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

Sarah snapped off the TV.

This was classic Samson and Delilah.

“Terror” wouldn’t be home for two hours, and if she used that time efficiently, she’d be able to give Marcus Dowling a haircut. She couldn’t allow him to get away with murder.

Chapter 72

SARAH HEADED TOWARD the phone kiosk at Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the largest tourist attractions in the state. Families and herds of students parted around her, surging toward the shops and restaurants at the Cannery, no one even glancing at the young woman in gangsta shorts and a pink “Life is good” sweatshirt pressing quarters into the pay phone.

She tapped the buttons. The tip-line operator answered and switched the call to the Southern District Police Station, and Sarah asked to be connected to a Homicide inspector.

“What should I say this is about?”

“Casey Dowling,” Sarah said. “I know who shot her.”

“One moment, please. Sergeant Boxer is getting off the phone.”

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.”