I reached out and touched her hand. I had my answer. I closed my pad, ready to get up, when Joanna surprised me.
“I thought it was him. Not really. But I thought of Nick when I heard about those terrible crimes. I thought about his book, and I said, It could be him.”
I stopped Joanna. “What book?”
“That first thing he wrote. Always a Bridesmaid. I figured that’s what brought you here, what connected him to the murders.”
I stared at her, confused. “Just what are you talking about?”
“I barely remember it. He wrote it before we met. I was lucky enough to come in for the second unpublished one, which, I’m told, he recently sold for two million. But this book I’d totally forgotten about until recently. It was about a student in law school who discovers his wife with his best friend. He kills them both. Ends up going on a rampage.”
“What kind of rampage?” I asked. What she said next made me gasp.
“He goes around killing brides and grooms. A lot like what happened.”
Chapter 80
THAT WAS THE PIECE of the puzzle I needed. If Jenks had premeditated these crimes, mapped them out in some early book, it would constitute unimpeachable knowledge. No longer circumstantial. With everything else we had, I could definitely bring him in.
“Where can I find this book?” I asked.
“It wasn’t very good,” Joanna Wade replied. “Never published.”
Every nerve in my body was standing on end. “Do you have a copy?”
“Trust me, if I did I would have burned it years ago. Nick had this agent in town, Greg Marks. He dumped him when he got successful. If anyone would have it, it might be him.”
I called Greg Marks from the car. I was really humming now. I loved this.
The operator connected me and after four rings, an answering tape came on: “You’ve reached Greg Marks Associates…” I cringed with disappointment. Damn, damn, damn
.
Reluctantly, I left him my pager number. “A matter of great urgency,” I said. I was about to tell him why I was calling when a voice cut in on the tape — “This is Greg Marks.”
I explained I needed to see him immediately. His office wasn’t too far; I could be there in ten minutes. “I have an engagement at One Market at six-fifteen,” the agent replied curtly. “But if you can get here…”
“You just stay right there,” I told him. “This is police business and it’s important. If you leave, I’ll arrest you!”
Greg Marks worked out of his brownstone, a third-floor loft in Pacific Heights with a partial view of the bridge. He answered the door with a suspicious reserve. He was short, balding, smartly dressed, a jacquard shirt buttoned to the top.
“I’m afraid you haven’t picked a popular topic with me, Inspector. Nicholas Jenks hasn’t been a client for over six years. He left me the day Crossed Wire hit the Chronicle’s bestseller list.”
“Are you still in touch?” I wanted to make sure anything I asked him wouldn’t get back to Jenks.
“Why? To remind him how I baby-sat him through the years when he could barely use a noun with an adjective, how I took his obsessed midnight calls, stroked that gigantic ego?”
“I’m here about something Jenks wrote early on,” I interrupted. “Before any big deals. I spoke to his ex-wife.”
“Joanna?” Marks exclaimed with surprise.
“She said he had written a book that never got published. She thought it was called Always a Bridesmaid.”
The agent nodded. “It was an uneven first effort. No real narrative power. Truth is, I never even sent it out.”
“Do you have a copy?”
“Packed it back to him as soon as I turned the final page. I would think Jenks must, though. He thought the book was a suspense masterpiece.”