The 9th Judgment (20 page)

“A white guy in his early thirties came into my store,” Kennedy said, “and right away, I thought he was wrong.”

“Why was that?” Benbow asked him.

“He goes over to the rack of prepaid phones, picks one with a camera and a two-gig chip. Cheap prepaids fly off the shelves,
but expensive phones? Who throws away an expensive phone? Anyway, this guy knows what he wants. And he keeps his head down,
never even looks up when he pays.”

“Was he wearing a cap?”

“Yeah, baseball cap, blue, no logo but a different jacket than the one in the artist’s rendering on TV. This jacket was brown
leather, kinda distressed, American flag on the right sleeve.”

“Flight jacket,” Conklin said. “What color was his hair?”

“Brown, what I could see of it. So after he buys the GoPhone, he leaves, and I tell my manager to take over for a couple of
minutes.”

“You followed the guy?” Brady asked.

“Sure did. I kept back a few yards so he wouldn’t notice me, and pretty soon I see him talking to this pretty African-American
woman with two kids in a double stroller. He was gesturing to her, like, asking if he could give her a hand with her packages.

“Then, damn it, my manager called asking me to sign off on a personal check for a big sale. I turned around for a minute,
and when I turned back, I’d lost him—the place was packed, you know? I go back to the store, and next thing, there’s sirens
coming up the road. I turn on my police band and hear that there’s been a shooting.”

“Could you ID this guy from photos?” I asked.

“I can do better than that. Everything that guy did inside and in front of my store was recorded on high-quality digital media.
I can make you a disk off my hard drive right now.”

“Was he wearing gloves?”

“No,” said Kennedy. “No, he wasn’t.”

“How’d he pay for the phone?” Conklin asked.

“Cash,” Kennedy said. “I gave him change.”

“Let’s open your register,” I said.

MY CELL PHONE rang at some bleary predawn hour. I fumbled with it in the dark and took it into the living room so Joe could
sleep. My caller was Jackson Brady. Despite the weariness in his voice, I caught his excitement as he told me he’d been at
the crime lab all night watching the CSU dust every bill from U-Tel’s cash drawer.

“You’ve got something?” I asked, daring to hope.

“Only some partial prints that match to a former marine.”

“No
kidding
. That was your hunch.”

“Captain Peter Gordon. Served in Iraq, two back-to-back tours.”

I stood in my blue flannel pj’s looking down on the quiet beauty of Lake Street as Brady told me of this former marine officer
who, after he was discharged, went off the radar. There was nothing unusual in his military record, no postduty hospitalizations—also
no homecoming parades.

“After Gordon’s discharge,” Brady told me, “he returned to Wallkill, New York, where he lived with his wife and little girl
for a couple of months. Then the family moved to San Francisco.”

“So what do you think, Brady? You like him as our killer?”

“He sure looks like Lipstick,” Brady said. “Of course the garage videos are crap, and what we’ve got from U-Tel isn’t conclusive.
Gordon bought a prepaid cell phone twenty minutes to an hour before Veronica Williams and her kids were killed—that’s all.
Can’t do much with that.”

“Wait a minute. Gordon was seen talking to Veronica Williams,” I said. “She had two children in a stroller. Christ!”

“We don’t know if the woman Kennedy saw was Veronica Williams. We’ve got six people screening all of the Pier Thirty-nine
surveillance videos,” Brady said. “Look, Lindsay, I’d love to pick him up, but when we do it, we want to nail him good.”

Brady was right. I would’ve been giving him the same lecture if our positions were reversed.

“Anything on Gordon since he moved to San Francisco?”

“As a matter of fact, a neighbor called in a domestic disturbance twice, but no charges were filed.”

“You have a picture of this guy?”

“It’s old, but it’s coming at you now.”

The picture on my cell phone was of a man with bland good looks, about thirty, brown hair, brown eyes, symmetrical features,
nothing remarkable. Was this the man who’d worn a two-tone baseball jacket and had hidden his face from the security cameras
at the Stonestown Galleria? Wishing didn’t make it so, but I felt it in my gut.

Pete Gordon was the Lipstick Killer.

I knew this was him.

