1st to Die - James Patterson [49]
“You said the bodies were found in a sexually explicit position?” I asked McBride with dismay.
The Cleveland cop hesitated. He finally said, “The groom was shot sitting on the john. We found him there. Sitting up, legs open. The bride was shot in the stall, too, as she was coming in. There was enough of her brains on the inside of the door to confirm it. But when we found her, she was facedown. Uh, her face was stuffed between his legs.”
I was silent, forming the image in my mind, hating this cruel, inhuman bastard more every day.
“You know… fellatio style,” McBride finally managed. “There’s a few things my investigators want to ask you.”
“Ask me yourself. I’m gonna be there tomorrow.”
Chapter 54
SIX-THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING, Raleigh and I were on our way to Cleveland, of all places. McBride met us at the plane. He wasn’t how I had imagined him. He wasn’t flabby, middle-aged, Irish Catholic. He was was intense, sharp boned, maybe thirty-eight, and black.
“You’re younger than I thought.” He smiled at me.
I smiled back. “And you’re definitely less Irish.”
On the way into town, he brought us up to speed. “Groom’s from Seattle. Had something to do with the music business. Worked with rock bands. Producer… marketing guy. Bride grew up here in Ohio. Shaker Heights. Father’s a corporate attorney. Girl was cute, redhead, freckles, glasses.”
He pulled a manila envelope off the dashboard and tossed it over to me in the passenger seat. Inside were a series of glossy eight-by-elevens of the crime scene: stark, graphic, somewhat resembling old photos of gang land rubouts. The groom was sitting in the stall with a surprised expression and the top of his head blown off. The bride was slumped over his lap, curled in a pool of blood, hers and his.
The sight of the couple filled me with a cold dread. As long as the killer was in northern California, I felt we had him contained. Now he was on the loose.
We grilled McBride about the venue—how the victims might have ended up in the men’s room and what security was like at the Hall of Fame.
Each answer I heard convinced me even more that it was our guy. What the hell was he doing here?
We pulled off the highway at Lake Shore Boulevard. A modern skyline rose all around us. “There she is,” McBride announced.
From a distance, I saw the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame glinting up ahead like a jaggedly cut jewel. A twisted killer had struck in the city’s most celebrated venue. By now, he might already be back in San Francisco. Or Chicago? New York? Topeka? Planning another gruesome double murder. Or maybe he was in a hotel room across the square, watching us arrive.
Red Beard could be anywhere.
Chapter 55
IT WAS THE THIRD TIME in two weeks I had to go over a harrowing double-murder scene.
McBride walked us up to the second floor and through an eerie, empty atrium devoid of pedestrian traffic to a men’s room blocked off by crisscrossing yellow crime tape and cops.
“Public bathroom,” Raleigh said to me. “He’s getting nastier each time.”
This time there were no bodies, no horrifying discoveries. The victims had long been transferred to the morgue. In their place were grim outlines of tape and chalk; gut-wrenching black-and-white crime photos were taped to the walls.
I could see what had happened. How the groom had been killed first, his blood smeared on the wall behind the toilet. How Red Beard had waited, surprised the bride as she came in, then moved Kathy Voskuhl into the provocative position between her husband’s legs. Defiled her.
“How did they both end up here in the middle of their wedding?” Raleigh asked.
McBride pointed to a crime-scene photo on the wall. “We found a smoked-down joint next to James Voskuhl. Figured he came here to cop a buzz. My guess is the bride came in to join him.”
“No one saw anything, though? They didn’t leave the reception with anyone?”
McBride shook his head.
I felt the same smoldering anger I had felt twice before. I hated this killer. This savager of dreams. With each act I hated