James Patterson - The 9th Judgment

“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.