1st to Die

by James Patterson

  The four of us walked arm in arm out of the cemetery. A cooling breeze was blowing in our faces, drying our tears.

  At six o’clock that night, I was back inside the halls of the Hall of Justice.

  There was something important I had to do.

  In the lobby, almost the first thing you see, there’s a large marble plaque. On it are ninety-three names, the names and dates of ninety-one men and two women who wore the uniform of the SFPD and died in the line of duty. A mason is working on the plaque.

  It’s an unwritten rule on the force, you never count them. But tonight, I did. Ninety-three, starting with James S. Coonts on October 5, 1878, when the SFPD was first formed.

  Tomorrow there will be one more: Christopher John Raleigh. The mayor will be there; Mercer, too. The reporters who cover the city beat. Marion and the boys. They will memorialize him as a hero cop. I will be there, too.

  But tonight, I don’t want speeches or ceremonies. Tonight, I want it to be just him and me.

  The mason finishes up the engraving of his name. I wait while he sands the marble, vacuums away the last particle of dust. Then I walk up and run my hand over the smooth marble. Over his name.

  Christopher John Raleigh.

  The mason looks at me. He can see the pain welling in my eyes. “You knew him, huh?”

  I nod, and from somewhere deep in my heart, a smile comes forth. I knew him.

  “Partner,” I say.

  Epilogue

  COUP DE GRCE

  I HAVE COME TO LEARN that murder investigations always have loose ends and questions that cry out to be answered. Always.

  But not this time.

  I was home one night about a month after we buried Chris. I had finished dinner for one, fed and walked Her Sweetness, when there was a knock on the door, a single, authoritative rap.

  I hadn’t buzzed anyone up from downstairs, so I went and looked through the peephole before I opened up. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Nicholas Jenks.

  He had on a blue blazer over a white shirt and dark gray slacks. He looked as arrogant and obnoxious as ever.

  “Aren’t you going to let me in?” he asked, then smiled as if to say, Of course you are. You can’t resist, can you?

  “No, actually I’m not,” I told him. I walked away from the door. “Get lost, asshole.”

  Jenks knocked again, and I stopped walking. “We have nothing to talk about,” I called loudly enough for him to hear.

  “Oh, but we do,” Jenks called back. “You blew it, Inspector. I’m here to tell you how.”

  I froze. I could feel my eyes blazing, heat burning the back of my neck. I walked back to the door, paused, then opened it, my heart beating fast. You blew it.

  He was smiling, or maybe laughing at me. “I’m celebrating,” he said. “I’m a happy fella! Guess how come?”

  “Don’t tell me, because you’re a bachelor again.”

  “Well, there’s that. But I also just sold North American rights to my latest book. Eight million dollars. Then the movies paid four. This one’s nonfiction, Lindsay. Guess the subject. Go ahead, take a stab.”

  I wanted desperately to punch Jenks out again. “And I’m the one you have to share your news with? How goddamn sad for you.”

  Jenks continued to grin. “Actually, I came here to share something else. You are the only one I want to share this with. Do I have your attention yet, Lindsay? You blew it big-time, babe.”

  He was so creepy and inappropriate that he was scaring me. I didn’t want him to see it. What did he mean, I blew it?

  “I’d offer you a drink, but I hate your guts.” I smirked.

  He threw up his hands, imitated my smirk. “You know, I feel exactly the same thing toward you. That’s why I wanted to tell you this, Lindsay, only you.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Chessy did what I told her to do, right up until the very end. The murders? We were playing a terrible, wonderful game. Tragic husband and wife kill happy, innocent husbands and wives. We were living out the plot of a novel. My novel. You blew it, Lindsay. I got away clean. I’m free. I’m so free. And now I’m richer than ever.”

  He stared at me, then he started to laugh. It was probably the most sickening sound I’d heard in my life.

  “It’s true. Chessy would do anything I wanted her to do. All of them would — that’s why I picked them. I used to play a game where they barked like dogs. They loved it. Want to play, Lindsay? Ruff, ruff?”

  I glared at him. “Don’t you feel kind of inadequate — playing your father’s old games? Joanna told me.”

  “I took things way past anything my father ever imagined. I’ve done it all, Inspector, and I got away with it. I planned every murder. Doesn’t that make your fucking skin crawl? Doesn’t it make you feel inadequate?”

  Suddenly, Jenks was putting on plastic gloves he took out of his jacket pockets. What the hell?

  “This is perfect, too,” he said. “I’m not here, Lindsay. I’m with this sweet little liar of a bitch in Tahoe. I have an alibi bought and paid for. Perfect crimes, Lindsay. My specialty.”

  As I turned to run, Jenks took out a knife. “I want to feel this going inside you, Lindsay. Deep. The coup de grâce.”

