1st to Die

by James Patterson

  “That we already knew,” I said.

  He kept looking at me, as if I had somehow insulted him with the obvious. Then he lifted a bottle out of the open case.

  “Check the numbers, Lindsay. Each bottle’s registered with a number. Look here, four-two-three-five-five-nine. Must make it go down all the more smoothly.” He took out a folded-up green copy of a “Police Property” voucher from his chest pocket. “The one from the Hyatt. Same lot. Same number.” Charlie smiled.

  The bottles were the same. It was solid evidence that tied Jenks to where David and Melanie Brandt were killed. It wasn’t a weapon, but it was damning, no longer circumstantial. A rush of excitement shot through me. I high-fived the pale, heavy-set CSU man.

  “Anyway,” Charlie said, almost apologetically, “I wouldn’t have brought you all the way out here for just that.”

  Clapper led me through the finely furnished interior of the house to the master bedroom. It had a vast picture window looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge. He took me into a spacious closet. Jenks’s.

  “You remember the bloody jacket we found at the hotel?” In the rear of the closet, Charlie squatted over a large shoe rack. “Well, now it’s a set.”

  Clapper reached behind the shoe rack and pulled out a crumpled Nordstrom’s shopping bag. “I wanted you to see how we found it.”

  Out of the bag, he pulled balled-up black tuxedo trousers.

  “I already checked. It’s the other half of the jacket at the Hyatt. Same maker. Look inside; same style number.”

  I might as well have been staring at a million dollars in cash, or a ton of stolen cocaine. I couldn’t take my eyes off the pants, imagining how Nicholas Jenks would squirm now. Claire had been right. She’d been right from the start. The jacket hadn’t come off the victim. It had always belonged to Jenks.

  “So whaddaya think, Inspector?” Charlie Clapper grinned. “Can you close your case or what? Oh, yeah,” the CSU man exclaimed, almost absentmindedly. “Where’d I put it?”

  He patted his pockets, searched around in his jacket. He finally found a small plastic bag.

  “Straight out of the sucker’s electric razor,” Charlie announced.

  In the bag were several short red hairs.

  Chapter 91

  CLAIRE SAID, “I’ve been expecting you, honey.” She took my arm and led me back into the lab to a small room lined with chemicals. Two microscopes were set up side by side on a granite-block counter.

  “Charlie told me what he came up with,” she said. “The champagne. Matching pantalones. You got him, Lindsay.”

  “Match these”— I held out the plastic bag —“we put him in the gas chamber.”

  “Okay, let’s see,” she said, smiling. She opened a yellow envelope marked “Priority, Evidence,” and took out a petri dish identical to the one I had seen after the second murders. It had Subject: Rebecca DeGeorge, #62340 written on the front in bold marker.

  With a tweezer, she placed the single hair that had come from the second bride onto a clear slide. Then she inserted it under the scope. She leaned over it, adjusting the focus, then caught me by surprise, asking, “So how’re you feeling, woman?”

  “You mean Negli’s?”

  “What else would I mean?” she said, peering into the scope.

  In the rush of apprehending Jenks, it was the first time in the past few days that I had really thought about it. “I saw Medved late last week. My blood count’s still down.”

  Claire finally looked up. “I’m sorry, Lindsay.”

  Trying to sound upbeat, I walked her through my regimen. The increased dosage. The higher frequency. I mentioned the possibility of a bone marrow transplant.

  She flashed me a big smile. “We’re gonna have to find a way to get those red cells of yours shaken up.”

  Even in the laboratory, I must’ve started to blush.

  “What?” asked Claire. “What’re you hiding? Trying unsuccessfully to hide?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something’s going on. Between you and Mr. Chris Raleigh, I bet. C’mon, this is me you’re talking to. You can’t pull that blue-wall-of-silence stuff.”

  I told her. From the first kiss at the precinct to the slow, torturous ride home to the burst of heat right there on the hallway rug.

  Claire grasped me by my shoulders. Her eyes were as bright and excited as mine. “So?”

