The 9th Judgment

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

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

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

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

“Nothing distinctive, am I right?”

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

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

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

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

More people were going to die.

Chapter 37

TEN DAYS AGO, “Dowling trumped everything.”

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

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

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

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

“What, then?” I asked.

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

“Jeez, what the hell does that mean?”

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

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

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

I was thinking, What now?

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

“No, c’mon, NO.”

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 38

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

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

He was crazy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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