  “Help!” I screamed, but then he hit me hard. I was shocked at how fast he moved and how powerful he was.

  I slammed into a living room wall and almost went out. Martha instinctively went after him. I’d never seen her bare her teeth before. He lashed out and cut her shoulder. Martha fell over, whining horribly.

  “Stay away, Martha!” I screamed at her.

  Jenks picked me up and threw me into my bedroom. He shut the door.

  “There was supposed to be another bride and groom murder while I was in jail. New evidence was going to slowly reveal itself. It would become clear that I was innocent — framed. Then I’d write the book! But Chessy turned around and double-crossed me. I never respected her more, Lindsay. I almost loved her for it. She showed some goddamn guts for once!”

  I crawled away from Jenks, but he could see there was nowhere for me to go in the bedroom. I thought I might have a broken rib.

  “You’ll have to kill me first,” I told him in a hoarse whisper.

  “Okay.” He grinned. “Glad to oblige. My pleasure.”

  I crawled hand over hand toward my bed, the side facing a window on the bay. It was hard to breathe.

  Jenks came after me.

  “Stop, Jenks!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “Stop right there, Jenks!”

  He didn’t stop. Why should he? He slashed back and forth with the knife. Christ, he was enjoying this. He was laughing. Another perfect murder.

  I reached under the bed to where I’d fastened a holster and revolver, my home security system.

  I didn’t have time to aim, but I didn’t have to. Nicholas Jenks was stunned, the knife poised over his left shoulder.

  I fired three times. Jenks screamed, his gray eyes bulged in disbelief, then he collapsed dead on top of me. “Burn in hell,” I whispered.

  I called Claire first — the medical examiner; then Cindy — the best crime reporter in San Francisco; then Jill — my lawyer.

  The girls came running.

  More

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  2ND CHANCE

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  available March 2002

  Prologue

  THE CHOIR KIDS

  Aaron Winslow would never forget the next few minutes. He recognized the terrifying sounds the instant they cracked through the night. His body went cold all over. He couldn’t believe that someone was shooting a high-powered rifle in this neighborhood.

  K-pow, k-pow, k-pow… k-pow, k-pow, k-pow.

  His choir was just leaving the Harrow Street church. Forty-eight young kids streamed past him onto the sidewalk. They had just finished their
final rehearsal before the San Francisco Sing-Off, and they had been excellent.

  Then came the gunfire. Lots of it. Not just a single shot. A strafing. An attack.

  K-pow, k-pow, k-pow… k-pow, k-pow, k-pow.

  “Get down…” he screamed at the top of his voice. “Everybody down on the ground! Cover your heads. Cover up!” He almost couldn’t believe the words as they left his mouth.

  At first, no one seemed to hear him. To the kids, in their dress white blouses and shirts, the shots must have seemed like firecrackers. Then, a volley of shots rained through the church’s beautiful stainedglass window. The depiction of Christ’s blessing over a child at Capernaum shattered, glass splintering everywhere, some of it falling on the heads of the children.

  “Someone’s shooting!” Winslow screamed. Maybe more than one person. How could that be? He ran wildly through the kids, screaming, waving his arms, pushing as many as he could down to the grass.

  As the kids finally crouched low or dove for the ground, Winslow spotted two of his choir girls, Chantal and Tamara, frozen on the lawn as bullets streaked past them. “Get down, Chantal, Tamara!” he screamed, but they remained there, hugging each other, emitting frantic wails. They were best friends. He had known them since they were little kids, playing four-square on blacktop.

  There was never any doubt in his mind. He sprinted toward the two girls, grasping their arms firmly, tumbling them to the ground. Then he lay on top of them, pressing their bodies tightly.

  Bullets whined over his head, just inches away. His eardrums hurt. His body was trembling and so were the girls shielded beneath him. He was almost sure he was about to die. “It’s all right, babies,” he whispered.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the firing stopped. A hush of silence hung in the air. So strange and eerie, as if the whole world had stopped to listen.

  As he raised himself, his eyes fell on an incredible sight. Slowly, everywhere, the children struggled to their feet. There was some crying, but he didn’t see any blood, no one seemed to be hurt.

  “Everyone okay?” Winslow called out. He made his way through the crowd. “Is anyone hurt?”

  “I’m okay… I’m okay,” came back to him. He looked around in disbelief. This was a miracle.

  Then he heard the sound of a single child whimpering.

  He turned and spotted Maria Parker, only twelve years old. Maria was standing on the whitewashed wooden steps of the church entrance. She seemed lost. Choking sobs poured from her open mouth.

  Then Aaron Winslow’s eyes came to rest on what had made the girl hysterical. He felt his heart sink. Even in war, even growing up on the streets of Oakland, he had never felt anything so horrible, so sad and senseless.

