The 9th Judgment

Chapter 45

SARAH WELLS CROUCHED in the shrubbery between the huge Tudor-style house and the street, her clothes blending into the shadows. She was having a three-dimensional flashback of the Dowling job-how she’d hidden in the closet while the Dowlings made love, later knocking into that table of whatnots during her narrow frickin’ escape. And then the worst part-the murder accusation hanging over her.

She considered quitting while she was ahead. On the other hand, the Morley house was a prize.

The three-story white home with dark beams and bay windows belonged to Jim and Dorian Morley, the Sports Gear Morleys who owned a chain of athletic stores up and down the coast. She’d read everything about them on the Web and seen dozens of photos. Dorian Morley dressed to impress and owned a stunning jewelry collection that she kept in constant use.

Sarah had made special note of Mrs. Morley telling a Chronicle reporter that she loved to wear diamonds every day, “even around the house.”

Imagine. Everyday diamonds.

Which is why Sarah had put the Morleys on her to-do list, done several run-throughs to check out the traffic patterns at nine p.m. in their neighborhood, and pinpointed where to stash her car and where to hide. On one of her drive-bys earlier in the week, she’d even seen Jim Morley leaving the house in his Mercedes. He was stocky and muscular-the kind of build people called “brawny.”

Sarah definitely did not want to run into Jim Morley tonight. And she wouldn’t. The Morleys were having a Big Chill party in their backyard and would be treating their friends to a live performance of a retread rock-and-roll band from the ’60s. She could hear the first set now, electric guitars twanging over screeching mics.

What a fantastic cover of sound.

Fifteen minutes ago, one of the valets had parked the last guest’s car down the hill and was now hanging out in the street with his buddy. Sarah could hear their muted laughter and smell the cigarette smoke.

She was going to do it. She’d made up her mind. And there was no better time than now.

Sarah glanced up at the Morleys’ bedroom window, and, after taking a breath, she darted out from the sheltering shrubbery and ran twenty feet to the base of the house. Once there, she executed a maneuver like the one she’d practiced many times on the climbing wall at the gym. She jammed the left toe of her climbing shoe against the clapboard, gripped the drainpipe of the gutter with her right hand, and stretched up to the window ledge.

Halfway through the ten-foot climb, her left foot slipped, and she hung, heart pounding, body splayed vertically against the wall, right hand gripping the drainpipe, desperate not to pull down the gutter and create a clamor that would end with a shout or a rough hand at her back.

Quit now, Sarah. Go home.

Sarah hung against the wall for interminable seconds.

Her forearms were like cables from hours of just hanging by her hands from the bar across her closet doorway-not just until she couldn’t hold on for another instant but until her muscles failed and she peeled off the bar. She’d strengthened her fingers by squeezing a rubber ball when she drove her car, watched TV-any spare moment at all. But despite her strength and determination, there was still some light from the moon, and Sarah Wells was not invisible.

As she clung to the wall, Sarah heard a car stop around the corner of the house and voices of new guests coming up the walk. She waited for them to enter the house, and when she figured it was safe, she took her hand off the drainpipe and reached for the molding below the window. When she had a firm grip, she pulled herself up until she was able to hook a leg onto the sill of the westernmost window of the Morleys’ bedroom.

She was in.

Chapter 46

SARAH WRIGGLED OVER the sill and dropped to the carpet.

Her head swam with a high-octane blend of elation, urgency, and fear. She glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand beside the Morleys’ huge four-poster bed and registered the time. It was 9:14, and Sarah swore to herself that once the blue digits read 9:17, she’d be gone.

The spacious room was dimly lit from the light in the hall. Sarah took in the heavy, Queen Anne-period maple furnishings, evidence of an inheritance as well as the bazillions the Morleys had made in sporting goods. There were little oil paintings near the bed, a huge plasma-screen TV in the armoire, photos along the walls of the handsome Morley clan in sailboats-walls that now thrummed with a pounding rock-and-roll beat.

Sarah was on her mark and ready to go. She crossed the long, carpeted room, then shut the door leading out to the hallway and locked it. Now, except for the blinking blue light of the digital clock, she was completely in the dark.

It was 9:15.

Sarah felt along the wall, found the closet door, opened it, and threw on the switch to her headlamp. The room-sized closet was fantastic, and she wouldn’t have expected less from the Morleys. There were racks and racks of clothes, hers on one side, his on the other; a triple-paned floor-to-ceiling mirror at the back wall; everything you could ever ask from a closet-except a safe. Where was it?

Sarah worked quickly, looking behind evening gowns and running her fingers along baseboard moldings and shelves, feeling time whiz by as she inventoried the Morleys’ frickin’ closet.

She would have to leave. Empty-handed.

Sarah had just turned off her light and exited the closet when she heard footsteps on the hardwood. They stopped outside the bedroom. The doorknob twisted back and forth, then a man’s voice shouted, “Hey! Who locked the door?”

Sarah froze. Should she hide? Break for the window in the dark?

The man called out again: “It’s Jim. I need to use the can.” His laugh was sloppy with drink. He put on a high-pitched, fruity voice. “Hello Kitty? Is that youuuu?”

Sarah’s heart nearly stopped. It was Jim Morley, and he was pounding on his bedroom door.

“Hey. Open up!”

Chapter 47

SARAH RAN TO the window, whatever might be in her way be damned. She had her hand on the sill when a door opened into the room and light poured in. Morley had entered the bathroom from the room next door, and his hulking frame was silhouetted by the bathroom light.

He called out as he fumbled for the switch on the bedroom wall. “Is someone here?”

Sarah’s mind did a backflip. Without the light, she could see him better than he could see her. She had to brazen it out. “Jim,” she said, “can you give us some privacy, please?”

“Laura? Laura, is that you? Jesus. I’m sorry. You and Jesse, take your time. Take all the time you need.”

The bathroom door closed. The darkness returned. Take all the time you need, Morley had said, but when he got back to the party, he’d see Laura and Jesse, and he’d sound the alarm.

It was 9:20.

Sarah had a foot up on the sill when an image appeared in the corner of her mind’s eye. She’d been in a rush to get to the closet, but she’d half noticed a particular painting of a wheat field right next to the bed. Had it been hinged to the wall?

Thirty seconds, no more, but she had to check it out.

Sarah found the four-poster by the pale blue light of the clock and used it to guide her. Her fingers ran across the edges of the small picture frame, and then she pulled it toward her.

She exhaled as the painting swung open. Behind it was a cool metal box with its padlock hanging open. Sarah moved quickly. She pulled the box from the wall, set it down on the bed, and flipped back the lid. Then she opened the empty duffel bag she’d brought for the loot and began to transfer small bulging envelopes and boxes out of the safe.

When her bag was full, she zipped it closed and returned the empty box to its sleeve in the wall.

Time to go!

Sarah peered out the window and saw a man walking his rottie. He stopped to talk to the valet, then continued up the street. Sarah vaulted onto the sill and turned so that she faced into the room. She placed her hands on the ledge between her bent legs and then let herself down and over the side. She jammed her climbing shoes against the wall of the house, then dropped.

Her foot hit a hollow in the lawn, and her ankle turned.

She stifled a yelp, clenching her teeth in a grimace. Then, hidden by clouds crossing the moon, Sarah hobbled through the dark toward her car.

Chapter 48

SARAH ALMOST CRIED out in relief when she saw her red Saturn parked along the street not far from the Morleys’ house. She got inside, whipped off her lamp and knit hat in one movement, and stripped off her gloves. She stuffed them into the duffel with the jewelry cases and slid the bag under the front seat.

She sat in the comforting dark of night, gripping the steering wheel, her ankle throbbing as she marveled at her minutes-long, heart-stopping escapade.

It was unbelievable.

Jim Morley had called her “Hello Kitty.”

He’d opened the bathroom door and stared right at her. And still she hadn’t gotten caught.

Hadn’t gotten caught yet, Sarah reminded herself. She was carrying enough evidence under her car seat to get her locked up for twenty years, and that’s if she wasn’t charged with murder.

Sarah fluffed up her hair, slipped on the blue quilted shirt she kept in the backseat, and started up the engine. She rolled out onto Columbus, carefully keeping to the speed limit as she headed toward Bay Street, passing Chestnut and Francisco, her mind floating on the aftermath of her success, starting to think now about seeing Heidi.

She imagined telling Heidi the truth about herself, about how the loot she’d stolen would fund their freedom for maybe the rest of their lives, how their fantasies of living together as a family would come true.

As she thought about Heidi clapping her hands and throwing her arms around her, a distant sound nagged at Sarah until she couldn’t ignore the whine any longer. The looping, high-pitched wail came from behind, getting louder as it approached. She could see red flashers in her rearview mirror.

Cops.

They couldn’t be coming for her, could they? Had Jim Morley called the police after all? Maybe the valet had seen her limping down the street when Morley sounded the alarm. Still, she was sure no one had followed her to the car.

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.

Chapter 49

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.

Chapter 50

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.

Chapter 51

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!”

Chapter 52

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.”

Chapter 53

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.

Because of Conklin’s work and mine, Madison Tyler had not been found dead in a ditch. Instead, she was playing the piano, going to school, and romping with her little dog.

Tyler and his wife had been so grateful to Conklin and me for saving Madison ’s life, Tyler had said he owed us a big favor. I hoped he’d remember that promise-and then he was on the line.

Chapter 54

“MR. TYLER,” I said into the phone, calling up a mental image of the tall, gray-haired man. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been in the park with his little girl. He’d been laughing.

“Lindsay, I’ve told you, call me Henry,” Tyler said now. “I’ve been expecting your call. It’s too bad it has to be about this guy.”

“We’re glad he’s surfaced,” I told Tyler. “It’s an opportunity, but only if we have time to work up a plan. Can you stall him, Henry? What if you don’t run his letter tomorrow, maybe give us another day?”

“How can I do that? If I don’t run his letter and he kills more people, it’ll be my fault-and I can’t live with that. But, Lindsay, I can get the money for him. I was hoping you could be our go-between.”

“You’re paying him the two million?”

“It’s cheap any way you look at it,” Tyler said to me. “He could have asked five times as much, and paying him off would still be the right thing to do. He’s going to keep killing kids and their mothers unless we give him what he wants-you know that. I’m sure that he’s had this payout in mind from the beginning.”

I was startled to hear Henry Tyler say he was going to pay off the killer and even more stunned at his conclusion: that the Lipstick Killer’s spree had been about the money all along.

“Henry, what worries me is that buying off the killer won’t stop him from killing, and it will only encourage others to make similar threats.”

“I understand, Lindsay. We have to trip him up somehow. That’s why I’ll be working with you.”

My headache had gone molten right between my eyes. I was a cop, nothing more. I couldn’t see through walls or into the mind of a psycho. While it was flattering that Henry Tyler thought I could stop the Lipstick Killer, it was obvious the murderer was smart-too smart to fall for your basic van full of cops waiting for him to pick up a briefcase of money.

The worst-case scenario was the one that seemed the most likely: Killer gets the cash. Killer gets away. Killer continues to kill. And he inspires terrorism all over the country. There weren’t enough cops in America to cover an epidemic of sickos killing for money.

“I want to be sure I understand,” I said to Tyler. “You haven’t been in touch with the Lipstick Killer. He doesn’t know you’re going to give him the money?”

“He doesn’t know about me at all. He’s paid for us to run the letter, and he’ll be waiting for a response by way of a return letter in the paper. I can stall, get the money, and write a reply to run the day after tomorrow.”

“So we have two days.”

“Yes. I guess that’s right.”

“You’ve got a new secretary starting tomorrow morning,” I said to Tyler. “I’ll be with you round the clock.”

Chapter 55

THERE WAS A pile of doughnuts in the coffee room, and I went for them. I hadn’t eaten a square meal in almost two weeks, and hadn’t had more than five consecutive hours of sleep in that time, either. As for exercise, zero, unless my brain running 24-7 on a hamster wheel counted for something.

I sugared my coffee, went back into the squad room, and saw Cindy sitting at my seat, smiling over the desk at Conklin and shaking her bouncy blond curls.

“Linds,” she said, getting up to give me a hug.

“Hey, Cindy,” I said, hugging her a little too tightly, “Rich and I have something to tell you-off the record.”

“That Hello Kitty is female?”

I glared at my partner, who shrugged at me.

“That’s not for publication,” I said, swinging down into my seat, watching Cindy pull up a chair. I piled my doughnuts on a paper napkin and placed my coffee cup on a file folder.

“I had put together this whole list of social-register guys who could climb up the side of a house,” Cindy said, pulling a sheet from her computer case. “Duke Edgerton, William Burke Ruffalo, and Peter Carothers are rock climbers. They were on top of my all-star list, but now they’re the wrong gender, right? Since Kitty’s a girl.”

“We have no idea if the woman in the Morleys’ house was Hello Kitty or a party guest Jim Morley didn’t know,” I said to Cindy, “so let’s not get crazy and print that, okay?”

“Hmmmm.”

“Cindy, we will not be able to vet a single lead that comes in if you print that Hello Kitty is female.”

“The Morleys had fifty guests last night,” Cindy said. “You think the word’s not going to get out?”

“There’s a difference between rumor and a police confirmation,” I said. “But you already know that.”

Cindy sniffed. “What if I say, ‘Sources close to the police department have confirmed to the Chronicle that they have new information that could lead to the identity of the cat burglar known as Hello Kitty’?”

