1st to Die

by James Patterson

  Something crept back into my life that had been away, something I never thought I would embrace again.

  Hope.

  Chapter 110

  I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU,” I said to Chris on the phone, my voice ringing with urgency.

  “Can you meet me for lunch?”

  “Sure. You bet. Where?” No doubt he thought I had some important news to break on the case.

  “Casa Boxer,” I said with a smile.

  “That urgent, huh?” Chris laughed into the phone. “I must be starting to have a bad effect on you. When should I come?”

  “I’m waiting now.”

  It took him barely fifteen minutes to arrive at the door. I’d stopped on the way at Nestor’s bakery and picked up some freshly baked cinnamon buns. Then I popped a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck that I had saved in my fridge.

  Never in six years had I bugged out on a case in the middle of the afternoon. Especially one of this magnitude. But I felt no guilt, none at all. I thought of the craziest way I could break the good news.

  I met him at the door, wrapped in a bedsheet. His big blue eyes went wide with surprise.

  “I’ll need to see some ID.” I grinned.

  “Have you been drinking?” he said.

  “No, but we’re about to.” I pulled him into the bedroom.

  At the sight of the champagne, he shook his head. “What is it you want to tell me?”

  “Later,” I said. I poured him a glass and began to un-fasten the buttons of his shirt. “But trust me, it’s good.”

  “It’s your birthday?” he said smiling.

  I let the bedsheet drop. “I would never do this for just my birthday.”

  “My birthday, then.”

  “Don’t ask. I’ll tell you later.”

  “You broke the case,” he exclaimed. “It was Joanna. You found something that broke the case.”

  I put my fingers to his lips. “Tell me that you love me.”

  “I do love you,” he said.

  “Tell me again, like you did at Heavenly. Tell me that you won’t ever leave me.”

  Maybe he sensed it was Negli’s talking, some crazy hysteria, or that I just needed to feel close. He hugged me. “I won’t leave you, Lindsay. I’m right here.”

  I took his shirt off — slowly, very slowly — then his trousers. He must’ve felt like the delivery boy who had stumbled into a sure thing. He was as hard as a rock.

  I brought a glass of champagne to his lips, and we both took a sip from it.

  “Okay, I’ll just go with this. Shouldn’t be too difficult,” he said.

  I drew him to the bed, and for the next hour we did the one thing I knew I would have missed most in the world.

  We were in the middle of things when I felt the first terrifying rumbling.

  At first it was so weird, as if the bed had speeded up and was rocking faster than we were; then there was a deep, grinding sound coming from all directions, as if we were in an echo chamber; then the sound of glass breaking — my kitchen, a picture frame falling off the wall — and I knew, we knew.

  “It’s a goddamn quake,” I said.

  I had been through many of these — anyone who lived here had — but it was startling and terrifying every time. You never knew if this was the Big One.

  It wasn’t. The room shook, a few dishes broke. Outside, I heard the bleat of horns and triggered car alarms. The whole thing lasted maybe twenty seconds — two, three, four vibrating tremors.

  I ran to the window. The city was still there. There was a rumble, like a massive humpback whale breaching underground.

  Then it was still — eerie, insecure, as if the whole town were holding on for balance.

  I heard wailing sirens, the sound of voices shouting on the street.

  “You think we should go?” I asked.

  “Probably…we’re cops.” He touched me again, and suddenly I was tingling all over, and we melted into each other’s arms. “What the heck, we’re Homicide, anyway.”

  We kissed, and once again we were locked into a single, intertwined shape. I started to laugh. The list, I was thinking. The skybox. Now an earthquake. This sucker’s starting to get pretty long.

  My beeper went off. I cursed, rolled over, glanced at the screen.

  It was the office.

  “Code one eleven,” I told Chris.

  Emergency Alert.

  “Shit,” I muttered, “it’s just an earthquake.”

  I sat up, pulled the sheet over me, called in on the phone next to the bed.

  It was Roth buzzing me. Roth never buzzed me. What was going on? Immediately, I transferred to his line.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Dusting off some debris,” I said, and smiled toward Chris.

  “Get in here. Get in here fast,” he barked.

  “What’s going on, Sam? This about the quake?”

  “Uh-uh,” he replied. “Worse. Nicholas Jenks has escaped.”

  Chapter 111

  AS HE SAT SHACKLED TO THE SEAT of the police van on the way back from Napa, Nicholas Jenks watched the impassive eyes of the patrolman across from him. He plotted, schemed. He wondered how much it would take to buy his freedom.

  One million? Two million? After all, what did the fool take home? Forty grand a year?

  He figured the steely-eyed officer was someone above reproach, whose commitment to his duty was unquestioned. If he were writing it, that’s who he would have put in the car with him.

  Five million, then. He smirked.

  If he were writing it. That notion possessed a cold, punishing irony for him. He had written it.

  Jenks shifted in his restraints — wrists cuffed, torso strapped to the seat. Only minutes earlier, he had stood in the redbrick courthouse in Santa Rosa while the prosecutor in her little Liz Claiborne suit pointed her finger at him. Over and over, she accused him of things only a mind as cultivated as his would think up and do.

