WMC - First to Die Read online

  Chapter 108

  SLOWLY, UNAVOIDABLY, I was starting to feel as if I were on the wrong airplane, heading to the wrong city. Against all logic, I was growing surer and surer that Nicholas Jenks might not be the killer. Oh, brother! I had to figure out what to do. Jenks in handcuffs was the lead picture in both Time and Newsweek. He was being arraigned in Napa for two additional murders the following day. Maybe I should just stay on the wrong plane, get out of town, never show my face in San Francisco again. I got the girls together. I took them through the mosaic that was starting to come clear: the acrimonious contest over the divorce, Joanna's sense of being discarded, her direct access to the victims through her contacts at Saks. "She was an assistant store manager," I told them. "Coincidence?" "Get me proof," Jill said. "Because as of now, I have proof against Nick Jenks. All the proof I need." I could hear the worry and frustration in her voice. The whole country was watching this case, watching her every move. We had worked so hard to sell Mercer and her boss, Sinclair, on the idea that it was Jenks. And now, after all that- to propose a new theory and suspect. "Authorize a search," I told Jill. "Joanna Wade's house. Something has to be there. The missing rings, a weapon, details on the victims. It's the only way we'll ever pin it down." "Authorize a search on what basis? Suspicion of new evidence? I can't do that without blowing this case wide open again. If we show we're not even sure, how can I convince a jury?" "We could check where she worked," proposed Cindy. "See if she had specific access to information on the brides." "That's circumstantial. It's crap," Jill cried. "One of my neighbors works at Saks. Maybe she's the murderer." "You can't go through with this," argued Cindy, "if we still have doubt." "You have doubt," said Jill. "What I have is everything in place for a slam-dunk conviction. To you, it's a story, you follow it where it leads. My whole career is on the line." Cindy looked stunned. "You think I'm here for just the story? You think I sat on every lead, agonized over not being able to go to copy, just so I could wind up with the book rights later on?" "C'mon girls," said Claire, her arm on Cindy's shoulder. "We have to be together on this." Slowly, Jill's intense blue eyes softened. She turned to Cindy. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's just that when this gets out, Leff will be able to plant huge doubts in that jury's mind." "But we can't back down now just because it's bad tactics," said Claire. "There could be a murderer out there, a multiple murderer." I said to Jill, "Authorize a search. C'mon, Jill." I had never seen Jill look so upset. Everything she had achieved in her career, everything she stood for, was being placed squarely on the line. She shook her head. "Let's try it Cindy's way. We'll start with Saks, check Joanna out there." "Thank you, Jill," I said. "You're the best." She exhaled resignedly. "Find out if she's had any contact with anyone who had access to those names. Connect Joanna with those names, and I'll get you what you want. But if you can't, be prepared to fry Jenks." From across the table, I took her hand. She gripped mine. We exchanged a nervous smile. Jill finally joked, "Personally, I hope all you come back with is the hot item to be featured in the next Christmas catalog." Claire laughed loudly. "Now that wouldn't be a total loss, would it?"

