1st to Die - James Patterson [64]
“I don’t want to lose him to Cleveland,” I said.
“So come back to me with something I can take to Big Ben.”
“How about a search and seizure,” Raleigh suggested. “Maybe we can match up the champagne bottle from the first crime scene to the lot he purchased.”
“I could run it by a judge,” Jill mused. “There must be someone out there on the bench who thinks Jenks has done enough to bring down the structure of literary form to the point where they’d go for it. But I think you’d be making a mistake.”
“Why?”
“Some two-time crack whore, her you can bring in on suspicion. You bring in Nicholas Jenks, you better arraign. You alert him that you’re onto him—you’ll spend more time fending off his lawyers and the press than making your case. If he’s it, you’re gonna have one shot and one shot only to dig up what you need to convict. Right now, you need more.”
“Claire has a hair in her lab from the second killing, the DeGeorges,” I said. “We can make Jenks give us a sample of his beard.”
She shook her head. “With what you have, his compliance would be totally voluntary. Not to mention, if you’re wrong, what you might lose.”
“You mean by narrowing the search?”
“I was talking politically. You know the game rules, Lindsay.”
She riveted those intense blue eyes directly at me. I could envision the headlines, turning the case back against us. Like the screwups with O. J. Simpson and Jon Benet Ramsey. In both cases it seemed the cops were as much on trial as any possible defendants.
Jill got up, smoothed her navy skirt, then leaned on her desk. “Look, if the guy’s guilty, I’d like to tear him apart as much as you. But all you’re bringing me is an unlucky preference in champagne and an eyewitness on her third vodka and tonic. Cleveland’s at least got a prior relationship with one of the victims, bringing up a possible motive, but right now none of the jurisdictions have enough to go on.
“I’ve got two of the biggest headline grabbers in the city looking over my every move,” Jill finally admitted. “You think the district attorney and the mayor want to pass this thing on?” Then she fixed unflappably on me. “What’s the litmus test here? You’re sure it’s him, Lindsay?”
He was linked to all three cases. The desperate voice of Christine Kogut was clear in my mind. I gave Jill my most convincing nod. “He’s the killer.”
She got up and made her way around the desk. With a half-smile, she said, “I’m gonna make you pay if this blows any chance of getting my memoirs in print by forty.”
Through the sarcasm, I saw a look flare up in Jill Bernhardt’s eyes, the same resolute look I had seen when she was spinning. It hit me like a spray of Mace.
“Okay, Lindsay, let’s make this case.”
I didn’t know what made Jill tick. Power? An urge to do right? Some manic drive to outperform? Whatever it was, I didn’t think it was far from what had always burned through me.
But listening to her cogently mapping out what we needed to indict, a tantalizing thought took hold of me.
I thought about getting her together with Claire and Cindy.
Chapter 71
AT AN OLD-FASHIONED STEEL DESK in the dingy halls of the Chronicle’s basement library, Cindy Thomas scrolled through four-year-old articles on microfiche. It was late. After eight. Working alone in the underbelly of the building, she felt as if she were some isolated Egyptologist scraping the dust off of long-buried hieroglyphic tablets. She now knew why it was referred to as “the Tombs.”
But she felt she was onto something. The dust was coming off secrets, and something worthwhile would soon be clear to her.
February… March, 1996. The film shot by with indistinguishable speed.
Someone famous, the Cleveland bride’s friend had said. Cindy pushed the film onward. This was how stories were earned. Late nights and elbow grease.
Earlier, she had called the public relations firm Kathy Kogut had worked for in San Francisco, Bright Star Media.