  “Oh, God. Oh, no. How could you let this happen?”

  Tasha Catchings, just eleven years old, lay in a heap in a flower bed near the base of the church. Her white school blouse was soaked with blood.

  Finally, Reverend Aaron Winslow began to cry himself.

  Part I

  The Women’s Murder Club—Again

  On a Tuesday night, I found myself playing a game of crazy eights with three residents of the Hope Street Teen House. I was loving it.

  On the beat-up couch across from me sat Hector, a barrio kid two days out of Juvenile; Alysha, quiet and pretty, but with a family history you wouldn’t want to know; and Michelle, who, at fourteen, had already spent a year selling herself on the streets of San Francisco.

  “Hearts,” I declared, flipping down an eight and changing the suit, just as Hector was about to lay out.

  “Damn, badge lady,” he whined, “how come each time I’m ’bout to go down, you stick your knife in me?”

  “Teach you to ever trust a cop, fool.” Michelle laughed, tossing a conspiratorial smile my way.

  For the past four months, I’d been spending a night or two a week at the Hope Street House. For so long after the terrible bride and groom case earlier that summer I’d felt completely lost. I took a month off from Homicide; ran down by the Marina; gazed out at the Bay from the safety of my Potrero Hill flat.

  Nothing helped. Not counseling, not the total support of my girls—Claire, Cindy, Jill. Not even going back to the job. I had watched unable to help as the life leaked out of the person I loved. I still felt responsible for my partner’s death in the line of duty. Nothing seemed to fill the void.

  So I came here…to Hope Street.

  And the good news was, it was working a little.

  I peered up from my cards at Angela, a new arrival who sat in a metal chair across the room, cuddling her three-month-old son. The poor kid, maybe sixteen, hadn’t said much all night. I would try to talk to her before I left for the night.

  The door opened and Dee Collins, one the House’s head counselors, came in. She was followed by a stifflooking black woman in a conservative gray suit. She had Department of Children and Families written all over her.

  “Angela, your social worker’s here.” Dee kneeled down beside her.

  “I ain’t blind,” the teenager said.

  “We’re going to have to take the baby now,” the social worker interrupted, as if completing this assignment was all that was keeping her from catching the next CalTrain.

  “No!” Angela pulled the infant even closer. “You can keep me in this hole, you can send me back to Claymore, but you’re not taking my baby.”

  “Please, honey, only for a few days,” Dee tried to assure her.

  The teenage girl drew her arms protectively around her baby, who, sensing harm, began to cry.

  “Don’t you make a scene, Angela,” the social worker warned. “You know how this is done.”

  As she came toward her, I watched as Angela jumped out of the chair. She was clutching the baby in one arm and a glass of juice she’d been drinking in the opposite hand.

  In one swift motion, she cracked the glass against a table. It created a jagged shard.

  “Angela!” I jumped up from the card table. “Put that down. No one’s going to take your baby anywhere unless you let her go.”

  “This bitch is trying to ruin my life.” She glared at the DGF agent, gripping the broken glass so tightly it cut into her hand. “First, she lets me sit in Claymore three days past my date, then she won’t let me go home to my mom. Now she’s trying to take my baby girl.”

  I nodded, peering into the teenager’s eyes. “First, you gotta lay down the glass,” I said. “You know that, Angela.”

  The DCF worker took a step, but I held her back. I moved slowly toward Angela. I took hold of the glass, then I gently eased the child out of her arms.

  “She’s all I have,” the girl whispered, and then started to sob.

  “I know,” I said gently. “That’s why you’ll change some things in your life and get her back.”

  Dee Collins had her arms around Angela, a cloth wrapped around the girl’s bleeding hand. The DCF worker was trying unsuccessfully to hush the crying infant.

  I went up to her and said, “That baby gets placed somewhere nearby, with daily visitation rights. And by the way, I didn’t see anything going on here that was worth putting on file… You?” The caseworker gave me a disgruntled look and turned away.

  Suddenly, my beeper sounded, three dissonant beeps punctuating the tense air. I pulled it out and read the number. Jacobi, my ex-partner in Homicide. What did he want?

  I excused myself and moved into the staff office. I was able to reach him in his car.

  “Something bad’s happened, Lindsay,” he said glumly. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  He clued me in about a horrible drive-by shooting at the Harrow Street church. An eleven-year-old girl had been killed.

  “Jesus…” I sighed, as my heart sank.

  “I thought you might want in on it,” Jacobi said.

  I took in a breath. It had been over three months since I’d been on the scene at a homicide. Not since the day the bride and groom case ended.

  “So, I didn
’t hear,” Jacobi pressed. “You want in, Lieutenant?” It was the first time he had addressed me by my new rank.

  I realized my honeymoon had come to an end. “Yeah,” I muttered back. “I want in.”