  Chapter 109

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, the day Nicholas Jenks was set to be arraigned for the murders of Rebecca and Michael De George, I set out to track down a new killer. I couldn't let Jenks know we were looking that closely at Joanna. Of course, I didn't want Joanna to know we were focusing suspicion on her, either. And I didn't want to face Mercer's or Roth's reactions. With all this going on, it was my Medved day, too. After that spell in the park with Chris three days before, I had gone for a blood test. Medved called back himself, told me he wanted me to come in. Being called in again like that scared me. Like that first time with Dr. Roy. That morning, Medved kept me waiting. When he finally called me in, there was another doctor in his office- older, with white hair and bushy white eyebrows. He introduced himself as Dr. Robert Yatto. The sight of a new doctor sent a chill through me. He could only be there to talk about the bone marrow procedure. "Dr. Yatto is head of hematology at Moffett," Medved said. "I asked him to look at your latest sample." Yatto smiled. "How are you feeling, Lindsay?" "Sometimes okay, sometimes incredibly weak," I answered. My chest felt tight. Why did I have to go through this with someone new? "Tell me about the other day." I did my best to recount the reeling spell I'd had in City Hall Park. "Any emissions of blood?" Yatto asked matter-of factly "No, not lately." "Vomiting?" "Not since last week." Dr. Yatto got up, came across the desk to me. "Do you mind?" he asked, as he cradled my face in his hands. He expressionlessly pressed my cheeks with his thumb, pulled down my eyes and peered into my pupils, under my lids. "I know I'm getting worse," I said. Yatto released my face, nodded toward Medved. Then, for the first time since I'd started seeing him, Medved actually smiled. "It's not getting worse, Lindsay. That's why I asked Bob to consult. Your erythrocytic count jumped back up. To twenty eight hundred." I gave a double take to make sure I had heard right. That it wasn't some kind of wishful dream I was playing out in my own mind. "But the spells… the hot and cold flashes? The other day, I felt like a war was going on in me." "There is a war," Dr. Yatto said. "You're reproducing cells. The other day, that wasn't Negli's talking. That was you. That's how it feels to heal." I was stunned. My throat was dry. "Say that again?" "It's working, Lindsay," Medved said. "Your red blood count has increased for the second time in a row. I didn't want to tell you in case it was an error, but as Dr. Yatto said, you're building new cells." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "This is real? I can trust this?" I asked. "This is very real," Medved said with a nod. I stood up, my whole body shaking, tingling with disbelief. For a moment, all the joys that I had suppressed- a chance at my career, running on Marina Green, a life with Chris- came tumbling through my brain. For so long, I had been so scared to let them free. Now, they seemed to burst out of me. Medved leaned forward and warned, "You're not cured, Lindsay. We'll continue the treatments, twice a week. But this is hopeful. More than hopeful, Lindsay. This is good." "I don't know what to say." My body was totally numb. "I don't know what to do." "If I were you," Dr. Yatto said, "I'd bring to mind the one thing you might've thought you'd miss most, and go do that today." I wandered out of the office in a haze. Down the elevator, through the sterile lobby, into a flowered courtyard that overlooked Golden Gate Park. The sky was bluer than I'd ever seen it, the air off the bay sweeter and cooler and more pure. I stood there, just hearing the beautiful sounds of my own breaths. Something crept back into my life that had been away, something I never thought I would embrace again. Hope.

  Chapter 110

  "I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU," I said to Chris on the phone, my voice ringing with urgency. "Can you meet me for lunch?" "Sure. You bet. Where?" No doubt he thought I had some important news to break on the case. "Casa Boxer," I said with a smile. "That urgent, huh?" Chris laughed into the phone. "I must be starting to have a bad effect on you. When should I come?" "I'm waiting now." It took him barely fifteen minutes to arrive at the door. I'd stopped on the way at Nestor's bakery and picked up some freshly baked cinnamon buns. Then I popped a bottle of Piper-Heidsieck that I had saved in my fridge. Never in six years had I bugged out on a case in the middle of the afternoon. Especially one of this magnitude. But I felt no guilt, none at all. I thought of the craziest way I could break the good news. I met him at the door, wrapped in a bedsheet. His big blue eyes went wide with surprise. "I'll need to see some ID." I grinned. "Have you been drinking?" he said. "No, but we're about to." I pulled him into the bedroom. At the sight of the champagne, he shook his head. "What is it you want to tell me?" "Later," I said. I poured him a glass and began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. "But trust me, it's good." "It's your birthday?" he said smiling. I let the bedsheet drop. "I would never do this for just my birthday." "My birthday, then." "Don't ask. I'll tell you later." "You broke the case," he exclaimed. "It was Joanna. You found something that broke the case." I put my fingers to his lips. "Tell me that you love me." "I do love you," he said. "Tell me again, li
ke you did at Heavenly. Tell me that you won't ever leave me." Maybe he sensed it was Negli's talking, some crazy hysteria, or that I just needed to feel close. He hugged me. "I won't leave you, Lindsay. I'm right here." I took his shirt off--slowly, very slowly- then his trousers. He must've felt like the delivery boy who had stumbled into a sure thing. He was as hard as a rock. I brought a glass of champagne to his lips, and we both took a sip from it. "Okay, I'll just go with this. Shouldn't be too difficult," he said. I drew him to the bed, and for the next hour we did the one thing I knew I would have missed most in the world. We were in the middle of things when I felt the first terrifying rumbling. At first it was so weird, as if the bed had speeded up and was rocking faster than we were; then there was a deep, grinding sound coming from all directions, as if we were in an echo chamber; then the sound of glass breaking- my kitchen, a picture frame falling off the wall- and I knew, ve knew. "It's a goddamn quake," I said. I had been through many of these- anyone who lived here had- but it was startling and terrifying every time. You never knew if this was the Big One. It wasn't. The room shook, a few dishes broke. Outside, I heard the bleat of horns and triggered car alarms. The whole thing lasted maybe twenty seconds- two, three, four vibrating tremors. I ran to the window. The city was still there. There was a rumble, like a massive humpback whale breaching underground. Then it was still- eerie, insecure, as if the whole town were holding on for balance. I heard wailing sirens, the sound of voices shouting on the street. "You think we should go?" I asked. "Probably… we're cops." He touched me again, and suddenly I was tingling all over, and we melted into each other's arms. "What the heck, we're Homicide, anyway." We kissed, and once again we were locked into a single, intertwined shape. I started to laugh. The list, I was thinking. The skybox. Now an earthquake. This suckers starting to get pretty long. My beeper went off. I cursed, rolled over, glanced at the screen. It was the office. "Code one eleven," I told Chris. Emergency Alert. "Shit," I muttered, "it's just an earthquake." I sat up, pulled the sheet over me, called in on the phone next to the bed. It was Roth buzzing me. Roth never buzzed me. What was going on? Immediately, I transferred to his line. "Where are you?" he asked. "Dusting off some debris," I said, and smiled toward Chris. "Get in here. Get in here fast," he barked. "What's going on, Sam? This about the quake?" "Uh-uh," he replied. "Worse. Nicholas Jenks has escaped."