  “So?” I laughed. “So… it was awesome. It was… right.” I felt a chill of doubt come over me. “I just don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. Considering what’s going on.” I hesitated. “I could love him, Claire. Maybe I already do.”

  We stared at each other. There wasn’t much more to say.

  “Well.” Claire’s eyes returned to her microscope. “Let’s see what we have here. Hairs from his chinny-chin-chin.”

  Three hairs from Jenks’s razor were set on a cellular slide. She loaded it into a scope. The two scopes were side by side.

  Claire looked first, leaned over as she focused the new one in. Then she went back and forth. “Mm-hmm,” she uttered.

  I held my breath. “What do you think?” I asked.

  “You tell me.”

  I leaned in. Immediately, I recognized the first hair, the one from inside Rebecca DeGeorge’s vagina. Thick, reddish, a white filament twisted around its base like the coil of a snake.

  Then I looked at the hairs from Jenks’s razor. There were three of them, shorter, clipped, but each had that same reddish hue, that same coil of filament around it.

  I was no expert. But there was no doubt in my mind.

  The hairs were a perfect match.

  Chapter 92

  NICHOLAS JENKS was in a holding cell on the tenth floor of the Hall of Justice. He was headed to arraignment later today.

  His lawyer, Sherman Leff, was with him, looking as if this were all just a formality and the scales of justice were resting on the shoulders of his English-tailored suit.

  Jill Bernhardt accompanied Raleigh and me. Jenks had no idea what was coming his way. We had the champagne, the tuxedo pants, matching hairs from his beard. We had him in the suite with David and Melanie Brandt. I couldn’t wait to tell him all the good news.

  I sat down across from Jenks and looked him in the eye. “This is Assistant District Attorney Jill Bernhardt,” I said. “She’s going to be handling your case. She’s going to convict you, too.”

  He smiled — the same, gracious, confident, and condescending glint — as if he were receiving us in his home. Why does he look so confident? I wondered.

  “If it’s all right,” Jill said, “I’d like to begin.”

  “Your meeting,” Sherman Leff said. “I’ve no objection.”

  Jill took a breath. “Mr. Jenks, in an hour you are going to be arraigned for the first-degree murder of David and Melanie Brandt at the Grand Hyatt hotel on June fifth. Shortly after, I believe a Cleveland court will do the same for the murders of James and Kathleen Voskuhl. Based on what the medical examiner has just uncovered, I believe you can expect a Napa Valley court to follow through as well. We have overwhelming evidence linking you to all three of these crimes. We’re sharing this with you, and with your counsel, in the hope that your response to this evidence might spare the city, the families of the deceased, and your family the further humiliation of a trial.”

  Sherman Leff finally cut in. “Thank you, Ms. Bernhardt. As long as consideration is the spirit of the day, we’d like to begin by expressing my client’s deep regret for his emotional outburst toward Inspector Boxer at the time of his arrest. As you might imagine, the shock and the suddenness of such an accusation, so totally preposterous after he had fully complied with your questioning…in his own home… I’m certain you can understand how the wrong emotions might take hold.”

  “I do deeply regret that, Inspector,” Jenks spoke up. “I realize how this must look. My being less than forthcoming about my relationship with one of the deceased. And now you seem to have stumbled upon that
unfortunate book.”

  “Which,” Leff interjected, “I must advise you, we will be making a motion to suppress. Obtaining it was an unjustified intrusion into my client’s private domain.”

  “The warrant was totally justified,” Jill said calmly.

  “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that your client gave false testimony concerning his whereabouts when Kathy Voskuhl was killed.”

  Leff hung in midmotion, stunned.

  “Your client was in Cleveland, Counselor,” I sprang on him. Then I said to Jenks, “You were registered at the Westin. You stayed two nights, coinciding with the Voskuhl murders. You said you were at home, Mr. Jenks. But you were there. And you were at the Hall of Fame.”

  Jenks’s smile disappeared and his eyes flicked around the room. He swallowed, and I could see the knot sliding down his throat. He was retracing his alibis and lies. He looked at Leff, somewhat apologetically.

