Women's Murder Club [01] 1st to Die

by James Patterson

  “I thought you were just a desk cop,” I said to him.

  He grinned. “I spent a summer in college working in the pit crew on the NASCAR circuit. I can change a tire faster than a beer man at 3Com can change a twenty. My guess would be a Caddy. Or a Lincoln.” Limo, his eyes were saying.

  My own mind was racing through something Claire had once said. Link the crimes.

  It was uncommon for a pattern killer to switch methods. Sexual killers liked closeness to their victims: strangulation, bludgeoning, knives. They wanted to feel their victims struggle, expire. They liked to invade a victim’s home. Shooting was detached, clinical. It provided no thrill.

  For a moment, I wondered if there were two murderers. Copycat killers. It couldn’t be.

  No one else knew about the rings.

  I went over to Becky DeGeorge as the doctor was zipping her into a body bag. I gazed down into her eyes. They were making love. Did he force them? Did he surprise them?

  A sexual psycho who changes his methods. A killer who leaves clues.

  What did he leave here?

  What were we missing?

  Chapter 37

  FRESH AIR FILLED MY LUNGS as soon as we stepped outside. Chris Raleigh, Hartwig, and I walked down the dirt road. The grid of the valley floor stretched out below us. Rows of fallow grapes hugged each side. We were silent. Shell-shocked.

  A scary idea shot through me. We were a thousand feet up, totally isolated. Something didn’t sit right. “Why here, Hartwig?”

  “How about, it’s remote and no one ever comes up here.”

  “What I meant,” I said, “is why here? This particular spot. Who knows about this place?”

  “There’s isolated property all up and down these slopes. The consortiums have eaten up the valley floor. These properties take more work than capital. Labors of love. Check the listings. Dozens of them dry up every season. Anyone around here knows places like this.”

  “The first killings were in the city. Yet he knew exactly where to come. Who owns this plot?”

  Hartwig shook his head. “Dunno.”

  “I’d find out. And I would also make another pass through their room. Someone had them targeted. Knew all their plans. Travel brochures, business cards, see if there’s anything from any limousine services.”

  From below, I heard the sound of a large vehicle climbing up the dirt road. I caught sight of a white San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Bronco pulling to a stop.

  Claire Washburn was behind the wheel. I had asked her to come — in the hope of matching evidence from both crime scenes.

  I opened her door and said gratefully, “Thanks for coming, sweetie.”

  Claire solemnly shook her head. “I only wish they had turned up differently. It’s a call I never like to receive.” She pulled her heavy frame out of the car with surprising ease. “I have a meeting later back in town, but I thought I’d look over the crime scene, introduce myself to the presiding on-site.”

  I introduced Claire to Frank Hartwig. “Your M.E.’s Bill Toll, isn’t he?” she asked with authority.

  He blinked warily, clearly nervous. First, he had Raleigh and me here as consults. But he had asked us in. Now the San Francisco M.E. pulls up.

  “Relax, I already patched through to his cell phone,” Claire said. “He’s expecting me.” She spotted the medical team standing over the yellow bags. “Why don’t I go take a look.”

  Trying to hold on to some sense of order, Hartwig followed close behind.

  Raleigh came and stood next to me. He looked tired.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He shook his head. He kept his eyes fixed on the shed where the bodies had been dumped.

  I remembered how he had steadied me at the morgue. “Been a while since you took in a really bad one?”

  “That’s not it,” he said, with the same unsettled look. “I want you to know… that wherever this leads, it’s not about interfacing with City Hall. Or containment, Lindsay. I want this guy.”

  I was already there in my head. This wasn’t about the big collar. Or my shot at lieutenant. Or even fighting Negli’s.

  We stood there side by side for a while.

  “Not that either of us,” he finally said, breaking the silence, “is in much of a position to be the last line of defense for the institution of marriage.”

  Chapter 38

  PHILLIP CAMPBELL had driven since the first light of dawn, setting out in the bulky rented stretch limo. He was nervous, wired — and he absolutely loved it.