  Chapter 111

  AS HE SAT SHACKLED TO THE SEAT of the police van on the way back from Napa, Nicholas Jenks watched the impassive eyes of the patrolman across from him. He plotted, schemed. He wondered how much it would take to buy his freedom. One million? Two million? After all, what did the fool take home? Forty grand a year? He figured the steely-eyed officer was someone above reproach, whose commitment to his duty was unquestioned. If he were writing it, that's who he would have put in the car with him. Five million, then. He smirked. If he were writing it. That notion possessed a cold, punishing irony for him. He had written it. Jenks shifted in his restraints- wrists cuffed, torso strapped to the seat. Only minutes earlier, he had stood in the redbrick courthouse in Santa Rosa while the prosecutor in her little Liz Claiborne suit pointed her finger at him. Over and over, she accused him of things only a mind as cultivated as his would think up and do. All he could do was stare coldly while she accused him of being this monster. Sometime, he'd like to lock her in the law library and show her what he was really capable of. Jenks caught a glimpse of the sky and the sun-browned hills through the narrow window in the rear door and tried to get a fix on their bearings. Novato. Just hitting Marin. He pressed his face to the steel restraining wall. He had to get out. If he were writing it, there would always be a way out. He looked at the guard. So what was the story, Joe Friday? What happened next? "You married?" he asked. The policeman stared through him at first, then he nodded. "Kids?" "Two." He nodded again, even breaking a slight smile. No matter how hard they tried to resist, they were always fascinated to talk with the monster. The guy who killed the honeymooners. They could tell their wives and friends, justify the miserable six hundred a week they brought home. He was a celebrity. "Wife work?" Jenks probed. The cop nodded. "Teacher. Business ed. Eighth grade." Business ed, huh? Maybe he would understand a business proposition. "My wife used to work," Jenks grunted back. "My first wife. In retail. My current wife worked, too, in television. Course, now she only works out." The remark produced a snicker. The tight-assed bastard was loosening up. Jenks saw a landmark he recognized. Twenty minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge. There wasn't much time left. He glanced out the window at the patrol car following them. There was another in front. A bitter resignation took hold. There was no way out. No elegant escape. That was in his books. This was life. He was screwed. Then, out of nowhere, the police van lurched violently. Jenks was hurled forward in his seat, toward the guard across from him. For a second, he wondered what was going on, then the van lurched again. He heard a chilling rumbling sound outside. It's a fucking quake. Jenks could see the lead police car swerve to avoid the charge of another car. Then it skidded off the road. One of the cops yelled, "Shit," but the van continued on. Jenks spun around in panic, trying to hold on to anything that was fixed in the compartment. The van was bucking and jolting. The police car following them jumped over a sudden hump in the highway and, to his total amazement, flipped. The driver of Jenks's van looked behind him in shock. Then suddenly the other cop in front screamed for the driver to stop. An eighteen-wheeler was breached in their way. They were headed right toward it. The van swerved, and when it did, the road buckled again. Then they were out of control- flying. I am going to die here, Nicholas Jenks thought. Die here, without anyone ever knowing the whole truth. The van crashed into the stanchions of a Conoco station. It screeched to a stop, spinning twice on its side. The officer across from him was hurled against the metal wall. He was writhing and moaning as he looked at Jenks. "Don't move," the officer panted. How the hell could he? He was still shackled to the seat. Then came this horrid wrenching sound, and they both looked up. The towering steel light above the station toppled like a redwood and crashed down on them. It smashed through the door of the van, striking the officer in back, probably killing him on impact. Jenks was sure he would be killed- all the smoke, the screams, the twisting of metal. But he wasn't. He was clear. The streetlight had torn a hole in the side of the car, ripped his restraints right out of the seat. He was able to kick himself free, even with shackled hands and feet, and push himself through the gaping hole. People were running in the street, screaming in panic. Motorists pulled off the road, some dazed, others jumping out of their vehicles to help. This was it! He knew if he didn't run he would replay this moment for the rest of his life. Nicholas Jenks crawled out of the van, dazed and disoriented. He spotted no cops. Only frightened passersby streaking past. He limped out and joined the chaotic street scene. I'm free! Jenks exulted. And I know who's setting me up. The cops won't get it in a million years.

