James Patterson - WMC - First to Die

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."

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 defiance. 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 unshaven- 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." On the floor of the kitchen, with a yellow "Evidence" marker on it, was a crate of wine, champagne. Krug. Clos du Mesnil. "That we already knew," I said. He kept looking at me, as if I had somehow insulted him with the obvious. Then he lifted a bottle out of the open case. "Check the numbers, Lindsay. Each bottle's registered with a number. Look here, four-two-three-five-five-nine. Must make it go down all the more smoothly." He took out a folded-up green copy of a "Police Property" voucher from his chest pocket. "The one from the Hyatt. Same lot. Same number." Charlie smiled. The bottles were the same. It was solid evidence that tied Jenks to where David and Melanie Brandt were killed. It wasn't a weapon, but it was damning, no longer circumstantial. A rush of excitement shot through me. I high-fived the pale, heavy-set CSU man. "Anyway," Charlie said, almost apologetically, "I wouldn't have brought you all the way out here for just that." Clapper led me through the finely furnished interior of the house to the master bedroom. It had a vast picture window looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge. He took me into a spacious closet. Jenfes's. "You remember the bloody jacket we found at the hotel?" In the rear of the closet, Charlie squatted over a large shoe rack. "Well, now it's a set." Clapper reached behind the shoe rack and pulled out a crumpled Nordstrom's shopping bag. "I wanted you to see how we found it." Out of the bag, he pulled balled-up black tuxedo trousers. "I already checked. It's the other half of the jacket at the Hyatt. Same maker. Look inside; same style number." I might as well have been staring at a million dollars in cash, or a ton of stolen cocaine. I couldn't take my eyes off the pants, imagining how Nicholas Jenks would squirm now. Claire had been right. She'd been right from the start. The jacket hadn't come off the victim It had always belonged to Jenks. "So whaddaya think, Inspector?" Charlie Clapper grinned. "Can you close your case or what? Oh, yeah," the CSU man exclaimed, almost absentmindedly. "Where'd I put it?" He patted his pockets, searched around in his jacket. He finally found a small plastic bag. "Straight out of the sucker's electric razor," Charlie announced. In the bag were several short red hairs.

CLAIRE SAID, "I've been expecting you, honey." She took my arm and led me back into the lab to a small room lined with chemicals. Two microscopes were set up side by side on a granite-block counter. "Charlie told me what he came up with," she said. "The champagne. Matching pantalones. You got him, Lindsay." "Match these"-- I held out the plastic bag-"we put him in the gas chamber." "Okay, let's see," she said, smiling. She opened a yellow envelope marked "Priority, Evidence," and took out a petri dish identical to the one I had seen after the second murders. It had Subject: Rebecca De George #62340 written on the front in bold marker. With a tweezer, she placed the single hair that had come from the second bride onto a clear slide. Then she inserted it under the scope. She leaned over it, adjusting the focus, then caugnt me oy surprise, asKing, 30 now re yuu leeimg, woman?" "You mean Negli's?" "What else would I mean?" she said, peering into the scope. In the rush of apprehending Jenks, it was the first time in the past few days that I had really thought about it, "I saw Medved late last week. My blood count's still down." Claire finally looked up, "I'm sorry, Lindsay." Trying to sound upbeat, I walked her through my regimen. The increased dosage. The higher frequency. I mentioned the possibility of a bone marrow transplant. She flashed me a big smile. "We're gonna have to find a way to get those red cells of yours shaken up." Even in the laboratory, I must've started to blush. "What?" asked Claire. "What're you hiding? Trying unsuccessfully to hide?" "Nothing." "Something's going on. Between you and Mr. Chris Raleigh, I bet. C'mon, this is me you're talking to. You can't pull that blue-wall-of-silence stuff." I told her. From the first kiss at the precinct to the slow, torturous ride home to the burst of heat right there on the hallway rug. Claire grasped me by my shoulders. Her eyes were as bright and excited as mine. "So?" "So?" I laughed. "So… it was awesome. It was… right." I felt a chill of doubt come over me. "I just don't know if I'm doing the right thing. Considering what's going on." I hesitated. "I could love him, Claire. Maybe I already do." We stared at each other. There wasn't much more to say. well. u-ia ires eyes returned 10 ncr microscope. "Lets see what we have here. Hairs from his chinnychin-chin." Three hairs from Jenks's razor were set on a cellular slide. She loaded it into a scope. The two scopes were side by side. Claire looked first, leaned over as she focused the new one in. Then she went back and forth. "Mm-hmm," she uttered. I held my breath. "What do you think?" I asked. "You tell me." I leaned in. Immediately, I recognized the first hair, the one from inside Rebecca De George vagina. Thick, reddish, a white filament twisted around its base like the coil of a snake. Then I looked at the hairs from Jenks's razor. There were three of them, shorter, clipped, but each had that same reddish hue, that same coil of filament around it. I was no expert. But there was no doubt in my mind. The hairs were a perfect match.