1st to Die

by James Patterson

  He pushed a button, and a thin band of pulsing lights began to shoot around the roof of the back compartment, a soft, romantic light show.

  “Oooh,” Becky said as the lights came on. “This is so great.”

  “I’ll put up the privacy screen for the rest of the trip. You’re only newlyweds once. Feel free to do whatever. Just look at it as your night.”

  He left the screen slightly open, so he could still see and hear them as he drove deeper into the hills. They were nuzzling now, sharing kisses. The groom’s hand was moving up Becky’s thigh. She pushed her pelvis into him.

  The road became bumpy, and at intermittent points the rough, split concrete gave way to gravelly dirt. They were climbing. On both sides, the slopes were patterned with grids of darkened vines.

  Becky’s teasing laughter gave way to a steady rhythm of deep-throated sighs. Phillip Campbell’s breath began to race. Only inches away, he could hear her panting. A warm, velvety sensation began to burn in his thighs, as it had a week ago at the Grand Hyatt. Michael was entering Becky, and she moaned.

  What is the worst thing?

  At a clearing, he pulled the car to a stop, turned the headlights off. He took the gun and pulled back the double-clicking action.

  Then he lowered the privacy screen.

  In the ambient light, there was Becky, her black cocktail dress pulled up around her waist.

  “Bravo!” he exclaimed.

  They looked up, startled.

  He saw a flicker of fear in the bride’s eyes. She tried to cover herself.

  Only then did the killer recognize that the warm flood burning his thighs and his knees was his own urine.

  He emptied the gun into Becky and Michael De-George.

  Chapter 28

  THAT SUNDAY MORNING, I woke for the first time all week with a sense of hopefulness. It’s the way I am…or was.

  It was clear and beautiful outside; the bay was shimmering as if it were thrilled, too. And it was the day of my brunch with Claire. My confession to her.

  Sunday mornings I had this place I always went to. My favorite place, I had told Raleigh.

  First I drove downtown, to the Marina Green, in my tights, and jogged in the shadow of the bridge.

  Mornings like this, I felt infused with everything that was beautiful about living in San Francisco. The brown coast of Marin, the noises of the bay, even Alcatraz, standing guard.

  I ran my usual three-plus miles south on the harbor, then up the two hundred and twelve stone stairs into Fort Mason Park.

  Even with Negli’s I could still do it. This morning it seemed to be letting me free.

  I jogged past yelping dogs running loose, lovers on a morning walk, gray-clad, bald-headed Chinese men bickering over mah-jongg. Always to the same spot, high on the cliff, looking east over the bay. It was 7:45.

  No one knew I came here. Or why. Like every Sunday, I came upon a small group practicing their tai chi. They were mostly Chinese, led, as every week, by the same old man in a gray knit cap and sweater vest.

  I huffed to a stop and joined in, as I had every Sunday for the past ten years, since my mother died.

  They didn’t know me. What I did. Who I was. I didn’t know them. The old man gave me the same quick, welcoming nod he always did.

  There’s a passage in Thoreau: “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper, fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.”

  I guess I’ve read that a hundred times. It’s the way I feel up here. Part of the stream.

  No Negli’s.

  No crimes, no faces twisted in death.

  No bride and groom murders.

  I did my Morning Swan, my Dragon, and I felt as light and free as I had before Orenthaler first dropped the news on me.

  The leader nodded. No one asked me if I was well. Or how the week was.

  I just welcomed the day, and knew that I was lucky to have it.

  My favorite place.

  I got home just before eleven, a half-finished coffee and the Sunday Chronicle in my hands. I figured I’d poke through the Metro section, see if there was anything on the case from my new best friend Cindy Thomas, shower, and be ready to meet Claire at one.

  It was 11:25 when the phone rang. To my surprise, the voice on the line was Raleigh’s.

  “You dressed?” he asked.

  “Sort of. Why? I have plans.”

  “Cancel them. I’m picking you up. We’re going to Napa.”

