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“You just missed Cindy,” Claire said, putting Barba
ra 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.”
