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

by James Patterson

Cindy handed her a piece of paper with Jenks’s Social Security number on it. “This should be on his registration.”

  “That won’t do,” the woman said.

  Cindy fumbled through a zipper in her knapsack. She felt the moment slipping away. “At least tell me if it’s here. I’ll come back later with whatever you want.”

  “Jenks,” the woman muttered skeptically. “Looks like your brother was a bit more prolific than you thought. He’s got three manuscripts registered here.”

  Cindy wanted to let out a shout. “The only one I’m looking for is called Always a Bridesmaid.”

  It took what seemed like several minutes, but the stony resistance on the woman’s face finally weakened. “I don’t know why I’m doing this, but if you can verify your story, there seems to be a record of that manuscript’s being here.”

  Cindy felt a surge of validation. The manuscript was the final piece they needed to crack a murder case and put away Jenks.

  Now she just had to get it out.

  Chapter 84

  “I FOUND IT!”exclaimed Cindy, her voice breathless on the phone. “Always a Bridesmaid!”

  I pounded my desk in elation. This meant we could definitely make our move. “So what does it say, Cindy?”

  “I found it,” Cindy clarified. “I just don’t actually have it.”

  She told me about the Writers Guild. The book was there, but it would take a little coaxing to actually get it into our hands.

  It took barely two hours — starting with a frantic call to Jill. She had a judge pulled out of chambers, and we had our court order mandating the release of Jenks’s manuscript Always a Bridesmaid.

  Then Jill and I ran down to meet Cindy. On the way, I made one more call. To Claire. It seemed fitting that all of us should be there.

  Twenty minutes later, Jill and I met Cindy and Claire in front of a drab building on Geary where the Writers Guild maintained its offices. Together, we rode to the eighth floor.

  “I’m back,” announced Cindy to a surprised woman behind the reception desk. “And I brought my documentation.”

  She eyed us suspiciously. “Who are these, cousins?”

  I flashed the clerk my badge and also presented the officially stamped search warrant.

  “What’s going on with this book?” the woman gasped. Clearly out of her authority, she went inside and came back with a supervisor, who read over the court order.

  “We usually only hold them for up to eight years,” he said with some uncertainty. Then he disappeared for what seemed a lifetime.

  We all sat there in the stark reception area like pacing relatives waiting for a baby to be born. What if it had been thrown out?

  Finally, the supervisor came out with a dusty bundle wrapped in brown paper. “In the back of the bins,” he announced with a self-satisfied smile.

  There was a coffee shop right down the street. We took a table in back and crowded around with anticipation. I plopped the manuscript down on the table, peeled off the brown-paper wrapping.

  I read the cover. Always a Bridesmaid. A novel by Nicholas Jenks.

  Nervously, I opened it and read the first page.

  The narrator was reflecting on his crimes from jail. His name was Phillip Campbell.

  “What is the worst thing,” the novel began, “anyone has ever done?”

  Chapter 85

  WE SPLIT UP THE BOOK into four sections. We each paged silently, searching for some scene or detail that would parallel the real-life crimes. Mine was about this guy’s life, Phillip Campbell. His picture-perfect wife, catching her with another man. He killed them both — and his life changed forever.

  “Bingo!” Jill spoke up suddenly. She read out loud, bending back the sheaf of paper like a deck of cards.

  She described a scene with Phillip Campbell — “breath pounding inside, voices ringing in his head”— stealing through the halls of a hotel. The Grand Hyatt. A bride and groom in a suite. Campbell breaks in on them — he kills them without a second thought.

  “‘In a single act,’” Jill read from the manuscript, “‘he had washed away the stench of betrayal and replaced it with a fresh, heretofore unimagined desire. He liked to kill.’”

  Our eyes locked. This was beyond creepy. Jenks was crazy — but was he also crafty?

  Claire was next. It was another wedding. This time outside a church. The bride and groom coming down the steps, rice being thrown, shouts of congratulations, applause. The same man, Phillip Campbell, at the wheel of the limo that will take them away.

