I was thinking,
Claire took her Minolta out of her kit and fired off two shots of Barbara Ann Benton from where we stood, then went around to the other side of the vehicle and took two more.
When she started shooting pictures of the baby, I saw the tears in her eyes. She wiped them with the back of her hand. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Claire cry.
“Mom let the killer get this close,” Claire said. “Gunpowder stippling is on her cheek and neck. She tried to shield her baby with her body, and still the bastard shot the child in the head. And here’s something new: I don’t recognize this stippling pattern.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means WCF has some rare kind of gun.”
Chapter 10
THE BENTONS ’ HOUSE was a modest two-bedroom on 14th Avenue, blue with white trim, spray-on Fourth of July decorations still on the picture window and a pull toy on the steps. Conklin rang the bell, and when Richard Benton opened the front door, I knew that we were seeing the last happy moment of the man’s life.
When a married woman is killed, her husband is involved more than half the time, but I found Richard Benton believably devastated when we told him the shocking news-and he had an alibi. He’d been home with his five-year- old when the shooting took place, had roasted a chicken for dinner, and had sent a constant stream of e-mail to his office during that time.
Benton was at first disbelieving and then shattered, but Conklin and I talked to him anyway, about his marriage, about Barbara’s friends and coworkers, and asked if there’d been any threats against her. He said, “Barbara is nothing but love. I don’t know what we’re going to do…” And then he broke down again.
I checked in with Jacobi at nine. I told him that until I ran Richard Benton’s name through NCIC, he was in the clear, and that Benton didn’t know the initials “WCF.”
“Barbara was a nurse’s aide,” I told Jacobi. “Worked at a nursing home. We’ll interview the others on her shift first thing in the morning.”
“I’m going to hand that job off to Samuels and Lemke,” Jacobi said. He had a strangled sound in his voice for the second time in as many hours.
“Hand it off? Excuse me? What’s that about?”
“Something new just came in, Boxer.”
Honest to God, I was running out of gas, going into my thirteenth straight hour on the job. Behind me, in a room shimmering with anguish, Conklin was telling Richard Benton to come to the ME’s office to identify the victims.
“Something new on the Benton case?” I asked Jacobi. Maybe the husband had a record for domestic violence. Maybe a witness had come forward, or perhaps CSI had found something inside the RAV4.
Jacobi said, “No, this just happened. If you want me to give it to Chi and McNeil, I will. But you and Conklin are going to want in.”
“Don’t be too sure, Jacobi.”
“You’ve heard of Marcus Dowling?”
“The actor?”
“His wife was just shot by an intruder,” Jacobi told me. “I’m on my way over to the Dowling house now.”
Chapter 11
THE DOWLING HOUSE is on Nob Hill, a sprawling mansion taking up most of the block, ivy growing up the walls, potted topiaries on either side of the large oak door. It couldn’t have been more different from the Bentons ’ humble home.
Before Conklin could reach for the bell, Jacobi opened the door. His face was sagging from stress. His eyelids drooped, and he almost looked older tonight than he had when we’d both taken bullets on Larkin Street.
“It happened in the bedroom,” he told me and my partner. “Second floor. After you’ve taken a look at the scene, join us downstairs. I’ll be in the library with Dowling.”
The bedroom shared by Marcus and Casey Dowling looked like it had been ripped from the pages of a Neiman Marcus catalog.
The bed, centered on the west-facing wall, was the size of Catalina, with a button-tucked bronze silk headboard, silk throw pillows, and rumpled satin bedding in bronze and gold. There were more tassels in this room than backstage at the Mitchell Brothers’
A dainty console table was on the floor, surrounded by broken knickknacks. Taffeta curtains swelled at the open window, but I could still smell the undertones of gunpowder in the air.
Charlie Clapper, director of our Crime Scene Unit, was taking pictures of Casey Dowling’s body. He flapped his hand toward me and Conklin in greeting and said, “Frickin’ shame, a beautiful woman like this.” He stepped back so we could take a look.
Casey Dowling was naked, lying faceup on the floor, her platinum hair splayed around her, blood on her palms. It made me think she’d clasped her hands to the chest wound before she fell.
“Her husband says he was downstairs rinsing dinner dishes when he heard two gunshots,” Clapper told me. “When he came into the room, his wife was lying here. That table and the bric-a-brac were broken on the floor, and the window was open.”
“Was anything taken?” Conklin asked.
“There’s some jewelry missing from the safe in the closet. Dowling says the contents were insured for a couple of million.”
Clapper walked to the window and held back the curtain, revealing a hole cut in the glass.
“Intruder used a glass cutter, then opened the lock. Drawers look untouched. The safe wasn’t blown, so either he knew the combination or, more likely, the safe was already open. Bullets are inside the missus. No shell casings. This was a neat job until he knocked over the table on the way out. We’ve just gotten started. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find prints or trace.”
Clapper is a pro, with some twenty-five years on the force, a good part of it in Homicide before he went over to crime scene investigation. He’s sharp, and he actually helps without getting in the way.
I said, “So this was a burglary that went to hell?”
Clapper shrugged. “Like all professional cat burglars, this one was organized, even fastidious. Maybe he carries a gun for emergencies, but packing goes against the type.”
“So what happened?” I wondered out loud. “The husband wasn’t in the room. The victim wasn’t armed-she wasn’t even
Chapter 12
