James Patterson - The 8th Confession

I hadn’t fully believed that our unmarked deaths were homicides – but I did now. And I could see that if we were looking at the same killer, he was slippery, smart, and very organized.

“Christopher Ross,” I said. “The final victim.”

“Christopher Ross,” said McCorkle, opening the fourth murder book to one of the morgue photos. “He was a forty-two-year-old white man. Rich as God. Born into old money. He was a family man who fooled around on the side. Some said he even had another family right here in town.

“Look at his kisser there, Boxer. Even dead, Chris Ross was a looker. His wife was one of those women who just put up with his breaking his vows. People said Chris was her lifelong sweetheart, and she loved him. And then, suddenly, he was found stone dead in his own bed – and this was why.”

McCorkle turned to the back of the Ross murder book.

“Here’s your murder weapon,” he said.

It was what I’d been waiting for – and it was nothing like what I expected. The snake was pinned to a board alongside a yardstick showing that the reptile was twenty-one inches long.

I just couldn’t drag my eyes away from that snake.

It was delicate, banded in bluish-gray and white, looked more like jewelry than a killer.

“This snake is a krait,” McCorkle was saying. “Incredibly lethal. Comes from India, so someone imported it. Illegally. No signs of a break-in at any of the victims’ houses.”

“So how did the snake get there?”

McCorkle shrugged expansively.

“And this one snake killed the other victims?” I asked.

“Maybe not this particular snake, Lindsay, but a snake just like it. The first three bodies were exhumed and examined microscopically. The ME, a Dr. Wetmore, found the bite marks on all four victims.

“And according to Dr. Wetmore, the marks were damned hard to see with the naked eye. They were like pinpricks, easily missed if you weren’t looking for them. And according to his report, there was no swelling or discoloration around the bite marks.”

“What about suspects?” I asked.

“Mrs. Christopher Ross inherited fifty million bucks. She was interrogated repeatedly, kept under surveillance. Her phones were tapped, but no one believed she did it. She had her own money. She had everything.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Died in a car accident two or three years after her husband’s death. And there never was another serious suspect.”

“Simon, did the victims know one another?”

“Some did, some didn’t, but one thing they all had in common was that they were all very rich. And something else, maybe you can use it.

“The lead investigator, Lieutenant Leahy, made an unfortunate aside to his deputy at a press conference and the mic was open. A reporter ran with it.”

“Don’t make me beg, McCorkle.”

“Leahy said, and I quote, ‘The victims were twisted – sexually and morally corrupt.’ ”

McCorkle was telling me that the sky fell on Leahy after his comment ran in the Chronicle, that he relocated to Omaha not long after that. But I was far from Omaha. I was thinking about a dainty little Indian snake that left almost imperceptible bite marks.

Claire didn’t know anything about this.

I had to call her.

RICH’S EYES ADJUSTED to the dim light in Cindy’s apartment. He’d been here a year and a half ago when a murdering psycho was at large in the building – a situation that couldn’t possibly be more different from this.

He and Cindy were alone. They’d been drinking. And Cindy was fussing with her multipart cappuccino machine as if she were really going to make coffee.

How had this happened?

Had wishing made it true?

As Cindy piled coffee-machine parts onto the countertop, Rich’s mind deleted her pink sweater and her tight pants, ran his hands all over her, refusing to peer any farther into the future than, say, an hour from now.

He couldn’t think about later.

He hadn’t planned for this.

“What’s your bird’s name?” he asked, walking over to the large brass cage on a table near the window. The bird was white and peach, with scaly claws and a black beak. Reminded him of a junkyard dawg.

“That’s Peaches,” said Cindy, coming up behind Rich, standing so close he could feel her breasts pressing against his back. “He was lonely in the pet store…”

Rich turned to Cindy, and her arms went around his neck. He drew her close and kissed her.

It was a perfect first kiss, no clashing of noses or teeth, Rich smelling flowers, tasting watermelon lip gloss and white wine, Cindy’s strong little body pressing hard against him, making him feel like he was going to burst out of his clothes like the freaking Hulk, when Peaches shrieked, “Kill the bitch! Kill the bitch!”

“He was abused,” Cindy said softly, with a melting look on her face as much as saying, “Take me to bed.”

“That’s too bad,” Rich said.

He reached into her hair and unfastened the rhinestone clip, and a torrent of blond curls jumped into his hand.

“Ohhhh,” Cindy said.

Still standing in front of the bird, Rich gently removed Cindy’s diamond studs, placing first one and then the other on the table, seeing her skin flush from the V of her sweater up to her eyes as her breathing cranked to about sixty miles per hour.

She hooked her hand around his belt.

He kissed her again and she moaned, then opened her hazy blue eyes and said, “You’re a little fast for me, Rich, but please. Don’t stop.”

He grinned at her, said, “How about a coffee break?”

“Later,” she said, taking his hand, pulling him through the living room and back to her bedroom.

Once there, she turned on the bedside lamp with its pink bulb and gauzy shade, stood in front of him, and lifted her arms like a little girl. He pulled off her sweater. He ran his fingers across the tops of her breasts, which were swelling out of her pink lace demibra, her nipples hardening behind the lace.

She unhooked her bra, breasts spilling out, sat down on the bed, and wriggled out of her pants. He ripped his shirttails from his waistband, and Cindy leaned forward to help with the last of his shirt buttons, undo his belt buckle, and hug him around the waist, resting her cheek against his zipper.

His clothing flew into the corner of the room, and then they were lying side by side in her bed, glued together, all panting and skin-on-skin, Rich slipping his hands into the flimsy fabric of her panties, making them disappear.

There was a fumbling moment, Cindy finding a square of foil in her nightstand, opening the packet with her teeth – and then he was inside her, making love to the beautiful woman with the curly blond hair who breathed, “Oh, oh, oh,” into his ear, and he held her tight until the shock waves overtook him and he cried out into her pillow.

Rich was awoken sometime later by the sound of the telephone on the nightstand, Cindy silky and warm in his arms, whispering, “Let’s not tell Lindsay.”

“Why not?”

“She’ll spoil it.”

Rich nodded his agreement – he would have agreed to anything – and then he heard Yuki’s voice coming over Cindy’s answering machine.

“Cindy. Cindy, pick up. Where are you? I have to talk to you. Damn. Call me, okay? Love you.”

Cindy held Rich’s face with one hand, reached down with the other hand and gave him a little tug, breathed, “Richie? Can you stay?”

CLAIRE AND I were huddled around her office computer at seven fifteen in the morning, caffeine free, reading an e-mail to Claire from Michelle Koo, a senior herpetologist at Berkeley.