Chapter42
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?" Claire raised a hand. "It's Lindsay. I rode back from Napa with her yesterday. She told me the most awful news. She's very sick. She's got a rare blood disorder, a form of anemia. It's called Negli's aplastic." "It's severe, this Negli's anemia?" Claire nodded, her eyes dim. "Damned severe." "Oh, God," Edmund murmured. "Poor Lindsay." He took her hand, and they sat there for a moment in stunned silence. Claire finally spoke. "I'm a doctor. I see death every day. I know the causes and symptoms, the science inside out. But I can't heal." "You heal us all the time," Edmund said. "You heal me every day of my life. But there are times when even all your love and even your amazing intelligence can't change things." She nestled her body in his strong arms and smiled. "You're pretty smart for a guy who plays the drums. So what the hell can we do?" "Just this," he said, wrapping his arms around her. He held Claire tight for a long time, and she knew he thought she was the most beautiful woman in the whole world. That helped.
Chapter 43
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, I got my first glimpse of the killer's face. Chris Raleigh was talking to the people who had handled the victims' travel arrangements. I was checking into who had planned their weddings. Two different companies. For the De Georges White Lace. For the Brandts, a fancy consultant, Miriam Campbell. That wasn't the link. I was at my desk when the duty clerk put through a call. It was Claire. She had just returned from examining the bodies of the victims with the county coroner in Napa. She sounded excited. "Get over here," she said. "Hurry." "You found a link. Becky De George was sexually disturbed?" "Lindsay, we're dealing with one sick dude." "They were definitely in the act when they were killed," Claire told me minutes later when I met her in the lab. "Semen traces found in Rebecca De George matched those I scraped off her husband. And the angle of the wounds confirmed what I suspected. She was shot from behind. Rebecca's blood was all over her husband's clothes. She was straddling him… But that's not why I asked you here." She fixed her large, wide eyes on me, and I could tell it was something important. "I thought it best to keep this quiet," she said. "Only the local M.E. and I know." "Know what, Claire? Tell me, for God's sake." In the lab, I spotted a microscope on a counter and one of those airtight petri dishes I remembered from high school biology. "As with the first victims," she said excitedly, "there was additional sexual disturbance of the corpse. Only this time, it wasn't so obvious. The labia was normal, what you would assume post intercourse and there were no internal abrasions like with the first bride. Toll missed it… but I was looking for signs of additional abuse. And there it was, inside the vagina, sort of shouting, "Come and get me, Claire."" She picked up the petri dish and a tweezer, and gently removed the top. Her eyes lit up with importance. Out of the clear dish she lifted out a single, half-inch red hair. "It's not the husband's?" Claire shook her head. "Look for yourself." She flicked on the microscope. I leaned in, and against the brilliant white background of the lens, I saw two hairs: one thin, shiny, black brown; the other short, curly, sickle shaped. "You're looking at two sections from Michael De George she explained. "The long one's from his head. The other is genital." Then she placed the hair from the petri dish on another slide and inserted it in the microscope lens bay, side by side with the others. My pulse was starting to race. I thought I knew where she was going with this. The new hair was reddish brown in hue and twice the thickness of either of De George It had tiny filaments twisted around the cortex. It clearly belonged to someone else. "It's neither cranial nor pubic. It's from a beard," Claire announced, leaning over me. I pulled back from the scope and looked at her, shocked. The killer's facial hair had turned up in Becky De George vagina. "Postmortem," she said, to drive it home.
Chapter44
AS CLAIRE SAID, we were piecing our killer together, step by step. His height, his face, his fetishes. The way he murdered. Now I had to figure out how he was tracking his victims. Raleigh and I were going full force on the travel and wedding-planner thing. We had fifteen detectives out there following up leads. Now that we had a facial characteristic, we went back to the guests, combing them for a guy in a beard who might have been seen trolling around. I felt confident that some aspect of this widening search would yield results. One of the guests would have noticed someone. We would discover a travel agent in common, a leak somewhere. Or one of Jacobi's searches would come up with a match. The following morning, Hartwig called in. "Sparrow Ridge Vineyards… it's owned by a group here known as E Black Hawk Partners. A local guy, Ed Lester, an attorney, puts together real-estate partnerships." "You know where he was over the weekend?" "Yeah, I checked. Portland. He ran in a marathon there. I caught up with him when he got back to the office. He was definitely in Portland." I still felt certain that whoever had dumped the bodies there hadn't stumbled on the remote vineyard by accident. It meant something to the killer. "He owns this place outright?" "Uh-uh. Black Hawk puts together deals. They bring in outside money from well-heeled guys down your way. People who want to break into the wine game. Lester acts as the managing partner." "So who's he partnered with on this one?" "I don't know. Investors." I sucked in my breath, trying to remain patient. "Which investors?" "Generally, investors who want to remain private. Listen, Inspector, I know where you're heading, but this guy only deals with pretty established people. Believe me, anyone could've found that dump site. Real-estate agents, someone who'd checked it out, anyone local. I have to deal with these people long after you're gone." I cradled the phone in my neck and spun around in my seat toward the window. "This is a multiple-murder investigation, Lieutenant, the worst I've ever seen. The dump site is three miles up a deserted dirt road. Anyone riding around in the dark with two bodies could've safely dumped them anytime before. Whoever did this had to know the vineyard was there. And I don't think it's a local. I don't think he would draw attention so close to where he lives. "Come back to me when you know who Lester's partners are." I hung up on Hartwig. Some of my optimism began to unravel. Raleigh turned up nothing on the travel agents. The Brandts had booked through Travel Ventures, a society agent that catered to a high-end crowd. The De Georges had used Journeytime, out of Los Altos. We had people scour through the personnel records of both firms. There was no connection between the two: no cooperative arrangements, not a single travel agent who had worked for both of them. It was possible someone had tapped into their systems, said the manager of Journeytime. But finding such a person was next to impossible. My end was equally disappointing. I had the files from both wedding planners. Engravers, bands, photographers, caterers, florists. Nothing matched up. The Brandts and the De Georges had lived in two separate worlds. However the killer was identifying the victims, I hadn't found a clue.