The 9th Judgment - James Patterson [74]
“Do you have any leads on this Kitty person?”
“She buried herself in a crowd coming through the front door. The security camera picked up the mob scene, but we couldn’t see who left the case,” Yuki said.
“Sergeant?”
“We have nothing on her identity,” I told him. “The jewelry is at the lab. So far, we haven’t found prints on anything. All we have is that Kitty returned every last piece. I think that gives her some credibility when she says she didn’t kill Casey Dowling.”
“What the hell do we have security cameras for?” Parisi groused.
Like the rest of us, Parisi had taken vast quantities of crap for his department’s low conviction record in the face of San Francisco’s rising crime rate. That would be our fault—the police, who didn’t bring the district attorney’s office enough evidence for them to build airtight cases.
“So that leaves us with what, Sergeant? The unsubstantiated statement of an anonymous self-confessed jewel thief that she’s not a murderer? You actually think Dowling did it?”
“Kitty was adamant the two times I spoke with her, and I found her convincing.”
“Never mind her. She’s nobody. She’s a ghost. What about Dowling?”
I told Parisi what we had on Caroline Henley, Dowling’s girlfriend of two years. I explained that Dowling’s net worth was in the tens of millions and that since a divorce would cost him plenty, there was a pretty good motive for killing his wife. I said that Dowling’s story had been inconsistent. That his explanation of the sounds, the shots, whether or not his wife had called out to him, had changed over time.
“What else?”
“His hair was wet when we interviewed him right after the shooting.”
“So he showered to get rid of evidence.”
“That’s what we think.”
Red Dog pushed the folder of photos across the desk in my direction. “A shower is not probable cause. Before you search the screen legend’s house and the news media gets hold of it and that gets us sued for defamation, you’d better have something stronger than the burglar says she didn’t do it and Dowling took a shower.
“It’s not probable cause for a warrant, Yuki,” Parisi said. “It’s not going to fly.”
Chapter 106
I YANKED OUT my desk chair and crashed it hard into my trash can, then did it again for the satisfying effect of the clamor. I said to Conklin, “Red Dog won’t ask for a warrant without a damned smoking gun.”
Conklin stared up at me and said, “Funny you should say that. I was watching some old Dowling movies last night. Look at this.”
Conklin rotated his computer screen around to face me.
I sat, wheeled my chair up to the desk, and looked at Conklin’s monitor. I saw what appeared to be a movie-studio publicity still for an old spy flick.
“Night Watch,” Conklin said. “He made this decades ago with Jeremy Cushing. Terrible film, but it was what they called ‘camp.’ It became a cult favorite. Check this out.”
There was Dowling: black suit, sideburns, and a sun-lined squint. And he was holding a gun. “You’re kidding me. Is that a forty-four?”
“A Ruger Blackhawk. It’s a single-action revolver, a six-shooter,” my partner said, clicking on another picture. The famous and now-deceased Jeremy Cushing was giving the gun to Dowling as a keepsake in a handshake photo op. You could almost hear the flashbulbs popping.
Conklin hit a key, and the printer chugged out hard copies of the photos. I picked up the phone and called Yuki. “Grab Red Dog before he goes anywhere. I’m coming back down.”
We arrived at Dowling’s magnificent mansion in Nob Hill before lunch, three cars full of Homicide cops dying to make a collar. I rang the doorbell, and Dowling came to the door in jeans and an unbuttoned white dress shirt.
“Sergeant Boxer,” he said.
“Hello again. You remember Inspector Conklin. And I’d like to introduce Assistant DA Yuki Castellano.”
Yuki handed Dowling the search warrant. “I went to school with Casey, you know,” she said, stepping