James Patterson: WMC - First to Die

I HAD BEEN HAVING very close encounters with dead bodies for six years now. But what I saw sent a shiver of revulsion racing through me. The mutilated bodies of the bride and groom were lying side by side. They were on gurneys, their faces frozen in the horrifying moment of their deaths. David and Melanie Brandt. In their stark, ghostly expressions was the strongest statement I have ever seen that life may not be governed by anything fair or clement. I locked on the face of Melanie. Yesterday, in her wedding dress, she had seemed somehow tragic and tranquil. Today, in her slashed, naked starkness, her body was snarled in a freeze-frame of grotesque horror. Everything I had buried deep yesterday rushed to the surface again. Six years in Homicide, and I had never turned away. But I turned away now. I felt Claire's hand bolstering my arm, and leaned into her. To my surprise, it turned out to be Raleigh. I righted myself with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. "Thanks." I exhaled. "I'm okay." "I've been doing this job eight years," Claire said, "and this one, I wanted to turn away myself." She picked up a folder from an examining table across from David Brandt. She pointed to the raw, gaping knife wound on the left side of his chest. "He was stabbed once in the right ventricle. You can see here the blade pierced the juncture between the fourth rib and the sternum on the way in. Ruptured the AV node, which provides the heart's electrical powering. Technically, he arrested." "He died of a heart attack?" Raleigh asked. She pulled a pair of tight surgical gloves over her hands and red-lacquered nails. "Electromechanical dissociation. Just a fancy way of describing what happens when you get stabbed in the heart." "What about the weapon?" I spoke up. "At this point, all I know is that it was a standard, straight-edged blade. No distinguishing marks or entry pattern. One thing I can tell you is that the killer was medium height, anywhere from five-seven to five-ten, and right handed, based on the angle of impact. You can see here the path of the incision is angled slightly upward. Here," she said, poking around the wound. "The groom was six feet. On his wife, who was five-five, the angle of the first incision was slanted in a downward path." I checked the groom's hands and arms for abrasions. "Any signs of a struggle?" "Couldn't. The poor man was scared right out of his mind." I nodded as my eyes fell on the groom's face. Claire shook her head. "That's not exactly what I meant. Charlie Clapper's boys scraped up samples of a fluid from the groom's shoes and the hardwood floor in the foyer where he was found." She held up a small vial containing droplets of a cloudy liquid. Raleigh and I stared at it, uncomprehending. "Urine," explained Claire. "The poor man apparently went in his pants. Must have been a gusher." She pulled a white sheet over David Brandt's face and shook her head. "I figure that's one secret we can keep to ourselves. "Unfortunately," she said with a sigh, "things didn't happen nearly as swiftly for the bride." She led us over to the bride's gurney "Maybe she surprised him. There are marks on her hands and wrists that indicate a struggle. Here," she pointed to a reddened abrasion on her neck. "I tried to lift some tissue from under her nails, but we'll see what comes back. Anyway, the first wound was in the upper abdomen and tore through the lungs. With time, given the loss of blood, she might have died from that." She pointed to a second and third ugly incision under the left breast in a similar location to the groom's. "Her pericardium was filled with so much blood you could've wrung it out like a wet dishrag." "You're getting technical again," I said. "The tissue like membrane around the heart. Blood collects in this space and compresses the muscle so that the heart can no longer fill with blood from the main return. Ultimately, it ends up strangling itself." The image of the bride's heart choking on her own blood chilled me. "It's almost as if he wanted to duplicate the wounds," I said, studying the knife-entry points. "I thought of that," said Claire. "Straight line to the heart." Raleigh furrowed his brow. "So the killer could be professional?" Claire shrugged. "By the technical pattern of the wounds, perhaps. But I don't think so." There was a hesitancy in her voice. I looked up and fixed on her grim eyes. "So what I need to know is, was she sexually molested?" She swallowed. "There are clear signs of some sort of postmortem penetration. The vaginal mucosa was severely extended, and I found small lacerations around the introit us My body stiffened in rage. "She was raped." "I/she was raped," Claire replied, "it was a very bad deal. The vaginal cavity was as wide as I've ever seen it. Honestly, I don't think we're talking penile entry at all." "Blunt instrument?" Raleigh said. "Certainly wide enough… but there are abrasions along the vaginal walls consistent with some kind of ring." Claire took in a breath. "Personally, I'd go with a fist." The angry, shocking nature of Melanie Brandt's