Chapter 113
AROUND FOUR, I saw Jill pushing her way through the crowd buzzing outside my office. She looked ready to kill somebody, probably me. "I'm glad you're here," I said grabbing her. "Trust me, please, Jill." "Cindy's downstairs," she said. "Let's go talk." We sneaked out and were able to find Cindy amid a throng of reporters clawing at anyone who came down from the third floor. We called Claire, and in five minutes we were sitting around a table at a coffee shop just down the block. Jenks's escape had thrown all of my speculations into disarray. "You still believe he's innocent?" Jill pressed the issue immediately. "That depends on where he turns up next." I informed them that I had stationed a couple of men around the homes of Greg Marks and Joanna Wade. "Even now?" Jill shook her head and looked close to blowing. "Innocent men don't run from police custody, Find say." "Innocent people might," I said. "If they don't believe the justice system is being just!" Claire looked around with a nervous swallow. "Ladies, it strikes me we're entering into very sensitive territory here, all right? We've got a manhunt trying to locate Jenks -he could be shot on sight- and at the same time, we're talking about trying to firm up a case against someone else. If this comes out, heads will roll. I'm looking at some of those pretty heads right now." "If you really believe this, Lindsay, you need to take it to someone," Jill lectured me. "Roth. Mercer." "Mercer's away. And right now, everybody's focused on locating Jenks. Anyway, who the hell would believe this? As you say, all I have is a bunch of hypotheticals." "Have you told Raleigh?" asked Claire. I nodded. "What does he think?" "Right now, he can't get past the hair. Jenks's escape didn't help my case." "I knew there was something I liked about that guy." Jill finally smiled thinly. I looked at Claire for support. "It's hard to argue your side of things, Lindsay," she said with a sigh. "That said, your instincts are usually good." "So then bust in on Joanna, like Lindsay proposed," said Cindy. The more I was around her, the more I loved her. Things had suddenly gotten very sticky in the way of accountability. I turned to Claire. "Is there anything we might have missed that could implicate Joanna?" She shook her head. "We've been through all that. All the evidence points the finger directly at Nicholas Jenks." "Claire, I'm talking about something that was there, right in front of us, that we just didn't see." "I want to be with you on this, Lindsay," Claire said, "but we've been through it. Everything." "There's got to be something. Something that could tell us if the killer is male or female. If Joanna did it, she's no different from any killer I've tracked down. She left something. We just haven't seen it. Jenks did- or someone did for him- and we found him." "And we ought to be out looking for him now," urged Jill, "before we end up with couple number four." I felt alone, but I just couldn't surrender. It wouldn't be right. "Please," I begged Claire, "go through everything on? more time. I think we've got the wrong man."
Chapter 114
IN THE LIGHT of the makeup mirror, the killer sat transfixed by soft blue eyes that were about to become gray. The first thing was to smear her hair until all the blond had been dyed away, then brush it back smooth, a hundred times, until it had lost its luster and shine. "You forced me into this," she said to the changing face. "Forced me to come out one more time. I should have expected as much. You love games, don't you, Nick?" With a cotton swab, she applied the base, a clear, sticky balm with a glue like smell. She dabbed it over her temples, down the curve of her chin, in the soft space between her upper lip and her nose. Then, with a tweezer, she matted on the hair. Tufts of reddish brown. The face was almost complete. But the eyes… anyone could see they were still hers. She slipped out a pair of tinted contacts from the case, moistening them, stretching her lids to insert each one. She blinked, well satisfied with the result. The familiarity was gone. The change was complete. Her eyes now reflected a steely, lifeless gray. Nicholas's color. She was him.
Chapter 115
CLAIRE'S CALL WOKE ME out of a deep sleep. "Come down here," her voice commanded. I blinked groggily at the clock. It was ten after five. "Come down where?" I moaned. "I'm at the damn office. In the damn lab. The guard at the front counter will let you in. Come right now." I heard the urgency in her voice, and it took only seconds for me to come to my senses. "You're at the lab?" "Since two-thirty, sleepyhead. It's about Nicholas Jenks. I think I found something, and Lindsay, it is a mind blower At that hour, it didn't take me more than ten minutes to get to the morgue. I parked in the circular area outside the coroner's entrance reserved for official vehicles. I rushed in, my hair uncombed, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. The guard buzzed me in and let me through. He was expecting me. Claire met me at the entrance to the lab. "Okay," I said, "my expectations are high." She didn't answer. Only pressed me up against the door of the lab, without a word of greeting or explanation. "We're back at the Hyatt," she started in. "Murder number one. David Brandt is about to open the door. "Pretend you're the groom," she said, placing her hand on my shoulder and gently easing me into place, "and I'll be the killer. I surprise you as you open the door, and stab- right handed, not that it makes any difference now." She thrust her fist into the space under my left breast. "So you fall, and that's where we find you, later, at the scene." I nodded, letting her know that I was following along so far. "So what do we find around you?" she asked, wide eyed. I made a mental picture of the scene. "Champagne bottle, tuxedo jacket." "True, but that's not where I'm headed." "Blood… a lot of blood." "Closer. Remember, he died of a cardiac, electromechanical collapse. We simply assumed he was scared to death." I stood up, gazed down at the floor. Then suddenly I saw it as if I were there with the body. "Urine." "Right!" exclaimed Claire. "We find a small residue of urine. On his shoes, on the floor. About six cubic centimeters' worth, that I was able to save. It seemed logical that it belonged to the groom- voiding is a natural response to sudden fear, or death. But I was thinking last night, there were traces of urine in Cleveland, too. And here, back at the Hyatt, I never even had it tested. Why would I? I always assumed it was from David Brandt. "But if you were here, crumpled on the floor, and I was the killer standing above you, and the pee was here," she said, pointing to the floor around me, "who the hell's urine would it be?" Our eyes locked in one of those shining moments of epiphany. "The killer's," I said. Claire smiled at her bright student. "The annals of forensic medicine are rich with examples of murderers 'getting off when they kill, so peeing isn't so far-fetched. Your nerves would be on end. And good old compulsive me, obsessive down to the last detail, refrigerates it in a vial, never knowing what for. And the thing that makes this all come together is, urine can be tested." "Tested? For what?" "For sex, Lindsay. Urine can reveal sex." "Jesus, Claire." I was stunned. She took me into the lab to a counter with two microscopes, some chemicals in bottles, and a device I recognized from college chemistry classes as a centrifuge. "There aren't any flashing gender signs in urine, but there are things to look for. First, I took a sample and spun it down in the centrifuge with this KOH stain, which is something we can use to isolate impurities in blood cultures." She motioned for me to look in the first scope. "See… these tiny, filament like branches with little clusters of cells like grapes. Candida albi cans I looked at her blankly. "Yeast cells, honey. This urine's laced with high deposits of yeast. Boys don't get them." 1 started to smile, but before I could even reply, she dragged me on. "Then I put the other sample under the scope and brought it up three thousand mag. Check this out." I lowered myself over the scope and squinted in. "You see those dark, crescent-shaped cells swimming around?" Claire asked. "Uh-huh." "Red blood cells. Lots of them." 1 lifted my head from the scope and looked at her. "They wouldn't show up in a man's urine. Not to anywhere near this degree. Not unless they've got a bleeding kidney, which to my knowledge, none of our principals show any signs of." "Or"-- I shook my head slowly" unless the killer was menstruating."