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

Nervously, I opened it and read the first page.

The narrator was reflecting on his crimes from jail. His name was Phillip Campbell.

“What is the worst thing,” the novel began, “anyone has ever done?”

Chapter 85

WE SPLIT UP THE BOOK into four sections. We each paged silently, searching for some scene or detail that would parallel the real-life crimes. Mine was about this guy’s life, Phillip Campbell. His picture-perfect wife, catching her with another man. He killed them both — and his life changed forever.

“Bingo!” Jill spoke up suddenly. She read out loud, bending back the sheaf of paper like a deck of cards.

She described a scene with Phillip Campbell — “breath pounding inside, voices ringing in his head”— stealing through the halls of a hotel. The Grand Hyatt. A bride and groom in a suite. Campbell breaks in on them — he kills them without a second thought.

“‘In a single act,’” Jill read from the manuscript, “‘he had washed away the stench of betrayal and replaced it with a fresh, heretofore unimagined desire. He liked to kill.’”

Our eyes locked. This was beyond creepy. Jenks was crazy — but was he also crafty?

Claire was next. It was another wedding. This time outside a church. The bride and groom coming down the steps, rice being thrown, shouts of congratulations, applause. The same man, Phillip Campbell, at the wheel of the limo that will take them away.

We looked at one another, stunned. It was how the second murders were committed.

Jill murmured, “Holy shit.”

Claire just shook her head. She looked sad and shocked. I guess we all were.

A long-suppressed cry of satisfaction built up in my chest. We had done it. We had solved the bride and groom murders.

“I wonder how it ends?” Cindy mused, fanning to the end of the book.

“How else?” said Jill. “With an arrest.”

Chapter 86

I RODE UP TO JENKS’S HOUSE with Chris Raleigh. We barely spoke, both of us brimming with anticipation. Outside, we were met by Charlie Clapper and his CSU team. They would grid-search the house and grounds as soon as we took Jenks in.

We rang the bell. Each second I waited, my heart pounded harder. Every reason I became a cop was grinding in my chest. This was it.

The door opened, and the same housekeeper answered. This time, her eyes went wide as she took in the convergence of blue-and-whites outside.

I flashed my badge. “We need to see Mr. Jenks.”

We made our way back toward the sitting room where we had met Jenks only the day before. A startled Chessy Jenks met us in the hall “Inspector,” she gasped, recognizing me. “What’s going on? What are all those police cars doing out front?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meeting her eyes. I was sorry for her. “Is your husband at home?”

“Nick!” she cried, realizing in a panic why we had come. Then she ran along with us, trying to block me, shouting, “You can’t just come in here like this. This is our home.”

“Please, Mrs. Jenks,” Raleigh implored.

I was too wound up to stop. I wanted Nicholas Jenks so bad it hurt. A second later he appeared, coming in from the back lawn overlooking the Pacific. He was holding a golf club.

“I thought I told you,” he said, looking perfectly unruffled in his white shirt and linen shorts, “the next time you need something from me you should contact my lawyer.”

“You can tell him yourself,” I said. My heart was racing. “Nicholas Jenks, you are under arrest for the murders of David and Melanie Brandt, Michael and Rebecca DeGeorge, James and Kathleen Voskuhl.”

I wanted him to hear every name, to bring to mind every one of them he’d killed. I wanted to see the callous indifference crack in his eyes.

“This is insane.” Jenks glared at me. His gray eyes burned with intensity.