“Okay,” I said. “Write that. Now just in case your boss didn’t already tell you-”

“Henry? Oh, he did. What a scorcher, huh? A letter from the Lipstick Killer going into the front section.”

“Well, you’re up to speed. Is there anything else, Cindy, dear?”

“I’m off to interview Dorian and Jim Morley. This is a heads-up.”

“Thanks,” Conklin said.

“Off you go,” I said to Cindy. “Have fun.”

“You’re not mad about anything?”

“Not at all. Thanks for the list.” I waggled my fingers.

“See you later,” she said to Conklin. I turned my face when she touched his cheek tenderly and kissed him. When Curlilocks had gone, I lifted my coffee, opened the file folder, and spread the morgue pictures of Elaine and Lily Marone out on the desk.

“Let’s get back to work,” I said to Conklin. “What do you say?”

I hung icicles from every word.

Chapter 56

“I TOLD HER nothing,” Conklin said to me.

“Whatever,” I said back. My mind was splitting, I think, literally. Hello Kitty. Lipstick Killer.

Lipstick Killer trumped everything.

“I didn’t even mention the Morleys to Cindy.”

“I believe you. It’s over. She’s going to run the story about Kitty being female, and the phone lines are going to burn up all over again.”

“Cindy got a tip from one of the Morleys’ friends. She did it all herself.”

“Can we please move on?”

I didn’t want to believe Conklin hadn’t spilled the new info to Cindy, but I did. I do. He’s honest. We’ve been partners for more than a year and, in that time, I’ve put my life in his hands more than once-and he’s put his in mine. Crap. Images of the two of us working through bombings and firestorms and covering each other while trading shots with homicidal punks washed over me.

We had a bone-deep connection as partners, and then there was what Claire called the “other thing.”

There was still a lot of spark in our relationship that had never been fully resolved. I remembered us grappling half naked on a hotel bed, an action that I’d stopped before it was too late. I recalled confessions of feelings. Promises to never discuss them again, that we had to keep our relationship professional, that it was the best and only way.

And now Rich was head over heels in amour with Cindy. That had to be why I was being a bitch. Had to be that, because I love Joe. I love him a lot-and Cindy and Rich are perfect together.

I took apart my stack of doughnuts and gave the chocolate one to Conklin.

“Wow. The chocolate one. For me?”

“I’m sorry. I’m hormonal. All the time.”

“Just take it easy on yourself, okay, Linds?”

“I’m trying.”

Conklin got up from his seat, came over to my side of our abutting desks, and sat in the chair Cindy had just vacated.

“Are you sure about Joe?” he asked me.

I was mesmerized for half a second. Conklin’s good looks have that effect on me, and there’s also something about the way he smells. Whatever the heck soap he uses.

“I’m sure,” I said, looking away.

“He’s the one?”

I nodded and said, “He’s the one.”

I felt Conklin’s lips on my cheek, right there in the squad room, a decidedly unpartnerlike gesture, but I didn’t care if anyone saw it.

“Okay, then,” he said.

He went back to his chair and put his feet on the desk.

“If Hello Kitty’s a female, what changes? Why would she shoot Casey Dowling?”

Chapter 57

IT WAS THEIR lunch break, and Sarah had left the building first. Now Heidi entered the diner and saw Sarah at a booth near the window.

Heidi broke into a smile, waved, and slid across the red leatherette banquette so she could sit next to Sarah and hold her hand. She kissed Sarah quickly, then looked over her shoulder, making sure there were no other teachers around.

“Happy birthday, darling,” Sarah said. “You’re a flirty thirty.”

Heidi laughed. “I don’t feel any different than when I was twenty-nine. I thought I would.”

Menus were brought to the table and hot open-faced turkey sandwiches were eaten quickly because the lunch break was short and there was a lot on their minds. Heidi blurted, “If we could be together for real, without being afraid of getting fired, or of Terror or Beastly going ballistic, do you think we’d feel differently about each other?”

“You mean, would we care less about each other if we felt safe?”

“Yeah.”

“No. I think it would be better. Will be better. That’s a promise. Look, Heidi-”

Three waitresses came out of the kitchen, the one in front holding the cake, cupping her hand in front of the thirty small pink candles. The waitresses clustered at the head of the table and sang, “Happy birthday, dear Heidi. Happy birthday to you.”

Applause sounded up and down the length of the narrow diner, and Heidi looked at Sarah, squeezed her hand, and then blew out the candles, every one of them on the first try.

“Don’t tell me what you wished for,” Sarah said.

“I don’t have to. You know.”

The two hugged, Sarah’s heartbeats picking up speed as she thought about the gift in the pocket of her jeans.

“I have something for my birthday girl,” Sarah said. She dug into her pocket and came out with a packet so small only something really good could be inside. Heidi exchanged a mischievous glance with Sarah, peeled away the silver wrapping paper, and held the small leather box shaped like a round-topped trunk.

“I can’t guess what this is,” she said.

“Don’t guess.”

Holding the box in both hands, Heidi pried up the lid, then took out the chain and the pendant, a brilliant yellow, very faceted stone. Heidi gasped and flung her arms around Sarah’s neck, asking her to please help her put it on.

Sarah beamed, moved Heidi’s soft red hair off the nape of her neck, and connected the clasp. The bead guy at Fisherman’s Wharf had done a wonderful job of fitting the stone into the new setting, not asking questions or even looking at her as he took the twenty dollars for the work.

“I love this. It’s the most beautiful gift, Sarah. What kind of stone is it?”

“It’s a citrine, but I think of it as a promise stone.”

Heidi looked into Sarah’s eyes and nodded.

Sarah touched the gem hanging sweetly from Heidi’s neck and told herself that she would do the last job on her list, that she would hook up with a fence, that she would get Heidi and Sherry and Steven out of San Francisco, that somehow she and Heidi and the kids would stop being afraid every single day of their lives.

Chapter 58

THE REPLY TO the Lipstick Killer’s “ransom letter” ran in the Chronicle, and within hours, the planet slammed on the brakes and all eyes became fixed on San Francisco. Media of every type and stripe materialized in satellite vans and on foot, surrounding the Hall of Justice and the Chronicle Building, swamping Tyler ’s phone lines with requests for interviews and dogging cops and newspaper employees on the street. Every man, woman, and child with an opinion and a computer fired off letters to the editor.

Interviews were denied, and the mayor pleaded with the press to “let us do what we need to do. We’ll provide full disclosure after the fact.”

Rich Conklin, Cappy McNeil, and I were embedded at the Chronicle, charged with screening out the garbage from the real thing: a reply from the killer with instructions on how to deliver two million in blood money in exchange for leaving San Francisco alone.

It was a sickening lose-lose situation that could only turn in our favor if we trapped the murderer. We had a simple plan. Follow the money.

At 2:15 in the afternoon, the mail cart arrived on the executive floor, carrying a fat brown envelope addressed to H. Tyler. I put on latex gloves and said to the mailroom kid, “Who delivered this?”

“Hal, from Speedy Transit. I know him.”

“You signed for it?”

“About eight or ten minutes ago. I rushed it right up.”

“What’s your name?”

“Dave. Hopkins.”

I told Dave Hopkins to go down the hall and ask Inspector McNeil, the big man in the brown jacket, to interview Hal pronto. Then I called out to Conklin, who exited the cube across the hall and followed me to Tyler ’s doorway.

I said, “Henry, this could be it. Or it could be a letter bomb.”

Tyler asked, “Do you want to drop it in a toilet or open it?”

I looked at Conklin.

“I feel lucky,” he said.

I placed the packet in the center of Tyler ’s leather-topped desk. We all stared at the envelope with Tyler ’s name and the word “URGENT” in big black letters. Where the return address should be were three letters written in red: “WCF.”

We’d withheld the killer’s specific signature from the press, so there was little doubt in my mind that this packet was from him. Tyler picked up a letter opener, slit the envelope, and tilted it gingerly until the enclosed objects slid onto his desk.

Item one was a phone. It was a prepaid model, the size of a bar of hand soap, complete with neck straps, a headset with earbuds, a chin mic, and a built-in camera.

Item two was a standard envelope, white, addressed to “H. Tyler.” I opened it and shook out the folded sheet of white paper inside. The message was typed and printed out with an ink-jet. The note read: “ Tyler. Use this phone to call me.”

There was a number and the signature: “WCF.”

Chapter 59

“CAN YOU TRACE a call on a prepaid phone?” Tyler asked.

I shook my head. “Not effectively. There’s no GPS device, so there’s no way to track the phone’s location, either.”

Tyler picked up the cell and dialed the number. I stooped beside him and put my ear next to his. There was ringing, and a man’s voice said, “ Tyler?”

“Yes, this is Henry Tyler. To whom am I speaking?”

“Do you have what I asked for?”

“I do,” said Tyler.

“Turn on the phone cam. Show me the money.”

Henry lifted a briefcase to his desk, opened the hasps, and pointed the phone at two million dollars in neat bundles. He snapped off a shot, then asked, “Did you receive the picture?”

“Yes. I asked you to choose a go-between.”

“I’ll be your contact,” Tyler said.

“You’re too recognizable,” said the killer.

“I have a good man in ad sales,” Tyler said, looking at Conklin. “And against my wishes, my secretary has volunteered.”

“What’s her name?”

“Judy. Judy Price.”

“Put Judy on the phone.”

Tyler handed the phone to me. I said, “This is Judy Price.”

“Judy. This phone can stream video to my computer for three hours. I hope we can conclude our business in less time than that. Use the neck straps and wear the phone with the camera lens facing out. Keep it on until I have the money. I’ll direct you as we go. Do you read me?”

“You want me to keep the phone on and wear it facing out so that it sends streaming video to you.”

“Good girl. Hesitate to follow my directions, screw with me in any way, and I’ll hang up. After that, I’ll kill a few more people, and their deaths will be on you.”

“Hey, what if I lose service?” I asked.

“I’ll call you back. Make sure the line is available. Don’t try any stupid phone tricks, Judy.”

“What should I call you?”

“Call me ‘sir.’ Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now hang the phone around your neck and do a little pirouette so I can see who’s with you.”

I turned on my heel, panning the office.

“I recognize Tyler. Who’s the other guy?”

“That’s Rich in ad sales.”

“Turn on the speakerphone,” the killer said.

I located the speaker button and turned it on.

“Rich, do not follow Judy. That goes for you, too, Tyler. And it goes without saying, if I see cops, anything that makes me think that Judy is being followed, I’ll hang up. Game over. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Point the camera at yourself, Judy.”

There was a pause. Longer than I expected. Then the killer’s voice was back.

“Nice rack, Judy. And let’s hope you’re a smart blonde. Now connect the headset to the phone and put in the earbuds. Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, sweet stuff, take the elevator down to the street. When you get to the corner of Mission and Fifth, I’ll give you instructions.”

“I can hardly wait,” I muttered.

“You’re coming in loud and clear,” the killer said with an edge in his voice. “I’m warning you again, Judy. This is a lucky break for the city. Don’t screw it up.”

Chapter 60

THE PHONE HANGING from my neck felt like an explosive charge. The Lipstick Killer could see everything I saw, hear what I was hearing and saying, and if that vile, crude psychopath became unhappy, he’d cut down more innocent lives.

We’d been warned.

I walked out of the Chronicle Building into a dull gray afternoon. I took in the shoppers and the yellow-light runners, and wondered if the Lipstick Killer recognized the unmarked cars on Fifth and Mission. I saw Jacobi and Brady, Lemke and Samuels and Chi.

By now, Conklin had put out the word that I was the go-between and working undercover. Still, to prevent a shout-out, I caught Jacobi’s eye and, being careful to keep my hand away from the lens, pointed two fingers to my eyes and then to the phone, signaling to Jacobi that I was being watched.

That’s when I glimpsed Cindy. Her eyes were huge, and she was hanging back against the wall of the Chronicle Building, looking at me as though I were heading for the guillotine. I was suffused with love for her. I wanted to hug her, but I winked instead, holding up crossed fingers.

She squeezed out a smile.

I turned back to the street and hefted Tyler ’s ZERO Halliburton case in my right hand. I was afraid, of course. Once I handed “sir” the briefcase, he wouldn’t want a witness. Odds were good that he’d shoot me. If I didn’t shoot him first.

I said into the microphone, “I’m on the corner of Fifth and Mission. What now?”

“Drop your handbag into the trash can. And show me.”

“My handbag?”

“Do it, princess.”

Because I was in my role as Tyler ’s secretary, I’d secreted my gun and my cell phone inside my shoulder bag. I dropped it into the trash can, then tilted the camera so the killer could see that I’d done it. That son of a bitch.

“Good girl,” the Lipstick Killer said. “Now let’s head out to the BART on Powell.”

The Powell Street BART was a block and a half away. As I crossed Market, I saw Conklin coming up behind me outside of camera range and felt a rush of relief. I had no gun, but my partner was with me.

I made my way down the stairs and reached the platform for trains going out to the airport. BART trains are sleek bullets that sound a warning whistle when they come into the station-which was happening now.

Brakes screeched. Doors opened. I got into the train marked SFO and saw Conklin get into the same car at the far end. The train started up, and the killer’s voice piped into my ears, breaking up slightly. “Pan the car,” he said.

I swung my shoulders slowly, giving Conklin enough time to turn away. The train was slowing for the next stop when a canned voice came over the PA system. It announced the station- Civic Center.

