The 9th Judgment (Women's Murder Club 9)

Maybe he’d taken the skywalk over to another of the malls in the Embarcadero Center, or he could just as easily have gone down the escalator and out onto the street.

I asked Robin if she’d come in to the station to look at surveillance tape, and then I left the manager’s office with Jacobi. He was putting out an APB on a white male in a blue-and-white baseball jacket when Claire stomped up the escalator with her chief assistant, Bunny Ellis, behind her.

Claire wore a furious look as she moved in on the victims’ bodies with her Minolta. I stood next to her as she said to me, “Lookit. Same weird stippling, Lindsay. Same point-blank shooting. Same bastard kid killer. Was anything stolen?”

“Mom’s wallet was full.”

It was Claire who saw the writing on the underside of the stroller.

I stared at the letters as cameras flashed in a stroboscopic frenzy. The message was written in lipstick. The signature was the same—but different.

FWC

“What the hell?” I said to Claire. “Not WCF? Now it’s FWC?”

“You ask me, Lindsay? This guy isn’t leaving clues. He’s purely fucking with us.”

Chapter 36

OUR PINCH HITTER, Jackson Brady, said he’d taken workshops at the FBI headquarters in Quantico.

“I spent two full summers learning to profile serial killers. That doesn’t make me a pro, but I have educated opinions.”

Jacobi commandeered a conference room in the Crimes Against Persons Division, and we all sat around the chipped fake-wood table, looking at Brady. Paul Chi told Brady what we’d gathered from the first scene and the latest, and Brady took notes.

All eyes were on him when he told us, “Killing children is reactive, maybe to a bad childhood, or it’s possible this killer is so dead inside, he just wastes the kids because they’re witnesses.”

“The kids were babies,” Jacobi said.

Brady shrugged. “The killer probably isn’t using that kind of logic. As for the killing of the mothers, you’re seeing a real hatred for women.”

“In terms of finding this guy,” Jacobi said, “his early childhood isn’t relevant, is it? How he feels isn’t going to lead us to him.”

“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.