  “Napa?” There was no trace of anything light or playful in his voice. “What’s up?”

  “I went into the office this morning just to check. While I was there, someone named Hartwig got transferred from Central Dispatch. He’s a lieutenant in Napa. He’s got some couple out there who are missing. They’re newlyweds on their honeymoon.”

  Chapter 29

  BY THE TIME I HAD CALLED Claire to cancel, showered, put my wet hair under a turned-back Giants cap, and thrown on some clothes, Raleigh’s white Explorer was beeping me from below.

  When I got downstairs, I couldn’t help but notice him looking me over — wet hair, jeans, black leather jacket. “You look nice, Boxer,” he said. He smiled as he put the car in gear.

  He was casually dressed, in crumpled khakis and a faded blue polo shirt. He looked nice, too, but I wasn’t going to say it.

  “This isn’t a date, Raleigh,” I told him.

  “You keep saying that,” he said with a shrug, then stepped down on the gas.

  We pulled up to the Napa Highlands Inn an hour and fifteen minutes later, the exact time, I noted, I was supposed to be pouring my heart out to Claire.

  The inn turned out to be one of those fancy, high-end spas I always dreamed about going to. It was tucked into the mountains on Stag’s Leap Road. By the looks of it, with its main lodge built of stacked giant redwoods and arcing windows of tempered glass, the guests here were not exactly into self-denial.

  Two green-and-white police units were parked along the rotary outside the hotel’s entrance. In the lobby, we were directed to the manager’s office, where a nervous, red-haired management type, who seemed just a few days out of the training program, was standing with a couple of local cops.

  “I’m Hartwig,” said a tall, lanky man in street clothes. He was holding a paper cup from Starbucks. “Sorry to bust up your weekend,” he apologized in a friendly drawl.

  He passed us a wedding photo of the missing couple. It was enclosed in one of those Plexiglas “shaky toys” with the Golden Gate Bridge in the foreground. “Party favor,” he acknowledged. “Mr. and Mrs. Michael De-George. From down your way. They both worked in the city at a large accounting firm. Married on Friday night.”

  Actually, it was a sweet photo. She, bright-eyed, with thick brown hair; he, ruddy and serious looking, wire-rimmed glasses. Oh, God, not them. Not again.

  “So when were they last seen?” I asked.

  “Seven-fifteen last night. Hotel staff saw them come down on their way to dinner. French Laundry,” Hartwig said. “The concierge wrote them out directions, but they never showed.”

  “They drove off to go to dinner and were never heard from again?”

  Hartwig kept rubbing the side of his face. “The manager said they checked in the day before in a gold Lexus. Door staff confirms they drove it briefly that afternoon.”

  “Yeah?” I nodded, fast-forwarding him.

  “Car’s still in the lot.”

  I asked, “Any messages from the outside we should know about?”

  Hartwig went back to a desk and handed me a small stack of slips. I skipped through them. Mom. Dad. Julie and Sam. Vicki and Don. Bon voyage.

  “We thoroughly searched the grounds around the property. Then we widened the search. It’s sort of like your murders down there. Big wedding, celebration. Then poof, they’re gone.”

  “Sort of like our th
ing,” I said. “Except we had bodies.”

  The Napa cop’s face tightened. “Believe me, I didn’t call you guys all the way out here just to help us with the missing-persons forms.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Raleigh asked.

  “’Cause the concierge did receive one call last night. It was from the restaurant, confirming their reservations.”

  “So?”

  Hartwig took a sip of his coffee before he met our eyes. “No one at the restaurant ever called them.”

  Chapter 30

  THE HONEYMOON COUPLE had received no unusual visitors, scheduled no conflicting side trips. The reservation at the French Laundry had been for just two.

  What made this all the more grave was that they had missed their scheduled flight to Mexico.

  While Raleigh poked around outside, I made a quick check of their room. There was this enormous redwood bed neatly turned down, a suitcase laid out, clothes stacked, toiletries. Lots of flowers — mostly roses. Maybe Becky DeGeorge had brought them from the reception.