The killer said, “Judy. Get out now.”

“You said the airport.”

“Get out now.”

Conklin was wedged into a corner, dozens of people between the two of us. I knew he didn’t see me leave until I was off the train and the doors were closing. I saw the worried look on my partner’s face as the train pulled out of the station.

“Take off your jacket and put it in the trash can,” the killer said.

“My house keys are in the pocket.”

“Throw your jacket into the trash. Don’t question me, sweetmeat. Just do what I say. Now, go to the stairs. On the first landing, pan around so I can see if anyone is following you.”

I did it, and the killer was satisfied.

“Let’s go, princess. We’ve got a date at the Whitcomb.”

Chapter 61

I CAME OUT of the underground into Civic Center Plaza, a clipped, tree-lined park flanked by gilded government buildings, banks, and cultural institutions-a fine public place encroached upon by the hopelessly addicted.

I searched parked cars with my eyes, hoping to see backup as I walked from the BART station to the Hotel Whitcomb. I heard a car take a fast left onto Market and saw a plain gray Ford pull up on its brakes. I couldn’t turn without showing the camera who was driving, so all I could do was hope that Jacobi or someone was on my tail.

I crossed Market to the Whitcomb, an elegant four-hundred-room Victorian hotel, and entered the opulent lobby, glittering with crystal chandeliers, marble floors underfoot, wood paneling everywhere, and humongous floral bouquets scenting the cool air.

My personal tour guide sent me with instructions to the Market Street Grill, a beautiful restaurant that was nearly empty. The trim young woman behind the restaurant’s reception desk wore her dark hair pulled back and a name tag on her blue suit jacket reading SHARRON.

Sharron asked if I’d be dining alone, and I said, “Actually, I’m here to pick up a letter for my boss. Mr. Tyler. He thinks he left it here at breakfast.”

“Oh yes,” Sharron said. “I saw that envelope. I put it away. Hang on a minute.”

The hostess dug inside the stand and, with a little cry of “I’ve got it,” handed me a white envelope with “H. Tyler” written in marker pen.

I wanted to ask if she’d seen the man who’d left the envelope, but the killer’s warning was loud in my head. “Screw with me in any way, and I’ll hang up. After that, I’ll kill a few more people, and their deaths will be on you.”

I thanked the hostess and walked down the hallway from the restaurant toward the lobby.

“Open the envelope, sweetheart,” the killer said, and, gritting my teeth, I did it.

Inside, I found a ticket stub and twenty-five dollars in crisp bills. The stub was marked TRINITY PLAZA. I knew the place, an all-day lot nearby.

“Having fun?” I asked the Lipstick Killer.

“Loads,” he told me. “If you’re bored, tell me about yourself. I’m all ears.”

“I’d rather talk about you. Why did you shoot those people?” I asked.

“I’d tell you,” he said, “but you know how the saying goes: then I’d have to kill you-Lindsay.”

“Who is Lindsay?” I asked, but I was rocked. My stride faltered and I nearly stumbled down the hotel steps. How did he know my name?

“Did you think I didn’t recognize you? Gee, princess, you’re almost a celebrity around this town. I knew, of course, that they’d put a cop on this gig. But, to my delight, it’s you. Sergeant Lindsay Boxer, my girl on a leash.”

“Well, as long as you’re happy.”

“Happy? I’m ecstatic. So listen up, Lindsay. I’m just a Google click away from knowing where you live, who your friends are, who you love. So I guess you’ve got an even better reason to make this a payday for me, don’t you, sweetmeat?”

I pictured Cindy in the camera’s eye, Conklin, Joe working in his home office, Martha at his feet. I saw myself with my Glock in my hand, sights lined up between the no-color eyes of a guy in a baseball jacket. I squeezed the trigger.

Problem was, I didn’t have the Glock.

Chapter 62

“YOU’RE QUIET, PRINCESS,” said the voice in my ear.

“What do you want me to say?”

“No, you’re right. Don’t think too much. Just execute the mission.”

But I was thinking anyway. If I saw his face and lived, I would quit the force if I had to in order to get the job done. I would look at all the thousands of photos of every former soldier, sailor, coastguardsman, and marine in San Francisco.

And if he wasn’t living in San Francisco, I’d keep looking at photos until I found him, if it was the last thing I ever did.

But, of course, he wouldn’t let me see his face and walk away. Not this guy.

I walked along Market, turned, and finally saw the parking lot. The guy in the booth was leaning against the back wall with his eyes closed, deep into his iPod. I rapped on the window and handed him the ticket stub, and he barely looked at me.

“That’s twenty-five bucks,” he said.

I pushed the bills at him, and he handed me the keys.

“Which car is it?” I said to the presence hanging from my neck.

“Green Chevy Impala, four cars down and to your right. It’s stolen, Lindsay, so don’t worry about tracing it to me.”

The car looked so old, it could’ve been from the ’80s, not the kind of junker someone would be in a hurry to report stolen. I opened the door and saw the brand-new Pelican gun case-long enough to hold an assault rifle-resting on the backseat.

“What’s that for?” I asked the Lipstick Killer.

“Open it,” he said.

Pelican is known for its protective cases. They are lined with foam, have unbreakable locks, and can withstand anything fire or water or an explosive blast can throw at them.

I opened the padded case. It was empty.

“Put the money inside,” said the Lipstick Killer.

Again, I followed his directions, transferring the money from Tyler ’s special briefcase, stacking the bills, closing the locks, all the while raging-I was helping a psycho get away with holding up a city. I couldn't help thinking about the Nazis putting the screws to Paris in World War II.

“Slide Mr. Tyler’s briefcase under the Lexus to your left,” the killer said. “Just another precaution, princess. In case there’s a tracking device in there.”

“There’s no tracking device,” I said, but there was. Tyler ’s case had a GPS built into the handle.

“And take off your shoes,” the killer said. “Slide them under the car with the case.”

I did what he said, thinking how Jacobi would follow the GPS signal to this parking lot and find the case-and it would be a dead end.

“Feel like going for a ride?” my constant companion asked me.

“I’d love to,” I said with false brightness.

“I’d love to, what?” said WCF.

“I’d love to, sir,” I answered.

I got into the driver’s seat and started the car.

“Where to?” I asked, sounding to myself as though I were already dead.

Chapter 63

“WELCOME TO THE mystery tour,” the killer told me.

“Which way do you want me to go?”

“Take a left, princess.”

I looked at my watch. I’d been wearing the devil around my neck for what seemed like forever, and I still knew nothing about him, nothing about what he intended to do. Since our genius “follow the money” plan had been canceled by the killer, my brain was on overdrive, trying to come up with another. But how could I? I didn’t know where this guy was going to execute the drop.

I left the parking lot and drove past the Asian Art Museum. The killer told me to follow Larkin. I glanced at the rearview mirror, seeing nothing that looked like an unmarked car.

No one was following me.

I took Larkin into the Tenderloin, threading the Impala through the roughest section in San Francisco, the dark streets crammed with hole-in-the-wall bars and girlie shows and rent-by-the-hour hotels. Jacobi and I had been shot in an alley not far from here, and we both almost died.

I passed streets I’d worked as a uniformed cop, a first-class pizzeria that I’d introduced Joe to a while ago, and a bar where Conklin and I sometimes came to wind down after a double shift. I turned onto Geary and drove past Mel’s Drive-in, where I used to hang out with Claire when we were both rookies, the two of us laughing away our frustration at being females in a man’s world.

I felt tears gathering in my eyes, not from the hoops the killer was making me jump through but from nostalgia, the aching memories of times with my good and beloved friends, and from the feeling that I was visiting sweet scenes from my past for the last time.

The disembodied voice of a man who’d wasted three young mothers and their small children spoke once again.

“Hang the phone over the rearview mirror, lens pointing at you.”

I was at a stoplight at the intersection of Van Ness and Geary. As soon as I hung the phone on the mirror and looked into the pea-sized camera’s eye, the Lipstick Killer said, “Take off your blouse, sweetmeat.”

“What’s this, now?”

“I told you. No questions.”

I understood. He was checking me for a wire. First my purse, then my jacket, my shoes, and the briefcase. Now this.

I took off my blouse.

“Throw it out the window.”

I complied. Not one of the skeezy pedestrians looked up.

“Do the same with your skirt.”

“The light is green.”

“Pull over and park. That’s a smart girl,” the killer said. “Take off that skirt and toss it. And now your bra.”

I felt sick, but I had no options. I unhooked my bra and dropped it out the window as directed. The killer whistled, a wolf call of appreciation, that sicko, and every part of my psyche hurt from the degradation. Not the least of which was that this murdering, child-killing woman hater had boxed me in and outmaneuvered the entire SFPD.

No one knew where I was.

“Good girl, Lindsay. Very, very good. Now, hang the phone around your neck and let’s get going. The best is yet to come.”

Chapter 64

I URGED THE old Impala up and down winding roads, then onto Lombard, the most curvaceous road of all, a tourist magnet that rose upward, cresting at Hyde, giving me a billion-dollar view, the reason why San Francisco should be one of the seven wonders of the world.

I’ve seen this panorama again and again, but this was the first time I’d failed to be dazzled by the full expansive sight of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz, Angel Island-and then, in a flash, I was hurtling down the steep, twisting plunge of Lombard Street.

There were more directions in my ear, commentary about how cool it felt to let me do the driving while he got to sightsee and think about his money. Meanwhile I was stopping at every cross street, hunching my shoulders, praying that no one would notice a bare-breasted woman heading down one of the most scenic drives in the nation.

I checked my mirrors and swiveled my head at intersections, looking for Jacobi, Conklin, Chi, anyone.

I’ll admit it. For an irrational blazing moment, I got mad. It’s one thing to put your life on the line for a cause you believe in. It’s another thing to be used as a robot for a killer, to be the lone sacrifice in an action you don’t believe in-in fact, one you think is insane.

The killer spoke again. He told me to double back toward the Presidio, and I did it, continuing on Richardson, taking the ramp leading to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Were we leaving town?

My anger dissipated as I came back to myself, realizing that the squad was frantic to know where I was. How could they find me when I was driving an old green Impala?

The Lipstick Killer had stopped joking and was all business as I joined the high-speed river of traffic heading across the bridge. The needle on the gas gauge was hovering over the E.

“We need to fill up the tank,” I said.

“No,” the killer told me. “We’ll be at the center of the bridge in about a minute. I’ll tell you when to pull over.”

“Pull over? There’s no stopping on the bridge.”

“There is if I tell you to,” he said.

Chapter 65

SWEAT POURED INTO my eyes as the killer counted down from ten to one.

“Pull over now,” he said.

My turn signal had been on since I got onto the Golden Gate Bridge, but anyone who saw it would have thought I’d left it on by accident.

“Pull over!” he repeated.

There was no actual place to stop, so I slowed, then braked in the lane closest to the handrail that acted as a safety line between the road and the narrow walkway.

I put on the hazard lights, listening to their dull clicking and imagining a horrible rear-end crash that could kill the occupants of the oncoming car and crush me against the steering wheel. I reduced my odds of making it from fifty-fifty to ninety-ten against. How could it be that today was my day to die?

“Get the case from the backseat, Lindsay,” the killer told me.

I undid my seat belt, reached behind me for the long, awkward case, and hauled it into the front seat.

“Good. Now get out of the car.”

It was pure suicide to exit on the driver’s side. Cars whizzed past me at high speeds, some honking, some with drivers screaming through their windows as they passed. I angled the gun case, reached the passenger-side handle, pulled up on it, and kicked open the door.

I was almost naked, yeah, but I couldn’t wait to get out of that car. I banged my shins with the case and negotiated the handrail, then my feet touched the walkway. Oncoming traffic was still swerving and honking. Someone yelled, “Jump. Jump,” and there were more horns.

“Bridge security is tight,” I told the killer. “There will be cops here any minute.”

“Shut up,” he said. “Go to the rail.”

My head swam as I peered down into the glinting water. He was going to make me jump. Approximately thirteen hundred people had leaped to their deaths off this bridge. Only twenty-odd jumpers had survived. It had come down to the wire, literally and figuratively. I was going to die, and I would never even know if I’d saved anyone-or if the killer would take the money and keep on killing.

And how was he going to get the money anyway?

I stared down at Fort Point, just under the south end of the bridge, and my gaze drifted along the Crissy Field shoreline. Where was the killer? Where was he? And then I saw a small motorboat coming out from Fort Baker, at the foot of the north tower, on the far side of the bay.

“Time to say good-bye, Lindsay,” said the voice in my ear. “Drop the phone over the side and then send the case over. Keep up the good work, princess. Everything will be fine if you don’t screw it up now.”

The wind blew my hair across my face as I dropped the phone, then cast the gun case over the railing. I watched it fall 260 feet straight down into the bay.

Chapter 66

THE GUN CASE hit the water, sent up plumes of spray, sank, then bobbed up again into view. As best as I could tell, there was one man in the motorboat piloting the small vessel through the chop toward the gun case.

I snapped out of my trance-I was free.

I stepped behind the rear of the Impala and put up my hand. The driver of a peacock-blue Honda sedan leaned on his horn as he flew past me, followed by a Corvette, the guy behind the wheel leering but not pulling over. What did he think? That I was a prostitute?

