rations, believed in the mission-to bring freedom to Iraq. Kenny liked to say that when it was his time, God would find him wherever he was.

After God called Kenny, after the IED killed this good American son and soldier, after the troops in Captain Peter Gordon’s command came out of their crouches, they looked to Pete for orders. It was easy. He did it by the book. His book.

Pete was sure he knew who had remotely triggered the IED. They were in the car behind the Humvee that Kenny had been driving. The next minutes were so vivid, he could smell the cordite and the dust and the fear even now. He could still hear his enemies scream as he shot them.

Now, on this cool evening in San Francisco, Pete Gordon gripped the gun inside his jacket pocket as he stalked the Embarcadero. He came to an alley between Sansome and Battery that was set up with plastic tables and chairs. A young mother was cleaning up after eating there with her bawler.

Petey followed Young Mom and her kiddo into the mall at the ground level of 1 EC, past the pastry shop and the Italian restaurant, up the escalator to the movie theater that stood apart and alone, anchoring the dead end at the western part of the second floor.

Mom was sitting on a bench, gazing at the movie posters, combing her baby’s hair with her fingers. It was between shows, and they had the place to themselves.

Young Mom turned to Petey when he called out, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, could you help me, please? I’m totally lost.”

Chapter 34

BY THE TIME I was called to the scene, the cruisers and the ambulances were parked all along Battery and Clay. I ran my Explorer onto the sidewalk and braked next to Jacobi’s Hyundai, then grabbed one of the uniforms who was doing crowd control at the western entrance to the mall.

“Second floor, Sergeant,” the uni told me. “Outside the movie theater.”

I called Jacobi and he answered his phone, saying, “Come up, Boxer. And hold on to your dinner.”

Moviegoers who’d been sent out through a back exit had returned to the front entrance, joining commuters and office workers and tourists who had gathered ten deep outside the entrance to 1 EC.

I held up my badge and edged through the crowd, fending off questions that I wouldn’t answer if I could. A uniform opened the glass doors for me, and I entered the mall, a stretch of shops bearing famous logos, now unnaturally empty of shoppers.

The escalators had been turned off and crime scene tape stretched across the whole western wing of the mall, so I stooped under the tape and loped up the stilled mechanical stairs. Jacobi was waiting for me at the top of the escalator, and I could see from his face how bad it was going to be before I even got near the bodies on the red carpet.

I saw the mother first. She’d fallen onto her back. Her pale-blue cardigan was black over her heart from the two shots to the center mass, and she’d taken another gunshot wound to the head. I reached over and closed her sightless eyes.

Only then could I bear to look at the small, still figure lying near her.

Damn it, he’d killed the child.

This scene was a horror, and even as I recoiled from the brutality, I was struck by how methodical these shootings had been. They had been impersonal, dead-on shots fired at close range.

Jacobi stepped aside and I circled the body of the child in the capsized stroller, a boy under the age of one. I didn’t need to say to Jacobi that it was obvious these killings and the ones in the Stonestown garage were the work of the same killer.

But where was his signature? Where were the letters “WCF”?

Jacobi dropped the young mother’s wallet into an evidence bag. “This is Judy Kinski. She had forty dollars in small bills. Two charge cards. Library card. She would have been twenty-six years old next week. McNeil is contacting her next of kin.”

“Witnesses?” I asked. “Someone had to see this go down.”

“Chi is talking to the ticket seller. Come with me.”

Chapter 35

THE GIRL IN the movie-theater manager’s office was crying into her hands. She looked up when I entered the tiny space. Paul Chi introduced me to the pale young woman and said, “This is Robin Rose. She may have seen the shooter.”

“Is my mother here?” Robin asked.

Jacobi said, “She’s on her way. As soon as she arrives, we’ll escort you down.”

“I didn’t see the shootings,” the girl said between sobs. “I was opening the booth for the seven o’clock show.”

Chi handed her a wad of tissues and told her it was all right, to take her time.

“I didn’t hear anything,” she said, blowing her nose. “But when I rolled up the window…”

I could see it through her eyes. The last moments of her innocence, opening the cash drawer, checking the ticket feed, rolling up the metal security window, expecting-what? A couple of people wanting to buy their tickets early?

