1st to Die - James Patterson [63]
I felt drawn by a single, irrepressible urge. I wanted to look in his eyes.
On Post, I found myself standing in front of a Borders bookshop. I went inside.
It was large and open, bright with merchandised stands and shelves of all the current books. I didn’t ask. I just looked. On a table in front of me, I spotted what I was searching for.
Lion’s Share. Maybe fifty copies, thick, bright blue, some stacked, some propped up.
Lion’s Share. By Nicholas Jenks.
My chest was exploding. I felt in the grip of unspeakable but undeniable right. A mission, a purpose. This was why I was an investigator. This very moment.
I took a copy of Jenks’s book and looked at the back cover.
I was staring at the killer of the brides and grooms. I was sure of it.
It was the cut of Nicholas Jenks’s face, sharp as a stone’s edge, that told me. The gray eyes, cold and sterile, controlling.
And one more thing.
The red beard, flecked with gray.
Book Three
RED BEARD
Chapter 70
JILL BERNHARDT, the tough, savvy assistant district attorney assigned to the bride and groom case, kicked off her Ferragamos and curled her leg up on the leather chair behind her desk. She fixed her sharp blue eyes directly on my face.
“Let me get this straight. You think the bride and groom killer is Nick Jenks?” she asked.
“I’m sure of it,” I said.
Jill was dark, disarmingly attractive. Curly jet-black hair framed a narrow, oval face. She was an achiever, thirty-four, a rising star in Bennett Sinclair’s office.
All you needed to know about Jill was that as a third-year prosecutor, it was she who had tried the La Frade case, when the mayor’s old law partner was indicted on a RICO charge for influence peddling. No one, including the D.A. himself, wanted to submarine his or her career by taking on the powerful fund-raiser. Jill nailed him, sent him away for twenty years. Got herself promoted to the office next to Big Ben himself.
One by one, Raleigh and I laid out Nicholas Jenks’s connections to the three double murders: the champagne found at the first scene; his involvement in Sparrow Ridge Vineyards; his volatile relationship with the third bride, Kathy Voskuhl.
Jill threw back her head and laughed. “You want to bust this guy for messing up someone’s life, be my guest. Go try the Examiner. Here, I’m afraid, they make us do it with facts.”
I said, “We have him tied to three double murders, Jill.”
Her lips parted into a skeptical smile that read, Sorry, some other time. “The champagne connection might fly, if you had him nailed down. Which you don’t. The real-estate partnership’s a nonstarter. None of it pins him directly to any of the crimes. A guy like Nicholas Jenks—public, connected—you don’t go around making unsubstantiated accusations.”
With a sigh, she shifted a tower of briefs aside. “You want to take on the big fish, guys? Go back, get yourself a stronger rod.”
My mouth dropped at her hard-edged reaction to our case. “This isn’t exactly my first homicide, Jill.”
Her strong chin was set.
“And this isn’t exactly my first page-one case.” Then she smiled, softened. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s one of Bennett’s favorite expressions. I must be spending too much time around the sharks.”
“We’re talking about a multiple killer, “ Raleigh said, the frustration mounting in his eyes.
Jill had that implacable, prove-it-to-me resistance. I had worked with her on murder cases twice before, knew how tireless and prepared she was when she got to court. Once, she had invited me to go “spinning” with her during a trial I was a witness at. I gave up in a sweat after thirty grueling minutes, but Jill, pumping without pause, went on at a mad pace for the full forty-five. Two years out of Stanford Law, she had married a rising young partner at one of the city’s top venture firms. Leapfrogged a squadron of career prosecutors to the D.A.’s right hand. In a city of high achievers, Jill was the kind of girl for whom everything clicked.
I passed her the security photo from the Hall of Fame, then Nicholas Jenks’s photograph.
She studied