I held my ground out there on that highway in my panties, my hand in the stop position, every part of me prickling from the fear of being flattened by a driver with his head up his ass-and then a baby-blue BMW slowed, pulled ahead of the Impala, and braked.

I leaned into the passenger side. “I’m a cop. I need your phone now.”

There was a gawking eighteen-year-old boy at the wheel. He handed me his phone, and I pointed to a newspaper on the seat beside him. He passed it to me, and I held the front section to my chest as I called Dispatch, giving my name and shield number.

“Lindsay! Oh God. Are you all right? What do you need? Where are you?”

I knew the dispatcher, May Hess, self-described Queen of the Bat Phone. “I’m on the bridge-”

“With that naked suicide?”

I barked a laugh, then caught myself before I went into hysterics. I told May to get a chopper over the bay PDQ and why-that I needed the coast guard to pick up a boater. May said, “Gotcha, Sergeant. Bridge Patrol will be at your location in thirty seconds, tops.”

I heard the sirens. With the newspaper fluttering against my chest, I leaned over the railing and watched as the small Boston Whaler motored closer to the floating gun case. A chopper whirred overhead, and the pilot bore down on the motorboat, herding it toward the southern shore.

The Boston Whaler dodged left and right like a quarter horse at a roping competition, ducked under the bridge, and powered beneath it, the chopper following the boat under the bridge deck, crowding the vessel until it stalled off Crissy Field.

The Lipstick Killer bailed out of the boat and ran in slow motion through hip-deep water. And then a coast guard vessel closed in on him.

A bullhorn blared, telling the killer to hit the ground and keep his hands in full sight. Squad cars tore down the beach and surrounded him.

Game over, psycho.

Chapter 67

I WATCHED HARBOR Patrol pull the Pelican case out of the water, and then there was the deafening sound of sirens all around me.

I turned and saw a fleet of cars-unmarked and black-and-whites-screeching to a halt behind the Impala, and driving those cars were just about every cop I’d ever met, now piling out and heading toward me.

My attention was drawn to a Land Rover stopping in the opposite lane, somehow making it through the perimeter before the bridge was closed off. A bearded man jumped out of the driver’s seat holding a camera with a long SLR lens. He started snapping pictures of me wearing a look of horror on my face, the Chronicle plastered to my chest, pink panties and all.

To my left, a yell: “HEY!”

A man burst from the back of a police cruiser, a big hunka guy, built like a football player. He crossed the roadway to the man with the camera and shouted, “Give me that!”

The big hunka guy was Joe.

The camera guy refused to give it up, so Joe grabbed him by the throat, extracted the camera from his hand, and threw it over the rail. He left the dude on the hood of the Land Rover and shouted out over his shoulder, “Sue me.”

Then the man I love ran toward me with a look of anguish on his face. He held out his arms, and I fell against him and began to cry. “We got him,” I said.

“Did that bastard hurt you?”

“No. We got him, Joe.”

“You sure did, honey. It’s all over now.”

Joe put his big jacket around me and folded me into his arms again. Conklin and Jacobi got out of a gray unmarked car and came over to where I stood with Joe, asking in unison, “Are you okay, Lindsay?”

“Never better,” I chirped, my cheeks wet with tears.

“Go home,” Jacobi said. “Clean up. Have a meal, then come back to the Hall. We’ll take our time booking that freak. Should take us about three hours to print him and do the paperwork. He’s all yours, Boxer. No one will talk to him before you do.

“Good job.”

Chapter 68

MY HAIR WAS still wet from my shower when I arrived back at the Hall, geared up and ready to confront the guy who’d humiliated me, terrified me, and killed six innocent people.

I walked to Jacobi’s office and said, “What have we got?”

“His ID says he’s Roger Bosco, former Park Service employee, currently a maintenance man at the San Francisco Yacht Club. No military background, no sheet of any kind. He hasn’t asked for counsel.”

“Let’s do it,” I said.

The observation room behind the glass was packed with cops, brass, and folks from the DA’s office. The cameras were rolling. We were good to go.

The suspect looked up from his seat at the table when Jacobi and I walked into the interrogation room, and I was surprised at his appearance and demeanor.

Roger Bosco seemed older and smaller than the man we’d seen on the parking-garage tapes, and he looked confused. He turned his watery blue eyes on me and said, “I was afraid of the helicopter. That’s why I tried to get away.”

“Let’s start at the beginning, Roger. Okay if I call you Roger?”

“Sure.”

“Why did you do it?”

“For the money.”

“Your plan all along was to collect the ransom?”

“What do you mean, ‘ransom’?”

I pulled out a chair and sat down next to Bosco, trying to look behind the “little guy” act for a cocky, murdering psycho. Jacobi walked slowly behind us, turned, and walked back the other way.

“I understand that two million is a lot of money,” I said, keeping my temper in check, showing that I could be trusted, that the hours-long mystery tour from hell was forgiven.

“Two million? I was offered five hundred. I only got the first two fifty.”

I looked up at Jacobi but could read nothing in his flat gray eyes. I ignored a new and sinking feeling. Bosco had been in a boat heading straight toward the money. It was indisputable.

“Roger. You’ve got to help me help you. Explain to me how you planned the killings. I have to say, you are brilliant. It took an entire police force to bring you in, and I respect that. If you can take me through every step, show us that you’re cooperating fully, I can work with the DA on your behalf.”

Bosco’s jaw dropped. He looked at me in believable disbelief, turned to look at Jacobi, then turned back to look at me.

“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.”

Chapter 69

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.”

Chapter 70

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.”

Chapter 71

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.

Chapter 72

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.

Chapter 73

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.”

Chapter 74

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.”

“Sergeant, don’t write me off as a crank. I’m being falsely accused of murder. Do you know what was stolen from the Dowlings?”

“I have a list.”

“Good. Then check it out. I took two opera-length diamond chains, three sapphire-and-diamond bracelets, a large diamond brooch in the shape of a chrysanthemum, and some other stuff, including an ornate ring with a big yellow stone.”

“The canary diamond.” There was silence. Then…

“It’s a diamond?”

“What am I supposed to do with this information, Kitty? I need your statement, or I’ve got nothing.”

“You’re a Homicide inspector. Do your job and leave me out of it,” she said, and she hung up again.

Chapter 75

YUKI WAS PULLING into the garage under her apartment building when her mobile rang. The caller ID read “Sue Emdin,” the woman she and Casey Dowling had both known at Boalt Law. Emdin was the “tough beans” type, but when she spoke now, Yuki thought her voice was strained to cracking.

“Sue. What’s wrong?”

“Plenty. I saw Marcus having dinner with a woman in Rigoletto’s. It’s a dark, six-table Italian place on Chestnut, home-style cooking and not Zagat rated. They were in the back corner, laughing and canoodling. It wasn’t a consolation dinner. Not in my book anyway.”

Yuki nosed the car into her spot, turned off the engine, got out, and headed to the elevator. Sue was filling in her report with color commentary.

“I wish you could’ve seen this girl. Tight little skirt, V-neckline down to her navel, showing off her great big bouncy boobs.”

“Dowling had a hot date, you’re saying?”

“Hot and a half with whipped cream on top. My husband would kill me for doing this, Yuki. He would say it’s none of my business, but after the funeral? After that eulogy Marcus gave? Well, it was a performance, and ever since I swore to you that he didn’t do it, I’ve been worried that I was wrong about him. For God’s sake, what if he did kill Casey and I vouched for him? Makes me sick just thinking about it.”

“Okay, I understand. Still, Marcus having a date is poor form, but it’s not criminal.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“What does that mean, Sue?” Yuki’s voice went up an octave. “What do you mean, exactly?”

“I’ve been following Marc since the funeral. I follow him all the time. Yuki, I had to do it. I was hoping he was the man I said he was, but another part of me was saying that he did kill Casey and that I was so under his spell, I didn’t see it. Casey told me she thought he was seeing someone, remember? Oh my God, I can’t stand it. Tell me I’m crazy and put me out of my misery, or do something for poor Casey.”

Yuki juggled her handbag and briefcase. What had she created by talking to Sue Emdin? Her hands were shaking as she got out her keys and opened her front door. “Where are you now?”

“Outside his house. I’ve been here for over an hour. Babe-a-licious is still with him, and if you ask me, she’s not going home. Not tonight anyway.”

“Tell me again. What does this prove?”

“It proves that all of Marc’s talk about how heartsick he is over losing Casey is bullshit. If he’s lying about that, it means he could be lying about everything.”

“What kind of car are you driving?” Yuki asked.

“Gold Lexus. I’m parked right across the street from his house.”

“Nobody would notice a car like that.”

“His neighborhood is full of them.”

Yuki put down her briefcase, kicked off her heels, and looked for a pair of flats. She was as crazy as Sue.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said.

Chapter 76

MY THIRD CUP of coffee was still hot when Yuki walked through the gate in the squad room at nine thirty a.m. and made a beeline to where I sat behind my floral barricade.

“I might have something on Marcus Dowling,” she said.

Conklin got up, gave her his chair, and said, “You have our complete attention.”

Yuki told us in one long run-on sentence that Casey’s school friend, Sue Emdin, had been tailing Dowling for more than a week and had seen him last night in a restaurant made for clandestine meetings, having dinner with a woman who was more friendly than friend.

“Sue followed them from the restaurant, then called to tell me she was staking out Dowling’s house. I went to sit with her.”

“Jesus, Yuki.”

“Just listen, okay? No laws were broken. At about eleven last night, Dowling and this woman came out of the house, falling all over each other. She’s in her late twenties, early thirties, Pilates body, long cover-girl hair. Totally gorgeous.”

“You’re saying, totally his girlfriend,” Conklin said.

“So it would seem. Dowling helps said blonde into his car and then off they go.”

“And you’re following them?” I said.

“Well, yeah.”

“Really, Yuki,” I said, flipping my ballpoint into the air. “That was nuts and dangerous and you know it. Everyone wants to be a cop, but it beats the hell out of me why.”

“It’s a glamour job, right?” Yuki cracked, waving a hand to indicate the splendor of our grimy, gray-on-gray bull pen.

“So you’re outside his house. What happened after that?” I asked.

“Okay, so we followed Dowling’s car to Cow Hollow,” Yuki said. “The car stops, and we have to drive past it, of course. We take a spin around the block, and on the return lap, I see Totally Gorgeous walking by herself to this extremely nice house. Dowling stayed in his car. He didn’t leave until his girlfriend went inside, but the point is, he didn’t walk her to the door. Clearly he didn’t want to be seen.”

Yuki paused for breath, took out a business card, and flipped it over so I could see the address she’d written on the back.

Conklin said, “We have his phone log.”

I typed the address Yuki gave me into the computer and came up with a name and a phone number.

“Graeme Henley,” I said to Conklin, and read him the number.

My partner scrolled down his computer screen. “It’s here. He called that number three or four times a day all last month.”

“Graeme Henley is probably not a woman,” I said.

“So the girlfriend is married,” Yuki said. “That’s why he stayed in the car. Lindsay, Casey thought Marc was seeing someone. If he was, if he was serious, if he couldn’t get rid of Casey… the girlfriend could be a motive.”

“There’s something else,” I told Yuki. “I’ve got a witness who says Casey Dowling was alive when Hello Kitty left the Dowling house.”

“You’ve got a signed statement?”

“It’s an anonymous source but credible.”

“Huh,” said Yuki. “You have an anonymous but credible source who says Casey was alive when Kitty left the Dowling house. Who could that be? Oh my God. Kitty called you?”

“Uh-huh, and she told me things only Kitty could know. Have we got probable cause for a wiretap warrant?”

“It’s a stretch,” Yuki told us. “I’ll go to work on Parisi. I’m not promising, but I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”

Chapter 77

YUKI GOT IT done.

A signed warrant for a wiretap was in my hands by lunch the next day, and within hours there was a tap on a phone circuit a couple of blocks from Dowling’s house. Effective three o’clock in the afternoon, Dowling’s phone calls were being routed through a small, windowless room on the fourth floor of the Hall.

The room was empty but for two Salvation Army-quality desks and chairs, a bank of file cabinets, and an outdated telephone book.

Conklin and I brought coffee and settled in behind a locked door. I was keyed up and bordering on optimistic. The odds that Dowling would say something incriminating were a long shot-but a shot we actually had.

For the next five hours, my partner and I monitored Dowling’s incoming and outgoing calls. He was a busy lad, having scripts overnighted from Hollywood, schmoozing with his agent, his lawyer, his banker, his manager, his PR person, his broker, and-finally-his girlfriend.

The conversation with Caroline Henley was laced with “darlings” and “sweethearts” from both ends of the line. They made a plan to have dinner together the next week, when Graeme Henley was on a business trip in New York.

Then, when I was sure the conversation was over, it got interesting.

“You don’t know what this is like, Marc. Graeme knows something’s wrong, and now he wants us to go into counseling.”

“I understand completely, Caroline. You have to stall him. We’ve waited for two long years, darling. Another few months won’t matter in the big picture.”

“You’ve been saying that forever.”

“Three or four more months, that’s all,” Dowling said. “Be patient. I told you it will work out, and it will. We need the public to get bored with the story, and then we’ll be fine.”

Conklin broke into a grin. “Two years. He’s been seeing her for two years. It’s not a smoking gun, but it’s something.”

Chapter 78

I CALLED JACOBI from Yuki’s office and told him that Marcus Dowling had been having an ongoing relationship with a woman, not his wife, for two years.