  He chewed up the miles in a steady, purposeful daze, crossing the Bay Bridge and continuing east on 80. He finally broke free of the morning traffic near Vallejo and maintained a vigilant sixty on the speedometer as he headed east.

  He didn’t want to be stopped.

  The papers called him a monster. Psychotic, sociopathic. Expert witnesses on TV analyzed his motives, his past, his possible future murders.

  They know nothing. They are all wrong. They’ll find what I want them to find. They only see what I want them to see.

  From the Nevada border it was a short drive down into Reno, which he considered a vulgar, aging cowboy town. He stayed on the highway, avoiding the Strip. Wide, stucco-lined boulevards of gas stations, gun dealerships, pawnshops. You could get anything here without a lot of questions. It was the place to come to buy a gun, or unload a car, or both.

  Out by the convention center, he turned into Lumpy’s. He pulled the car up to an open area in the lot, opened the glove compartment, recovered the folded paperwork, breathed a sigh of relief.

  The limo was perfectly clean. Spotless. There were no ghosts whispering. All day yesterday, he had cleaned and polished, scrubbing out the bloodstains until the last trace of evidence was gone. Now the car was silent, as unconfiding as the day he had picked it up.

  He breathed easier. It was as if Michael and Becky DeGeorge had never existed.

  In minutes he had paid for the car and called a cab to take him to the airport.

  At the airport, he checked in, looked through a San Francisco paper at a newsstand. Nothing about Becky and Michael. He made his way to the gate.

  He bought a bottle of Fruitopia apricot drink and a vegetarian wrap at a fast-food counter.

  He checked in at Gate 31, Reno Air to San Francisco. He took a seat and started eating his lunch.

  An attractive young woman sat next to him. Blond hair, tight ass, just tawdry-looking enough to attract his eye. She wore a gold chain around her neck with her name on it in script: Brandee. A tiny diamond ring.

  He smiled a quick, inadvertent greeting.

  She pulled out a Kipling knapsack, took a swig from a plastic water bottle, and took out a paperback, Memoirs of a Geisha. It interested him that of all things, she was reading about a woman in bondage. These were signs.

  “Good book?” He smiled her way.

  “That’s what everyone says,” she replied. “I’m just starting.”

  He leaned over and breathed in the cheap, citrusy scent of her perfume.

  “Hard to believe,” he went on, “it was written by a man.”

  “I’ll let you know.” She flipped a few pages, then added. “My fiancé gave it to me.”

  Phillip Campbell felt the short, thin hairs on his arms stand up.

  His heart began to throb. He ran a tremulous finger along the edge of his goatee.

  “Oh — when’s the big day?”

  Chapter 39

  RALEIGH DROVE back to town in our car. I hung around and caught a ride with Claire. I needed to tell her what was going on with me. Claire and I have been best friends for years. We talk at least once every day. I knew why I was having trouble telling her about my illness — I didn’t want to hurt her. Or to burden her with my problems. I loved her so much.

  As the M.E.’s van bumped down the mountain road, I asked if she had been able to pick up anything at the murder scene.

  “There was definitely sexual activity going on before they were
killed,” she replied confidently. “I could see labial distension around the vagina. Secretions on her thighs.

  “This is guesswork — I only had a few minutes — but I think the husband was shot first, Lindsay. The one clean wound to the head suggests he was dispatched without resistance. Head on. Wounds on Rebecca indicate something else. She was shot from the rear. Through the shoulder blades, the neck. From a distance, I would estimate, of no more than three to five feet. If the semen matches up and they were in the act when it took place, it suggests that she was on top. That would mean someone had to get in fairly close, unobserved, while they were at it. Come up at them from behind her. Since you said they didn’t use their own car that night, they were obviously on their way somewhere. I think it’s consistent with your theory that they were in some kind of vehicle when this took place. The killer in the front seat. So why not a limousine?”

  “That’s all?” I shook my head and smiled at Claire.

  “Like I said, I only had a few minutes. Anyway, it was your theory. If it ends up proving out, all I did was connect the dots.”