“I didn’t believe it at first,” Robin told us. “I thought it was some kind of alternative advertising for an upcoming show. Then I realized that those people were real. That they were dead.”

“Did you see anyone near the bodies?” I asked.

She nodded and said, “He must’ve heard the window go up. He met my eyes for a fraction of a second. I saw the gun, so I ducked down.”

The man Robin Rose saw was a white male, wearing a blue-and-white baseball jacket and a cap pulled down over his eyes. She didn’t think she could describe him, but she would try. Same with his gun. And she didn’t see which exit he took out of the mall.

Maybe he’d taken the skywalk over to another of the malls in the Embarcadero Center, or he could just as easily have gone down the escalator and out onto the street.

I asked Robin if she’d come in to the station to look at surveillance tape, and then I left the manager’s office with Jacobi. He was putting out an APB on a white male in a blue-and-white baseball jacket when Claire stomped up the escalator with her chief assistant, Bunny Ellis, behind her.

Claire wore a furious look as she moved in on the victims’ bodies with her Minolta. I stood next to her as she said to me, “Lookit. Same weird stippling, Lindsay. Same point-blank shooting. Same bastard kid killer. Was anything stolen?”

“Mom’s wallet was full.”

It was Claire who saw the writing on the underside of the stroller.

I stared at the letters as cameras flashed in a stroboscopic frenzy. The message was written in lipstick. The signature was the same-but different.

FWC

“What the hell?” I said to Claire. “Not WCF? Now it’s FWC?”

“You ask me, Lindsay? This guy isn’t leaving clues. He’s purely fucking with us.”

Chapter 36

OUR PINCH HITTER, Jackson Brady, said he’d taken workshops at the FBI headquarters in Quantico.

“I spent two full summers learning to profile serial killers. That doesn’t make me a pro, but I have educated opinions.”

Jacobi commandeered a conference room in the Crimes Against Persons Division, and we all sat around the chipped fake-wood table, looking at Brady. Paul Chi told Brady what we’d gathered from the first scene and the latest, and Brady took notes.

All eyes were on him when he told us, “Killing children is reactive, maybe to a bad childhood, or it’s possible this killer is so dead inside, he just wastes the kids because they’re witnesses.”

“The kids were babies,” Jacobi said.

Brady shrugged. “The killer probably isn’t using that kind of logic. As for the killing of the mothers, you’re seeing a real hatred for women.”

“In terms of finding this guy,” Jacobi said, “his early childhood isn’t relevant, is it? How he feels isn’t going to lead us to him.”

“You’re right, Lieutenant. In fact, I’m going to say this guy can hide in plain sight. Look at what you know from the way he committed the crimes, how he got away without being seen. He’s highly intelligent, he’s focused, he’s organized, and he’s working alone. Most important, he passes as ordinary. That’s the only way he could get so close to his victims. They don’t even scream.”

“And he’s got a gun that doesn’t bring up a hit,” I said.

“That’s an interesting detail,” Brady said. “This guy knows weaponry. Makes me think he may have military training.”

“We’ve got a witness ID and video surveillance,” I said. “We think we have some idea what he may look like.”

“Nothing distinctive, am I right?”

“Yeah,” said Chi. “White male, thirties, wears a cap. We’ll get another look when we go over the security tapes from One EC.”

Conklin asked, “If this guy is military, if he’s at least highly competent and trained, what’s going to trip him up?”

“Overconfidence,” Brady said. “He could get too sure of himself and leave a clue. But, you know, it could be a long time before he makes that kind of mistake.”

I sat back in my seat. It was another way of saying what I’d been thinking since the Bentons were killed in the Stones-town garage.

More people were going to die.

Chapter 37

TEN DAYS AGO, “Dowling trumped everything.”

Now the entire threadbare Homicide squad plus dozens of conscripted cops from other departments were canvassing the Embarcadero Center, following up every phoned-in, crackpot lead, working twelve-hour shifts under Jacobi in single-minded determination to nail the Lipstick Killer.