  “I was there,” he admitted. “I did conceal it. As it happens, I was in town to address a local readers group. You can check. The Argosy Bookstore. I didn’t know how to explain it. Coupled with knowing Kathy, it seemed so incriminating. But let me make this clear. You’re wrong about the wedding. I was nowhere near it.”

  My blood rose. I couldn’t believe this guy. “You had a reading? When, Mr. Jenks?”

  “Saturday afternoon. At four. A small group of very loyal fans. The Argosy was very kind to me when I first started out.”

  “And after that?”

  “After that I did what I always do. I stayed at the hotel and wrote. I took a swim, had an early dinner. You can ask my wife. I always spend the evenings alone when I’m on the road. It’s been written up in People magazine.”

  I leaned across the table. “So this was all some bizarre coincidence, right? A woman with whom you’ve denied having a sexual relationship is brutally murdered. You just happen to be in town. You just happen to lie about the relationship and about being there. Your likeness just happens to be caught by a security camera at the scene. Is that how it goes, Mr. Jenks?”

  Leff placed a cautionary hand on Jenks’s arm.

  “No!” His client snapped, his self-control clearly chipping away.

  Then he became calmer and wiped the sweat off his brow. “I lied…for Chessy…to preserve my marriage.” He straightened himself up in the wooden chair. His alibi was collapsing. “I’m not a perfect man, Inspector. I slip. I deceived you about Kathy. It was wrong. The answer is yes. What you assume to be true is true. We were lovers on and off for five years. It continued… well into her relationship with James. It was folly. It was the desperate thrill of a fool. But it was not murder. I did not kill Kathy. And I did not kill the others!”

  Jenks stood up. For the first time, he looked scared. The reality of what was happening was clearly sinking in.

  I leaned forward and said, “A bottle of champagne was left in the suite at the Hyatt where the Brandts were killed. It matched the same lot you purchased at an auction at Butterfield and Butterfield in November nineteen ninety-six.”

  Leff objected, “We know that. Surely the unfortunate coincidence of my client’s taste in champagne doesn’t implicate him in this act. He didn’t even know the Brandts. That wine could have been purchased anywhere.”

  “It could’ve, yes; however, the registration number on the bottle from the Hyatt matched those from the rest of the lot we uncovered at your home last night.”

  “This is getting absurd,” Jenks said angrily. “This sort of bullshit wouldn’t even make one of my books.”

  “Hopefully this will be better, then.” From under the table, I pulled out the Nordstrom’s shopping bag holding the balled-up tuxedo pants. I tossed them onto the table in front of everybody. “You recognize these?”

  “Pants…What kinds of games are we playing now?”

  “These were found last night. In this bag. In the back of your bedroom closet.”

  “So? What’re you saying, they’re mine? Joseph Abboud. They could be. I don’t understand where you’re going.”

  “Where I’m going is that these pants match the tuxedo jacket that was found in the Brandts’ suite. They’re a suit, Mr. Jenks.”

  “A suit?”

  “It’s the pants to the jacket you left in their hotel room. Same brand. Same style number. Same size.”

  A deepening panic began to sweep over his face.

  “And if all this still falls short of your usual material,” I said, fixing on his eyes, “then how’s this. The hair matched. The hair you left inside Becky DeGeorge. With hairs taken from your house. It belonged to you, you animal. You convicted yourself.”

  Jill leaned forward. “You’re going away, Jenks. You’re going away until the appeals finally run out and they come to stick a loaded needle in your arm.”

  “This is insane,” he cried. He was leaning over me, veins in his neck swelling, shouting in my face, “You bitch. You’re setting me up. You fucking ice bitch. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Suddenly, I found that I couldn’t move. Seeing Jenks unwind was one thing. But there was something else going on. I felt pinned to my chair.

  I knew, but I couldn’t fight it — Negli’s.

  I finally got up and went to the door, but my head swirled and the room tilted. My legs began to buckle. Not here, I begged.

  Then I felt Raleigh supporting me. “Lindsay…you all right?” He was looking at me, worried, unsuspecting. I saw Jill there, too.

  “You all right, Lindsay?”

