1st to Die - James Patterson [93]
Numbly, we looked around the table. It was as if we were staring at the pieces of some shattered, irreplaceable vase.
“Okay, so if it’s not him,” Claire said with a sigh, “then how do we go about proving who it is?”
It was as if we were all the way back at the beginning—all the way back at the first crime. I felt awful.
“What was the thing that nailed our suspicion on Jenks?” I asked.
“The hair,” said Claire.
“Not quite. We had to get to him before we knew who it belonged to.”
“Merrill Shortley,” Jill said. “Jenks and Merrill? You think?”
I shook my head. “We still needed one more thing before we could take him in.”
Cindy said, “Always a Bridesmaid. His first wife.”
I nodded slowly as I left Susie’s.
Chapter 104
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I went back over everything we had on Joanna Wade.
First, I reread the domestic complaint she had filed against Jenks. I looked at pictures of Joanna taken at the station, bruised, puffy faced. I read through the officers’ account of what they found at the scene. Exchanges laced with invectives. Jenks swinging wildly, clearly enraged. He had to be subdued, resisted arrest.
The report was signed by two officers from Northern, Samuel Delgado and Anthony Fazziola.
The following day, I went back out to visit Greg Marks, Jenks’s former agent. He was even more surprised at my visit when I told him I was there on a different aspect of Jenks’s past. “Joanna?” he replied with an amused smile. “Bad judge of men, Inspector, but a worse judge of timing.”
He explained that their divorce had been finalized only six months before Crossed Wire hit the stands. He said the book sold nearly a million copies in hardcover alone. “To have to put up with Nicholas through all the lean years, then come away with barely more than cab fare…” He shook his head. “The settlement was a pittance compared to what it would’ve been if they had filed a year later.”
What he told me painted a different picture of the woman I had met in the gym. She seemed to have put it all behind her.
“She felt used, dropped like worn baggage. Joanna had put him through school, supported him when he first started writing. When Nick bagged law school, she even went back to her job.”
“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