1st to Die

by James Patterson

  But I was no starry-eyed adolescent. I knew exactly what was taking place. I felt the steady, undeniable current rising inside me like a river spilling over its banks. I felt helpless.

  Saturday, Chris promised me a day I would never forget.

  We drove down to Lake Tahoe, to a quaint marina on the California side. He had rented a platform boat, an old puttering wooden barge. We bought sandwiches and a bottle of chardonnay, and went out to the middle of the lake. The water calm and turquoise, the sky cloudless and bright. All around, the rocky tips of snow-capped mountains ringed the lake like a crown.

  We moored, and for a while it was our own private world. Chris and I stripped down to our suits. I figured we’d kick back, enjoy the wine in the sun, look at the view, but Chris had sort of an expectant, dare-you look in his eye. He ran his hands through the frigid water.

  “No way,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s got to be fifty degrees.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a dry cold,” he teased.

  “Right,” I chortled. “You go, then. Catch me a coho if you see one swim by.”

  He came toward me with playful menace in his eyes. “You can catch one yourself.”

  “Not a chance.” I shook my head in defiance. But I was laughing, too. As he stepped forward, I backed to the rear of the craft until I ran out of room.

  He put his arms around me. I felt the tingle of his skin on mine. “It’s sort of an initiation,” he said.

  “An initiation for what?”

  “Exclusive club. Anyone who wants to be in it has to jump in.”

  “Then leave me out.” I laughed, squirming in his strong arms. With only weak resistance, he yanked me up on the cushion seat in the stern of the boat.

  “Shit, Chris,” I cried as he took hold of my hand.

  “Geronimo works better,” he said, pulling at me. I screamed, “You bastard!” and we toppled in.

  The water was freezing, a total, invigorating rush. We hit the surface together, and I screamed in his face, “Goddamn you!” Then he kissed me in the water and all at once I felt no chill. I held on to him, at first for warmth, but also because I never wanted to let him go. I felt a trust for him that was so complete it was almost scary. Fifty degrees, but I was burning up.

  “Check this out,” I dared him, kicking free of his grasp. There was an orange boat marker bobbing fifty yards away. “Race you to that buoy.” Then I cut out, surprising him with my speed.

  Chris tried to keep up with steady, muscular strokes, but I blew him away.

  Near the buoy I slowed, waited for him to catch up.

  Chris looked totally confounded. “Where’d you learn to swim?”

  “South San Francisco YMCA; fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-year-old division champ.” I laughed. “No one could keep up. Looks like I still have it.”

  Moments later, we had guided the boat to a private, shady cove near the shore. Chris cut the engine and put up a canvas shade around the cabin that was supposed to protect us from the sun. With bated breath, we crept inside, blocked off from anyone’s view.

  I let him slowly unfasten my bathing suit, and he licked beads of water off my arms and breasts. Then I kneeled down and unbuttoned his shorts. We didn’t have to speak. Our bodies were saying everything. I lay back, pulling Chris onto me.

  I had never felt so connected to another person, or to a place. I arched against him silently, the lake lapping gently at our sides. I thought, If I speak, it will change everything.

  Afterward I just lay there, tremors of warmth radiating through my body. I never wanted this to end, but I knew that it had to end. Reality always gets in the way, doesn’t it?

  Chapter 101

  SOMETIME THAT EVENING, I found myself starting to cry.

  I had made spaghetti carbonara, and we ate in the moonlight on the deck with a bottle of pinot noir. Chris put a cello concerto by Dvoák on the stereo, but eventually we switched to the Dixie Chicks.

  As we ate, Chris asked about where and how I had grown up.

  I told him about my mom, and how my dad had left when I was just a kid; how she had worked as a bookkeeper at the Emporium for twenty years. How I had practically raised my sister.

  “Mom died of breast cancer when she was only fifty.” The irony of this certainly wasn’t lost on me.

  “What about your father? I want to know everything about you.”

