1st to Die - James Patterson [66]
Too restless to sit, Cindy stalked around my living room as she took me through the steps of her amazing discovery. She unfolded a copy of the news photo showing Jenks and Kathy Kogut at the movie opening. I watched her circle the couch, trying to keep up with herself: Bright Star… Sierra… Crossed Wire…She was hyper. “I’m a good reporter, Lindsay,” she said.
“I know you are.” I smiled at her. “You just can’t write about it.”
Cindy stopped—the sudden realization of what she had overlooked hitting her like a pie in the face.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “That’s like being in a shower with Brad Pitt, but you can’t touch.” She looked at me, half smiling, half like nails were being driven into her heart.
“Cindy”—I reached out and held her—“you wouldn’t have even known to look for him if I hadn’t clued you in on Cleveland.”
I went to the kitchen. “You want some tea?” I called out.
She collapsed on the couch and let out another wail. “I want a beer. No, not beer. Bourbon.”
I pointed to my small bar near the terrace. In a few moments, we sat down. Me with my Nocturnal Seasonings, Cindy with a stiff glass of Wild Turkey, Martha comfortable at our feet.
“I’m proud of you, Cindy,” I told her. “You did crack the name. You scooped two police forces. When this is over, I’m gonna make sure you get a special mention in the press.”
“I am the press,” Cindy exclaimed, forcing herself to smile. “And what do you mean, ‘When this is over’? You have him.”
“Not quite.” I shook my head. I explained that everything we had, even stuff she didn’t know—the vineyard, the champagne—was circumstantial. We couldn’t even force him to submit a hair.
“So what do we need to do?”
“Tie Nicholas Jenks solidly in to the first crime.”
Suddenly, she began pleading, “I have to run with it, Lindsay.”
“No,” I insisted. “No one knows. Only Roth and Raleigh. And one more…. ”
“Who?” Cindy blinked.
“Jill Bernhardt.”
“The assistant district attorney? That office is like a colander trying to sail across the Pacific. It’s nothing but leaks.”
“Not Jill,” I promised. “She won’t leak this.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because Jill Bernhardt wants to nail this guy as much as we do,” I said with conviction.
“That’s all?” groaned Cindy.
I sipped a soothing mouthful of tea, met her eyes. “And because I invited her into our group.”
Chapter 73
THE FOLLOWING DAY we met after work for a drink at Susie’s; it was Jill’s introduction to our group.
All day, I couldn’t fix on anything other than the thought of confronting Jenks with what we knew and bringing him in. I wanted to accelerate everything—a face-to-face confrontation. I wanted to let him know we had him. Goddamn Red Beard.
As we waited for drinks, I threw out a couple of new developments. A search of Kathy Kogut’s home in Seattle had uncovered Jenks’s name and phone number in the dead bride’s phone book. A trace by Northwest Bell had turned up three calls to him in the past month—including one three days before the Cleveland wedding. It confirmed what Merrill Shortley had told us.
“Right up to the very end,” said Claire. “Creepy. Both of them, actually.”
We had run Jenks’s photo by Maryanne Perkins of Saks as part of a photo spread with five others. We desperately needed something that pinned him to the first crime. She paused over his likeness for a few seconds. “It’s him,” she declared. Then she paused. “But then, it’s hard to tell. It was so quick. And far away.”
The thought of a defense attorney cross-examining her didn’t sit well with me. It didn’t surprise me that Jill agreed.
It took no longer than a single margarita for her to make a seamless entry into our group.
Claire had met her a few times when she testified at trials. They had developed a mutual respect for each other’s rise through their male-dominated departments.
We asked Jill about herself, and she told us she was Stanford Law and her father was a corporate attorney back in Dallas. No interest in the corporate thing. That was for her husband,