Women's Murder Club [01] 1st to Die

by James Patterson

  “And afterward,” I asked, “did she continue to hate him?”

  “I believe she continued to try and sue him. After they split up, she tried to sue him for a lien against future earnings. Nonperformance, breach of contract. Anything she could find.”

  I felt sorry for Joanna Wade. But could it drive her to that kind of revenge? Could it cause her to kill six people?

  The following day, I obtained a copy of the divorce proceedings from County Records. Through the usual boilerplate, I got the sense it was an especially bitter case. She was seeking three million dollars judgment against future earnings. She ended up with five thousand a month, escalating to ten if Jenks’s earnings substantially increased.

  I couldn’t believe the bizarre transformation that was starting to take over my mind.

  It had been Joanna who had first mentioned the book. Who felt cheated, spurned, and carried a resentment far deeper than what she had revealed. Joanna, the Tae-Bo instructor who was strong enough to take down a man twice her size. Who even had access to the Jenkses’ home.

  It seemed crazy to be thinking this way. More than preposterous…it was impossible.

  The murders were committed by a male, by Nicholas Jenks.

  Chapter 105

  THE NEXT DAY, as we shared a hot dog and a pretzel in front of City Hall, I told Chris what I had found.

  He looked at me in much the same way the girls had a few days before. Shock, confusion. Disbelief. But he didn’t get negative.

  “She could’ve set the whole thing up,” I said. “She knew about the book. She lobbed it out there for us to find. She knew Jenks’s taste — champagne, clothes — his involvement with Sparrow Ridge. She even had access to the house.”

  “I might buy it,” he said, “but these murders were committed by a man. Jenks, Lindsay. We even have him on film.”

  “Or someone made up to look like Jenks. Every sighting of him was inconclusive.”

  “Lindsay, the DNA was a match.”

  “I spoke to the officers who went to the house when he beat Joanna,” I pressed on. “They said, as enraged as Jenks was, she was dishing it right back to him, just as strong. They had to restrain her as they took him away in the car.”

  “She dropped the charges, Lindsay. She got tired of being abused. She may not have gotten what she deserved, but she filed and started a new life.”

  “That’s just it, Chris. She didn’t file. It was Jenks who left her. She sacrificed everything for Jenks. Marks described her as a model of codependency.”

  I could see Chris wanted to believe, but he was unconvinced. I had a man in jail with almost incontrovertible evidence against him. And here I was unraveling everything. What was the matter with me?

  Then, out of the blue, something came back to me, something I had filed away long ago. Laurie Birnbaum, the witness from the Brandt wedding. How she had described the man she saw. Something strange … The beard made him seem older, but the rest of him was young.

  Joanna Wade, medium-height, right-handed, the Tae-Bo instructor, was strong enough to handle a man twice her size. And Jenks’s nine millimeter. He said he hadn’t seen it in years. At the house in Montana… The records showed he had bought the gun ten years ago. When he was married to Joanna.

  “You should see her,” I said with rising conviction. “She’s tough enough to handle any of us. She’s the one link who knew about everything: wine, clothes, Always a Bridesmaid. She had the means to pull it all together.

  The photos, the sightings were inconclusive. What if it was her, Chris?”

  I was holding his hand — my mind racing with the possibilities — when I felt a sudden, awful tightness in my chest. I thought it was the shock of what I had just proposed, but it hit me with the speed of an oncoming train.

  Vertigo, nausea. It swept from my stomach to my head.

  “Lindsay?” Chris said. I felt his hand bracing my shoulder.

  “I feel kind of weird,” I muttered. The sweats, a rush, then terrible light-headedness. As if armies were marching and clashing in my chest.

  “Lindsay?” he said again, this time with real concern.

  I leaned into him. This was the weirdest, scariest sensation. I felt both momentarily robbed of strength and then back in control; lucid, then very woozy again.

  I saw Chris, and then I didn’t.

  I saw who killed the brides and grooms. And then it faded away.

  I felt myself falling toward the sidewalk.

  Chapter 106

  I FOUND MYSELF COMING TO on a wooden park bench in Chris’s arms. He held me tightly while my strength returned.

  Orenthaler had warned me. It was stage three. Crunch time in my body.

  I didn’t know which held more apprehension for me: going on chemo and gearing up for a bone marrow transplant or feeling my strength eaten away from the inside.

  You can’t let it win.

  “I’m okay,” I told him, my voice getting stronger. “I was told to expect this.”

  “You’re trying to do too much, Lindsay. Now you’re talking about reopening a whole new investigation.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “I just need to be strong enough to see this through.”

  We sat there for a while. I could feel the color in my face reviving, the strength in my limbs returning. Chris held me, cuddled me tenderly. We must’ve looked like two lovers trying to find privacy in a very public place.

