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

“And if it doesn’t work, how long…before things start to…”

“Start to get worse? Let us attack this with optimism and hope. We’ll discuss that as we go along.”

Everything was thrown open now. The case, my career, all the goals of my life. The stakes had changed. I was walking around with a time bomb ticking in my chest, tightly wound, incendiary. And the slow, disappearing fuse was all that I thought I might be.

I asked quietly, “When do we start?”

He scribbled out the location of an office in the same building. Third floor. Moffett Outpatient Services. There was no date.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to start right now.”

Chapter 21

THE STORY ABOUT GERALD BRANDT’S business deal with the Russians had broken. It was on every newsstand: bold headline reading, “GROOM’S FATHER MAY HAVE TRIGGERED RUSSIAN WRATH.”

The Chronicle reported that the FBI was seriously looking into the matter. Great.

Two half-liter bags of hemoglobin-enriched blood were pumping through me as I finally reached my desk at about ten-thirty. It took everything I had to push from my mind the image of the thick, crimson blood slowly dripping into my vein.

Roth called my name — the usual disgruntled glower was all over his face. “Chronicle says it’s the Russians. The FBI seems to agree,” he said as he leaned over my desk. He pushed a copy of the morning’s paper at me.

“I saw it. Don’t let the FBI in on this,” I said. “This is our case.”

I told him about last night, my going back to the crime scene. How I was pretty sure the sexual assault on the corpse, the bloody jacket, the missing rings, added up to a single, obsessed killer.

“It’s not some Russian professional. He put his fist inside her,” I reminded him. “He did this on her wedding night.”

“You want me to tell the Feds to back off,” Roth said, “because you have strong feelings about the case?”

“This is a murder case. A kinky, very nasty sex crime, not some international conspiracy.”

“Maybe the Russian killer needed proof. Or maybe he was a sex maniac.”

“Proof of what? Every paper and TV station in the country carried the story. Anyway, don’t the Russki hitters usually cut off a finger, too?”

Roth rattled a frustrated sigh. His face showed more than its usual tic of agitation.

“I’ve got to run,” I said. I shot my fist in the air and hoped that Roth got the joke.

Gerald Brandt was still at the Hyatt, waiting for his son’s body to be released. I went to his suite and found him there alone.

“You see the papers?” I asked him as we sat at the umbrellaed table on the terrace.

“The papers, Bloomberg, some woman reporter from the Chronicle calling all night. What they’re suggesting is total madness,” he said.

“Your son’s death was an act of madness, Mr. Brandt. You want me to be straight with you when it comes to the investigation?”

“What do you mean, Detective?”

“You were asked the other day if you knew anyone who might want to cause you harm —”

“And I told your detective, not in this way.”

“You don’t think certain factions in Russia might be a little angry at you for pulling out of their deal?”

“We don’t deal with factions, Ms. Boxer. Kolya’s shareholders include some of the most powerful men in this country. Anyway, you make me seem like I’m a suspect. It was business. Negotiations. In what we do, we deal with this sort of thing every week. David’s death has nothing to do with Kolya.”

“Mr. Brandt, how can you be so sure? Your son and his wife are dead.”