Chapter40
IT CAME OUT OF THE BLUE--so unexpectedly -that it didn't really dawn on Claire what I had just said. She answered as if she were fielding a medical question in her lab. "Blood disorder. Pretty rare, serious. The body stops producing erythrocytes." "Red blood cells," I said. Claire glanced at me. "Why? It's not Cat?" referring to my sister. I shook my head. I sat rigid and stared straight ahead. My eyes were glassy. It was probably the long pause that caused it to slowly sink in. Claire whispered, "Not you?" An awful stillness took hold in the car. "Oh, Lindsay." Claire's jaw dropped. She pulled the Bronco onto the shoulder of the road and immediately reached out and hugged me. "What has your doctor told you?" "That it's serious. That it can be fatal." I saw the gravity of that wash over her face. The hurt, the pain. Claire was a doctor, a pathologist. She had taken in what was at stake before I even met her eyes. 1 told her that I was already undergoing packed-red cell transfusions twice a week. "That's why you wanted to get together the other day?" she declared. "Oh, Lindsay. Why couldn't you just tell me?" None of my past reasoning seemed clear now. "I wanted to so much. I was afraid. Maybe even more to admit it to myself. Then I allowed myself to get wrapped up in the case." "Does anyone know? Jacobi? Roth?" I shook my head. "Raleigh?" I took a breath. "Still think I'm ready for Mr. Right?" "You poor baby," Claire said softly. "Oh, Lindsay, Lindsay, Lindsay." Her body was shaking. I could feel it. I had hurt her. Suddenly, I let it all go- fear and shame and uncertainty rushing through me. I held on to Claire, and I realized she was all that kept me from hurtling out of control. I started to cry, and then we both did. It felt good, though. I wasn't alone anymore. "I'm here for you, sweetheart," Claire whispered. "I love you, girl."
Chapter41
THE MURDER IN NAPA changed everything. There were blistering attacks on the way the SFPD was trying to solve the case. We took heat from everywhere. Sensational headlines announced the handiwork of a sadistic, deranged, completely new kind of killer. Out-of town news crews buzzed around the Hall. Tragic wedding pictures and wrenching family scenes were the lead on every TV newscast. The task force that I was heading was meeting twice a day. Two other inspectors from SCU and a forensic psychologist were added on. We had to provide our files for the FBI. The investigation was no longer confined to some embittered figure lurking in David or Melanie Brandt's past. It had grown larger, deeper, more tragic and foreboding. Canvassing area wine shops, Jacobi's team had unearthed a few names, nothing more. The bloody jacket was leading us nowhere, too. The problem was, the tux style was from four or five years ago. Of the fifteen Bay Area stores, not one maintained records of manufacturers' styles, so it was virtually impossible to trace. We had to go over their records invoice by invoice. Mercer tripled our investigators. The killer was choosing his victims with careful precision. Both murders had taken place within a day of the victims' marriages; both reflected specific knowledge of the victims, their lodgings, their itineraries. Both couples still had most of their valuables: watches, wallets, jewelry. The only things missing were the wedding rings. He had dumped the De Georges in a seemingly isolated place, but one where they were sure to be found. He had left other blockbuster clues for us to follow up. It didn't make sense. The killer knows exactly what he's doing, Lindsay. He knows what you're doing. Link the crimes. 1 had to find the common denominator. How he knew his victims. How he knew so much about them. Raleigh and I divided up the possibilities. He took whoever had booked the Brandts' and the De Georges itineraries: travel agencies, limo services, hotels. I took planners. Ultimately, we would find some link between the crimes. "If we don't make progress soon," Raleigh grumbled, "there'll be a lot of priests and rabbis in this town with a shit load of dead time. What's this maniac after?" I didn't say, but I thought I knew. He was after happiness, dreams, expectations. He was trying to destroy the one thing that kept all of us going: hope.
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.