Chapter 103
JILL, CLAIRE, AND CINDY looked at me as if I were insane. The words had barely tumbled out of my mouth. "What if Jenks is right? What if someone is trying to set him up?" "That's a crock!" snapped Jill. "Jenks is desperate and only moderately clever. We've got him!" "I can't believe you're saying this," exclaimed Cindy. "You're the one who found him. You're the one who made the case." "I know. I know it seems crazy. Hopefully, it is crazy. Just hear me out." I took them through Jacobi's comment about the novel, then my lightning bolt about Jenks's left-handedness. "Proves nothing," Jill said. "I can't get past the science, Lindsay," Claire said with a shake of her head. "We've got his goddamn DNA at the scene." "Look," I protested, "I want the guy as much as anybody. But now that we have all this evidence- well- it's just so neat. The 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." "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 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 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." 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." 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 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.