  All he could do was stare coldly while she accused him of being this monster. Sometime, he’d like to lock her in the law library and show her what he was really capable of.

  Jenks caught a glimpse of the sky and the sun-browned hills through the narrow window in the rear door and tried to get a fix on their bearings. Novato. Just hitting Marin.

  He pressed his face to the steel restraining wall. He had to get out. If he were writing it, there would always be a way out.

  He looked at the guard. So what was the story, Joe Friday? What happened next?

  “You married?” he asked.

  The policeman stared through him at first, then he nodded.

  “Kids?”

  “Two.” He nodded again, even breaking a slight smile.

  No matter how hard they tried to resist, they were always fascinated to talk with the monster. The guy who killed the honeymooners. They could tell their wives and friends, justify the miserable six hundred a week they brought home. He was a celebrity.

  “Wife work?” Jenks probed.

  The cop nodded. “Teacher. Business ed. Eighth grade.”

  Business ed, huh? Maybe he would understand a business proposition.

  “My wife used to work,” Jenks grunted back. “My first wife. In retail. My current wife worked, too, in television. Course, now she only works out.”

  The remark produced a snicker. The tight-assed bastard was loosening up.

  Jenks saw a landmark he recognized. Twenty minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge. There wasn’t much time left.

  He glanced out the window at the patrol car following them. There was another in front. A bitter resignation took hold. There was no way out. No elegant escape. That was in his books. This was life. He was screwed.

  Then, out of nowhere, the police van lurched violently. Jenks was hurled forward in his seat, toward the guard across from him. For a second, he wondered what was going on, then the van lurched again. He heard a chilling rumbling sound outside.

  It’s a fucking quake.

  J
enks could see the lead police car swerve to avoid the charge of another car. Then it skidded off the road.

  One of the cops yelled, “Shit,” but the van continued on.

  Jenks spun around in panic, trying to hold on to anything that was fixed in the compartment. The van was bucking and jolting.

  The police car following them jumped over a sudden hump in the highway and, to his total amazement, flipped. The driver of Jenks’s van looked behind him in shock.

  Then suddenly the other cop in front screamed for the driver to stop.

  An eighteen-wheeler was breached in their way. They were headed right toward it. The van swerved, and when it did, the road buckled again. Then they were out of control — flying.

  I am going to die here, Nicholas Jenks thought. Die here, without anyone ever knowing the whole truth.

  The van crashed into the stanchions of a Conoco station. It screeched to a stop, spinning twice on its side. The officer across from him was hurled against the metal wall. He was writhing and moaning as he looked at Jenks.

  “Don’t move,” the officer panted.

  How the hell could he? He was still shackled to the seat.

  Then came this horrid wrenching sound, and they both looked up. The towering steel light above the station toppled like a redwood and crashed down on them. It smashed through the door of the van, striking the officer in back, probably killing him on impact.

  Jenks was sure he would be killed — all the smoke, the screams, the twisting of metal.

  But he wasn’t. He was clear. The streetlight had torn a hole in the side of the car, ripped his restraints right out of the seat. He was able to kick himself free, even with shackled hands and feet, and push himself through the gaping hole.

  People were running in the street, screaming in panic. Motorists pulled off the road, some dazed, others jumping out of their vehicles to help.

  This was it! He knew if he didn’t run he would replay this moment for the rest of his life.

  Nicholas Jenks crawled out of the van, dazed and disoriented. He spotted no cops. Only frightened passersby streaking past. He limped out and joined the chaotic street scene.

  I’m free! Jenks exulted.

  And I know who’s setting me up. The cops won’t get it in a million years.

  Chapter 112

  IT TOOK ABOUT THREE MINUTES for Chris and me to throw on clothes and head back to the Hall. In the rush, I never told him my news.

  By disaster standards, the quake was nothing much — unless you had spent the past five weeks tracking down the country’s most notorious killer. Most of the damage ended up confined to shattered storefronts and traffic accidents north of the city, but as we pushed our way through the clamoring throng of press in the Hall’s lobby, the quake’s biggest news crackled with the fierceness of a live wire:

  The bride and groom killer was free.

  Nicholas Jenks had managed to flee after the police van taking him back to jail had flipped over outside Novato, the result of a chain of automobile accidents caused by the tremor. The policeman guarding him had been fatally injured. Two more, in the front seat of the overturned van, were hospitalized.

  A huge command center was set up down the hall from Homicide. Roth himself took charge. The place was crawling with brass from downtown and, of course, the press.

  An APB was released, Jenks’s description and photo distributed to cops on both sides of the bridge. All city exits and highway tolls were being monitored; traffic slowed to a crawl. Airports, hotels, and car-rental ports were put on alert.

  Since we had tracked Nicholas Jenks down originally, Raleigh and I found ourselves at the center of the search.

  We placed an immediate surveillance on his residence. Cops spread out all over the Sea Cliff area, from the Presidio to Lands End.

  In searches like this, the first six hours were critical. The key was to contain Jenks in the grid where he had bolted, not let him contact anyone who could help him. He had no resources, no funds, no one to take him in. Jenks couldn’t stay on the loose — unless he was a lot craftier than I thought he was.

