The 9th Judgment by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro Read Free Book Online

flights and worked my way through the Hall’s crowded lobby, out the back door, and down the breezeway to
     the medical examiner’s office.
    I found Claire in the autopsy suite. She was wearing a floral shower cap and an apron over her XXL scrubs—still carrying some
     poundage from her pregnancy on her size-sixteen frame. I called out to her, and she looked up from the body of Barbara Ann
     Benton, who was lying eviscerated on the table.
    “You just missed Cindy,” Claire said, putting Barbara Ann’s liver onto a scale.
    “No, I didn’t. She stormed the squad room. Got Conklin into a lip-lock. Promised him favors in exchange for a headline, and
     he lapped it up. What’d she get out of you?”
    “Breaking news. Casey Dowling was shot to death. Cindy has the best job, doesn’t she? She can focus on her one and only story
     and still have time to get it on with Inspector Hottie.”
    “Anything interesting on Barbara Ann Benton?” I asked, staring into the dead woman’s abdominal cavity, hoping to head off
     a sore subject. To be precise, it was hard keeping Cindy out of confidential police business—and
I
wasn’t sleeping with her.
    “No postmortem surprises,” said Claire. “Mrs. Benton took two slugs. Either one of them could have killed her, but the shot
     to the chest is the cause of death.”
    “And the baby?”
    “Cause of death, a nine millimeter through the temporal lobe. Calling it a homicide. That’s signed, stamped, and official.
     The slugs are at the lab.”
    Claire asked her assistant to finish with Barbara Ann, then stripped off her gloves and mask and walked me out of the autopsy
     suite and into her office. She took the swivel chair, and I slumped into the seat across from her desk. She pulled two bottles
     of water out of the fridge and handed one to me.
    Claire has a picture on her desk, and I turned it around so I could scrutinize the four of us on the front steps of the Hall
     of Justice. There was Yuki, all suited up, her dark hair parted in the middle, falling in two glossy wings to her chin; Cindy
     was grinning, her slightly overlapping front teeth drawing attention to how pretty she really is; and then there was Claire,
     buxom and beautiful in her midforties.
    And there I was, towering over them all at five ten, wearing my blond hair in a ponytail and sporting a dead-serious look
     on my face. The thing is, I think of myself as lighthearted. I wonder where I got that idea.
    “What’s wrong, Lindsay?”
    “You don’t always get what you want,” I said, sort of smiling.
    “The Benton case? Or the other thing?”
    “Both. Listen, I’m supervising Chi on Benton, but he’s the primary.”
    “I know. And you know Paul Chi will kill himself to solve the case.”
    I nodded. “Tell me what you’ve got on Casey Dowling.”
    “Her assailant used a forty-four.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “I know. What’s a burglar doing with a cannon when a cute little nine would do? Lab didn’t get a hit from the database.”
    “That was quick,” I said.
    “I leaned on Clapper to rush it, and now I have to name my next child after him.”
    “Clapper Washburn. Rough handle for a child.”
    Claire laughed, then sobered. “Maybe I’ve got something.”
    “Don’t make me beg.”
    “When I did the rape kit on Casey Dowling, I found evidence of sexual intercourse. The little fishes were still swimming.”

Chapter 20
    WHEN I GOT back to my desk, Conklin said, “While you were out, seventy-two people called with tips about Casey Dowling’s murder.
     Look.” Brenda came over and dropped several pink message squares on his desk. “Ten more.”
    “What did I miss?”
    “Dowling’s lawyer went on the air, said he’s putting up fifty grand for info leading to the arrest of Casey Dowling’s killer.”
    “So here’s the question, Rich. Is Dowling completely right to offer a reward? Or is he jamming us up with wacko tipsters so
     we can’t work the case?”
    I called Yuki to discuss