  We looked at one another, stunned. It was how the second murders were committed.

  Jill murmured, “Holy shit.”

  Claire just shook her head. She looked sad and shocked. I guess we all were.

  A long-suppressed cry of satisfaction built up in my chest. We had done it. We had solved the bride and groom murders.

  “I wonder how it ends?” Cindy mused, fanning to the end of the book.

  “How else?” said Jill. “With an arrest.”

  Chapter 86

  I RODE UP TO JENKS’S HOUSE with Chris Raleigh. We barely spoke, both of us brimming with anticipation. Outside, we were met by Charlie Clapper and his CSU team. They would grid-search the house and grounds as soon as we took Jenks in.

  We rang the bell. Each second I waited, my heart pounded harder. Every reason I became a cop was grinding in my chest. This was it.

  The door opened, and the same housekeeper answered. This time, her eyes went wide as she took in the convergence of blue-and-whites outside.

  I flashed my badge. “We need to see Mr. Jenks.”

  We made our way back toward the sitting room where we had met Jenks only the day before. A startled Chessy Jenks met us in the hall “Inspector,” she gasped, recognizing me. “What’s going on? What are all those police cars doing out front?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meeting her eyes. I was sorry for her. “Is your husband at home?”

  “Nick!” she cried, realizing in a panic why we had come. Then she ran along with us, trying to block me, shouting, “You can’t just come in here like this. This is our home.”

  “Please, Mrs. Jenks,” Raleigh implored.

  I was too wound up to stop. I wanted Nicholas Jenks so bad it hurt. A second later he appeared, coming in from the back lawn overlooking the Pacific. He was holding a golf club.

  “I thought I told you,” he said, looking perfectly unruffled in his white shirt and linen shorts, “the next time you need something from me you should contact my lawyer.”

  “You can tell him yourself,” I said. My heart was racing. “Nicholas Jenks, you are under arrest for the murders of David and Melanie Brandt, Michael and Rebecca DeGeorge, James and Kathleen Voskuhl.”

  I wanted him to hear every name, to bring to mind every one of them he’d killed. I wanted to see the callous indifference crack in his eyes.

  “This is insane.” Jenks glared at me. His gray eyes burned with intensity.

  “Nick?” cried his wife. “What are they talking about? Why are they here in our house?”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked, the veins bulging on his neck. “I asked you, do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

  I didn’t answer, just recited the Miranda warning.

  “What you’re doing,” he raged, “is engaging in the biggest mistake of your little life.”

  “What are they saying?” His wife was pale. “Nick, please tell me. What is going on?”

  “Shut up,” Jenks spat out at her. Suddenly, he spun back toward me with a vicious fire in his eyes. He lunged forward with his fist. He swung at me.

  I cut his feet out from under him. Jenks fell across an end table to the floor, photos falling everywhere, glass shattering. The writer moaned loudly in pain.

  Chessy Jenks screamed, stood there in a paralyzed state. Chris Raleigh cuffed her husband and dragged him to his feet.

  “Call Sherman,” Jenks shouted at his wife. “Tell him where I am,
what’s happened.”

  Raleigh and I pushed Jenks out to our car. He continued to struggle, and I saw no reason to be gentle.

  “What’s your theory on the murders now?” I asked him.

  Chapter 87

  AFTER THE LAST NEWS CONFERENCE had ended, after the last flashbulb had dimmed, after I had rehashed for what seemed the hundredth time how we had narrowed in on Jenks, after a beaming Chief Mercer had been chauffeured away, I hugged Claire, Cindy, and Jill. I then passed on a celebratory beer and wandered back to the Hall of Justice.

  It was well past eight, and only the prattle of the night shift interrupted my being alone.

  I sat at my desk, in the well-earned silence of the squad room, and tried to remember the last time I felt this good.

