The 9th Judgment

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."