“Go get ’em,” Jacobi said.

Conklin and I drove to Caroline Henley’s place, a modern two-story house only blocks from the Presidio.

Mrs. Henley came to the door wearing her blond hair in one long braid, black tights under a blue-striped man’s shirt, a big diamond ring next to her wedding band. A couple of little boys were playing with trucks in the living room behind her.

I introduced myself and my partner and asked Mrs. Henley if we could come in to talk, and she opened the door wide.

Conklin has consistently proved that he can get any woman to spill her guts, so once we were ensconced in overstuffed furniture, I turned the floor over to him.

“Marcus Dowling says you two are very good friends.”

“He never said that. Come on. I’ve met him at a couple of cocktail parties is all.”

“Mrs. Henley, we know about your relationship,” my partner said. “We just need you to verify his whereabouts at certain times. We have no interest in making trouble for you. Or,” he added reasonably, “we can come back when your husband is home.”

“No, please don’t do that,” she said.

Caroline Henley told us to wait. She bent to talk to the boys, then took their small hands, walked them to a bedroom, and closed the door.

She came back to her seat and clasped her hands in her lap, then said to my partner, “Casey stifled him. She ground him down with her jealousy and her constant demands. Marc was waiting for the right time, and then he was going to divorce her and I was going to leave Graeme. We were going to get married. That’s not bull, that’s the truth.”

I walked around the living room as Caroline Henley told Conklin “the truth.” There were photos everywhere, standing on tables, framed on the walls. Caroline Henley was either at the center of every group shot or alone, wearing something small that showed off her figure and her beautiful face.

I wondered why she was attracted to an aging movie star twenty years’ her senior. Maybe her vanity demanded more of a catch than a stockbroker ordinaire.

“So, if I’ve got this right, you and Marcus Dowling have been lovers for two years,” Conklin said.

Caroline Henley looked stunned as she realized why we were there. “Wait a minute. Are you thinking he had something to do with Casey’s death? That’s crazy. I would have known. Marc’s not capable of that. Is he?”

She clapped her hands to her mouth, then dropped them. She almost looked pleased when she asked Conklin, “You think he killed Casey for me?”

Back out in the car, I said to my partner, “So maybe he wanted out of the marriage but didn’t have the guts to tell Casey. Then Kitty shows up in his bedroom, for Christ’s sake. Dowling couldn’t have planned it better.”

“Another way to look at it,” Conklin said. “Divorce is expensive. But, if you get away with it, murder is dead cheap.”

Chapter 79

SARAH WELLS WAS dressed for her night job, black clothes and shoes, car pointed toward Pacific Heights. She hit the turn signal and took Divisadero as the light went red. A cacophony of horns blared, damn it. Brakes screeched, and she narrowly avoided a collision with a station wagon full of kids.

Oh my God. Focus, Sarah!

She should be thinking about the work ahead, but her mind kept drifting back to earlier that night, seeing the perfect blue fingerprints on the soft flesh of Heidi’s arms, the still-vivid bite mark on her neck.

Heidi had tried to brush off the evidence of Beastly’s attack. “He’s out of control,” she said. “But it’s not his fault.”

“Whose fault is it? Yours?”

“It’s because of what he went through in Iraq.”

“It doesn’t make any difference what the reason is,” Sarah had snapped. “You don’t have to take it.”

She hadn’t meant to bark at Heidi, but she was angry and scared at what Pete Gordon could do. Heidi had to get away from Beastly for her own sake, and for the good of the children.

“I know, I know,” Heidi had cried out, putting her head on Sarah’s shoulder. “It can’t go on.”

No, it couldn’t go on, and it wouldn’t, Sarah told herself as she cruised along Bush Street. She was meeting with Lynnette Green, Maury’s widow, next week. Lynnette had told Sarah that she’d buy the jewels and sell them herself. Sarah couldn’t wait to cash out. Could not wait.

She turned on Steiner and again on California, then parked her Saturn at the Whole Foods parking lot, surrounded by other cars. She took a few minutes to make sure she had all her gear, then locked her wallet in the glove box, got out of the car, and locked that, too, now thinking about Diana King, her target tonight.

Mrs. King was a widowed philanthropist, a big wheel on the charity circuit, frequently photographed and written about in the glossies and every month in the Chronicle.

According to the Lifestyle page, Mrs. King was having a small engagement party for her son and future daughter-in-law that night in her home, a superbly restored cream-colored Victorian. And also superbly restored was Mrs. King’s classic jewelry: Tiffany, Van Cleef, Harry Winston.

If Sarah could steal it, Lynnette Green would buy it and make it disappear. And then it would be over. Tonight’s job would be Sarah’s grand finale, her last haul.

A half dozen cars were parked in front of the King house when Sarah approached on her rubber-soled climbing shoes. She crept into the side yard, which was shielded from the neighbors by a tall privet hedge. She peeked through one of Mrs. King’s ground-floor windows and saw guests at the dinner table, deeply involved in conversation.

Sarah’s pulse sped up as she prepared herself for the climb, and then she caught a lucky break: an air conditioner on the first floor that was diagonally placed under the master bedroom. Sarah told herself she would spend only four minutes inside the house. Whatever she grabbed would be enough.

Using the air conditioner as a foothold, she easily gained purchase, and then she was through the open bedroom window and inside the house.

Getting in had almost been too easy.

Chapter 80

SARAH STOOD JUST inside Diana King’s rose-scented bedroom, checking for anything that could impede her speedy exit. She crossed the room and closed the paneled door leading to the hallway. Then she flipped on her light.

The room was about fifteen feet square, with deeply sloped ceilings and a dormer facing the street. Sarah panned her light over the antique furnishings and cabbage-rose wallpaper, then hit the dresser with her beam. She was ready to go through the drawers when she saw a dark figure with a light. “Jeez! Who?” she squealed, then realized that it was her own reflection in the mirror.

Sarah, get a grip.

She flicked her beam back around the room and picked up a dull gold gleam on top of the vanity. She moved closer and saw a mass of jewelry, just tons of it, lying on the warm cherrywood surface.

Sarah was already swimming in adrenaline, but the mound of gold topped up her tank. She opened her duffel and, using the side of her shaking hand, slid the jewelry into her bag. A few pieces, a ring and an earring, escaped and fell to the floor. Sarah snatched them up before they stopped rolling. She glanced at her watch.

She’d made a first-class score in just over three minutes. A record, her personal best-and now it was time to go.

Sarah crossed to the window and let herself down over the side of the house, once again using the air conditioner as a foothold. Feeling almost giddy, she threaded her way between the hedge and the house until she reached the dimly lit street.

She’d pulled it off.

She was outta there.

Sarah ripped off her headlamp and dropped it into her tool bag as she turned right on the sidewalk, heading for the next street-then she pulled up short. She’d patted herself on the back too fast. Sirens shrilled, and Sarah saw a cruiser take the corner and head straight for her.

How she’d been found out, or even if the police were coming for her, was irrelevant. Sarah was holding several hundred thousand dollars in jewels and a bagful of burglar’s tools.

She couldn’t get caught.

Taking off at a run, reversing her direction, Sarah cut through the backyard of the house to the west of Mrs. King’s. Mentally marking the spot, she ditched the bag of jewels into a basement window well and kept running. She skirted what looked to be the makings of a backyard shed and dropped her tools into a bag of construction trash.

Still at a run, Sarah whipped off her hat and gloves and tossed them under a hedge. She heard the siren stop only yards away, and someone shouted, “Stop! This is the police.”

Without her light, Sarah couldn’t see where to run, so she dropped to her haunches and froze against the rough stucco wall of a house. Flashlight beams swept the yard, but the lights didn’t touch her. Radios crackled and cops called out to one another, guessing at which way she had gone, and for those interminable minutes, Sarah hugged the stucco wall, fighting the urge to run.

When the voices faded, Sarah broke diagonally across a yard full of kiddie toys to a metal gate, which she opened. The gate latch clanked. A big dog barked behind a door. Security lights blazed.

Sarah skirted the reach of the lights, running through shadows into another yard, where she tripped over a garden cart, falling hard enough for her right shoe to fly off her foot. She felt for the shoe in the dark but couldn’t find it.

A woman’s shrill voice called out, “Artie, I think someone’s out there!”

Sarah vaulted over a fence, then took off again, ripping off her black sweater as she ran. She pulled the hem of her neon-green T-shirt out of her pants as she came out of the shadows onto a street she didn’t know.

Feeling nauseous and desperate, Sarah stripped off her other shoe and her socks and left them in a trash can at the edge of a driveway, then headed north at a steady pace in the general direction of her car.

That was when she realized, too late, that her keys were in her tool bag and she’d locked her wallet in the glove box.

She was shoeless and miles from home without a dime.

What now?

Chapter 81

THE BRIGHT WINDOWS at Whole Foods were in sight when Sarah heard a car slowly coming up behind her on the dark street. The vehicle crawled, keeping pace with her, its headlights elongating her silhouette on the pavement.

Was it the cops?

Half out of her mind with fear, Sarah fought her compulsion to turn toward the car. Panic would show on her face. And if it was the cops and they stopped to question her-she was cooked.

Who was it? Who was trailing her?

A horn blared and then tires squealed as the vehicle behind her peeled out and flew past, an old silver SUV with a jerk hollering out the window, “Sweet ass, baby!” Sarah lowered her head as whoops of laughter receded.

Her red Saturn was where she had left it. She could see, by peering through Whole Foods’ front windows, that the store was nearly empty.

A sandy-haired boy was closing down the last open register. He looked up when Sarah approached. She said, “I locked myself out of my car. Could I borrow your phone?”

“There’s a pay phone outside,” he said, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. Then his expression changed.

“Ms. Wells. I’m Mark Ogrodnick. I was in your class about five years ago.”

Sarah’s heart revved up again and went into overdrive. Of all the stores in the world, how had she found the one place in Pacific Heights where someone knew her?

“Mark. Great to see you. May I borrow your phone? I have to call my husband.”

Mark stared down at her bare feet, at the bleeding gash on her shin. He opened his mouth and closed it, then fished his phone out of his back pocket and handed it to Sarah. She thanked him and walked down the produce aisle, dialing and then listening to the phone ring several times. Finally Heidi picked up.

“It’s me,” Sarah said. “I’m at Whole Foods. I locked myself out of my car.”

“Oh God, Sarah,” Heidi said. “I can’t come. The kids are sleeping.”

“Where’s Beastly?”

“He’s out, but he could walk in at any minute. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”

“I love you, too.”

Ogrodnick looked up and switched off the neon light in the storefront window. Sarah had no choice. She dialed her home phone number and, for the first time ever, prayed that Trevor would pick up.

“Sarah, where the hell are you?” Terror asked with a sharp edge in his voice.

Meekly, Sarah told him.

Chapter 82

AFTER TREVOR THREATENED her, drank, shoved her around, and collected his marital due, he finished a six-pack and went to bed. Red-eyed, sore, and frightened, Sarah sat in his chair, squeezing the exercise ball. She changed hands, working her fingers until they were nearly numb. Then she shook out her hands and booted up her laptop.

Once she was on the Web, she clicked on Google News and typed “Hello Kitty” into the search bar.

To Sarah’s relief, there was no mention of the burglary at Diana King’s house. Not yet. But Sarah was worried about the tools she’d ditched in her steeplechase through Pacific Heights. Specifically, had she been wearing gloves when she changed the battery in her headlamp? She couldn’t remember.

And so Sarah searched her mind for an out. She’d dumped the tools in a trash bag near that small construction site. Maybe if someone found it, he’d think, Cool. Free stuff. Or maybe the trash bag would be tied and simply taken out to the curb.

Sarah thought about all the other stuff she’d left behind like a trail of bread crumbs: her sweater and socks and shoes. By themselves, they were nothing. But if her prints were on the battery, everything else could be used to back up the charges against her.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, if the shoe fits, you must nail her ass for twenty years without possibility of parole.

Sarah groaned and ran the cursor down the Hello Kitty page. She read a few articles about her burglaries and her growing infamy, taking no pleasure in any of it. A headache bloomed behind her right eye as she tapped into the canon of stories about the Dowlings. The most recent clips were all Marcus Dowling quotes and interviews, but as she scrolled to earlier pages, she found stories from the day after she’d done the Dowling job.

A headline grabbed her attention.

“The Sun of Ceylon Stolen in Fatal Armed Robbery.”

Sarah flashed on a few words that had been almost forgotten since she’d spoken with Sergeant Boxer. The cop had said that the yellow stone was a diamond. Now it seemed the diamond had a name. After clicking on the link to the article, Sarah began to read.

“The Sun of Ceylon,” a twenty-karat yellow diamond, was stolen from actor Marcus Dowling and his wife, Casey Dowling, who was killed in an armed robbery. When last seen, this showy stone was set in a handworked gold ring with 120 smaller white diamonds.

The Sun has a long history, marked with sudden death. Once the property of a young farmer who found it in a dirt street in Ceylon, the stone has passed from paupers to kings, leaving a trail of tragedy behind.

Sarah felt as if a fist had closed around her heart. She called up the history of the Sun of Ceylon and everything that had happened to the people who had owned it-a long list of financial ruin and disgrace, sudden insanity, suicide, homicide, and accidental death.

