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

I stepped through the open door to the library, and Dowling was standing there barefoot, wearing blue trousers and an unbuttoned white shirt. I admit to feeling a little starstruck. Marcus Dowling, the next best thing to Sean Connery. He was telling Jacobi about the senseless murder of his wife when Conklin and I came through the door.

Jacobi introduced us, telling Dowling that the three of us would be working the case together.

I shook hands with the film legend, then sat at the edge of a leather sofa. Dowling was clearly distraught. And I noticed something else. His hair was wet.

Dowling didn’t sit down. He repeated his story as he paced around the book-lined room.

“Casey and I had the Devereaus over for dinner. François and his wife, Sheila—he’s directing my new film.”

“We’ll need their contact numbers,” I said.

“I’ll give you all the numbers you want,” he said, “but they had already left when this happened. Casey had gone upstairs to dress for bed. I was tidying up down here. I heard a loud bang coming from upstairs.” His forehead rumpled. “It didn’t even occur to me that it was a gunshot. I called out to Casey. She didn’t answer.”

“What happened next, Mr. Dowling?”

“I called her again, and then as I was heading upstairs, I heard another bang. This time I thought it was a gunshot, and right after that, I heard glass breaking.

“I was all emotional by this time, Inspectors. I don’t know what happened after… after I saw my girl lying on the floor. I grabbed her in my arms,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Her head fell back, and she wasn’t breathing. I must have called the police. I saw my bloody handprint on the phone. Afterward, I realized that the safe was nearly empty.

“Whoever did this must have known Casey,” Dowling continued, weeping now. “He must have known that she didn’t always lock the safe, because dialing the combination was just… too bloody boring.

“Killing Casey was so insane,” Dowling went on. He was rubbing his chest when he said to Jacobi, “Just tell me what I can do to help you catch the animal who did this.”

I was about to ask Marcus Dowling why he’d showered while waiting for the police to arrive when Conklin got ahead of me, inquiring, “Mr. Dowling, do you own a gun?”

Dowling turned a wild-eyed stare on Conklin. His face went rigid with pain. He clutched his left arm and said, “Something’s wrong.”

Then he keeled over and dropped to the floor.

Chapter 13

JESUS CHRIST! MARCUS Dowling was dying.

Conklin found the aspirin, Jacobi cushioned Dowling’s head with a throw pillow, and I called Dispatch. I repeated the house

address and shouted, “Fifty-year-old male! Heart attack!”

Dowling was still writhing when the ambulance arrived, and the big man was loaded onto a gurney and carried out through the door. Jacobi rode with Dowling to the hospital, leaving me and Conklin to canvass the neighborhood.

Lights from fantastic neighboring homes punctuated the darkness along the tree-lined street. I was worried about this new case. Because Casey Dowling had been wealthy and famous, the public pressure to find her killer would squeeze the politicos, who would, in turn, squeeze us. The SFPD was already suffering from budget deficits and too little manpower. Add to that the public expectation that homicides could be solved in an hour between commercial breaks, and I knew we were in for a humongous, spotlighted nightmare.

I hoped Clapper would come up with a good lead in the lab, because right now, along with next to nothing to go on, I was getting a bad feeling that what Marcus had told us was all wrong.

“Why would a burglar shoot Casey Dowling?” I asked Conklin as we walked up the street.

“What Clapper said. The burglar carried a gun in case he ran into an emergency.”

“Like a surprised homeowner?”

“Exactly.”

“Casey Dowling wasn’t armed.”

“True. Maybe she recognized the intruder,” Conklin said. “You know those stories Cindy’s been doing on Hello Kitty?”

Cindy is Cindy Thomas, a crime reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle and a friend to the end with a great mind for solving whodunits.