1st to Die (Women's Murder Club 1)

He looked completely confused. “What am I not following here?”

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“Chris.” I seized his arm. “I think we broke the case.”

Chapter 118

AN HOUR LATER, I got everyone together on the Jenks case, hopefully for the last time.

There had been a few alleged sightings of Nicholas Jenks — in Tiburon down by the marina, and south of Market, huddled around a gathering of homeless men. Both of them proved false. He had eluded us, and the longer he remained free, the greater the speculation.

We got together in a vacant interrogation room that Sex Crimes sometimes used. Claire smuggled Cindy up from the lobby, then we rang down Jill.

“I see we’ve loosened the requirements,” Jill commented, when she came in and saw Chris.

Raleigh looked surprised, too. “Don’t mind me — I’m just the token male.”

“You remember Claire, and Jill Bernhardt from the district attorney’s office,” I said. “Cindy you may recall from Napa. The team.”

Slowly, Chris looked from one face to another until he settled on me. “You’ve been working on this independently of the task force?”

“Don’t ask,” said Jill, plunking herself down in a wooden chair. “Just listen.”

In the cramped, narrow room, all eyes turned to me. I looked at Claire. “You want to begin?”

She nodded, scanned the group as if she were presenting at a medical conference. “On Lindsay’s urging, I spent all last night going through the three case files; I was looking for anything that would implicate Joanna. At first, nothing. Other than coming to the same conclusion I had before — that from the angle of the first victims’ wounds, the killer was right-handed. Jenks is left-handed. But it was clear that it wouldn’t stick.

“Then something struck me that I had never noticed before. At both the first and third crime scenes there were traces of urine. Individually, I guess neither the medical examiner in Cleveland nor I ever thought much of it. But as I thought through the crimes scenes in my head, the locations of these deposits didn’t make any sense. Early this morning, very early, I rushed down here and performed some tests.”

There was barely a breath in the room.

“The urine we found at the Grand Hyatt demonstrated large deposits of yeast, as well as atypically large counts of red blood cells. Red blood cells in that amount appear in the urine during menstruation. Coupled with the yeast, there’s no doubt in my mind that the urine was a woman’s. A woman killed David Brandt, and I have no doubt we’ll find a woman was in the stall in Cleveland, too.”

Jill blinked, dumbfounded. Cindy’s bright red lips parted in an incredulous half smile.

Raleigh just shook his head.

“Jenks didn’t do it,” I said. “Joanna must have. He abused her, then he dumped her for his new wife, Chessy, just as he was about to strike it rich. Joanna tried to sue him twice, unsuccessfully. Ended up with a settlement many times smaller than she would have gotten a year later. She watched him gain celebrity and wealth, and a new, seemingly happy, life.”

Chris looked amazed. “You really believe a woman could physically pull this off? The first victims were stabbed, the second were dragged twenty, thirty yards to where they were dumped.”

“You haven’t seen her,” I replied. “She knew how to set Jenks up. She knew his tastes, his investments, and had access to his possessions. She even worked at Saks.”

Cindy chipped in, “She was one of the few people who would’ve been aware of Always a Bridesmaid.”

I nodded toward Jill. “She had the means, the motive, and I’m damned sure she had the desire.”

A really heavy silence filled the room.

“So how do you want to play this?” Chris finally said. “Half the force is looking for Jenks.”

“I want to inform Mercer, try to get Jenks brought in without someone killing him. Then I want to go ahead and pierce Joanna’s cover. Phone calls, credit cards. If she was in Cleveland, something will tie her there. I think you’d agree now,” I said to Jill, “we have enough to authorize a search.”

Jill nodded, at first hesitantly, then with more resolve. “It’s just impossible to believe that after all this, we now have to defend that bastard.”

Suddenly, there was a loud rap on the glass window of the door. John Keresty, an inspector on the task force, broke in on us.

“It’s Jenks…. He’s just been sighted. He’s up in Pacific Heights.”