  The escape left me stunned. The man I had hunted down was free, but I was also left conflicted. Were we hunting the right man?

  Everyone had a theory about where he might head: the wine country, east into Nevada. I had my own theory. I didn’t think he’d head back to the house. He was too smart, and there was nothing to be gained there. I asked Roth if I could borrow Jacobi and Paul Chin, to play out a hunch.

  I took Jacobi aside. “I need you to do me a big favor, Warren.” I asked him to do surveillance outside Joanna Wade’s apartment on Russian Hill. I asked Chin to do the same outside the house of Jenks’s former agent, Greg Marks.

  If Jenks really believed he was being set up, those were two places he might go.

  Jacobi gave me a look as if I were sending him out on another champagne lead. The entire corps of inspectors was following up leads. “What the hell, Lindsay… why?”

  I needed him to trust me. “Because it struck me as funny, too,” I said, begging his support, “why Jenks would leave that damn tuxedo jacket behind. I think he might go after Joanna. Trust me on it.”

  With Warren and Paul Chin in place, there was nothing I could do except monitor the wires. Six hours into the search, there was still no sign of Nicholas Jenks.

  Chapter 113

  A ROUND FOUR, I saw Jill pushing her way through the crowd buzzing outside my office. She looked ready to kill somebody, probably me. “I’m glad you’re here,” I said grabbing her. “Trust me, please, Jill.”

  “Cindy’s downstairs,” she said. “Let’s go talk.”

  We sneaked out and were able to find Cindy amid a throng of reporters clawing at anyone who came down from the third floor. We called Claire, and in five minutes we were sitting around a table at a coffee shop just down the block. Jenks’s escape had thrown all of my speculations into disarray.

  “You still believe he’s innocent?” Jill pressed the issue immediately.

  “That depends on where he turns up next.” I informed them that I had stationed a couple of men around the homes of Greg Marks and Joanna Wade.

  “Even now?” Jill shook her head and looked close to blowing. “Innocent men don’t run from police custody, Lindsay.”

  “Innocent people might,” I said. “If they don’t believe the justice system is being just!”

  Claire looked around with a nervous swallow. “Ladies, it strikes me we’re entering into very sensitive territory here, all right? We’ve got a manhunt trying to locate Jenks — he could be shot on sight — and at the same time, we’re talking about trying to firm up a case against someone else. If this comes out, heads will roll. I’m looking at some of those pretty heads right now.”

  “If you really believe this, Lindsay, you need to take it to someone,” Jill lectured me. “Roth. Mercer.”

  “Mercer’s away. And right now, everybody’s focused on locating Jenks. Anyway, who the hell would believe this? As you say, all I have is a bunch of hypotheticals.”

  “Have you told Raleigh?” asked Claire.

  I nodded.

  “What does he think?”

  “Right now, he can’t get past the hair. Jenks’s escape didn’t help my case.”

  “I knew there was something I liked about that guy.” Jill finally smiled thinly.

  I looked at Claire for support.

  “It’s hard to argue your side of things, Lindsay,” she said with a sigh. “That said, your instincts are usually good.”

  “So then bust in on Joanna, like Lindsay proposed,” said Cindy. The more I was around her, the more I loved her.

  Things had suddenly gotten very sticky in the way of accountability. I turned to Claire. “Is there anything we might have missed that could implicate Joanna?”

  She shook her head. “We’ve been through all that. All the evidence points the finger directly at Nicholas Jenks.”

  “Claire, I’m talking about someth
ing that was there, right in front of us, that we just didn’t see.”

  “I want to be with you on this, Lindsay,” Claire said, “but we’ve been through it. Everything.”

  “There’s got to be something. Something that could tell us if the killer is male or female. If Joanna did it, she’s no different from any killer I’ve tracked down. She left something. We just haven’t seen it. Jenks did — or someone did for him — and we found him.”

  “And we ought to be out looking for him now,” urged Jill, “before we end up with couple number four.”

  I felt alone, but I just couldn’t surrender. It wouldn’t be right. “Please,” I begged Claire, “go through everything one more time. I think we’ve got the wrong man.”

  Chapter 114

  IN THE LIGHT of the makeup mirror, the killer sat transfixed by soft blue eyes that were about to become gray.

  The first thing was to smear her hair until all the blond had been dyed away, then brush it back smooth, a hundred times, until it had lost its luster and shine.

  “You forced me into this,” she said to the changing face. “Forced me to come out one more time. I should have expected as much. You love games, don’t you, Nick?”

  With a cotton swab, she applied the base, a clear, sticky balm with a gluelike smell. She dabbed it over her temples, down the curve of her chin, in the soft space between her upper lip and her nose.

  Then, with a tweezer, she matted on the hair. Tufts of reddish brown.

  The face was almost complete. But the eyes…anyone could see they were still hers.

  She slipped out a pair of tinted contacts from the case, moistening them, stretching her lids to insert each one.

  She blinked, well satisfied with the result.

  The familiarity was gone. The change was complete. Her eyes now reflected a steely, lifeless gray.

  Nicholas’s color.

  She was him.