Chapter 69
JACOBI'S STATEMENT kit like an elbow to my solar plexus. At the same time it removed all doubt for me. Kathy Kogut, Sparrow Ridge, the Clos du Mesnil champagne. Jenks was now tied in to all three murders. He was Red Beard. I wanted to run and confront Jenks, but I knew I couldn't. I wanted to get up close, glare in his smug eyes, let him know I knew. At the same time, a suffocating tightness swept up into my chest. I didn't know if it was a flash of nausea, Negli's, or the release of my bottled-up rage. Whatever it was, I knew I had to get out. "I'm leaving," I said to Raleigh. I was scared. He looked stunned and confused as I rushed out. "Hey, I say something wrong?" I heard Jacobi say. I grabbed my jacket and purse and ran down the steps to the street. My blood was rioting inside me like an angry demon. A cold sweat had broken out all over me. I ran out into the cool day, started to walk fast down the street. I had no idea where I was going. I felt like a foreign tourist wandering in the city for the first time. Soon, there were crowds, stores, people rushing by who knew nothing about me. I wanted to lose myself for a few minutes. Starbucks, Kinko's, Empress Travel. Familiar names flashed by. I felt drawn by a single, irrepressible urge. I wanted to look in his eyes. On Post, I found myself standing in front of a Borders bookshop. I went inside. It was large and open, bright with merchandised stands and shelves of all the current books. I didn't ask. I just looked. On a table in front of me, I spotted what I was searching for. Lion's Share. Maybe fifty copies, thick, bright blue, some stacked, some propped up. Lion's Share. By Nicholas Jenks. My chest was exploding. I felt in the grip of unspeakable but undeniable right. A mission, a purpose. This was why I was an investigator. This very moment. I took a copy of Jenks's book and looked at the back cover. I was staring at the killer of the brides and grooms. I was sure of it. It was the cut of Nicholas Jenks's face, sharp as a stone's edge, that told me. The gray eyes, cold and sterile, controlling. And one more thing. The red beard, flecked with gray. Book Three
RED BEARD
Chapter 70
JILL BERNHARDT, the tough, savvy assistant district attorney assigned to the bride and groom case, kicked off her Ferragamos and curled her leg up on the leather chair behind her desk. She fixed her sharp blue eyes directly on my face. "Let me get this straight. You think the bride and groom killer is Nick Jenks?" she asked. "I'm sure of it," I said. Jill was dark, disarmingly attractive. Curly jet-black hair framed a narrow, oval face. She was an achiever, thirty-four, a rising star in Bennett Sinclair's office. All you needed to know about Jill was that as a third-year prosecutor, it was she who had tried the La Frade case, when the mayor's old law partner was indicted on a RICO charge for influence peddling. No one, including the D.A. himself, wanted to submarine his or her career by taking on the powerful fund-raiser. Jill nailed him, sent him away for twenty years. Got herself promoted to the office next to Big Ben himself. One by one, Raleigh and I laid out Nicholas Jenks's connections to the three double murders: the champagne found at the first scene; his involvement in Sparrow Ridge Vineyards; his volatile relationship with the third bride, Kathy Voskuhl. Jill threw back her head and laughed. "You want to bust this guy for messing up someone's life, be my guest. Go try the Examiner. Here, I'm afraid, they make us do it with facts." I said, "We have him tied to three double murders, Jill." Her lips parted into a skeptical smile that read, Sorry, some other time. "The champagne connection might fly, if you had him nailed down. Which you don't. The real-estate partnership's a nonstarter. None of it pins him directly to any of the crimes. A guy like Nicholas Jenks -public, connected- you don't go around making unsubstantiated accusations." With a sigh, she shifted a tower of briefs aside. "You want to take on the big fish, guys? Go back, get yourself a stronger rod." My mouth dropped at her hard-edged reaction to our case. "This isn't exactly my first homicide, Jill." Her strong chin was set. "And this isn't exactly my first page-one case." Then she smiled, softened. "Sorry," she said. "It's one of Bennett's favorite expressions. I must be spending too much time around the sharks." "We're talking about a multiple killer, " Raleigh said, the frustration mounting in his eyes. Jill had that implacable, prove-it-to-me resistance. I had worked with her on murder cases twice before, knew how tireless and prepared she was when she got to court. Once, she had invited me to go "spinning" with her during a trial I was a witness at. I gave up in a sweat after thirty grueling minutes, but Jill, pumping without pause, went on at a mad pace for the full forty-five. Two years out of Stanford Law, she had married a rising young partner at one of the city's top venture firms. Leapfrogged a squadron of career prosecutors to the D.A."s right hand. In a city of high achievers, Jill was the kind of girl for whom everything clicked. I passed her the security photo from the Hall of Fame, then Nicholas Jenks's photograph. She studied them, shrugged. "You know what an adversarial expert witness would do with these? It's pup shit If the cops in Cleveland feel they can convict with this, be my guest." "I don't want to lose him to Cleveland," I said. "So come back to me with something I can take to Big Ben." "How about a search and seizure," Raleigh suggested. "Maybe we can match up the champagne bottle from the first crime scene to the lot he purchased." "I could run it by a judge," Jill mused. "There must be someone out there on the bench who thinks Jenks has done enough to bring down the structure of literary form to the point where they'd go for it. But I think you'd be making a mistake." "Why?" "Some two-time crack whore, her you can bring in on suspicion. You bring in Nicholas Jenks, you better arraign. You alert him that you're onto him- you'll spend more time fending off his lawyers and the press than making your case. If he's it, you're gonna have one shot and one shot only to dig up what you need to convict. Right now, you need more." "Claire has a hair in her lab from the second killing, the De Georges I said. "We can make Jenks give us a sample of his beard." She shook her head. "With what you have, his compliance would be totally voluntary. Not to mention, if you're wrong, what you might lose." "You mean by narrowing the search?" "I was talking politically. You know the game rules, Find say." She riveted those intense blue eyes directly at me. I could envision the headlines, turning the case back against us. Like the screwups with O. J. Simpson and Jon Benet Ramsey. In both cases it seemed the cops were as much on trial as any possible defendants. Jill got up, smoothed her navy skirt, then leaned on her desk. "Look, if the guy's guilty, I'd like to tear him apart as much as you. But all you're bringing me is an unlucky preference in champagne and an eyewitness on her third vodka and tonic. Cleveland's at least got a prior relationship with one of the victims, bringing up a possible motive, but right now none of the jurisdictions have enough to go on. "I've got two of the biggest headline grabbers in the city looking over my every move," Jill finally admitted. "You think the district attorney and the mayor want to pass this thing on?" Then she fixed unflappably on me. "What's the litmus test here? You're sure it's him, Lindsay?" He was linked to all three cases. The desperate voice of Christine Kogut was clear in my mind. I gave Jill my most convincing nod. "He's the killer." She got up and made her way around the desk. With a half-smile, she said, "I'm gonna make you pay if this blows any chance of getting my memoirs in print by forty." Through the sarcasm, I saw a look flare up in Jill Bernhardt's eyes, the same resolute look I had seen when she was spinning. It hit me like a spray of Mace. "Okay, Lindsay, let's make this case." I didn't know what made Jill tick. Power? An urge to do right? Some manic drive to outperform? Whatever it was, I didn't think it was far from what had always burned through me. But listening to her cogently mapping out what we needed to indict, a tantalizing thought took hold of me. I thought about getting her together with Claire and Cindy.