I was in the morgue with Claire when the ballistics report from the Feds was dropped into her in-box. I tried not to scream out my impatience as she carried on a phone call while gingerly peeling up the envelope flap. She finally hung up on her caller and took out the single sheet of paper. She skimmed the page and said, “Hey-hey. Our case was reviewed by Dr. Mike himself.”

“Forgive my ignorance-and will you please give me the damned report?”

“Hang on, girlfriend. Dr. Michael Sciarra is the FBI’s Dr. Gun,” she said. “Okay. Lemme get to the nub here. Dr. Mike says the gunpowder stippling on those dead babies was atypical because the shots were fired through a suppressor. And not your basic pop-bottle-and-scouring-pad wackadoo, either.”

“What, then?” I asked.

“It had to be professionally tooled, cold steel or titanium. Very few of these exist. Dr. Mike says here, ‘There is no record of any homicides in the United States committed with a suppressor like the one that caused the atypical stippling pattern on the Benton and Kinski children.’”

“Jeez, what the hell does that mean?”

“For starters, it explains why no one heard gunshots.”

“And why we didn’t get a hit in the database.”

“Because it probably came from outside the country,” Claire was saying when my cell phone buzzed. My stomach clenched when I read the caller ID. I showed the phone to Claire, flipped it open, and said, “Boxer.”

I was thinking, What now?

“Boxer, that goddamned, shit-for-brains Lipstick Psycho put on another freakin’ horror show!” Jacobi shouted into my ear.

“No, c’mon, NO.”

“Yeah, well, a woman and child were killed in the parking garage at Union Square, looks exactly like the last two homicides. I’m at the scene with Chi and Cappy. Tracchio’s on the way, and now he’s going to put his mitts all over this.”

I hung up with Jacobi, briefed Claire, and got Conklin on the line, then fled to the parking lot behind the Hall. Conklin was waiting for me in the driver’s seat of our squad car, and as soon as I slammed my door closed, he jammed on the gas and we peeled out with flashers on, siren blaring, rubber burning tracks into the asphalt.

Conklin shouted over the clamor, “He does this smack in the middle of town. What a pair this guy has.”

“Smack in the middle of town is what he likes. He’s a terrorist. A damned good one.”

I had no idea how right I would turn out to be.

Chapter 38

I SWEAR CONKLIN got the car up to three G’s in three seconds. I gripped the dash as the Crown Vic roared up Leavenworth and then took us through the stomach-turning roller-coaster climbs, sudden-death drops, and hairpin turns of our city’s streets.

When I wasn’t mentally trying to steer the car from the passenger seat, I thought about the Lipstick Killer. He wasn’t just insane.

He was crazy.

He’d killed four people-and now maybe more. His signature was so cryptic, it was meaningless. How could we predict his behavior if we didn’t get his point?

Conklin wrenched the wheel right at the bottom of a hill, sending us into a gridlocked intersection. I wanted to get out and beat on car roofs until the road was clear, but instead I shouted into the bullhorn, “Move your vehicles. Pull over now!”

We started and stopped as cars stalled trying to climb over one another, the seconds dragging until we cleared the jam. Minutes later, Conklin nosed the squad car between a small herd of parked black-and-whites outside the garage at Union Square. I was out of the car before Conklin set the brake.

Together we waded into the panicky throng of shoppers who had left their cars in the garage. I saw the fear on their faces and could almost hear their collective thoughts: The killer was here. He could have shot me.

I made a path through the crowd with my badge, signed the log, and asked Officer Sorbero to fill me in.

“Déjà vu all over again,” Joe said. “The crime scene’s on the fourth floor. We shut the elevators down.”

Conklin held up the tape and we ducked under it, entering the chill of the garage. There were dark, tunneled access points on the ground floor, passageways coming from all sides-the huge Macy’s, the Saks, the Sir Francis Drake Hotel-perfect opportunities for a predator to stalk his victims unseen.

