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jacket, the champagne. Jenks has set up complicated murders in his
books. Why would he leave clues behind?"
"Because he's a sick bastard, Lindsay. Because he's an arrogant prick
who's connected to all three crimes."
Jill nodded. "He's a writer. He's an amateur at actually doing
anything. He just fucked up."
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"You saw his reactions, Jill. They were deeper than simply
desperation. I've seen killers on death row still in denial. This was
more unsettling. Like disbelief."
Jill stood up, her icy blue eyes spearing down at me. "Why, Lindsay,
why the sudden about-face?"
For the first time I felt alone and separated from the people I had
most learned to trust. "No one could possibly hate this man more than
I do," I declared. "I hunted him. I saw what he did to those women."
I turned to Claire. "You said the killer was right-handed."
"Probably right-handed," Claire came back.
"What if he simply held the knife in his other hand?" proposed
Cindy.
"Cindy, if you were going to kill someone," I said, "someone larger and
stronger, would you go at him with your opposite hand?"
"Maybe not," injected Jill, "but you're throwing all this up in the
face of facts. Evidence and reason, Lindsay. All the things we worked
to assemble. What you're giving me back is a set of hypotheticals.
"Jenks holds his pitcher with his left hand. Phillip Campbell sets
someone up at the end of his book." Lindsay, we have the guy pinned to
three double murders. I need you firm on this." Her jaw was
quivering. "I need you to testify."
I didn't know how to defend myself. I had wanted to nail
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Jenks as eagerly as any one of us. More. But now, after being so
sure, I couldn't put it away, the sudden doubt.
Did we have the right man?
"We still haven't uncovered a weapon," I said to Jill.
"We don't need a weapon, Lindsay. We have his hair inside one of the
victims!"
Suddenly, we were aware that people from other tables were looking at
us. Jill huffed and sat back down. Claire put her arms around my
shoulders.
I puffed a deep breath into my cheeks, slumped back against the cushion
of the booth.
Finally, Cindy said, "We've been behind you all the way. We're not
going to abandon you now."
Jill shook her head. "You want me to let him go, guys, while we reopen
the case? If we don't try him, Cleveland will."
"I don't want you to let him go," I said. "I only want to be one
hundred percent sure."
"I am sure," Jill replied, her eyes ablaze.
I sought out Claire, and even she had a skeptical expression fixed
firmly in my direction. "There's an awful lot of physical evidence
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that makes it pretty clear."
"If this gets out," Jill warned, "you can toss my career out with the
cat litter. Bennett wants this guy's blood on the courthouse wall."
"Look at it this way," Cindy said, chuckling, "if Lindsay's right, and
you send Jenks up, they'll be studying this case as a 'how not to' for
twenty years to come."
Numbly, we looked around the table. It was as if we were staring at
the pieces of some shattered, irreplaceable vase.
"Okay, so if it's not him," Claire said with a sigh, "then how do we go
about proving who it is?"
It was as if we were all the way back at the beginning- all the way
back at the first crime. I felt awful.
"What was the thing that nailed our suspicion on Jenks?" I asked.
"The hair," said Claire.
"Not quite. We had to get to him before we knew who it belonged to."
"Merrill Shortley," Jill said. "Jenks and Merrill? You think?"
I shook my head. "We still needed one more thing before we could take
him in."
Cindy said, "Always a Bridesmaid. His first wife."
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I nodded slowly as I left Susie's.
Chapter 104
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, I went back over everything we had on Joanna
Wade.
First, I reread the domestic complaint she had filed against Jenks. I
looked at pictures of Joanna taken at the station, bruised, puffy
faced. I read through the officers' account of what they found at the
scene. Exchanges laced with invectives. Jenks swinging wildly,
clearly enraged. He had to be subdued, resisted arrest.
The report was signed by two officers from Northern, Samuel Delgado and
Anthony Fazziola.
The following day, I went back out to visit Greg Marks, Jenks's former
agent. He was even more surprised at my visit when I told him I was
there on a different aspect of Jenks's past. "Joanna?" he replied
with an amused smile. "Bad judge of men, Inspector, but a worse judge
of timing."
He explained that their divorce had been finalized only
six months before Crossed Wire hit the stands. He said the book sold
nearly a million copies in hardcover alone. "To have to put up with
Nicholas through all the lean years, then come away with barely more
than cab fare ..." He shook his head. "The settlement was a pittance
compared to what it would've been if they had filed a year later."
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What he told me painted a different picture of the woman I had met in
the gym. She seemed to have put it all behind her.
"She felt used, dropped like worn baggage. Joanna had put him through
school, supported him when he first started writing. When Nick bagged
law school, she even went back to her job."
"And afterward," I asked, "did she continue to hate him?"
"I believe she continued to try and sue him. After they split up, she
tried to sue him for a lien against future earnings. Nonperformance,
breach of contract. Anything she could find."
I felt sorry for Joanna Wade. But could it drive her to that kind of
revenge? Could it cause her to kill six people?
The following day, I obtained a copy of the divorce proceedings from
County Records. Through the usual boilerplate, I got the sense it was
an especially bitter case. She was seeking three million dollars
judgment against future earnings. She ended up with five thousand a
month, escalating to ten if Jenks's earnings substantially increased.
I couldn't believe the bizarre transformation that was starting to take
over my mind.
It had been Joanna who had first mentioned the book. Who felt cheated,
spurned, and carried a resentment far deeper than what she had
revealed. Joanna, the Tac-Bo in351
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structor who was strong enough to take down a man twice her size. Who
even had access to the Jenkses' home.
It seemed crazy to be thinking this way. More than preposterous it was
impossible.
The murders were committed by a male, by Nicholas Jenks.
Chapter 105
THE NEXT DAY, as we shared a hot dog and a pretzel in front of City
Hall, I told Chris what I had found.
He looked at me in much the same way the girls had a few days before.
Shock, confusion. Disbelief. But he didn't get negative.
"She could've set the whole thing up," I said. "She knew about the
book. She lobbed it out there for us to find. She knew Jenks's taste-
champagne, clothes- his involvement with Sparrow Ridge. She even had
access to the house."
"I might buy it," he said, "but these murders were committed by a man.
Jenks, Lindsay. We even have him on film."
"Or someone made up to look like Jenks. Every sighting of him was
inconclusive."
"Lindsay, the DNA was a match. " [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]