In her research on gems, Sarah had read of other stones like the Sun. The Koh-i-noor diamond, known as the “ Mountain of Light,” brought either great misfortune or an end to the kingdoms of all men who owned it. Marie Antoinette wore the Hope diamond, and she was beheaded-it was said that a string of death and misfortune followed the stone.

There were other gems that carried curses: the Black Orlov Diamond, the Delhi Purple Sapphire, the Black Prince’s Ruby. And the Sun of Ceylon.

Casey Dowling had owned it. And now she was dead.

Sarah had given that stone to Heidi as a romantic gift-but what if it brought evil into Heidi’s life?

Sarah had to ask herself, Am I really this superstitious?

Crossing your fingers and throwing salt over your shoulder were baloney. Still, call it stress, call it irrational-it didn’t matter. Sarah felt it strongly. It was well-documented. People who owned cursed gemstones died.

She had to get that diamond back from Heidi before Pete really hurt her.

Chapter 83

THE POLICE CAR circled the parking lot at Crissy Field like a buzzard. Sarah stiffened as she watched the cruiser in her rearview mirror, seeing it loop slowly around the lot while she wondered if her former student Mark Ogrodnick had told the police that she’d been in Whole Foods, barefoot, scraped up, and looking scared.

Sarah held her breath and moved only her eyes, and then the black-and-white eased out of the exit and continued onto the boulevard.

God, Sarah, chill.

There’s no way those cops could be looking for you here. No way!

Putting on her sunglasses, Sarah got out of the car. She crossed over the trail to the beach side of the walk and sat on an empty bench facing the water.

Weather was coming in, clouds obscuring the afternoon sun but not stopping the windsurfers, who were shouting to one another as they changed their clothes out there on the asphalt.

Zipping up her jacket, Sarah felt chilled inside and out. How do you tell someone you love that you’ve been leading a double life-and, in her case, a criminal double life? She had to get Heidi to understand that she knew stealing was wrong and dangerous, but if she could provide the means for all of them to escape Terror and Beastly, then she could live with what she’d done.

Sarah imagined Heidi looking at her as if she were an alien, gathering up the kids, getting back into her car, and driving off. Sarah crossed her arms over her chest and doubled over. It killed her to think of losing Heidi. If that happened, everything she’d done would be for nothing.

Sarah’s cell phone rang. She answered it.

“Where are you, Sarah? We’re in the parking lot.”

Sarah stood up and waved. Sherry screamed, “Sarah, Sarah,” and ran to her mom’s friend. Sarah lifted the little girl into her arms.

Heidi broke into a grin. She held on to her floppy hat and balanced Stevie on her hip, the wind blowing her skirt tight against her body. Heidi was so beautiful. And that was the least of why Sarah loved her.

Heidi came to her and hugged her with the kids in the middle, Sherry scrutinizing Sarah’s face, asking her, “What’s wrong, Sarah? Did someone hurt you?”

Sarah put Sherry down and started to cry.

Chapter 84

HEIDI AND SARAH crossed the picturesque bridge, over an inlet that ran from the bay into the pretty little nature park. Sherry took Stevie ahead toward the wooden dock and, grown-ups forgotten, gathered stones to throw into the water.

The two women sat together on a bench, and Heidi asked, “What’s going on, sweetie?”

Sarah looked into Heidi’s face and said, “There’s no good way to tell you. I wanted to keep you out of it. I didn’t want to involve you in any way.”

“Wow,” Heidi said. “You’re really scaring me.”

Sarah nodded and, looking down at her feet, said, “You know about the cat burglar they call Hello Kitty?”

“That’s the one who killed Marcus Dowling’s wife, right?”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t do it.”

Heidi laughed. “Duh-uh. Of course not. What are you talking about?”

“Heidi, I’m Hello Kitty.”

“Shut up! You are not!”

“Would I make this up? Heidi, believe me, I’m the cat burglar. Let me get this all out, and then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Okay. But-okay.”

“I told you, my granddad was a jeweler,” Sarah said. “But I didn’t tell you he had a friend who was a fence. I heard a lot of stories when I was Sherry’s age, just playing with stuff in my granddad’s shop.

“So when I was thinking how to get us all out of here, I realized I could actually get rich quick. I started climbing the wall at the gym, getting strong, and I started researching potential targets, picking only people who could recover from the loss of their stuff. At first I wasn’t sure I could do it.

“And then Trevor raped me.”

Sarah swallowed hard, forcing her mind to skip past the memory.

“My first few burglaries were-easy,” Sarah said. “I had a knack for it, and I could count on Terror to pass out in front of the TV long enough for me to do the job, come home, and get into bed before he woke up.

“Then there was the Dowling job.”

Heidi looked stricken, as though she were trying to say something but couldn’t find the right words. Instead she just stared. Sarah kept going. She told Heidi about Marcus Dowling’s outrageous lies and about the next job-the one where Jim Morley came into the room when her hands were wrist-deep in his wife’s jewelry. And then she went on to the robbery of Diana King, the last job she was ever going to do.

“It had to happen,” Sarah said. “I thought I was home free. And then a cop car came out of the dark, shining lights on me, following me. So I ditched everything: the jewelry, most of my clothes, and-in a perfectly brilliant move-my tool bag with my car keys inside. When you couldn’t come get me, I had to call Terror.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah.”

Sarah shook her head. “Not your fault. Anyway, Terror didn’t like my answer to why I was locked out of my car and barefoot in Pac Heights,” Sarah went on. “I couldn’t think of a lie that wasn’t frickin’ totally laughable, and obviously I couldn’t tell him the truth. So I said that I didn’t answer to him. That I was entitled to have a life.”

Heidi was murmuring, “Oh no, oh no.”

“He accused me of sneaking out to be with a guy. And then he ‘taught me a lesson.’”

Sarah pulled at the neck of her shirt and turned her head so that Heidi could see the fingerprints around her throat.

Heidi clapped her hand to her mouth.

“Oh my God, Sarah,” she said. She put her arm around the woman she loved and drew her close. “Sometimes I wonder if I even know you.”

Chapter 85

THE WARMING HUT is a bright-white snack and gift shack at the intersection of the Crissy Field and the Presidio, where the outstretched arm of the Golden Gate Bridge spans the bay.

Sarah and Heidi lunched on soup and sandwiches while the kids sat near the window, picking at their food and blowing bubbles into their drinks.

“There’s something else,” Sarah said. “That stone I gave you.”

“Let me guess. It’s hot.”

“Very, very hot. It’s a diamond. With a name and a freaky history.”

Heidi pulled at her necklace so she could look at it. “You said it was something else. A citrine.”

“Its name is the Sun of Ceylon, and it comes with a curse.”

“A curse? That’s insane.”

“I know, I know, but the stories go back three centuries. Hey, it belonged to Casey Dowling when her son-of-a-bitch husband killed her. What more do I need to say?”

Sherry came over and leaned against Heidi. “What’s a curse, Mommy?”

“It’s a wish for something-bad.”

“Like if I wished something bad would happen to Daddy?”

“Sherry, Stevie is about to cry. Be a good girl and give him a hug.”

“I don’t want you to wear it anymore,” Sarah said when Sherry had gone. “It’s tempting fate, you know?”

“Really?” Heidi laughed. “This is tempting fate? My God, that’s a riot.” She unclasped the chain and handed the necklace to Sarah. “The Sun of Ceylon, huh? Well, it’s a little flashy for me anyway.”

Sarah said, “Thanks,” took the pendant, jammed it into her hip pocket, and forged ahead to the last of her story-her plan to meet with Lynnette Green and turn the jewels into cash for their plunge into a new life as a family of four.

“I have something to say, Sarah.”

“Okay, but take it easy on me. I’m a wreck.”

“I can hardly believe you did this.”

“You’re appalled. Go ahead and say it.”

“I’m completely blown away. But I’m so grateful that you’d do this for us. You risked your life, Sarah. If the kids weren’t here, I’d kiss you. I’ve never loved anyone so much.”

“I love you, too.”

“What now? You think the police are on to you?”

“It’s possible,” Sarah said, rubbing her temples. “That kid at the supermarket. He could tell the cops. A fingerprint could turn up on something I ditched. Time is running out on all fronts, Heidi. If we’re going to jump outta here, we have to do it soon.”

“I know. We’re a team. Everything you do involves all of us now.”

Sarah nodded and was quiet for a while as she sorted through a number of options, every single one of them scarier than the last-but just as compelling.

“Sarah?”

“I know what to do.”

Chapter 86

PETE GORDON HAD parked at the outer edge of the shopping center, beyond the lights and the security cameras, and was waiting now for Heidi and the kiddos to catch up with him.

Keyed up but in control, Pete was aware of everything around him: the smell of newly painted lines in the parking lot, the shoppers walking out to their cars, the lights at Mervyns and Toys “R” Us, and the deepening dusk of the sky.

The adrenaline charging through his veins sharpened his mind as he waited out the last minutes before he would execute the most critical phase of his plan. Once he’d eliminated the Three Stooges, he’d walk to his house and stretch out in front of the TV. He’d be home before the cops were even called.

He ran the three little sentences of his letter to the Chronicle through his mind: “Believe me now? The price has gone up to five million. Don’t screw up again.”

He couldn’t be any clearer than that.

The letter would run as the cops and the media were consoling him for his terrible loss, blaming yet three more “senseless murders” on the Lipstick Killer.

It was a brilliant plan, and he had to give himself credit, because he’d never get it from anyone else.

And with that, Pete heard Heidi yakking away and saw her in the rearview mirror bouncing the stink bomb on her hip as she pushed the shopping cart. He also heard another voice-damn it. It was that dog-faced Angie Weider, one of their neighbors, and here she was, pushing her brat in a stroller.

Heidi called out, “Bye,” to Angie, then pulled up on the shopping cart, leaving it at the back of the car.

“Pete?”

Heidi opened the rear doors, strapped the kids in, and called over the seat back to him, “Petey, would you get the groceries?”

“No problem, princess. All you have to do is ask.”

Pete pulled on his gloves, leaped out of the car, and opened the trunk lock, waiting as a vehicle sped out of the lot. When it was all clear, he stowed the groceries neatly beside the emergency road kit and the shoe box that held his loaded gun.

“Hey, Pete,” Angie Weider called out to him, “you guys should come to dinner with us. We’re going to the BlueJay Café.”

“Another time, okay?” Pete said, dropping the gun back into the box, fury flooding through him, a tidal wave of hatred directed at that bitch who had destroyed both his opportunity and his alibi in one blow. He thought for a moment of killing her and her tot, but he could hear Heidi screaming and see Sherry running and he’d never be able to murder them all without being seen.

Heidi ignored him. “Kids, want to go out for dinner?”

Sherry sang her approval and the stink bomb gurgled his. Pete slammed the trunk lid shut and, barely checking his temper, said, “You go ahead. There’s a game on in ten minutes.”

Heidi said, “Just remember to put the ice cream away, and I’ll take care of the rest when I get home.”

She grabbed the stink bomb out of his car seat, and Sherry skipped over to the Weiders’ van. With a toot of the horn, they were gone.

Pete jerked the car into gear and backed out.

Change of plan. He wasn’t going to go home after all.

Chapter 87

IT HAD BEEN a week since I’d stopped traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge with the front section of the Chronicle clasped to my chest, ten days since that psycho we call the Lipstick Killer had murdered Elaine Marone and her child. I could still feel the weight of the killer’s cell phone hanging around my neck, could hear his jeers and gibes as he ordered me to disarm and disrobe myself on the way to the drop that never was.

I was relieved that the Feds had taken the Lipstick Psycho off our hands. The Dowling case was heating up. We had a wiretap transcript that could lead to probable cause. And in Evidence we had a climber’s shoe, a Banana Republic sweater, and a bag of tools that probably belonged to Hello Kitty.

I liked the feeling of getting traction at last, so I was none too happy when Jackson Brady called at six that evening, saying the FBI had requested my help at a triple homicide.

Twenty minutes after Brady’s call, Conklin and I were climbing the chilly ramp of a parking garage. It was several levels of a winding concrete helix that connected by an overpass to Pier 39, a gigantic mall full of restaurants and shops, the perfect place to disappear after bloody murders.

Brady introduced us to Special Agent Dick Benbow, a square-shouldered man of about forty with a crisp haircut and mirror-shined shoes. Benbow shook our hands, then walked us toward the scene, which was now being processed by a dozen Federal agents.

Benbow said, “Sergeant Boxer, no one knows this animal the way you do. I want to know what you see. What’s the same? What’s different? What’s your theory of the case?”

My scalp tightened and every hair on my body stood up as we closed in on a young black woman lying under the glaring fluorescent lights, her eyes wide open and a bullet hole in the center of her forehead.

She was wearing expensive clothing: a long, printed designer skirt, a navy-blue jacket, a white blouse with tucks and fancy buttons. It looked like she was visiting here, not just going to the mall.

A tipped-over double-wide stroller lay six feet behind her. Two dead children were hidden by the stroller, but I could see a lot without taking a step: twin puddles of blood, a little foot wearing a small white shoe to the left of the stroller, the hand of another young child flung out to the right, a pacifier only inches away.

He might have reached for that small comfort before he died.

Benbow said, “The victims are Veronica Williams; her daughter, Tally; and her son, Van. They were visiting from LA. We’ve notified the family.”

I held down a scream of outrage as I stood over the dead bodies of victims number seven, eight, and nine. It wasn’t just murder. It was slaughter.