  Tomorrow we would begin meticulously compiling the case against Nicholas Jenks: interrogating him, accumulating more evidence, filling out report after report. But we had done it. We had caught him just as I had hoped we eventually would. I had fulfilled the promise I made to Melanie Brandt that horrible night in the Mandarin Suite at the Grand Hyatt.

  I felt proud of myself. Whatever happened with Negli’s, even if I never made lieutenant, no one could take this away.

  I got up, stepped over to the freestanding blackboard that listed the cases we were working on.

  Under “Open Cases,” somewhere near the top, was her name: Melanie Brandt. I took the eraser and rubbed her name, then her husband’s, until they disappeared, until the blue smear of chalk was no more.

  “I bet you that feels good,” Raleigh’s voice sounded behind me.

  I turned. He was there, looking smug.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “So late.”

  “Thought I’d straighten up Roth’s desk, steal a few brownie points,” he said. “What do you think, Lindsay? I came to find you.”

  We were in a corner of the squad room, and there was no one around. He never had to move. I went to him. Nothing in the way. No reason to deny this.

  I kissed him. Not like before. Not just to let Chris know I was interested. I kissed him the way I had wanted him to kiss me that night in Cleveland. I wanted to steal the breath right out of him. I wanted to say, I wanted to do this from the first time I saw you.

  When we finally pulled apart, he repeated with a smile, “Like I said, I bet that feels good.”

  It did feel good. Right now, it all felt good. It also felt unavoidable.

  “What’re your plans?” I smiled at him.

  “How loosely are we talking?”

  “Specifically, right now. Tonight. The next several hours, at least.”

  “I thought I would come back, straighten Cheery’s desk, and see if you wanted me to take you home.”

  “Let me get my purse.”

  Chapter 88

  I DON’T KNOW HOW we got all the way to my apartment in the Potrero. I don’t know how Chris and I talked and drove and ignored what was tearing at us inside.

  Once we got through my door, there was no stopping it. I was all over Chris; he was all over me. We only got as far as the rug in the foyer, kissing, touching, fumbling for buttons and zippers, breathing loudly.

  I had forgotten how good it was to be held, to be desired by somebody I wanted, too. Once we touched, we knew enough to take our time. We both wanted it to last. Chris had what I needed more than anything else, soft hands.

  I loved kissing him, loved his touch, his gentleness, then his roughness, the simple fact that he was concerned about my pleasure as much as his own. You never know until you try it out — but I loved being with Chris. I absolutely loved it.

  I know it’s a cliché, but that night I made love as if it might never happen again. I felt Chris’s current, warming me, electrifying — from my womb to my thighs to the tips of my fingers and my toes. His grasp was all that held me together, kept me from breaking apart. I felt a trust for him that was unquestioning.

  I held nothing back. I gave myself to Chris in a way I never had to anyone before. Not only with my body and my heart; these were things I could pull back. I gave him my hope that I could still live.

  When I cried out, tremors exploding inside me, my fingers and toes stiff with joy, a voice inside me whispered what I knew was true.

  I gave him everything. He gave it back.

  Finally, Chris pulled off me. We were both tingling, still on fire.

  “What?” I gasped for breath. “Now what?”

  He looked at me and smiled. “I want to see the bedroom.”

  Chapter 89

  A COOL BREEZE was blowing in my face. Oh, God, what a night. What a day. What a roller coaster.

  I sat wrapped in a quilt out on my terrace, overlooking the south end of the bay. Nothing moving, only the lights of San Leandro in the distance. It was quarter of two.

  In the bedroom, Chris lay asleep. He’d earned some rest.

  I couldn’t sleep. My body was too alive, tingling, like a distant shore with a thousand flickering lights.

  I couldn’t help but smile at the thought: It had been a great day. “June twenty-seventh,” I said aloud, “I’m gonna remember you.” First we find the book. Then we arrest Jenks. I never imagined it could go any further.

  But it had. It went way further. Chris and I had made love that night twice more, the last three hours a sweet dance of touching, panting, loving.