SARAH WELLS AND Heidi Meyer, along with a half dozen of their colleagues, huddled around the TV in the teachers’ lounge during
their lunch break. On the screen was a jumpy video of Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Claire Washburn attempting to drive away
from the scene of the terrible shooting at the Pier 39 garage the night before.

The vehicle’s egress was blocked by a crowd of onlookers made up of looky-loos, reporters, and the police, who had sealed
off the entrance to the garage. A video camera focused on Kathryn Winstead of Crime TV as she shouted to Dr. Washburn, “How
many people were shot? Was it another mother and child? Were the shootings done by the same killer?”

“Move aside. I’m not joking. Step back from the vehicle!” Dr. Washburn shouted back.

“Recently you told women to carry guns,” Winstead continued.
“The public needs to know.”

“I meant what I said,” Washburn answered, then blew a hole through the crowd with her horn and pulled out onto the street.

The scene switched back to the studio, Kathryn Winstead saying, “For those just joining us, we’ve obtained a security video
from a Mr. Daniel Kennedy, the owner of U-Tel, a shop at Pier Thirty-nine. The man you see in this video appears to be the
same one we’ve seen in the surveillance tape from the Stonestown Galleria garage. Sources close to the SFPD confirm that he
may very well be the Lipstick Killer.”

Heidi’s mouth dropped open as she watched her husband buying a cell phone.

But there was a mistake. Pete wasn’t the Lipstick Killer
.

How could he be?

Sarah took Heidi’s arm and walked her away from the TV, out of the lounge, and into the hallway. She asked, “Where was Pete
last night?”

“Pete? We went shopping and then I went out to the Blue-Jay Café with my neighbor…,” Heidi said, her face blanched, her eyes
wide with horror. “Pete said he was going home to watch the game. He was on the couch when I got there. He couldn’t have done
what they say.”

“It’s a short drive from your house to Pier Thirty-nine.”

“We were at dinner for a while—
oh my God
. But it couldn’t be him. I would know, wouldn’t I?”

“Heidi, he’s mean. He’s abusive. He treats you and the kids… look, where does Pete go when he says he wants to be ‘anywhere
but here’ and then disappears for hours? Do you know?”

“God. You’re serious.” Heidi looked into Sarah’s resolute face, then her knees buckled. Sarah steadied her and said, “Heidi,
Heidi, are you all right?”

“What if this is true? What am I going to do?”

“Where are the kids?”

“Sherry’s in school. Stevie’s at day care—unless, oh God. What time is it?
Pete picked Stevie up
. I’ve got to call the police. Where’s my bag? I need my phone. I’ve got to call the police
now
.”

PETE GORDON WAS cleaning his gun in front of the TV, watching that video of him buying a phone at the mall.

The video had been all over the news for the last thirty minutes, and now a CNN talking head was saying, “sources close to
the FBI have confirmed that this man is a person of interest in the recent killings in parking garages around our city. His
name has not been released, and if you know or see him, do not confront him. He is classified as armed and very dangerous…”

“Why, thank you,” Pete said, screwing his suppressor onto the barrel of his Beretta. He put the gun into his waistband and
went out to the garage. His go-bag was already in the trunk, along with the emergency kits and a case of bottled water.

He got into the car, buzzed up the garage door, and immediately heard the sound of props twirling overhead. He couldn’t see
if the helicopter belonged to the Feds or if it was a news chopper, but either way its crew knew who he was and was coming
after him.

He had to go to Plan B. And Plan B was a damned fine plan.

Pete buzzed down the garage door. He got out of the car, took a Styrofoam cooler from a high shelf, and brought the cooler
into the house. He dismantled the doorbell and deftly rejiggered the wiring. The blasting caps were in a small taped box marked
PAPER CLIPS
at the back of the junk drawer. He dropped the bell ringer and one of the caps into the cooler, walked it outside to the
curb, and put it next to the mailbox.

Back inside the house, Pete put another of the blasting caps into a cardboard box, covered it with a sheaf of old newspaper,
and took the box out to the back porch, leaving it right outside the rear door.

He returned to the living room and peered out through the curtains. A black SUV drove up and parked in front of his walkway.
Five or six identical vehicles were now pouring onto the street from both directions. No doubt now. It was the Feds.