I stared helplessly at Benbow, then walked over to the Blazer with rental plates. The driver’s-side door was hanging open, and lying on the ground was an expensive black leather handbag. It had disgorged a wallet, an open makeup bag, a pacifier, an airline-ticket folder, aspirin, a cell phone, and packets of moist towelettes.

I leaned into the vehicle. The light coming through the glass outlined the lipstick lettering and turned it black. Instead of three cryptic letters, there were six words, just as unfathomable.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST. GET IT?

No, I didn’t get it. I didn’t get it at all.

He was smart and slick, and he hated women and children, that much I got. But what set him off? How had he committed nine homicides without being noticed? How would we catch him?

Or would the Lipstick Killer case become one of those unsolved mysteries that haunt cops into their graves?

I said to Benbow, “No question, this is the same shooter. He’s spelling out the acronym. It’s his signature. I don’t have a theory on this case. I wish I had one frickin’ clue.”

I put my back against a concrete pylon and called Claire, saying to her voice mail, “I’m at the Pier Thirty-nine garage. Three more victims, two are little kids.”

Claire picked up. She doesn’t swear often, but she let loose an impressive stream of curses before saying she was on her way. As she hung up, I heard footsteps on concrete. I turned to see Jackson Brady coming up the ramp with two other men: a uniformed police officer and a wiry white male with graying hair. Brady’s eyes had brightened, and there was a new expression on his face that gave me hope.

He smiled.

I felt storm clouds part and a godlike finger of light break through the concrete ceiling when Brady said to me, “This is Mr. Kennedy. Says he’s a witness.”

Chapter 88

SIX LAW ENFORCEMENT officers surrounded the man called Daniel Kennedy. We were standing so close we were pretty much sucking up his air, but he seemed glad for the attention. Kennedy said that he was a crime buff and had read everything about the Lipstick Killer. He told us that he was the owner of U-Tel, a telephone shop at Pier 39, and then he got into his story.

“A white guy in his early thirties came into my store,” Kennedy said, “and right away, I thought he was wrong.”

“Why was that?” Benbow asked him.

“He goes over to the rack of prepaid phones, picks one with a camera and a two-gig chip. Cheap prepaids fly off the shelves, but expensive phones? Who throws away an expensive phone? Anyway, this guy knows what he wants. And he keeps his head down, never even looks up when he pays.”

“Was he wearing a cap?”

“Yeah, baseball cap, blue, no logo but a different jacket than the one in the artist’s rendering on TV. This jacket was brown leather, kinda distressed, American flag on the right sleeve.”

“Flight jacket,” Conklin said. “What color was his hair?”

“Brown, what I could see of it. So after he buys the GoPhone, he leaves, and I tell my manager to take over for a couple of minutes.”

“You followed the guy?” Brady asked.

“Sure did. I kept back a few yards so he wouldn’t notice me, and pretty soon I see him talking to this pretty African-American woman with two kids in a double stroller. He was gesturing to her, like, asking if he could give her a hand with her packages.

“Then, damn it, my manager called asking me to sign off on a personal check for a big sale. I turned around for a minute, and when I turned back, I’d lost him-the place was packed, you know? I go back to the store, and next thing, there’s sirens coming up the road. I turn on my police band and hear that there’s been a shooting.”

“Could you ID this guy from photos?” I asked.

“I can do better than that. Everything that guy did inside and in front of my store was recorded on high-quality digital media. I can make you a disk off my hard drive right now.”

“Was he wearing gloves?”

“No,” said Kennedy. “No, he wasn’t.”

“How’d he pay for the phone?” Conklin asked.

“Cash,” Kennedy said. “I gave him change.”

“Let’s open your register,” I said.

Chapter 89

MY CELL PHONE rang at some bleary predawn hour. I fumbled with it in the dark and took it into the living room so Joe could sleep. My caller was Jackson Brady. Despite the weariness in his voice, I caught his excitement as he told me he’d been at the crime lab all night watching the CSU dust every bill from U-Tel’s cash drawer.

“You’ve got something?” I asked, daring to hope.

“Only some partial prints that match to a former marine.”

“No kidding. That was your hunch.”

“Captain Peter Gordon. Served in Iraq, two back-to-back tours.”

I stood in my blue flannel pj’s looking down on the quiet beauty of Lake Street as Brady told me of this former marine officer who, after he was discharged, went off the radar. There was nothing unusual in his military record, no postduty hospitalizations-also no homecoming parades.

“After Gordon’s discharge,” Brady told me, “he returned to Wallkill, New York, where he lived with his wife and little girl for a couple of months. Then the family moved to San Francisco.”

“So what do you think, Brady? You like him as our killer?”

“He sure looks like Lipstick,” Brady said. “Of course the garage videos are crap, and what we’ve got from U-Tel isn’t conclusive. Gordon bought a prepaid cell phone twenty minutes to an hour before Veronica Williams and her kids were killed-that’s all. Can’t do much with that.”

“Wait a minute. Gordon was seen talking to Veronica Williams,” I said. “She had two children in a stroller. Christ!”

“We don’t know if the woman Kennedy saw was Veronica Williams. We’ve got six people screening all of the Pier Thirty-nine surveillance videos,” Brady said. “Look, Lindsay, I’d love to pick him up, but when we do it, we want to nail him good.”

Brady was right. I would’ve been giving him the same lecture if our positions were reversed.

“Anything on Gordon since he moved to San Francisco?”

“As a matter of fact, a neighbor called in a domestic disturbance twice, but no charges were filed.”

“You have a picture of this guy?”

“It’s old, but it’s coming at you now.”

The picture on my cell phone was of a man with bland good looks, about thirty, brown hair, brown eyes, symmetrical features, nothing remarkable. Was this the man who’d worn a two-tone baseball jacket and had hidden his face from the security cameras at the Stonestown Galleria? Wishing didn’t make it so, but I felt it in my gut.

Pete Gordon was the Lipstick Killer.

I knew this was him.

Chapter 90

SARAH WELLS AND Heidi Meyer, along with a half dozen of their colleagues, huddled around the TV in the teachers’ lounge during their lunch break. On the screen was a jumpy video of Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Claire Washburn attempting to drive away from the scene of the terrible shooting at the Pier 39 garage the night before.

The vehicle’s egress was blocked by a crowd of onlookers made up of looky-loos, reporters, and the police, who had sealed off the entrance to the garage. A video camera focused on Kathryn Winstead of Crime TV as she shouted to Dr. Washburn, “How many people were shot? Was it another mother and child? Were the shootings done by the same killer?”

“Move aside. I’m not joking. Step back from the vehicle!” Dr. Washburn shouted back.

“Recently you told women to carry guns,” Winstead continued. “The public needs to know.”

“I meant what I said,” Washburn answered, then blew a hole through the crowd with her horn and pulled out onto the street.

The scene switched back to the studio, Kathryn Winstead saying, “For those just joining us, we’ve obtained a security video from a Mr. Daniel Kennedy, the owner of U-Tel, a shop at Pier Thirty-nine. The man you see in this video appears to be the same one we’ve seen in the surveillance tape from the Stonestown Galleria garage. Sources close to the SFPD confirm that he may very well be the Lipstick Killer.”

Heidi’s mouth dropped open as she watched her husband buying a cell phone.

But there was a mistake. Pete wasn’t the Lipstick Killer.

How could he be?

Sarah took Heidi’s arm and walked her away from the TV, out of the lounge, and into the hallway. She asked, “Where was Pete last night?”

“Pete? We went shopping and then I went out to the Blue-Jay Café with my neighbor…,” Heidi said, her face blanched, her eyes wide with horror. “Pete said he was going home to watch the game. He was on the couch when I got there. He couldn’t have done what they say.”

“It’s a short drive from your house to Pier Thirty-nine.”

“We were at dinner for a while-oh my God. But it couldn’t be him. I would know, wouldn’t I?”

“Heidi, he’s mean. He’s abusive. He treats you and the kids… look, where does Pete go when he says he wants to be ‘anywhere but here’ and then disappears for hours? Do you know?”

“God. You’re serious.” Heidi looked into Sarah’s resolute face, then her knees buckled. Sarah steadied her and said, “Heidi, Heidi, are you all right?”

“What if this is true? What am I going to do?”

“Where are the kids?”

“Sherry’s in school. Stevie’s at day care-unless, oh God. What time is it? Pete picked Stevie up. I’ve got to call the police. Where’s my bag? I need my phone. I’ve got to call the police now.”

Chapter 91

PETE GORDON WAS cleaning his gun in front of the TV, watching that video of him buying a phone at the mall.

The video had been all over the news for the last thirty minutes, and now a CNN talking head was saying, “sources close to the FBI have confirmed that this man is a person of interest in the recent killings in parking garages around our city. His name has not been released, and if you know or see him, do not confront him. He is classified as armed and very dangerous…”

“Why, thank you,” Pete said, screwing his suppressor onto the barrel of his Beretta. He put the gun into his waistband and went out to the garage. His go-bag was already in the trunk, along with the emergency kits and a case of bottled water.

He got into the car, buzzed up the garage door, and immediately heard the sound of props twirling overhead. He couldn’t see if the helicopter belonged to the Feds or if it was a news chopper, but either way its crew knew who he was and was coming after him.

He had to go to Plan B. And Plan B was a damned fine plan.

Pete buzzed down the garage door. He got out of the car, took a Styrofoam cooler from a high shelf, and brought the cooler into the house. He dismantled the doorbell and deftly rejiggered the wiring. The blasting caps were in a small taped box marked PAPER CLIPS at the back of the junk drawer. He dropped the bell ringer and one of the caps into the cooler, walked it outside to the curb, and put it next to the mailbox.

Back inside the house, Pete put another of the blasting caps into a cardboard box, covered it with a sheaf of old newspaper, and took the box out to the back porch, leaving it right outside the rear door.

He returned to the living room and peered out through the curtains. A black SUV drove up and parked in front of his walkway. Five or six identical vehicles were now pouring onto the street from both directions. No doubt now. It was the Feds.

Pete pulled back the curtains so he was clearly visible, letting them see that he saw them. Then he plucked the kiddo out of his crib. “Let’s go, stink bomb.”

Stevie cried out, wriggling in Pete’s arms, so Pete shook him and told him to stop. He grabbed a box of juice and a bag of Cheerios from the countertop. Then he headed out to the attached garage and got inside the car with the stink bomb on his lap.

Pete imagined the chatter going on between the SUV teams and a command post, which by now would have been set up a block away. As he waited in the dark of his garage, enemy troops gathering around his house, Captain Pete’s mind rolled back several years to a day when he and his command had been traveling just outside Haditha.

It was the day the only person he cared about in the world had been murdered.

Chapter 92

PETE GORDON HAD been in the lead car at the head of a caravan of six vehicles transporting equipment and stores into the Green Zone. Riding shotgun beside Corporal Andy Douglas, he’d been busy on the walkie-talkie with Base Command when the world cracked open.

The explosion shocked every sense in his system, turning him deaf and smoke-blind, the concussive waves jolting his vehicle, lifting the chassis and dropping it down hard. He’d staggered out onto the chaotic roadside, his hearing coming back only to reveal the heartrending shrieks of the dying and wounded.

Working his way over the litter of smoldering steel and rock, Pete found the last vehicle in his caravan. It had been overturned by the blast and was on fire. He saw three of his men: Corporal Ike Lennar was lying on the ground, twitching. Private Oren Hancock was holding his guts as they spilled into the dust. The other marine was Kenny Marshall, from Pete’s hometown, his legs blown off above the knees.

Pete’s eyes watered up now as he remembered that day.

He’d dropped beside his dear friend, ripped off Kenny’s helmet, and cradled his bare head. The picture of Jesus inside Kenny’s helmet appeared to shake its head as the helmet rolled on its rim. Pete had murmured empty words of comfort to Kenny, the boy who’d said he’d be ready whenever the Lord called him. Kenny had looked up at Pete-surprise in his eyes-and then the life had fled from him.

Pete had felt emptied of life himself, and then a torrent of rage flowed into that void. He tore off his shirt and covered Kenny’s face, then shouted to his troops that the IED had been set off remotely by the car behind the caravan. What was left of his company, ten good men, had swarmed around the nondescript gray car and yanked open the doors.

There were two cowards in the front seat, and a woman and a child screamed in the back. Pete dragged the woman out of the car, her arms wrapped around the baby. He didn’t understand what she said, and he didn’t care. When the insurgents were facedown on the ground, Pete had shouted at them while aiming his weapon at the black sack of woman and baby at his feet.

“Do you love these people?” he’d screamed at the men. “Do you?”

He aimed his gun at the bitch, and she turned to look at him, her hands coming out from her shroud of a garment, palms up to stop the bullets. He fired his automatic, watching her jerk and flutter, and as she died he shot her squalling kiddo. He then turned his weapon on the enemy insurgents, but his troops tackled and disarmed him, put him down, and sat on him until he stopped sobbing.

Nothing was ever said about the incident. But in his mind Gordon still lived on the dusty road outside Haditha. It was the last time he’d had a tender feeling.

The roar of the descending chopper brought Pete back to the moment. He was inside the car in his garage, the enemy all around, but he was eager for the action to commence. He patted the stink bomb’s stomach, tap tap tap, and waited to make his move.

