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

Becky’s teasing laughter gave way to a steady rhythm of deep-throated sighs. Phillip Campbell’s breath began to race. Only inches away, he could hear her panting. A warm, velvety sensation began to burn in his thighs, as it had a week ago at the Grand Hyatt. Michael was entering Becky, and she moaned.

What is the worst thing?

At a clearing, he pulled the car to a stop, turned the headlights off. He took the gun and pulled back the double-clicking action.

Then he lowered the privacy screen.

In the ambient light, there was Becky, her black cocktail dress pulled up around her waist.

“Bravo!” he exclaimed.

They looked up, startled.

He saw a flicker of fear in the bride’s eyes. She tried to cover herself.

Only then did the killer recognize that the warm flood burning his thighs and his knees was his own urine.

He emptied the gun into Becky and Michael De-George.

Chapter 28

THAT SUNDAY MORNING, I woke for the first time all week with a sense of hopefulness. It’s the way I am…or was.

It was clear and beautiful outside; the bay was shimmering as if it were thrilled, too. And it was the day of my brunch with Claire. My confession to her.

Sunday mornings I had this place I always went to. My favorite place, I had told Raleigh.

First I drove downtown, to the Marina Green, in my tights, and jogged in the shadow of the bridge.

Mornings like this, I felt infused with everything that was beautiful about living in San Francisco. The brown coast of Marin, the noises of the bay, even Alcatraz, standing guard.

I ran my usual three-plus miles south on the harbor, then up the two hundred and twelve stone stairs into Fort Mason Park.

Even with Negli’s I could still do it. This morning it seemed to be letting me free.

I jogged past yelping dogs running loose, lovers on a morning walk, gray-clad, bald-headed Chinese men bickering over mah-jongg. Always to the same spot, high on the cliff, looking east over the bay. It was 7:45.

No one knew I came here. Or why. Like every Sunday, I came upon a small group practicing their tai chi. They were mostly Chinese, led, as every week, by the same old man in a gray knit cap and sweater vest.

I huffed to a stop and joined in, as I had every Sunday for the past ten years, since my mother died.

They didn’t know me. What I did. Who I was. I didn’t know them. The old man gave me the same quick, welcoming nod he always did.

There’s a passage in Thoreau: “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper, fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.”

I guess I’ve read that a hundred times. It’s the way I feel up here. Part of the stream.

No Negli’s.

No crimes, no faces twisted in death.

No bride and groom murders.

I did my Morning Swan, my Dragon, and I felt as light and free as I had before Orenthaler first dropped the news on me.

The leader nodded. No one asked me if I was well. Or how the week was.

I just welcomed the day, and knew that I was lucky to have it.