  There was nothing to indicate that the DeGeorges weren’t set to board that plane the next morning.

  I caught up with Raleigh outside. He was talking with a bellhop who was apparently the last person who saw the DeGeorges leaving.

  When it was just the two of us, Raleigh said, “Two of the local guys and I swept a hundred yards into the woods.” He shook his head in exasperation. “Not even a footprint. I looked around the car, too. It’s locked. No blood, no sign of a struggle. But something happens to them out here. Someone accosts them. Twenty, thirty yards from the hotel.”

  I took a frustrated 360-degree scan of the driveway and the nearby parking lot. A local police cruiser was set up outside the property gate. “Not accosts them. Too risky. It’s in plain view. Maybe someone picked them up.”

  “Reservations were only for two,” he countered. “And the guy at the front door insists they were headed to their car.”

  “Then they vanish?”

  Our attention was diverted by the swoosh of a long black limousine turning into the resort’s pebbly driveway. It pulled up under the redwood overhang in front of the entrance.

  Raleigh and I watched the hotel door open and the doorman emerge rolling a trolley of bags out. The driver of the limo hopped out to open the trunk.

  It hit us both at the same time.

  “It’s a long shot,” said Raleigh, meeting my eyes.

  “Maybe,” I agreed, “but it would explain how someone gained access without attracting anyone’s attention. I think we should check if any limos have been reported stolen lately in the Bay Area.”

  Another car turned into the driveway, a silver Mazda, and parked near the far end of the circle. To my dismay, a woman in cargo pants and a University of Michigan sweatshirt jumped out.

  “Raleigh, you said one of your particular skills was containment, didn’t you?”

  He looked at me as if I had asked Dr. Kevorkian, You’re sort of good at mixing chemicals, aren’t you?

  “Okay,” I said, eyeing the approaching figure, “contain this.”

  Walking up to us was Cindy Thomas.

  Chapter 31

  “EITHER YOU’VE GOT the sharpest nose for a story I’ve ever seen,” I said to Cindy Thomas angrily, “or I may start to think of you as a murder suspect.”

  This was the second time she had intruded in the middle of a possible crime scene.

  “Don’t tell me I’m stepping on some interoffice romance?” she quipped.

  That made me steaming mad. We had a developing situation here. If it got in the news prematurely, it would hurt any chance the department had to control this case. I could just imagine the nightmare headlines: BRIDE AND GROOM KILLER STRIKES AGAIN. And Roth would be livid. This would be the second time I had failed to control the crime scene with the same reporter.

  “Who’s your friend?” Raleigh asked.

  “Cindy Thomas,” she announced, extending her hand. “And you?”

  “Cindy’s with the Chronicle,” I alerted him.

  Raleigh did a startled double take, left in midshake like a fired worker holding the hand of his replacement.

  “Listen very clearly, Ms. Thomas,” I said firmly. “I don’t know if you’ve been around long enough to develop a sense for how this is supposed to work. But if you’re planning on doing anything besides telling me why you’re here and then packing up your little reporter’s kit and driving away, you’re definitely gonna make the department’s shit list in a hurry.”

  “Cindy,” she reminded me. “But first, the much more interesting question is, why am I bumping into you out here?”

  Raleigh and I both glared at her with deepening impatience. “Answer my question,” I pressed.

  “All right.” She pursed her lips. “You two shooting up here on a Sunday, Captain Raleigh kicking around the woods and the parking lot, your grilling the hotel staff, both of you looking stumped. I have to figure it all starts to add up. Like the fact that the place hasn’t been cordoned off, so no crime’s been committed yet. That someone could be missing. Since we all know what you two are working on, it’s not a far reach to assume it might be a couple who just got married. Possibly, that our bride and groom killer found himself number two.”

  My eyes were wide, worried.

  “Either that”— she smiled —“or I’ve grossly misjudged things and you guys are just here zin-tasting for the department’s wine club.”