  Chapter 112

  IT TOOK ABOUT THREE MINUTES for Chris and me to throw on clothes and head back to the Hall. In the rush, I never told him my news. By disaster standards, the quake was nothing much -unless you had spent the past five weeks tracking down the country's most notorious killer. Most of the damage ended up confined to shattered storefronts and traffic accidents north of the city, but as we pushed our way through the clamoring throng of press in the Hall's lobby, the quake's biggest news crackled with the fierceness of a live wire: The bride and groom killer was free, Nicholas Jenks had managed to flee after the police van taking him back to jail had flipped over outside Novato, the result of a chain of automobile accidents caused by the tremor. The policeman guarding him had been fatally injured. Two more, in the front seat of the overturned van, were hospitalized. A huge command center was set up down the hall from Homicide. Roth himself took charge. The place was crawling with brass from downtown and, of course, the press. An APB was released, Jenks's description and photo distributed to cops on both sides of the bridge. All city exits and highway tolls
were being monitored; traffic slowed to a crawl. Airports, hotels, and car-rental ports were put on alert. Since we had tracked Nicholas Jenks down originally, Raleigh and I found ourselves at the center of the search. We placed an immediate surveillance on his residence. Cops spread out all over the Sea Cliff area, from the Presidio to Lands End. In searches like this, the first six hours were critical. The key was to contain Jenks in the grid where he had bolted, not let him contact anyone who could help him. He had no resources, no funds, no one to take him in. Jenks couldn't stay on the loose- unless he was a lot craftier than I thought he was. The escape left me stunned. The man I had hunted down was free, but I was also left conflicted. Were we hunting the right man? Everyone had a theory about where he might head: the wine country, east into Nevada. I had my own theory. I didn't think he'd head back to the house. He was too smart, and there was nothing to be gained there. I asked Roth if I could borrow Jacobi and Paul Chin, to play out a hunch. I took Jacobi aside. "I need you to do me a big favor, Warren." I asked him to do surveillance outside Joanna Wade's apartment on Russian Hill. I asked Chin to do the same outside the house of Jenks's former agent, Greg Marks. If Jenks really believed he was being set up, those were two places he might go. Jacob! gave me a look as if I were sending him out on another champagne lead. The entire corps of inspectors was following up leads. "What the hell, Lindsay… why?" I needed him to trust me. ""Because it struck me as funny, too," I said, begging his support, "why Jenks would leave that damn tuxedo jacket behind. I think he might go after Joanna. Trust me on it." With Warren and Paul Chin in place, there was nothing I could do except monitor the wires. Six hours into the search, there was still no sign of Nicholas Jenks.