As Conklin and I strode up the winding center double aisles between the rows of parked cars, I braced myself for what Jacobi had described as a “horror show.” We found him talking with Chief Anthony Tracchio on the third-floor landing. The chief’s face was blanched, and Jacobi’s hooded eyes were drawn almost closed, both men looking as though they’d peered over the abyss into the devil’s own lair.

“Chi and McNeil are on four,” Tracchio said, his mouth hardly moving. “Swing shift is canvassing the perimeter. I’ve expanded the team to any cop who volunteers or who crosses my path.”

“Were there any witnesses?” I asked. It was more a small, doomed wish than a question.

“No,” Jacobi said. “No one saw or heard a fucking thing.”

Chapter 39

CONKLIN AND I climbed past the angled rows of parked cars, my feelings of dread increasing the higher we went. By the time we greeted McNeil and Chi at the top of the fourth floor, I felt as if spiders were using the tops of my arms as a freeway, working their way under the hair at the back of my neck.

I didn’t want to see the victims, yet I had to look. I forced my eyes down. And there, lying in an empty parking space between two vehicles, were the bodies.

The woman had been pretty, and she still retained grace in death. Her white sweater and long brunette hair were soaked with blood, which pooled around her and ran in long runnels down the sloping concrete floor. There were bloody footprints around her and blood on the bottoms of her shoes.

The child was tucked into the curl of the woman’s body. It looked as though they had been posed.

My vision started to fade. I felt the ground shift under my feet and heard Conklin’s voice. “Linds? Lindsay?” His arm around my waist stopped me from dropping to the floor.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

I nodded and mumbled, “I’m fine. Fine. I haven’t eaten today.” I was annoyed at myself for looking weak. For looking female. My superiors, the guys, my friends in the squad, would be looking to me for leadership. I had to get a grip.

The victims were bracketed between a red Dodge Caravan and a silver Highlander. An open handbag lay on the ground, and the contents of the victim’s purse were scattered.

All of the Caravan’s doors were open. I lifted my eyes to the windshield and saw the letters “CWF” written in red.

That strange signature again. What the hell did it mean?

Paul Chi called my name from behind my shoulder, and I turned to see his blanched face. I knew that, like me, Chi was shocked to the core by this terrible crime.

“The vic’s name is Elaine Marone,” Chi said. “Mrs. Marone was thirty-four. She had fifty-six dollars in her wallet, credit cards, a driver’s license, and so on. We don’t know the little girl’s name.”

“Did you find the lipstick?” I asked, hoping that it had rolled under a vehicle, that the killer had left a fingerprint on its shiny case.

“We found no makeup of any kind,” Chi said. “But here’s something new: check out the bruising on Mrs. Marone’s wrist. Maybe she tried to disarm the shooter.”

I crouched next to the body of Elaine Marone. As Chi said, there were bluish finger marks on the woman’s right wrist, and I counted five distinct bullet holes in her sweater. Elaine Marone hadn’t just put up a struggle. She’d fought like hell.

And then the screaming started, a heartrending howl twisting up through the concrete cavern.

“Laineeee. Lilllly.”

Oh God, no.

Footsteps pounded on concrete. Jacobi yelled, “Stop! Freeze right where you are!”

It was a clear warning, but the footsteps kept coming.

Chapter 40

I RAN DOWN the incline toward the third floor, then rounded the turn to see Tracchio and Jacobi tackling a big man wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. The man was a bruiser, a charging bull on full adrenaline. He shook off Tracchio and Jacobi as if they were small dogs, then continued running up the ramp toward the crime scene. It looked like he was going to blast right through me.

Jacobi yelled, “FREEZE,” then pulled his Taser from his belt. I shouted, “Jacobi, NO! Don’t do it, don’t-” But I knew he had no choice. I heard the electric chattering of the stun gun, and the big man was jerked off his feet, going down as if his spinal cord had been cut. He flopped and slid down the incline, a five-second ride, and during that time he was paralyzed and unable to scream.

Jacobi caught up to him, shouting, “Jesus Christ, look what you made me do! Are you done now? Are you done?”

The rattle of the Taser stopped and the fallen man’s horrific sobbing began-and he couldn’t stop. I stooped beside him as Jacobi twisted back his arms and snapped on the cuffs.