  I didn’t want to feel Chris’s hands ever leave me. I didn’t ever want to miss the heat of his body. It was a new, electrifying sensation. For once, I had held nothing back, and that was very, very good.

  But here, in the dark of the night, an accusing voice needled me. I was lying. I hadn’t given it all. There was the one inescapable truth that I was hiding.

  I hadn’t told him about Negli’s. I didn’t know how to. Just as we had felt such life, how could I tell him I might be dying. That my body, which a moment ago was so alive with passion, was infected. In a single day, it seemed that everything in my life was transformed. I wanted to soar. I deserved it. I deserved to be happy.

  But he deserved to know.

  I heard a rustling behind me. It was Chris.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked. He came up behind me, placed his hands on my neck and shoulders.

  I was hugging my knees, the quilt barely covering my breasts. “It’s gonna be hard,” I said, leaning my head on him, “to go back to the way things were.”

  “Who said anything about going back?”

  “I mean, like partners. Watching you across the room. Tomorrow we have to interrogate Jenks. Big day for both of us.”

  His fingers teased my breasts, then the back of my neck. He was driving me crazy. “You don’t have to worry,” he said. “Once the case is made, I’m going back. I’ll stick around for the interrogation.”

  “Chris,” I said, as a chill shot through me. I had gotten used to him.

  “I told you we weren’t going to be partners forever.” He bent down, inhaling the smell of my hair. “At least not that kind of partners.”

  “What kind does that leave?” I murmured. My neck was on fire where his hands caressed me. Oh, let this go somewhere, I begged inside. Let this go all the way to the moon.

  Could I just tell him? It was no longer that I couldn’t find a way. It was just, now that we were here, I didn’t want it to end.

  I let him take me into the bedroom.

  “This keeps getting better and better,” I whispered.

  “Doesn’t it? I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

  Chapter 90

  I HAD JUST GOTTEN TO MY DESK the following morning. I was flipping the Chronicle to the continuation of Cindy’s article on Jenks’s arrest when my phone rang.

  It was Charlie Clapper. His crime scene team had spent most of the night meticulously going over everything in Jenks’s house.

  “You make a case for me, Charlie?” I was hoping for a murder weapon, maybe even the missing rings. Something solid that would melt Jenks’s sneering defi
ance.

  The CSU leader let out a weary breath. “I think you should come down here and see.”

  I grabbed my purse and the keys to our work car. In the hallway, I ran into Jacobi. “Rumors say,” he grunted, “I’m no longer the man of your dreams.”

  “You know you should never believe what you read in the Star,” I quipped.

  “Right, or hear from the night shift.”

  I pulled myself to a stop. Someone had spotted Chris and me last night. My mind flashed through the red-hot copy that was probably running through the office rumor mill. Behind my anger, I knew that I was blushing.

  “Relax,” Jacobi said. “You know what can happen when you get caught up in a good collar. And it was a good collar.”

  “Thank you, Warren,” I said. It was one of those rare moments when neither of us had anything to hide. I winked and hit the stairs.

  “Just remember,” he called after me, “it was the champagne match that got you on your way.”

  “I remember. I’m grateful. Thank you, Warren.”

  I drove down Sixth to Taylor and California to Jenks’s home in Sea Cliff. When I arrived, two police cars were blocking the street, keeping a circle of media vans at bay. I found Clapper — looking weary and un-shaven — catching a brief rest at the dining room table.

  “You find me a murder gun?” I asked.

  “Just these.” He pointed to a pile of guns in plastic bags on the floor.

  There were hunting rifles, a showcase Minelli shotgun, a Colt automatic .45 pistol. No nine millimeter. I didn’t make a move to examine them.

  “We went through his office,” Clapper wheezed. “Nothing on any of the victims. No clippings, no trophies.”

  “I was hoping you might’ve come across the missing rings.”

  “You want rings?” Clapper said. He wearily pushed himself up. “His wife’s got rings. Plenty of them. I’ll let you go through them. But what we did find was this. Follow me.”