  We drove on a bit. I was still fumbling for the right words.

  Claire asked, “So how’s the new partner?”

  I gave her an affirming nod. “Turns out he’s okay. He’s backed me up with Roth and Mercer.”

  “And you were so sure he was only a watchdog from the mayor’s office.”

  “So I was wrong.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time you ended up wrong about a guy,” Claire said.

  I wrinkled my face in pretended offense and ignored her grin.

  “Anyway, watchdog or not,” Claire continued, “he’s a damn sight better to look at than Jacobi.”

  “Smarter, too. When we drove up to Napa yesterday, I flipped on the stereo in his Explorer. A tape of The Shipping News came on.”

  “So,” Claire went on, with a look of inquisitiveness, “anything going on?”

  “You mean other than four innocent people being killed?”

  “I mean with Chris Raleigh, Lindsay. He’s working out of the mayor’s office, he’s a hunk, and your social calendar isn’t exactly Gwyneth Paltrow’s. You can’t tell me he’s not your type.”

  “We’ve been wrapped up in the case, Claire.”

  “Yeah.” She chortled. “He’s not married, right?”

  “C’mon, Claire,” I pleaded. “I’m just not ready.”

  As Claire winked, I found myself imagining something going on with Raleigh. If I had driven back with him from Napa, instead of Cindy. If I had asked him up, it being nothing but a lonely Sunday, thrown together something out of the fridge. Shared a beer on the terrace as the sun melted into the bay. In my mind, I caught him checking me over again. You look nice, Boxer. He had noticed. Truth was, I had noticed things about him, too. Patient, sensitive eyes. Even finished The Shipping News. It wouldn’t be so hard.

  Even as I sat there pretending I could fall in love with someone, the daydream crashed. Life was slowly leaking out of me.

  Something with Raleigh, or anyone, just wasn’t a possibility now.

  I glanced over at Claire, who was pulling the car onto 101. I took a deep breath.

  “You ever hear of something called Negli’s aplastic anemia?” I asked.

  Chapter 40

  IT CAME OUT OF THE BLUE — so unexpectedly — that it didn’t really dawn on Claire what I had just said.

  She answered as if she were fielding a medical question in her lab. “Blood disorder. Pretty rare, serious. The body stops producing erythrocytes.”

  “Red blood cells,” I said.

  Claire glanced at me. “Why? It’s not Cat?” referring to my sister.

  I shook my head. I sat rigid and stared straight ahead. My eyes were glassy.

  It was probably the long pause that caused it to slowly sink in.

  Claire whispered, “Not you?”

  An awful stillness took hold in the car.

  “Oh, Lindsay.” Claire’s jaw dropped.

  She pulled the Bronco onto the shoulder of the road and immediately reached out and hugged me. “What has your doctor told you?”

  “That it’s serious. That it can be fatal.”

  I saw the gravity of that wash over her face. The hurt, the pain. Claire was a doctor, a pathologist. She had taken in what was at stake before I even met her eyes.

  I told her that I was already undergoing packed–red cell transfusions twice a week.

  “That’s why you wanted to get together the other day?” she declared. “Oh, Lindsay. Why couldn’t you just tell me?”

  None of my past reasoning seemed clear now. “I wanted to so much. I was afraid. Maybe even more to admit it to myself. Then I allowed myself to get wrapped up in the case.”

  “Does anyone know? Jacobi? Roth?”

  I shook my head.

  “Raleigh?”

  I took a breath. “Still think I’m ready for Mr. Right?”

  “You poor baby,” Claire said softly. “Oh, Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay.”

  Her body was shaking. I could feel it. I had hurt her.

  Suddenly, I let it all go — fear and shame and uncertainty rushing through me.

  I held on to Claire, and I realized she was all that kept me from hurtling out of control. I started to cry, and then we both did. It felt good, though. I wasn’t alone anymore.

  “I’m here for you, sweetheart,” Claire whispered. “I love you, girl.”