“I’m Sergeant Boxer,” I said, patting the man down. I lifted his wallet from his back pocket and checked his face against his driver’s license photo. The man was Francis Marone.

“Let me UP. I have to go to them!”

I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Marone, not right now.”

“What happened? Are they okay?” Marone choked out. “I just spoke to Elaine.” He sobbed. “I had to stop for cigarettes, but I told her I’d meet her at the car.”

“You were talking to her on the phone just now?”

“I heard her say to someone, ‘What do you want?’ And then I heard-oh God, tell me she’s okay.”

I said again that I was sorry as Marone cried, “NO, not my girls. Please, please, I have to go to them.”

Francis Marone was breaking my heart-and this was the savage part: if we ever expected to catch, let alone indict, the killer, we had to protect the crime scene from this man.

A forest of legs had grown up around me-Tracchio, Conklin, Chi, McNeil. I asked Mr. Marone if there was a friend or relative I could call for him, but he wasn’t listening. Still, I had to know: “Mr. Marone, can you think of anyone who may have wanted to harm your wife?”

Marone searched my face with his bloodshot eyes before shouting, “I operate a cement mixer! Elaine does PR for a toy store! We’re nobodies. Nobodies.”

Marone was bleeding from bad scrapes on his forearms. I put my hand on the poor guy’s shoulder and stood aside as Jacobi and Tracchio got him to his feet.

“I didn’t want to hurt you, man,” Jacobi said.

I signaled to officers Noonan and Mackey, asking them to drive Marone to the hospital. I promised Marone I’d meet him there as soon as I could. Then I got out of the way as Claire’s van tore up the ramp.

Chapter 41

CLAIRE WAS STOWING her camera by the time I made it back up to the fourth tier. She looked into my face, and I saw my own horror reflected in hers. We opened our arms and held on to each other, and this time I didn’t care who thought I was weak.

“These babies. I can’t take the babies,” I said.

“It’s not going to be all right,” Claire said into my shoulder. “Even when you catch the bastard, it’s not going to be all right. Not ever again. You know that, right?”

We broke apart as one of Claire’s assistants asked her if it was okay to start bagging the victims’ hands. The grim work of deconstructing the crime had begun. I said to Claire, “Did you see the letters on the windshield?”

“Uh-huh. CWF. That’s another kink in the pattern. The ‘C’ and the ‘W’ are still next to each other, so the ‘F’ is moving around. And that’s all I’ve got except for two more DBs to work up who shouldn’t be dead.”

Claire pulled at my arm, and I stepped out of the way as Clapper’s crime scene-mobile steamed up the rise and stopped beside the ME’s van. CSIs poured out of the back, and Clapper stood over the sickening tableau and said to no one in particular, “Makes you wonder if the Good Lord has just given up on humanity.”

Cameras flashed and video was shot of the bodies and of the bullet dings in the car both inside and out. Slugs were collected for evidence. Markers were set out, sketches were drawn, and notes were taken.

I stood aside and watched the CSIs work, thinking about how an hour before, Elaine Marone had been shopping with her husband and her toddler, and now Claire’s team was wrapping their bodies in clean white sheets, zipping up the body bags. I was glad the cold finality of those zippers closing was something Francis Marone would never hear.

I was wishing again, hoping that the spent slugs would compute, that there would be some useful physical evidence in this bloodbath, when Conklin called out, “Linds. Check this out.”

I walked over to the Marones’ minivan and saw that my partner was pointing to the three-letter signature on the windshield. He turned his brown eyes on me and said, “That’s not lipstick.”

I shined my light on the letters and felt my stomach drop.

“That’s blood,” Conklin said. “He wrote the letters in their blood with his finger.”

One of Clapper’s techs took close-ups. Another swabbed the letters on the windshield. My flicker of hope burned bright.

Could it be?

Had the Lipstick Killer gotten so lost in his madness, he’d left a bloody print behind for the good guys?