death shivered me again. She had been mutilated, defiled. A fist. It had a blunt, savage finality to it. Her assailant wasn't just trying to act out his nightmare but wanted to shame her as well. Why? "If you can handle one more thing, follow me," Claire said. She led us out through a swinging door into an adjoining lab. On an apron of white sterile paper lay the blood-smeared tuxedo jacket we had found next to the groom. Claire picked it up by the collar. "Clapper loaned it to me. Of course, the obvious thing was to confirm whose blood was actually on it." The left front panel was slashed through with the fatal incision and sprayed with dark blotches of blood. "Where this starts to get really interesting," said Claire "is that it wasn't just David Brandt's blood that I found on the front of the jacket." Raleigh and I gaped in surprise. "The killer's?" he said, wide-eyed. She shook her head. "No, the bride's." I made a fast recollection of the crime scene. The groom had been killed at the door; his wife, thirty feet away in the master bedroom. "How could the bride's blood get on his jacket?" I said, confused. "I struggled with the same thing. So I went back and lined up the jacket against the groom's torso. The slash mark didn't quite match up with his wound. Look, the groom's wound was here. Fourth rib. The slash marks on the jacket are three inches higher. Checking further, the damned jacket isn't even the same brand as the pants. This is Joseph Abboud." Claire winked, seeing the gears of my brain shift into place. The jacket wasn't the groom's. It belonged to the man who had killed him. Claire rounded her eyes. "Ain't no professional I know would leave that behind." "He could've been just trying to utilize the wedding as a cover," Raleigh replied. An even more chilling possibility had already struck me. "He could have been a guest."

AT THE OFFICES of the San Francisco Chronicle, Cindy Thomas's frantic brain was just barely staying ahead of her fingers. The afternoon deadline was barely an hour away. From a bellhop at the Hyatt, she had been able to obtain the names of two guests who had attended the Brandt wedding and who were still at the hotel. After running down there again last night, she had been able to put together a heart-wrenching, tragic picture- complete with vows, toasts, and a romantic last dance- of the bride and groom's final moments. All the other reporters were still piecing together the sparse details released by the police. She was ahead so far. She was winning, and it felt great. She was also certain this was the best writing she'd done since arriving at the Chronicle, and maybe since she'd been an undergraduate at Michigan. At the paper, Cindy's coup at the Hyatt had turned her into an instant celebrity. People she scarcely knew were suddenly stopping and congratulating her. Even the publisher, whom she rarely saw on the Metro floor, came down to find out who she was. Metro was covering some demonstration in Mill Valley about a construction rerouting that had built up traffic near a school zone. She was writing page one. As she typed, she noticed Sidney Glass, her city editor, coming up to her desk. Glass was known at the newspaper as El Sid. He parked himself across from her with a stiff sigh. "We need to talk." Her fingers slowly settled to a halt as she looked up. "I've got two very pissed-off senior crime reporters itching to get into this. Suzy's at City Hall awaiting a statement by the police chief and the mayor. Stone's put together profiles on both families. They have twenty years and two Pulitzers between them. And it is their beat." Cindy felt her heart nearly come to a stop. "What did you tell them?" she asked. In El Sid's hardened eyes, she could see the greedy first team crime staff, senior reporters with their own researchers, trying to hack their way in and carve this story up. Her story. "Show me what you've got," the city editor finally said. He came around, peered over her shoulder, read a few lines off the computer screen. "A lot of it's okay. You probably know that. "Anguished' belongs over here," he said, pointing at the screen. "It modifies 'bride's father." Nothing pisses Ida Morris off like misplaced modifiers and inversions." Cindy could feel herself blushing. "I know, I know. I'm trying to get this in. Deadline's at…" "I know when deadline is." The editor glowered. "But down here, if you can get it in, you can get it in right." He studied Cindy for what seemed an interminable duration, a deep, assessing stare that kept her on edge. "Especially if you intend to stay on this thing." Glass's generally implacable face twitched, and he almost smiled at her. "I told them it was yours, Thomas." Cindy repressed an urge to hug the cranky, domineering editor right on the bull pen floor. "You want me at City Hall?" she asked. "The real story's in that hotel suite. Go back to the Hyatt." El Sid began to walk away with his hands, as always, thrust into his trouser pockets. But a moment later, he turned back. "Course, if you intend to stay on this story, you'd better find a police source on the inside- and quick." Jl,