James Patterson: WMC - First to Die

I TOOK OFF IN THE RADIO CAR with the siren blaring all the way to the Presidio. It took me no more than seven minutes, with traffic wildly shifting out of my way, to speed down Lombard over to Richardson to the south tip of the Presidio. Up ahead, the golden rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts loomed powerfully above a calm, gleaming pond. I saw Chris's blue Taurus pulled up diagonally across from the tip of the park and jackknifed the patrol car to a halt next to it. I didn't see a sign of any other cops. Why hadn't any backup arrived? What the hell was going on now? I clicked my gun off safety and made my way into the park underneath the giant rotunda. No way I was waiting. I was startled by people running toward me, away from the rotunda grounds. "Someone's shooting," one of them screamed. Suddenly, my legs were flying. "Everyone out! I'm San Francisco police!" I screamed as I bumped through the people rushing by. "Maniac with a gun," one of them yelled. I ran around the pond alongside a massive marble colonnade. There was no sound up ahead. No more shots. Leading with my gun, I rounded corners until I was in sight of the main rotunda. Huge Corinthian columns soared above me, capped with ornate heroic carvings. I could hear voices in the distance: a woman's mocking tone: "It's just you and me, Nick. Imagine that. Isn't it romantic?" And a man's voice, Jenks's: "Look at you, you're pathetic. As always." The voices echoed out of the huge dome of the main rotunda. Where was Chris? And where was our backup? Cops should have been here by now. I held my breath, straining to hear the first police siren. Every step I took, I heard my own footsteps echoing to the roof. "What do you want?" I heard Jenks's cry reverberating off the stone. Then the woman shouting back, "I want you to remember them. All the women you fucked." Still no sign of Chris. I was tight with worry. 1 decided to go around the side of a row of low arches that ran down to where the voices were coming from. I ducked around the corner of the colonnade. Then I saw Chris. He was sitting there, propped against a pillar, watching everything unfold. My first reaction was to say something like, Chris, get down, someone will see you. It was one of those slow-motion perceptions where my eyes were faster than my mind. Then I was seized with horrible fright, nausea, and sadness. Chris wasn't watching, and he wasn't hiding. The front of his shirt was covered with blood. All my police training nearly gave way. I wanted to scream, to cry out. It took everything I had to hold it in. Two dark bloodstains were soaking through Chris's shirt. My legs were paralyzed. Somehow I forced myself over to him. I knelt down. My heart was pounding. Chris's eyes were remote, his face as gray as stone. I checked for a pulse and felt the slightest rhythm of a heartbeat. "Oh, Chris, no." I stifled a sob. When I spoke, he looked up, eyes glimmering as he saw my face. His lips parted into a weak smile. His breath wheezed, heavy and labored. My eyes filled with tears. I applied pressure to the holes in his chest, trying to push back the blood. "Oh, Chris, hang in there. Hang in there. I'll get help." He reached for my arm. He tried to speak, but it was only a weak, guttural whisper. "Don't talk. Please." I raced back to the patrol car and fumbled with the transmitter until I heard Dispatch. "Officer down, officer down," I shouted. "Four-oh-six. I repeat, four-oh-six!" The statewide call for alarm. "Officer shot, rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts. Need immediate EMS and SWAT backup. Possible Nicholas Jenks sighting. Second officer on the scene inside. Repeat, four-oh-six, emergency." As soon as the dispatcher repeated the location back to me with a "Copy," I threw down the transmitter and headed back inside. When I got to him, Chris was still holding on to small breaths. A bubble of blood popped on his lip. "I love you, Chris," I whispered, squeezing his hand. Voices rang out ahead in the rotunda. I couldn't make them out, but it was the same man and woman. Then there was a gunshot. "Go," Chris whispered. "I'm holding on." Our hands touched. "I've got rear," he muttered with a smile. Then he pushed me away. I scurried ahead, my gun drawn, glancing back twice. Chris was watching- watching my back. I ran in a low crouch all the way down the length of the row of columns closest in, clear up to the side of the main rotunda. The voices echoed, intensified. My eyes were riveted. They were straight across the basilica. Jenks, in a plain white shirt. He was holding one arm, bleeding. He'd been shot. And across from him, holding a gun and dressed in a man's clothes, Chessy Jenks.

SHE LOOKED like a bizarre disfigurement of the beautiful woman she was. Her hair was matted and dyed gray and red. Her face still carried the marks of her disguise, a man's sideburns and flecks of a red beard. She was holding a gun tightly, pointing it directly at him. "I have a present for you, Nick." "A present?" Jenks said in desperation. "What the hell are you talking about?" "That's why we're here. I want to renew our vows." Chessy took a small pouch out of her jacket and tossed it at his feet. "Go ahead. Open it." Nicholas Jenks knelt stiffly and picked up the pouch. He opened it, the contents spilling into his palm. His eyes bulged in horror. The six missing rings. "Chessy, Christ," he said. "You're out of your mind. What do you want me to do with these?" He held out a ring. "These will put you in the gas chamber." "No, Nick," Chessy said, shaking her head. "I want you to swallow them. Get rid of the evidence for me." Jenks's face twitched in apprehension. "You want me to what?" "Swallow them. Each one is someone you've destroyed. Someone whose beauty you've killed. They were innocent. Like me. Little girls on our wedding days. You killed us all, Nick- me, Kathy, Joanna. So now give us something back. With this ring, I do pledge." Jenks glared and shouted at her. "That's enough, Chessy!" "I'll say when it's enough. You love games, so play the game. Play my game this time. Swallow them."" She pointed the gun. "No sense pretending I won't shoot, is there, dear?" Jenks took one of the rings, raised it to his lips. His hand was shaking badly. "That was Melanie, Nicky. You would've liked her. Athletic a skier… a diver. Your type, huh? She fought me to the end. But you don't like us to fight, do you? You like to be in total control." She cocked the gun and leveled it at Jenks's head. Jenks put the ring in his mouth. With a sickened expression, he forced it down his throat. Chessy was losing it. She was sobbing, trembling. I didn't think I could wait any longer. "Police," I yelled. I stepped forward, two hands on my38, leveling it at her. She spun at me, not even showing surprise, then back to Jenks. "He has to be punished!" "It's over," I said, carefully advancing toward her. "Please, Chessy, no more killing. " As if she suddenly realized what she had become, the sickening things she'd done, she looked at me. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry for everything that happened- except this!" She fired, atjenks. I fired, too, at her. Chessy's slender body flew backward, hitting the wall hard and crumpling against it. Her beautiful eyes widened, and her mouth sagged open. I looked and saw that she'd missed Jenks. He was staring at her in disbelief. He didn't think she could do it, didn't think she hated him that much. He still believed he controlled Chessy, and probably that she loved him. I hurried to her, but it was too late. Her eyes were already glazed, and the blood was streaming from her chest. I held her head and thought that she was so beautiful- like Melanie, Rebecca, Kathy- and now she was dead, too. Nicholas Jenks turned toward me with a gasp of relief. "I told you… I told you I was innocent." I looked at him in disgust. Eight people were dead. The brides and grooms, Joanna, now his own wife. I told you I was innocent? Is that what he thought? I swung, my fist catching him square in the teeth. I felt something shatter as Jenks dropped to his knees. "So much for innocence, Jenks!"