Chapter 42

AT EIGHT THIRTY that night, Sergeant Jackson Brady faced the motley gang of Homicide inspectors and patrol cops who were grouped around him in our squad room. He jammed a videotape into our old machine and said, “If anyone sees something I missed, shout it out.”

The screen sparked with a grainy black-and-white image of a man in the lower right corner, walking up the center aisle of the garage, heading toward the Dodge Caravan near the end of the row.

The images were halting, dark, snowy-the result of bad lighting and cheap tape that had been recycled hundreds of times. Still, we could see the killer. As before, he wore a billed cap and a two-toned baseball jacket. He kept his head down and faced away from the surveillance camera.

Brady narrated as the pictures rolled.

“Here, he has his hands in his pockets. As he approaches the victim’s van, he hails Mrs. Marone. What’s he saying? Asking the time, maybe? Or does she have change for a twenty?

“Now she puts her packages on the van’s backseat and slides the door closed. She goes to the driver’s side, talking on the cell phone to her husband.”

I watched the screen as the killer moved in on the still-living figure of Elaine Marone. I studied the way he walked, examining his body language and hers. He seemed apologetic as he went toward her, and Elaine Marone didn’t appear alarmed.

I remembered Brady saying that this guy “passes as ordinary.” And I thought about the most vicious of the serial killers-the ones that movies were made about-and every one of those psychopaths looked ordinary.

“See, now, the gun is out,” Brady said. “Nine mil, Beretta. Nifty suppressor. She takes a quick look into the backseat, then stretches out the handbag. She’s saying, ‘What do you want?’ She’s trying to buy the killer off, not getting anywhere. The Highlander blocks the camera’s view of their lower bodies, but from the way he’s suddenly bent over, I think she’s kicked him.

“Now he’s slapping the handbag out of her hand, and there’s the first gunshot. She presses her hand to her upper chest.”

Brady talked, but I could see for myself that Elaine Marone went for the killer’s gun hand. He grabbed her wrist with his free hand, squeezing it hard, and he wrenched himself free. That’s when he left bruises on her wrist. A second later, Elaine Marone’s body jerked four times, then slumped out of sight.

The back door of the van was opened, and the killer fired one shot into the backseat, then disappeared from view.

“Look,” Brady said. “Here’s our shooter again. He’s holding Elaine Marone’s body around the waist with his left arm and using the index finger of her right hand to write his signature on the glass. She didn’t have lipstick,” Brady said, “so he improvised.”

I asked Brady to roll the tape back, and I watched again as the killer used the dead woman’s hand to write “CWF” in her blood. He used her finger, not his, and besides, the bastard was wearing gloves. My hope for a fingerprint died.

Brady was saying, “He left the van doors open and arranged the bodies. Now here he is, walking up toward the fifth tier, where the next camera picks him up getting into the elevator. We have the tape from that, too. It’s ten seconds, a close-up of the top of his cap, no logo. Now he exits at street level.

“Three minutes and forty seconds,” Brady said, pointing the remote at the monitor, shutting it off. “That’s how much time elapsed from when he drew his gun to when he disappeared.”

Chapter 43

WE WERE ON the wide leather couch in the living room, waiting for the eleven o’clock news. My feet were in Joe’s lap, and Martha was snoring on the rug beside me. I was frustrated and beyond exhaustion. I wanted to sleep, but my mind was spinning.

“A woman came into the Hall today,” I said to Joe. “She told Jacobi that a man approached her outside the Ferry Building the night the Kinskis were killed. Said he was lost. He was wearing a billed cap and a blue-and-white baseball jacket.”

“She was credible?”

“Jacobi said she was shaking and had half chewed her lip off. She told Jacobi the guy was creepy. She said she couldn’t help him and walked away with her baby, and he shouted after her, ‘I appreciate the fucking time of day!’ She’s seen the surveillance video and thinks it could be him.”

“Good news, Linds. A witness, of sorts.”

“It’s something, but, you know, it could have been anyone wearing a baseball jacket. Joe, WCF, FWC. And now CWF. You’re a puzzle addict. What do you get out of that?”

“West Coast Freak. Factory Workers’ Coalition. Chief Wacko Freak. Want me to keep going?”

