James Patterson - The 9th Judgment

“Graeme Henley,” I said to Conklin, and read him the number.

My partner scrolled down his computer screen. “It’s here. He called that number three or four times a day all last month.”

“Graeme Henley is probably not a woman,” I said.

“So the girlfriend is married,” Yuki said. “That’s why he stayed in the car. Lindsay, Casey thought Marc was seeing someone. If he was, if he was serious, if he couldn’t get rid of Casey… the girlfriend could be a motive.”

“There’s something else,” I told Yuki. “I’ve got a witness who says Casey Dowling was alive when Hello Kitty left the Dowling house.”

“You’ve got a signed statement?”

“It’s an anonymous source but credible.”

“Huh,” said Yuki. “You have an anonymous but credible source who says Casey was alive when Kitty left the Dowling house. Who could that be? Oh my God. Kitty called you?”

“Uh-huh, and she told me things only Kitty could know. Have we got probable cause for a wiretap warrant?”

“It’s a stretch,” Yuki told us. “I’ll go to work on Parisi. I’m not promising, but I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”

YUKI GOT IT done.

A signed warrant for a wiretap was in my hands by lunch the next day, and within hours there was a tap on a phone circuit a couple of blocks from Dowling’s house. Effective three o’clock in the afternoon, Dowling’s phone calls were being routed through a small, windowless room on the fourth floor of the Hall.

The room was empty but for two Salvation Army-quality desks and chairs, a bank of file cabinets, and an outdated telephone book.

Conklin and I brought coffee and settled in behind a locked door. I was keyed up and bordering on optimistic. The odds that Dowling would say something incriminating were a long shot-but a shot we actually had.

For the next five hours, my partner and I monitored Dowling’s incoming and outgoing calls. He was a busy lad, having scripts overnighted from Hollywood, schmoozing with his agent, his lawyer, his banker, his manager, his PR person, his broker, and-finally-his girlfriend.

The conversation with Caroline Henley was laced with “darlings” and “sweethearts” from both ends of the line. They made a plan to have dinner together the next week, when Graeme Henley was on a business trip in New York.

Then, when I was sure the conversation was over, it got interesting.

“You don’t know what this is like, Marc. Graeme knows something’s wrong, and now he wants us to go into counseling.”

“I understand completely, Caroline. You have to stall him. We’ve waited for two long years, darling. Another few months won’t matter in the big picture.”

“You’ve been saying that forever.”

“Three or four more months, that’s all,” Dowling said. “Be patient. I told you it will work out, and it will. We need the public to get bored with the story, and then we’ll be fine.”

Conklin broke into a grin. “Two years. He’s been seeing her for two years. It’s not a smoking gun, but it’s something.”

I CALLED JACOBI from Yuki’s office and told him that Marcus Dowling had been having an ongoing relationship with a woman, not his wife, for two years.

“Go get ’em,” Jacobi said.

Conklin and I drove to Caroline Henley’s place, a modern two-story house only blocks from the Presidio.

Mrs. Henley came to the door wearing her blond hair in one long braid, black tights under a blue-striped man’s shirt, a big diamond ring next to her wedding band. A couple of little boys were playing with trucks in the living room behind her.

I introduced myself and my partner and asked Mrs. Henley if we could come in to talk, and she opened the door wide.

Conklin has consistently proved that he can get any woman to spill her guts, so once we were ensconced in overstuffed furniture, I turned the floor over to him.

“Marcus Dowling says you two are very good friends.”

“He never said that. Come on. I’ve met him at a couple of cocktail parties is all.”

“Mrs. Henley, we know about your relationship,” my partner said. “We just need you to verify his whereabouts at certain times. We have no interest in making trouble for you. Or,” he added reasonably, “we can come back when your husband is home.”

“No, please don’t do that,” she said.

Caroline Henley told us to wait. She bent to talk to the boys, then took their small hands, walked them to a bedroom, and closed the door.

She came back to her seat and clasped her hands in her lap, then said to my partner, “Casey stifled him. She ground him down with her jealousy and her constant demands. Marc was waiting for the right time, and then he was going to divorce her and I was going to leave Graeme. We were going to get married. That’s not bull, that’s the truth.”

I walked around the living room as Caroline Henley told Conklin “the truth.” There were photos everywhere, standing on tables, framed on the walls. Caroline Henley was either at the center of every group shot or alone, wearing something small that showed off her figure and her beautiful face.

I wondered why she was attracted to an aging movie star twenty years’ her senior. Maybe her vanity demanded more of a catch than a stockbroker ordinaire .

“So, if I’ve got this right, you and Marcus Dowling have been lovers for two years,” Conklin said.

Caroline Henley looked stunned as she realized why we were there. “Wait a minute. Are you thinking he had something to do with Casey’s death? That’s crazy. I would have known. Marc’s not capable of that. Is he? ”

She clapped her hands to her mouth, then dropped them. She almost looked pleased when she asked Conklin, “You think he killed Casey for me? ”

Back out in the car, I said to my partner, “So maybe he wanted out of the marriage but didn’t have the guts to tell Casey. Then Kitty shows up in his bedroom, for Christ’s sake. Dowling couldn’t have planned it better.”

“Another way to look at it,” Conklin said. “Divorce is expensive. But, if you get away with it, murder is dead cheap.”

SARAH WELLS WAS dressed for her night job, black clothes and shoes, car pointed toward Pacific Heights. She hit the turn signal and took Divisadero as the light went red. A cacophony of horns blared, damn it. Brakes screeched, and she narrowly avoided a collision with a station wagon full of kids.

Oh my God. Focus, Sarah!

She should be thinking about the work ahead, but her mind kept drifting back to earlier that night, seeing the perfect blue fingerprints on the soft flesh of Heidi’s arms, the still-vivid bite mark on her neck.

Heidi had tried to brush off the evidence of Beastly’s attack. “He’s out of control,” she said. “But it’s not his fault.”

“Whose fault is it? Yours?”

“It’s because of what he went through in Iraq.”

“It doesn’t make any difference what the reason is,” Sarah had snapped. “You don’t have to take it.”

She hadn’t meant to bark at Heidi, but she was angry and scared at what Pete Gordon could do. Heidi had to get away from Beastly for her own sake, and for the good of the children.

“I know, I know,” Heidi had cried out, putting her head on Sarah’s shoulder. “It can’t go on.”

No, it couldn’t go on, and it wouldn’t, Sarah told herself as she cruised along Bush Street. She was meeting with Lynnette Green, Maury’s widow, next week. Lynnette had told Sarah that she’d buy the jewels and sell them herself. Sarah couldn’t wait to cash out. Could not wait.