  Chapter 41

  THE MURDER IN NAPA changed everything. There were blistering attacks on the way the SFPD was trying to solve the case. We took heat from everywhere.

  Sensational headlines announced the handiwork of a sadistic, deranged, completely new kind of killer. Out-of-town news crews buzzed around the Hall. Tragic wedding pictures and wrenching family scenes were the lead on every TV newscast.

  The task force that I was heading was meeting twice a day. Two other inspectors from SCU and a forensic psychologist were added on. We had to provide our files for the FBI. The investigation was no longer confined to some embittered figure lurking in David or Melanie Brandt’s past. It had grown larger, deeper, more tragic and foreboding.

  Canvassing area wine shops, Jacobi’s team had unearthed a few names, nothing more.

  The bloody jacket was leading us nowhere, too. The problem was, the tux style was from four or five years ago. Of the fifteen Bay Area stores, not one maintained records of manufacturers’ styles, so it was virtually impossible to trace. We had to go over their records invoice by invoice.

  Mercer tripled our investigators.

  The killer was choosing his victims with careful precision. Both murders had taken place within a day of the victims’ marriages; both reflected specific knowledge of the victims, their lodgings, their itineraries. Both couples still had most of their valuables: watches, wallets, jewelry. The only things missing were the wedding rings.

  He had dumped the DeGeorges in a seemingly isolated place, but one where they were sure to be found.

  He had left other blockbuster clues for us to follow up. It didn’t make sense.

  The killer knows exactly what he’s doing, Lindsay.

  He knows what you’re doing.

  Link the crimes.

  I had to find the common denominator. How he knew his victims. How he knew so much about them.

  Raleigh and I divided up the possibilities. He took whoever had booked the Brandts’ and the DeGeorges’ itineraries: travel agencies, limo services, hotels. I took planners. Ultimately, we would find some link between the crimes.

  “If we don’t make progress soon,” Raleigh grumbled, “there’ll be a lot of priests and rabbis in this town with a shitload of dead time. What’s this maniac after?”

  I didn’t say, but I thought I knew. He was after happiness, dreams, expectations. He was trying to destroy the one thing that kept all of us going: hope.

  Chapter 42

  THAT NIGHT, Claire Washburn took a cup of tea into her bedroom, qu
ietly closed the door, and started to cry again. “Goddamn it, Lindsay,” she muttered. “You could have trusted me.”

  She needed to be alone. All evening long, she had been moody and distracted. And it wasn’t like her. On Mondays, a night off for the symphony, Edmund always cooked. It was one of their rituals, a family night, Dad in the kitchen, boys cleaning. Tonight he had cooked their favorite meal, chicken in capers and vinegar. But nothing had gone right, and it was her fault.

  One thought was pounding in her. She was a doctor, a doctor who dealt only in death. Never once had she saved a life. She was a doctor who did not heal.

  She went into her closet, put on flannel pajamas, went into the bathroom, and carefully cleansed her smooth brown face. She looked at herself.

  She was not beautiful, at least not in the way society taught us to admire. She was large and soft and round, her shapeless waist merging with her hips. Even her hands — her well-trained, efficient hands that controlled delicate instruments all day — were pudgy and full.

  The only thing light about her, her husband always said, was when she was on the dance floor.

  Yet in her own eyes she had always felt blessed and radiant. Because she had made it up from a tough, mostly black neighborhood in San Francisco to become a doctor. Because she was loved. Because she was taught to give love. Because she had everything in her life that she ever wanted.

  It didn’t seem fair. Lindsay was the one who attacked life, and now it was seeping out of her. She couldn’t even think of it in a professional way, as a doctor viewing the inevitability of disease with a clinical detachment. It pained her as a friend.

  The doctor who could not heal.

  After he and the boys had finished the dishes, Edmund came in. He sat on the bed beside her.

  “You’re sick, kitty cat,” he said, a hand kneading her shoulder. “Whenever you curl up before nine o’clock, I know you’re getting sick.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not sick, Edmund.”