Chapter 93

BRADY’S CALL REACHED me at my desk at 1:30 p.m. He was shouting into the phone, telling me that our witness had blown the whole thing and that Peter Gordon was in an armed standoff with the FBI. “The bastard is holding his son hostage. Agent Benbow needs you on the scene, Lindsay. Pete Gordon says he’ll talk only to you.”

Jacobi hovered behind me. I brought him up to speed in ten words or less and saw the conflict in his face.

“Get going. Keep me posted,” he barked. “Be careful,” he shouted after us as Conklin and I left the squad room.

It took an agonizingly long time to get from the Hall through the traffic around the Civic Center and then to where Gordon lived. We passed through the cordon at the end of the street and saw a herd of black SUVs in front of a mud-brown two-story house with attached garage set back on a patch of dry lawn.

Agent Benbow flagged us down with his hand, came up to the passenger-side window, and said to me, “You’ve got experience in hostage negotiation?”

“Not enough,” I said.

“Give it your best, Sergeant,” he said. “Be his friend. Don’t antagonize him. Try to get him to come out with the boy.”

“What have I got to offer?”

“Whatever he wants. Once we have the child, he’s ours.”

Benbow held out a Kevlar vest. I put it on and took the bullhorn. I called out to Gordon, “Peter, this is Lindsay Boxer. I’m here because you asked for me and I want this to turn out right for everyone. Open the front door slowly, put your hands on your head, and come out, okay? No one is going to shoot.”

There was no reply, so I tried again, varying my request. Then, taking a phone number from Benbow, I called Gordon’s home. Five rings. No answer. Then the machine picked up, and a little girl’s voice said, “This is the Gordon house. Please leave a message.”

I was out of moves, wondering why Gordon had even asked for me, when my own cell phone rang. I pulled it off my belt and stared at the faceplate. The caller ID was blocked, but I knew.

“Boxer.”

“Well, hello, sweetmeat,” said the Lipstick Killer.

Chapter 94

THE SOUND OF Gordon’s voice in my ear bypassed reason and went straight to my adrenal glands. I broke into an instant sweat, feeling it roll down my sides, between my breasts, across my brow. I was having déjà vu of some of the most terrifying hours of my life, but somehow I forced myself to keep my voice steady.

“Gordon, no one wants to hurt you. We know you’ve got your son, and he’s very important to all of us.”

“He’s important to you. I don’t give a crap about him. Ask my wife. Odds are, he’s not even mine.”

“How can we all get what we want?”

“There’s only one way, and it’s my way. Drop your weapon,” Gordon said. “Call off the choppers. If I hear rotors, this conversation is over. My house is wired to explode. I have trip wires inside and out. There’s one safe path, and it’s the walkway to the front door. Come on down, Lindsay, come onnn downnnn.”

I told Gordon to hold, and I briefed Benbow, who shook his head and said, “No frickin’ way.”

I said, “I’m not coming in, Gordon. I need you to come out with Steven. I guarantee your safety. My word of honor, no one will shoot.”

“Lindsay, you want the kiddo, you have to come to me. I’ll use you and the kid as a shield. We get into your car, and no one follows. If I see a gun, I shoot the kid and myself. If I hear a chopper, I shoot. If anyone breaks a window or steps on the lawn, the house blows. Do you copy?”

Benbow took the phone out of my hand and said, “Gordon, this is Special Agent Richard Benbow, FBI. I can’t let Sergeant Boxer go in, but I’ll come to your door unarmed and escort you to safety. Give us the child, and I’ll personally drive you to Mexico. How’s that for a deal?”

Benbow listened to Gordon’s response, then snapped the phone closed. “He told me he wants Boxer. Otherwise it’s over and I can go fuck myself. He hung up.”

There was only one option, the killer had told us. His way, or he would blow up everything, including his own child.

I took my Glock out of its holster and put it down on the grass. I asked God for protection, then headed up Peter Gordon’s front walk.

Chapter 95

I KEPT MY eyes on the front door of a dreary house on an old shoe of a block that might be the last thing I’d ever see. I rapped on the door-no answer. I rapped even harder. No answer again.

What the hell was this?

I turned to look at Conklin and shrugged. Then I reached out and pressed the doorbell.

I heard Conklin shout, “No, Lindsay, NO!” and at that moment there were two loud explosions, a nanosecond apart.

The air cracked open. The ground lurched, and I was knocked off my feet. It was as if I’d been hit by a truck. I fell hard to the ground and was lost in a dense cloud of black smoke. I inhaled the bitter taste of cordite, coughing until my guts spasmed. Men shouted from the street, and there was the loud static of car radios. I heard Conklin calling my name.

I peered through the smoke and saw my partner lying fifteen feet away. I screamed, “Richie,” scrambled up, and ran to him. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead.

“You’re hit!”

He put a hand to his head and said, “I’m okay. Are you?”

“Fucking perfect.”

I helped Rich to his feet. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Jesus Christ, Linds, I thought he’d killed us.”

Fire was consuming an SUV at the curb. Injured men, bleeding from shrapnel wounds, leaned against their vehicles or slumped by the street. The intensity of the blast marks near the road told me that Gordon had planted a bomb on the sidewalk. Another bomb had gone off at the back of the house-and the home was starting to burn. Were these explosives meant to kill? Or to create chaos?

Where was Gordon now?

I heard the unmistakable grind of a garage door rolling up behind me. I turned to see Gordon at the wheel of a blue Honda station wagon, heading out of the garage and down the driveway toward the street.

Rich pulled his nine, and I knew his wasn’t the only weapon pointed toward that Honda. The house was covered, high and wide-and I was in the direct line of fire.

“Hold your fire,” I shouted toward the street.

I put up my hands and walked toward Gordon’s car. As I stared through the driver’s-side window, I found that I was looking into the face of a terrified child. Gordon was holding his son up to the glass, gun to the baby’s head, using him as a shield.

The window lowered an inch, and Gordon’s too-familiar voice came to me.

“Stink bomb,” he said, “say hello to Sergeant Boxer.”

Chapter 96

I TORE MY eyes away from the terrified little boy, whipped around toward the street, and screamed again, “Hold your fire. For God’s sake, he’s got the child. Hold your fire.”

A blurred shape charged from behind a vehicle and continued in a line parallel to the street and toward the driveway. It was Brady. I watched in horror as he threw a spike strip down in front of Gordon’s car, then took a stance at the head of the vehicle and, holding his gun with both hands, leveled it at the windshield.

Brady yelled to Gordon, “Get out of the car. Get out of the car now.”

Gordon leaned on his horn, then called out to me, “Tell that bozo I have a gun to stinky’s head. At the count of three, I shoot. One.”

My voice was hoarse as I shouted, “Brady, put down your gun. He’ll shoot the boy. He’ll shoot!”

Gordon was a serial killer with a hostage. Procedurally, Brady was in the right and would probably be considered a hero for bringing Gordon down, even if Steven died.

Then Benbow backed me up.

“Brady, lower your weapon.”

Brady hesitated, then did what he was told. I was moved by Benbow’s humanity, even as I prayed he was doing the right thing.

Gordon said, “Lindsay? No guns. No choppers. No one on my tail. Do you copy? Two.”

I called out Gordon’s demands toward the street, and the chopper flew out of range. I heard the squeal of rubber on asphalt, and I turned back to see Gordon’s car shoot out of the driveway. He wheeled around the spike strip and rammed an SUV, knocking it out of the way, then jumped the curb and gunned the car down the street in the direction of the freeway.

Within seconds, this suburban block had been turned into what looked like a combat zone. The wails of sirens came from all directions: the bomb squad, ambulances, and fire rigs all rushed to the scene.

I made my way to the street, where Benbow was ordering air cover on the Honda.

Conklin put me on the phone with Jacobi, and I told him I was all right, but the truth was, I was dazed and breathless from the explosions, and my vision kept fading in and out.

As Conklin and I helped each other to our car, I kept seeing the red, terrified face of that small boy, screaming wordlessly through the car window.

Dizziness swamped me. I bent over and threw up in the grass.

Chapter 97

I WOKE UP in the emergency room, lying in a railed bed inside a curtained-off stall. Joe got up from the chair next to me and put his hands on my shoulders.

“Hello, sweetie. Are you all right? Are you okay?”

“Never better.”

Joe laughed and kissed me.

I squeezed his hand. “How long was I out?”

“Two hours. You needed the sleep.” Joe sat back down, keeping my hand in his.

“How’s Conklin? How’s Brady?”

“Conklin’s got a line of stitches across his forehead. The scar’s going to look good on him. Brady’s a hundred percent okay but pissed off. Says he could’ve taken Gordon out.”

“Or he could’ve gotten me, himself, Conklin, and that baby all killed.”

“You did good, Linds. No one died. Jacobi’s in the waiting room. He hugged me.”

“He did, huh?”

“Bear hug.” Joe grinned and I laughed. I’m not sure that Jacobi has ever hugged me.

“Any news on Gordon?”

“By the time the air cover got up, his Honda was one of a million blue wagons just like it. They lost him.”

“And the boy?”

Joe shrugged. I felt sick all over again. All that highly trained manpower, and Gordon had made fools of us all. “He’s going to use Steven as a hostage until he doesn’t need him anymore.”

“I think he’s ditched the kid by now, honey. Once he got out of there, a screaming toddler could only get in his way.”

“He killed him, you mean?”

Joe shrugged. “Let’s say he just dropped him off somewhere.” Joe turned his eyes down.

A nurse came in and said the doctor would be back in a minute. “Can I get you anything, sweetheart? Juice?”

“No, thanks. I’m okay.”

When she’d gone, Joe said, “The whole deal was a diversion. The guy knows how to make a bomb.”

“Did I set off the charge?”

“The doorbell. When you pressed the button, signals went to two blasting caps, one in a cooler at the curb. The other blew up the back of the house-what used to be a house.”

“He asked for me, Joe. He demanded that I come to the door. He planned for me to detonate that bomb. Why me? Payback because he didn’t get the money?”

“I think so. He’s putting your face on his power struggle with the city-”

The doctor came in, and Joe stepped outside. Dr. Dweck asked me to follow his finger with my eyes. He hammered my knees and made me flex my wings. He told me that I had a gorgeous palm-sized contusion on my shoulder and that the cuts on my hands would heal just fine.

He listened to my breathing and my heart, both of which sped up as I thought about how Peter Gordon could be anywhere by now, with or without that little boy-and no one knew where in the hell he was.

Chapter 98

I LEANED BACK in the passenger seat as Joe drove us home. Jacobi had told me to take a few days off and to call in on Monday to see if he was letting me work next week.

Joe said, “You’re taking the sleeping cure, you hear me, Blondie? Once you’re home, you’re under house arrest.”

“Okay.”

“Stop arguing with me.”

I laughed and turned my head so I could look at his strong profile in silhouette against the cobalt-blue dusk. I let centrifugal force hold me against the car door when Joe made the turn onto Arguello and I watched the steeples of St. John’s go by. I must’ve closed my eyes, because I woke hearing Joe telling me that we were home.

He helped me onto the sidewalk outside our building and steadied me as I got my balance.

Joe was asking, “What do you feel like having for dinner?” when I saw what had to be an illusion. Across the street was a blue Honda wagon with a crumpled right fender.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the car.

I didn’t wait for Joe to answer. I knew that car. Even from twenty feet away, I could see writing on the windshield. Fear shot through me as if Pete Gordon had lit a fuse under the soles of my shoes.

How did he know where I lived?

Why had he driven his car to my door?

I ran out into the Lake Street traffic, dodging cars blowing past me. I reached the Honda, cupped my hands to the glass, and peered inside. I saw the little boy lying on his side across the backseat. Even in the low light, the round dark spot on Steven Gordon’s temple was a vivid red.

The psycho had shot his little boy.

He’d shot him-even though we’d done everything he asked us to do! I screamed, “No!” and wrenched the door open. The dome light flashed on, and I seized the child by the shoulder. The little boy’s eyes opened, and he jerked away from me, screaming.

He was alive. I gibbered, “Stevie, are you okay, are you okay? Everything’s going to be all right.”

“I want my mom-my.”

I used my thumb to wipe away the lipstick from the side of Steven’s head, a mark so obscene, I couldn’t bear to look at it. I took the child out of the car and swung him onto my hip, holding him tight. “Okay, little guy. Your mommy will be here soon.”

Joe was leaning into the front seat. He fastened his eyes on the letters written on the windshield.

“What is it? What does it say?” I asked him.

“Aw shit, Linds. This guy is crazy.”

“Tell me.”

“It says, ‘Now I want five million. Don’t screw it up again.’ ”

He was going to kill more people if he didn’t get the money. He’d done it before. I swayed on my feet, and Joe put his arms around me and the boy in my arms.

“He’s desperate,” Joe said. “He’s a terrorist. Don’t let him get to you, Linds. It’s all bull.”

I wanted Joe to be right, but the last time the city hadn’t come through with the ransom money, Gordon had killed three more people.

“Don’t screw it up again” wasn’t a taunt. It was a threat, a loaded gun pointed at the people of San Francisco. And because I seemed to have become Gordon’s connection to the rest of the world, that threat was also pointed at me.

Joe put his arm around me and led me back to his car, settling me into the backseat with Steven. He slid behind the wheel and locked the doors. I patted the boy’s back as Joe got Dick Benbow on the line. I thought about Stevie Gordon’s father, a homicidal maniac with nothing to lose.

Where the hell was he?

I didn’t think I could sleep until he was dead.