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

Sensational headlines announced the handiwork of a sadistic, deranged, completely new kind of killer. Out-of-town news crews buzzed around the Hall. Tragic wedding pictures and wrenching family scenes were the lead on every TV newscast.

The task force that I was heading was meeting twice a day. Two other inspectors from SCU and a forensic psychologist were added on. We had to provide our files for the FBI. The investigation was no longer confined to some embittered figure lurking in David or Melanie Brandt’s past. It had grown larger, deeper, more tragic and foreboding.

Canvassing area wine shops, Jacobi’s team had unearthed a few names, nothing more.

The bloody jacket was leading us nowhere, too. The problem was, the tux style was from four or five years ago. Of the fifteen Bay Area stores, not one maintained records of manufacturers’ styles, so it was virtually impossible to trace. We had to go over their records invoice by invoice.

Mercer tripled our investigators.

The killer was choosing his victims with careful precision. Both murders had taken place within a day of the victims’ marriages; both reflected specific knowledge of the victims, their lodgings, their itineraries. Both couples still had most of their valuables: watches, wallets, jewelry. The only things missing were the wedding rings.

He had dumped the DeGeorges in a seemingly isolated place, but one where they were sure to be found.

He had left other blockbuster clues for us to follow up. It didn’t make sense.

The killer knows exactly what he’s doing, Lindsay.

He knows what you’re doing.

Link the crimes.

I had to find the common denominator. How he knew his victims. How he knew so much about them.

Raleigh and I divided up the possibilities. He took whoever had booked the Brandts’ and the DeGeorges’ itineraries: travel agencies, limo services, hotels. I took planners. Ultimately, we would find some link between the crimes.

“If we don’t make progress soon,” Raleigh grumbled, “there’ll be a lot of priests and rabbis in this town with a shitload of dead time. What’s this maniac after?”

I didn’t say, but I thought I knew. He was after happiness, dreams, expectations. He was trying to destroy the one thing that kept all of us going: hope.

Chapter 42

THAT NIGHT, Claire Washburn took a cup of tea into her bedroom, quietly closed the door, and started to cry again. “Goddamn it, Lindsay,” she muttered. “You could have trusted me.”

She needed to be alone. All evening long, she had been moody and distracted. And it wasn’t like her. On Mondays, a night off for the symphony, Edmund always cooked. It was one of their

rituals, a family night, Dad in the kitchen, boys cleaning. Tonight he had cooked their favorite meal, chicken in capers and vinegar. But nothing had gone right, and it was her fault.

One thought was pounding in her. She was a doctor, a doctor who dealt only in death. Never once had she saved a life. She was a doctor who did not heal.

She went into her closet, put on flannel pajamas, went into the bathroom, and carefully cleansed her smooth brown face. She looked at herself.

She was not beautiful, at least not in the way society taught us to admire. She was large and soft and round, her shapeless waist merging with her hips. Even her hands — her well-trained, efficient hands that controlled delicate instruments all day — were pudgy and full.

The only thing light about her, her husband always said, was when she was on the dance floor.

Yet in her own eyes she had always felt blessed and radiant. Because she had made it up from a tough, mostly black neighborhood in San Francisco to become a doctor. Because she was loved. Because she was taught to give love. Because she had everything in her life that she ever wanted.

It didn’t seem fair. Lindsay was the one who attacked life, and now it was seeping out of her. She couldn’t even think of it in a professional way, as a doctor viewing the inevitability of disease with a clinical detachment. It pained her as a friend.

The doctor who could not heal.

After he and the boys had finished the dishes, Edmund came in. He sat on the bed beside her.

“You’re sick, kitty cat,” he said, a hand kneading her shoulder. “Whenever you curl up before nine o’clock, I know you’re getting sick.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sick, Edmund.”

“Then what is it? This grotesque case?”