The 8th Confession (Women's Murder Club 8)

Chapter 57

MCCORKLE LAUGHED at me.

“Boxer, I’m talking as fast as I can.”

“Talk faster.”

I pounded the Godfrey murder book in jest, but I was starting to get really scared. Four society people had mysteriously died in ’82. We already had three similar, if not identical, deaths within the same week.

I hadn’t fully believed that our unmarked deaths were homicides — but I did now. And I could see that if we were looking at the same killer, he was slippery, smart, and very organized.

“Christopher Ross,” I said. “The final victim.”

“Christopher Ross,” said McCorkle, opening the fourth murder book to one of the morgue photos. “He was a forty-two-year-old white man. Rich as God. Born into old money. He was a family man who fooled around on the side. Some said he even had another family right here in town.

“Look at his kisser there, Boxer. Even dead, Chris Ross was a looker. His wife was one of those women who just put up with his breaking his vows. People said Chris was her lifelong sweetheart, and she loved him. And then, suddenly, he was found stone dead in his own bed — and this was why.”

McCorkle turned to the back of the Ross murder book.

“Here’s your murder weapon,” he said.

It was what I’d been waiting for — and it was nothing like what I expected. The snake was pinned to a board alongside a yardstick showing that the reptile was twenty-one inches long.

I just couldn’t drag my eyes away from that snake.

It was delicate, banded in bluish-gray and white, looked more like jewelry than a killer.

“This snake is a krait,” McCorkle was saying. “Incredibly lethal. Comes from India, so someone imported it. Illegally. No signs of a break-in at any of the victims’ houses.”

“So how did the snake get there?”

McCorkle shrugged expansively.

“And this one snake killed the other victims?” I asked.

“Maybe not this particular snake, Lindsay, but a snake just like it. The first three bodies were exhumed and examined microscopically. The ME, a Dr. Wetmore, found the bite marks on all four victims.

“And according to Dr. Wetmore, the marks were damned hard to see with the naked eye. They were like pinpricks, easily missed if you weren’t looking for them. And according to his report, there was no swelling or discoloration around the bite marks.”

“What about suspects?” I asked.

“Mrs. Christopher Ross inherited fifty million bucks. She was interrogated repeatedly, kept under surveillance. Her phones were tapped, but no one believed she did it. She had her own money. She had everything.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Died in a car accident two or three years after her husband’s death. And there never was another serious suspect.”

“Simon, did the victims know one another?”

“Some did, some didn’t, but one thing they all had in common was that they were all very rich. And something else, maybe you can use it.

“The lead investigator, Lieutenant Leahy, made an unfortunate aside to his deputy at a press conference and the mic was open. A reporter ran with it.”

“Don’t make me beg, McCorkle.”

“Leahy said, and I quote, ‘The victims were twisted — sexually and morally corrupt.’ ”

McCorkle was telling me that the sky fell on Leahy after his comment ran in the Chronicle, that he relocated to Omaha not long after that. But I was far from Omaha. I was thinking about a dainty little Indian snake that left almost imperceptible bite marks.