“No, you’re right,” I said. “It’s gooseberries. The shooter is playing with us.”

“Listen, before I forget to tell you-”

“There,” I said, grabbing the clicker off the coffee table, amping up the volume as the familiar face of news anchor Andrea Costella talked above the “Breaking News” banner.

“We have news tonight about the Lipstick Killer, who was videotaped at a Union Square garage as he was leaving the scene of another horrific double homicide,” she said.

The video came on the screen, about ten seconds of the shooter entering the elevator car, stabbing the button with a gloved hand, and standing in one place, eyes lowered, until the doors opened and he exited into thin air.

“An anonymous witness described the shooter to the police, who have made a sketch available to this station,” Costella said. A drawing replaced the videotape on the screen.

“See?” I said to Joe. “Mr. Ordinary. No-color eyes, no-color hair. Regular features, regular nine mil slugs, no match to anything. But not mentioned to the viewers, he uses a suppressor, professional grade.”

“Sounds like he’s military. Special Ops. Or he’s a military contractor. Got the suppressor on the black market or overseas.”

“Yeah. The military angle makes sense. But there are, what, thousands and thousands of former military guys in the city? And half of them fit this guy’s description. Hey, what’s this?” I asked as another video came on the screen.

I watched with my mouth open as a handheld camera bumped along behind Claire. It was recording her leaving the morgue, heading to the parking lot just outside her office. Reporters fired questions about the victims and asked her if there was anything she could tell the people of San Francisco.

Claire turned her back to the cameras and got into her new Prius. She started it up, and I thought that was it-Get lost, you vultures-but she buzzed down the window, rested her elbow on the frame, and looked squarely at the cameras.

“Yes, I have something to tell the people of San Francisco, and I’m not speaking as the chief medical examiner. I’m speaking as a wife and a mother. Are we clear?”

There was a chorus of yeses.

“Moms, keep your eyes open,” Claire said. “Don’t trust anyone. Don’t park in lonely places, and don’t get near your car unless there are other people around. And, no kidding, get a license to carry a handgun. Then carry it.”

Chapter 44

PETE GORDON SAT in the kitchen, laptop in front of him on the red Formica table, his back to the porch where Sherry was doing stupid puppet tricks for her brother. The stink bomb was shrieking with joy or fright, Pete really didn’t know which, because it was all like having a screwdriver jabbed through his eardrum.

Pete yelled over his shoulder, “Keep it down, Sherry! In a minute, I’m going to take off my belt.”

“We’ll be quiet, Daddy.”

Gordon returned to the letter he was composing, a kind of ransom note. Yeah. He liked thinking of it that way. He was a pretty good writer, but this had to be crystal clear and without any clues to his identity.

“An open letter to the citizens of San Francisco,” he wrote. “I have something important to tell you.”

He thought about the word “citizens,” decided it was too stiff, and replaced it with “residents.” Much better.

“An open letter to the residents of San Francisco.” Then he changed the second line: “I have a proposition to make.” Suddenly there was a shrill scream from the porch, and Sherry was shushing the stink bomb and then calling in through the window, “Daddy, I’m sorry, please don’t get mad. Stevie didn’t mean it.”

The baby was crying on both the inhale and the exhale, un-fucking-relenting. Pete clenched his hands, thinking how much he hated them and everything about the life he lived now. Look at me, Ladies and Gentlemen, Captain Peter Gordon, former commando, currently Househusband First Class.

What a frickin’ tragedy.

The only thing that gave him joy anymore was working on his plan. Thinking how, after he’d wasted Sherry and the stink bomb, it was going to give him great, great pleasure to show the princess who he really was. He could hardly wait to silence her nagging. Pete, sweetie, don’t forget to pick up the milk and don’t forget to take your meds, okay? Hey, handsome, did you make lunch for the kids? Make the bed? Call the cable guy?

He imagined Heidi’s face, pale in the middle of all that red hair, eyes like yo-yos when she realized what he had done. And what he was going to do to her.

Hi-hi, Heidi. Bye-dee-bye.