1st to Die - James Patterson [94]
“Lindsay, the DNA was a match.”
“I spoke to the officers who went to the house when he beat Joanna,” I pressed on. “They said, as enraged as Jenks was, she was dishing it right back to him, just as strong. They had to restrain her as they took him away in the car.”
“She dropped the charges, Lindsay. She got tired of being abused. She may not have gotten what she deserved, but she filed and started a new life.”
“That’s just it, Chris. She didn’t file. It was Jenks who left her. She sacrificed everything for Jenks. Marks described her as a model of codependency.”
I could see Chris wanted to believe, but he was unconvinced. I had a man in jail with almost incontrovertible evidence against him. And here I was unraveling everything. What was the matter with me?
Then, out of the blue, something came back to me, something I had filed away long ago. Laurie Birnbaum, the witness from the Brandt wedding. How she had described the man she saw. Something strange… The beard made him seem older, but the rest of him was young.
Joanna Wade, medium-height, right-handed, the Tae-Bo instructor, was strong enough to handle a man twice her size. And Jenks’s nine millimeter. He said he hadn’t seen it in years. At the house in Montana…The records showed he had bought the gun ten years ago. When he was married to Joanna.
“You should see her,” I said with rising conviction. “She’s tough enough to handle any of us. She’s the one link who knew about everything: wine, clothes, Always a Bridesmaid. She had the means to pull it all together. The photos, the sightings were inconclusive. What if it was her, Chris?”
I was holding his hand—my mind racing with the possibilities—when I felt a sudden, awful tightness in my chest. I thought it was the shock of what I had just proposed, but it hit me with the speed of an oncoming train.
Vertigo, nausea. It swept from my stomach to my head.
“Lindsay?” Chris said. I felt his hand bracing my shoulder.
“I feel kind of weird,” I muttered. The sweats, a rush, then terrible light-headedness. As if armies were marching and clashing in my chest.
“Lindsay?” he said again, this time with real concern.
I leaned into him. This was the weirdest, scariest sensation. I felt both momentarily robbed of strength and then back in control; lucid, then very woozy again.
I saw Chris, and then I didn’t.
I saw who killed the brides and grooms. And then it faded away.
I felt myself falling toward the sidewalk.
Chapter 106
I FOUND MYSELF COMING TO on a wooden park bench in Chris’s arms. He held me tightly while my strength returned.
Orenthaler had warned me. It was stage three. Crunch time in my body.
I didn’t know which held more apprehension for me: going on chemo and gearing up for a bone marrow transplant or feeling my strength eaten away from the inside.
You can’t let it win.
“I’m okay,” I told him, my voice getting stronger. “I was told to expect this.”
“You’re trying to do too much, Lindsay. Now you’re talking about reopening a whole new investigation.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “I just need to be strong enough to see this through.”
We sat there for a while. I could feel the color in my face reviving, the strength in my limbs returning. Chris held me, cuddled me tenderly. We must’ve looked like two lovers trying to find privacy in a very public place.
Finally, he said, “What you were describing, Lindsay, about Joanna, you really think it’s true?”
It could still add up to nothing. She hadn’t lied about her separation from Jenks. Or about her current relationship with both him and Chessy. Had she concealed a bitter hatred? She had the knowledge, the means.
“I think the killer is still out there,” I said.
Chapter 107
I DECIDED TO TAKE A HUGE RISK. If I blew it, it could knock the lid right off my case.
I decided to run what I suspected by Jenks.
I met him in the same visiting room. He was accompanied by his lawyer, Leff. He didn’t want to meet, convinced there was no longer a point in talking with the police. And I didn’t want to convey my true intent and end up