  Finally, he said, “What you were describing, Lindsay, about Joanna, you really think it’s true?”

  It could still add up to nothing. She hadn’t lied about her separation from Jenks. Or about her current relationship with both him and Chessy. Had she concealed a bitter hatred? She had the knowledge, the means.

  “I think the killer is still out there,” I said.

  Chapter 107

  I DECIDED TO TAKE A HUGE RISK. If I blew it, it could knock the lid right off my case.

  I decided to run what I suspected by Jenks.

  I met him in the same visiting room. He was accompanied by his lawyer, Leff. He didn’t want to meet, convinced there was no longer a point in talking with the police. And I didn’t want to convey my true intent and end up feeding their defense arguments if I was wrong.

  Jenks seemed sullen, almost depressed. His cool and meticulous appearance had deteriorated into an edgy, unshaven mess.

  “What do you want now?” he sneered, barely meeting my eyes.

  “I want to know if you were able to come up with anyone who would like to see you in here,” I said.

  “Pounding the lid on my coffin?” he said with a mirthless smile.

  “Let’s just say, in the interest of doing my duty, I’m giving you one final chance to pry it back open.”

  Jenks snorted skeptically. “Sherman tells me I’m about to be charged in Napa with two more murders. Isn’t that great? If this is an offer of assistance, I think I’ll take my chances on proving it myself.”

  “I didn’t come here to trap you, Mr. Jenks. I came to hear you out.”

  Leff leaned over and whispered in his ear. He seemed to be encouraging Jenks to talk.

  The prisoner looked up with a disgusted glare. “Someone’s running around, intent to look like me, familiar with my first novel. This person also wants to see me suffer. Is it so hard to figure out?”

  “I’m willing to hear any names,” I told him.

  “Greg Marks.”

  “Your former agent?”

  “He feels like I owe him my fucking career. I’ve cost him millions. Since I left, he hasn’t gotten a worthwhile client. And he’s violent. Marks belongs to a shooting club.”

  “How would he have gotten his hands on your clothing? Or been able to get a sample of your hair?”

  “You find that out. You’re the police.”

  “Did he know you’d be in Cleveland that night? Did he know about you and Kathy Kogut?”

  “Nick is merely proposing,” Leff cut in, “that other possibilities do exis
t for who could be behind these crimes.”

  I shifted in my seat. “Who else knew about the book?”

  Jenks twitched. “It wasn’t something I paraded around. Couple of old friends. My first wife, Joanna….”

  “Any of them have any reason to want to set you up?”

  Jenks sighed uncomfortably. “My divorce, as you may know, was not exactly what they call mutually agreeable. No doubt there was a time Joanna would’ve been delighted to find me on a deserted road while she was cruising along at sixty. But now that she’s back on her feet, with a new life, now that she’s even gotten to know Chessy…I don’t think so. No. It isn’t Joanna. Trust me on that.”

  I ignored the remark and looked firmly into his eyes. “You told me your ex-wife’s been to your house.”

  “Maybe once or twice.”

  “So, she’d have access to certain things. Maybe the wine? Maybe what was in your closet?”

  Jenks seemed to contemplate the possibility for a moment, then his mouth crinkled into a contemptuous smile. “Impossible. No. It isn’t Joanna.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  He looked at me as if he were stating an understood fact. “Joanna loved me. She still does. Why do you think she hangs around, covets a relationship with my new wife? Because she misses the view? It’s because she cannot replace what I gave her. How I loved her. She is empty without me.

  “What do you think?” he snorted. “Joanna’s been holding specimens of my hair in a jar ever since we were divorced?” He sat there, stroking his beard, while the resolve on his face softened into a glimmer of possibility. “Someone has it in for me…but Joanna… she was just a little clerk when I met her. She didn’t know Ralph Lauren from JCPenneys. I gave her self-esteem. I devoted myself to her, and she to me. She sacrificed for me, even worked two jobs when I decided to write.”

  It was hard to think of Jenks as anything other than the ruthless bastard who was responsible for these horrible crimes, but I pressed on. “You said the tuxedo was an old suit. You didn’t even recognize it. And the gun, Mr. Jenks, the nine millimeter. You said you hadn’t seen it in years. That you thought it was kept somewhere at your house in Montana. Are you so sure this might not have been planned for some time?”

  I could see Jenks subtly shifting his expression as he came around to the impossible conclusion.

  “You said that when you started writing, Joanna took a second job to help support you. Just what sort of work?”

  Jenks stared up toward the ceiling, then he seemed to remember.

  “She worked at Saks.”

  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 DeGeorge, 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-offactly.

  “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.