  I leaned against the wall. I willed my legs to work. “I’m okay.” I whispered, holding on to Raleigh’s arm.

  “I just hate that bastard,” I said, and walked out of the interrogation room. I was very weak, swaying. I barely made it to the ladies’ room.

  I felt faint, then nauseated, as if some angry spirit were trying to claw out of my lungs. I closed my eyes, leaned over the sink.

  I coughed, a raw, burning stinging in my chest, then I shook and coughed some more.

  Gradually, I felt the spell recede. I took a breath, opened my eyes.

  I shuddered.

  There was blood all over the sink.

  Chapter 93

  FOUR HOURS LATER, in District Criminal Court, I felt well enough to watch Nicholas Jenks be arraigned for murder.

  A buzzing crowd filled the halls outside the courtroom of Judge Stephen Bowen. Photographers flashed cameras blindly, reporters surged for a glimpse of the sullen, shaken bestselling writer.

  Raleigh and I squeezed through, took a seat behind Jill in the front row. My strength having returned, the riot in my chest subsided. I wanted Jenks to see me there.

  I saw Cindy, sitting in the press section. And in the back of the courtroom, I spotted Chancellor Weil and his wife.

  It was over before it began. Jenks was led in, his eyes as dead and hollow as craters on the moon. The clerk read the docket, the suspect rose. The bastard pleaded Not Guilty. What were they going to argue, that all the evidence was inadmissible?

  Leff, the consummate showman, was unusually respectful, even demure before Judge Bowen. He made a pleading case for release on recognizance based on Jenks’s stature in the community. For a moment, the killer’s accomplishments almost even swayed me.

  Jill fought him head-on. She graphically detailed the savagery of the murders. She argued that the suspect had the means and the lack of roots to flee.

  I felt a surge of triumph rippling through me when the judge struck his gavel and intoned, “Bail denied.”

  Chapter 94

  NOW WE WERE CELEBRATING.

  It was the end of the day, a day I had long waited for, and I met the girls for a drink at Susie’s.

  We had earned this. Nicholas Jenks had been arraigned. No bail. No consideration of the court. The four of us had pulled it off.

  “Here’s to the Women’s Murder Club,” Cindy cheered, with her beer mug in the air.

  “Not bad for a collection of gender-impaired public s
ervants,” Claire agreed.

  “What did Jenks call me?” I shook my head and smiled. “A fucking ice bitch?”

  “I can do ice bitch,” Jill said, grinning.

  “To the ice bitches of the world,” Cindy toasted, “and the men who cannot thaw us out.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Claire. “Edmund thaws me just fine.” We all laughed and clinked beers.

  “Still,” I said, letting out a deep breath, “I’d like to turn up a murder weapon. And I want to nail him to the second crime.”

  “When I’m through with him,” Jill tugged at her beer and said, “you won’t have to worry about him serving time for the second crime.”

  “You see Jill chop down his lawyer’s bail request?” Cindy said with admiration. “You see the look on his face?” She made her fingers into a scissors. “Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip. Straight for the testicles. That man was left standing there in his suit with a two-inch dick.”

  We all laughed. Cindy’s cherubic nose twisted as she said, Snip, snip, snip.

  “Still,” I said, “without a weapon, his motive still needs work.”

  “Damn his motive, child!” Claire exclaimed. “Let well enough alone.”

  Jill agreed. “Why can’t his motive simply be that he’s a sick bastard? He’s had a history of sexual sadism for years. He’s brutalized three women that we know of. I’m sure more will come out as the trial moves on.

  “You saw the bastard, Lindsay,” she went on. “He’s crazed. His little perfect world gets rocked, he goes insane. This morning, he looked like he was about to plant a death grip on your throat.” She grinned toward the group. “Lindsay just sort of glares up at him like, Get the fuck out of my face.”

  They were about to raise a glass to me — the tough hero cop who would always carry the tag that she was the one who nailed Jenks — when the realization shot through me that I could never have done it without them. It wasn’t my steel nerves that had taken over in the interrogation room, but the grip of my disease squeezing my energy. I had kept it concealed — never shared — even with the ones who had become my closest friends.