  I took a sip of wine, then told him how I’d only seen him twice since I was thirteen. At my mother’s funeral. And the day I became a cop. “He sat in the back, apart from everybody else.” Suddenly, my blood became hot with long-buried feelings. “What was he doing there?” I looked up, my eyes moist. “Why did he spoil it?”

  “You ever want to see him?”

  I didn’t answer. Something was starting to take shape in my head. My mind drifted, struck by the fact that here I was, maybe the happiest I had been, but it was all built on a lie. I was blinking back the impact of what was going through my mind. Not doing real well.

  Chris reached over and grasped my hand. “I’m sorry, Lindsay. I had no right to…”

  “That’s not it,” I whispered, and squeezed his hand. I knew it was time to really trust him, time to finally give myself over to Chris. But I was scared, my cheeks trembling, my eyes holding back tears.

  “I have something to tell you,” I said. “This is a little heavy, Chris.”

  I looked at him with all the earnestness and trust my worried eyes could manage. “Remember when I almost fainted in the room with Jenks?”

  Chris nodded. Now he looked a little worried. His forehead was furrowed with deep lines.

  “Everyone thought I was just freaked out, but it wasn’t that. I’m sick, Chris. I may have to go into the hospital soon.”

  I saw the light in his eyes suddenly dim. He started to speak, but I put my finger to his lips.

  “Just listen to me for a minute. Okay?”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  I poured out everything about Negli’s. I was not responding to treatments. Hope was fading. What Medved had warned only days before. I was in stage three, serious. A bone marrow transplant might be next.

  I didn’t cry. I told him straight out, like a cop. I wanted to give him hope, to show him I was fighting, to show him I was the strong person I thought he loved.

  When I was done, I clasped his hands and took a monumental breath. “The truth is, I could die soon, Chris.”

  Our hands were tightly entwined. Our eyes locked. We couldn’t have been more in touch.

  Then he placed his hand gently on my cheek and rubbed it. He didn’t say a word, just took me and held me in the power and softness of his hands and drew me to him.

  And that’s what made me cry. He was a good person. I might lose him. And I cried for all the things we might never do.

  I cried and cried, and with each sob he pressed me harder. He kept whispering, “It’s all right, Lindsay. It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  “I should’ve told you,” I said.

  “I understand why you didn’t. How long have you known?”

  I told him. “Since the day we met. I feel so ashamed.”

  “Don’t be ashamed,” he said. “How could you know you could trust me?”

  “I trusted you pretty quickly. I didn’t trust myself.”

  “Well, now you do,” Chris whispered.

  Chapter 102

  I THINK WE ROCKED ALL NIGHT. We laughed some, cried some. I don’t even remember how I woke up in bed.

  The following day, I barely left his touch. With all that was threatening, all that seemed uncertain, I felt so safe and sure in his arms. I never wanted to leave.

  But something else happened during that weekend — apart from Negli’s, apart from Chris and me. Something gripping, invading my sense of comfort and security.

  It was something Jacobi had said that planted the thought.

  One of those thrown-out remarks you didn’t pay much attention to but somehow got filed away
in your mind. Then it comes back at the oddest time, with more force and logic than before.

  It was Sunday night. The weekend was over. Chris had driven me home. Hard as it was to leave him, I needed to be alone for a while, to take inventory of the weekend, to figure out what I would do next.

  I unpacked, made some tea, curled up on my couch with Her Sweetness. My mind wandered to the murder case.

  Nicholas Jenks was behind me now. Only the countless reports to fill out. Even though he was still ranting about being set up. It was just more insanity, more lies.

  It was then that Jacobi’s words snaked into my brain.

  Good collar, he’d said, early Tuesday morning.

  He had that annoying, persistent look in his eyes. Just remember, he’d called after me, it was the champagne match that got you on your way…. Why do you think Jenks left that champagne?

  I was barely paying attention. Jenks was locked away. The case was a slam dunk. I was thinking about the night before, and Chris. I stopped on the stairs and turned to him. I don’t know, Warren. We’ve been over this. Heat of the moment, maybe.

