First to Die

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.