Women's Murder Club [09] The 9th Judgment

by James Patterson

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 39

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

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

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

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

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

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Laineeee. Lilllly.”

  Oh God, no.

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

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

  Chapter 40

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

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

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

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

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

  “Let me UP. I have to go to them!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 41

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Could it be?

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

  Chapter 42

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

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

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

  Brady narrated as the pictures rolled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 43

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

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

  “She was credible?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Listen, before I forget to tell you—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  There was a chorus of yeses.

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

  Chapter 44

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

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

  “We’ll be quiet, Daddy.”

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

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

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

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

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

  What a frickin’ tragedy.

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