  You’re right. He nodded. That must be why he didn’t ball up the jacket and take it with him, too.

  I looked at him, like, Why are we going through this now? Jenks needed a clean tux jacket to get out of the hotel undetected. The DNA match on the hair made it all academic, anyway.

  Then he said it. You ever read the whole book? he asked.

  Which book?

  Jenks’s book. Always a Bridesmaid.

  The parts that matter, I replied. Why?

  He said, I don’t know, it just sort of stuck with me. Like I said, my wife happens to be a fan. There were some copies of the manuscript around, so I took one home. It was interesting how it all came out in the end.

  I looked at him, trying to figure out where all this was heading.

  It was a setup, Jacobi said. This Phillip Campbell guy, he gets off. He pins the whole thing on someone else.

  Days later, Warren’s words came creeping back into my mind. A setup. He pins the whole thing on someone else.

  It was ridiculous, I told myself, that I was even dignifying this scenario, running through it in my mind. Everything was solid, airtight.

  Setup, I found myself thinking again.

  “I must be an idiot,” I said aloud. “Jenks is clinging to any story he can to wiggle his way out of this.”

  I got up, brought my tea into the bathroom, began to wash my face.

  In the morning I would tell Cheery about my disease. I had some time coming. I would face this thing head-on. Now that the case was complete, it was the right time. Now that the case was complete!

  I went into the bedroom, ripped the tags off a “Little Bit of Heaven,” a T-shirt Chris had bought me. I got into bed, and Martha came around for her hug.

  Memories of the weekend began to drift in my head. I closed my eyes. I could hardly wait to share it with the girls.

  Then a thought from out of the blue hit me. I shot up as if I’d had a nightmare. I stiffened. “Oh, no. Oh, Jesus, no,” I whispered.

  When Jenks had lunged at me at his house, he had swung with his left hand.

  When he’d offered me a drink, he’d picked up the pitcher with his left hand.

  Impossible, I thought. This can’t be happening.

  Claire was certain David Brandt’s killer had been right-handed.

  Chapter 103

  JILL, CLAIRE, AND CINDY looked at me as if I were insane.

  The words had barely tumbled out of my mouth. “What if Jenks is right? What if someone is trying to set him up?”

  “That’s a crock!” snapped Jill. “Jenks is desperate and only moderately clever. We’ve got him!”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this,” exclaimed Cindy. “You’re the one who found him. You’re the one who made the case.”

  “I know. I know it seems crazy. Hopefully, it is crazy. Just hear me out.”

  I took them through Jacobi’s comment about the novel, then my lightning bolt about Jenks’s left-handedness.

  “Proves nothing,” Jill said.

  “I can’t get past the science, Lindsay,” Claire said with a shake of her head. “We’ve got his goddamn DNA at the scene.”

  “Look,” I protested, “I want the guy as much as anybody. But now that we have all this evidence — well — it’s just so neat. The jacket, the champagne. Jenks has set up complicated murders in his books. Why would he leave clues behind?”

  “Because he’s a sick bastard, Lindsay. Because he’s an arrogant prick who’s connected to all three crimes.”

  Jill nodded. “He’s a writer. He’s an amateur at actually doing anything. He just fucked up.”

  “You saw his reactions, Jill. They were deeper than simply desperation. I’ve seen killers on death row still in denial. This was more unsettling. Like disbelief.”

  Jill stood up, her icy blue eyes spearing down at me. “Why, Lindsay, why the sudden about-face?”

  For the first time I felt alone and separated from the people I had most learned to trust. “No one could possibly hate this man more than I do,” I declared. “I hunted him. I saw what he did to those women.” I turned to Claire. “You said the killer was right-handed.”

  “Probably right-handed,” Claire came back.

  “What if he simply held the knife in his other hand?” proposed Cindy.

  “Cindy, if you were going to kill someone,” I said, “someone larger and stronger, would you go at him with your opposite hand?”

