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

The angry, shocking nature of Melanie Brandt’s death shivered me again. She had been mutilated, defiled. A fist. It had a blunt, savage finality to it. Her assailant wasn’t just trying to act out his nightmare but wanted to shame her as well. Why?

“If you can handle one more thing, follow me,” Claire said.

She led us out through a swinging door into an adjoining lab.

On an apron of white sterile paper lay the blood-smeared tuxedo jacket we had found next to the groom.

Claire picked it up by the collar. “Clapper loaned it to me. Of course, the obvious thing was to confirm whose blood was actually on it.”

The left front panel was slashed through with the fatal incision and sprayed with dark blotches of blood. “Where this starts to get really interesting,” said Claire “is that it wasn’t just David Brandt’s blood that I found on the front of the jacket.”

Raleigh and I gaped in surprise.

“The killer’s?” he said, wide-eyed.

She shook her head. “No, the bride’s.”

I made a fast recollection of the crime scene. The groom had been killed at the door; his wife, thirty feet away in the master bedroom.

“How could the bride’s blood get on his jacket?” I said, confused.

“I struggled with the same thing. So I went back and lined up the jacket against the groom’s torso. The slash mark didn’t quite match up with his wound. Look, the groom’s wound was here. Fourth rib. The slash marks on the jacket are three inches higher. Checking further, the damned jacket isn’t even the same brand as the pants. This is Joseph Abboud.”

Claire winked, seeing the gears of my brain shift into place.

The jacket wasn’t the groom’s. It belonged to the man who had killed him.

Claire rounded her eyes. “Ain’t no professional I know would leave that behind.”

“He could’ve been just trying to utilize the wedding as a cover,” Raleigh replied.

An even more chilling possibility had already struck me.

“He could have been a guest.”

Chapter 15

AT THE OFFICES of the San Francisco Chronicle, Cindy Thomas’s frantic brain was just barely staying ahead of her fingers.

The afternoon deadline was barely an hour away.

From a bellhop at the Hyatt, she had been able to obtain the names of two guests who had attended the Brandt wedding and who were still at the hotel. After running down there again last night, she had been able to put together a heart-wrenching, tragic picture — complete with vows, toasts, and a romantic last dance — of the bride and groom’s final moments.

All the other reporters were still piecing together the sparse details released by the police. She was ahead so far. She was winning, and it felt great. She was also certain this was the best writing she’d done since arriving at the Chronicle, and maybe since she’d been an undergraduate at Michigan.

At the paper, Cindy’s coup at the Hyatt had turned her into an instant celebrity. People she scarcely knew were suddenly stopping and congratulating her. Even the publisher, whom she rarely saw on the Metro floor, came down to find out who she was.

Metro was covering some demonstration in Mill Valley about a construction rerouting that had built up traffic near a school zone.

She was writing page one.

As she typed, she noticed Sidney Glass, her city editor, coming up to her desk. Glass was known at the newspaper as El Sid. He parked himself across from her with a stiff sigh. “We need to talk.”

Her fingers slowly settled to a halt as she looked up.

“I’ve got two very pissed-off senior crime reporters itching to get into this. Suzy’s at City Hall awaiting a statement by the police chief and the mayor. Stone’s put together profiles on both families. They have twenty years and two Pulitzers between them. And it is their beat.”

Cindy felt her heart nearly come to a stop. “What did you tell them?” she asked.