Pete pulled back the curtains so he was clearly visible, letting them see that he saw them. Then he plucked the kiddo out
of his crib. “Let’s go, stink bomb.”

Stevie cried out, wriggling in Pete’s arms, so Pete shook him and told him to stop. He grabbed a box of juice and a bag of
Cheerios from the countertop. Then he headed out to the attached garage and got inside the car with the stink bomb on his
lap.

Pete imagined the chatter going on between the SUV teams and a command post, which by now would have been set up a block away.
As he waited in the dark of his garage, enemy troops gathering around his house, Captain Pete’s mind rolled back several years
to a day when he and his command had been traveling just outside Haditha.

It was the day the only person he cared about in the world had been murdered.

PETE GORDON HAD been in the lead car at the head of a caravan of six vehicles transporting equipment and stores into the Green
Zone. Riding shotgun beside Corporal Andy Douglas, he’d been busy on the walkie-talkie with Base Command when the world cracked
open.

The explosion shocked every sense in his system, turning him deaf and smoke-blind, the concussive waves jolting his vehicle,
lifting the chassis and dropping it down hard. He’d staggered out onto the chaotic roadside, his hearing coming back only
to reveal the heartrending shrieks of the dying and wounded.

Working his way over the litter of smoldering steel and rock, Pete found the last vehicle in his caravan. It had been overturned
by the blast and was on fire. He saw three of his men: Corporal Ike Lennar was lying on the ground, twitching. Private Oren
Hancock was holding his guts as they spilled into the dust. The other marine was Kenny Marshall, from Pete’s hometown, his
legs blown off above the knees.

Pete’s eyes watered up now as he remembered that day.

He’d dropped beside his dear friend, ripped off Kenny’s helmet, and cradled his bare head. The picture of Jesus inside Kenny’s
helmet appeared to shake its head as the helmet rolled on its rim. Pete had murmured empty words of comfort to Kenny, the
boy who’d said he’d be ready whenever the Lord called him. Kenny had looked up at Pete—surprise in his eyes—and then the life
had fled from him.

Pete had felt emptied of life himself, and then a torrent of rage flowed into that void. He tore off his shirt and covered
Kenny’s face, then shouted to his troops that the IED had been set off remotely by the car behind the caravan. What was left
of his company, ten good men, had swarmed around the nondescript gray car and yanked open the doors.

There were two cowards in the front seat, and a woman and a child screamed in the back. Pete dragged the woman out of the
car, her arms wrapped around the baby. He didn’t understand what she said, and he didn’t care. When the insurgents were facedown
on the ground, Pete had shouted at them while aiming his weapon at the black sack of woman and baby at his feet.

“Do you love these people?” he’d screamed at the men. “Do you?”

He aimed his gun at the bitch, and she turned to look at him, her hands coming out from her shroud of a garment, palms up
to stop the bullets. He fired his automatic, watching her jerk and flutter, and as she died he shot her squalling kiddo. He
then turned his weapon on the enemy insurgents, but his troops tackled and disarmed him, put him down, and sat on him until
he stopped sobbing.

Nothing was ever said about the incident. But in his mind Gordon still lived on the dusty road outside Haditha. It was the
last time he’d had a tender feeling.

The roar of the descending chopper brought Pete back to the moment. He was inside the car in his garage, the enemy all around,
but he was eager for the action to commence. He patted the stink bomb’s stomach,
tap tap tap,
and waited to make his move.

BRADY’S CALL REACHED me at my desk at 1:30 p.m. He was shouting into the phone, telling me that our witness had blown the
whole thing and that Peter Gordon was in an armed standoff with the FBI. “The bastard is holding his son hostage. Agent Benbow
needs you on the scene, Lindsay. Pete Gordon says he’ll talk only to you.”

Jacobi hovered behind me. I brought him up to speed in ten words or less and saw the conflict in his face.

“Get going. Keep me posted,” he barked. “Be careful,” he shouted after us as Conklin and I left the squad room.

It took an agonizingly long time to get from the Hall through the traffic around the Civic Center and then to where Gordon
lived. We passed through the cordon at the end of the street and saw a herd of black SUVs in front of a mud-brown two-story
house with attached garage set back on a patch of dry lawn.