  “Maybe not,” injected Jill, “but you’re throwing all this up in the face of facts. Evidence and reason, Lindsay. All the things we worked to assemble. What you’re giving me back is a set of hypotheticals. ‘Jenks holds his pitcher with his left hand. Phillip Campbell sets someone up at the end of his book.’ Lindsay, we have the guy pinned to three double murders. I need you firm on this.” Her jaw was quivering. “I need you to testify.”

  I didn’t know how to defend myself. I had wanted to nail Jenks as eagerly as any one of us. More. But now, after being so sure, I couldn’t put it away, the sudden doubt.

  Did we have the right man?

  “We still haven’t uncovered a weapon,” I said to Jill.

  “We don’t need a weapon, Lindsay. We have his hair inside one of the victims!”

  Suddenly, we were aware that people from other tables were looking at us. Jill huffed and sat back down. Claire put her arms around my shoulders.

  I puffed a deep breath into my cheeks, slumped back against the cushion of the booth.

  Finally, Cindy said, “We’ve been behind you all the way. We’re not going to abandon you now.”

  Jill shook her head. “You want me to let him go, guys, while we reopen the case? If we don’t try him, Cleveland will.”

  “I don’t want you to let him go,” I said. “I only want to be one hundred percent sure.”

  “I am sure,” Jill replied, her eyes ablaze.

  I sought out Claire, and even she had a skeptical expression fixed firmly in my direction. “There’s an awful lot of physical evidence that makes it pretty clear.”

  “If this gets out,” Jill warned, “you can toss my career out with the cat litter. Bennett wants this guy’s blood on the courthouse wall.”

  “Look at it this way,” Cindy said, chuckling, “if Lindsay’s right, and you send Jenks up, they’ll be studying this case as a ‘how not to’ for twenty years to come.”

  Numbly, we looked around the table. It was as if we were staring at the pieces of some shattered, irreplaceable vase.

  “Okay, so if it’s not him,” Claire said with a sigh, “then how do we go about proving who it is?”

  It was as if we were all the way back at the beginning — all the way back at the first crime. I felt awful.

  “What was the thing that nailed our suspicion on Jenks?” I asked.

  “The hair,” said Claire.

  “Not quite. We had to get to him
before we knew who it belonged to.”

  “Merrill Shortley,” Jill said. “Jenks and Merrill? You think?”

  I shook my head. “We still needed one more thing before we could take him in.”

  Cindy said, “Always a Bridesmaid. His first wife.”

  I nodded slowly as I left Susie’s.

  Chapter 104

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I went back over everything we had on Joanna Wade.

  First, I reread the domestic complaint she had filed against Jenks. I looked at pictures of Joanna taken at the station, bruised, puffy faced. I read through the officers’ account of what they found at the scene. Exchanges laced with invectives. Jenks swinging wildly, clearly enraged. He had to be subdued, resisted arrest.

  The report was signed by two officers from Northern, Samuel Delgado and Anthony Fazziola.

  The following day, I went back out to visit Greg Marks, Jenks’s former agent. He was even more surprised at my visit when I told him I was there on a different aspect of Jenks’s past. “Joanna?” he replied with an amused smile. “Bad judge of men, Inspector, but a worse judge of timing.”

  He explained that their divorce had been finalized only six months before Crossed Wire hit the stands. He said the book sold nearly a million copies in hardcover alone. “To have to put up with Nicholas through all the lean years, then come away with barely more than cab fare…” He shook his head. “The settlement was a pittance compared to what it would’ve been if they had filed a year later.”

  What he told me painted a different picture of the woman I had met in the gym. She seemed to have put it all behind her.

  “She felt used, dropped like worn baggage. Joanna had put him through school, supported him when he first started writing. When Nick bagged law school, she even went back to her job.”

  “And afterward,” I asked, “did she continue to hate him?”

  “I believe she continued to try and sue him. After they split up, she tried to sue him for a lien against future earnings. Nonperformance, breach of contract. Anything she could find.”