  “You picked up all that from watching us?” I asked her.

  “Honestly, no.” She nodded toward the hotel gate. “Most of it was from the big-mouth local cop I was yapping with out there.”

  Without meaning to, I started to smile.

  “Seriously, you realize you can’t run with anything here,” Raleigh said.

  “Another dead bride and groom? Same M.O.?” She snorted with resolve. “Damn right I’m going to run with it.”

  I was starting to see the situation going straight downhill. “One thing I’d strongly consider would be to get in your car and just drive back into town.”

  “Would you say that to Fitzpatrick or Stone?”

  “If you went back to town, then I really would owe you one.”

  She smiled thinly. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? Just walk away?”

  “Yeah, just walk away.”

  Cindy shook her head. “Sorry. One, I’d probably get fired, and two, there’s just no way I can let this pass.”

  “What if I drove back with you?” I said, spur of the moment. “What if you can have pretty much what you’re looking for, be on the inside, and give me some consideration at the same time?”

  Raleigh’s eyes almost bulged out of his head, but I gave him my best let-me-handle-this expression.

  “When this story does break,” Cindy insisted, “it’s gonna be larger than any of us can control.”

  “And when it does, it’ll be yours.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She was rolling around in her head whether she could trust me. “You mean from you, exclusive?”

  I waited for Raleigh to object. To my amazement, he went along.

  “Chief Mercer handling all the releases?” Cindy asked.

  “He is. All the public ones.”

  I looked at Raleigh with my nerves jumping around like Mexican jumping beans. If I couldn’t trust him, then when we got back to town, I could be facing maximum rebuke. I would have Roth at my desk, or worse, Mercer. But I already felt I could trust him.

  “So I’m gonna catch a ride back to town with Ms. Thomas,” I said, waiting for his response.

  “Cindy,” the reporter said with renewed determination.

  Raleigh began to nod in a gradual, acquiescent way. “I’ll finish up with Hartwig. I’ll talk to you soon. Ms. Thomas, an unexpected pleasure.”

  I shot him a grateful smile. Then I took the reporter by the arm and said, “C’mon, Cindy, I’m gonna explain the rules along the way.”

  Chapter 32

&
nbsp; I DON’T KNOW WHY I DID IT.

  It was risky and rash, precisely the opposite of whatever had gotten me as far as I was.

  Maybe I just wanted to say screw it in the face of authority. To Roth, Mercer. To play things my own way.

  Maybe the case was widening, and I just wanted to keep the illusion that it was in my control.

  Or maybe all I wanted to do was let someone else in.

  “Before we go anywhere,” I said, grasping Cindy’s wrist as she started up the car, “I need to know something. How did you find out about what was going on down here?”

  She took a deep breath. “So far, all that’s happened is you’ve pushed me away from the story of my career. Now I have to give up my sources, too?”

  “Anything we do from here on is dependent on it.”

  “I’d kind of prefer it if I can keep you guessing,” Cindy said.

  “If this is gonna work, it’s gotta be based on trust.”

  “Then trust goes two ways, doesn’t it, Inspector?”

  We sat there, baking in the hot Mazda littered with empty fast-food drink cups, sort of squaring off.

  “Okay,” I finally relented. I gave her what little we knew about why we were in Napa that afternoon. The DeGeorges missing in action. That they had been married Friday night. The possibility that they were couple number two. “None of this goes to print,” I insisted, “until we have confirmation. I give you the okay.”

  Her eyes beamed with her suppositions suddenly confirmed.

  “Now it’s your turn. There was no press here. Even local. How did you get onto this?”

  Cindy put the Mazda in gear. “I told you I was from Metro,” she said, as the car putted out onto the main road, “and I’ve been fighting to stay on this story. My boss gave me the weekend to come up with something solid on this biggie. You had already brushed me off, so I parked myself down your street since yesterday and waited for something to turn up.”

  “You followed me?”

  “Pretty desperate, huh? But effective.”