First to Die

Chapter 16

AFTER LEAVING THE MORGUE, Raleigh and I walked back to the office, mostly in silence. Lots of details about the murders were bothering me. Why would the killer take away the victim's jacket? Why leave the champagne bottle? It made no sense. "We've got a sex crime now. Bad one." I finally turned to him on the asphalt walkway leading to the Hall. "I want to run the autopsy results through Milt Fanning and the FBI computers. We also need to meet with the bride's parents. We'll need a history on anyone she may have been involved with before David. And a list of everyone at that wedding." "Why don't we wait for some confirmation on that one," my new partner said, "before we go all out on that angle." I stopped walking and stared at him. "You want to see if anybody checked in for a bloody jacket with the lost and found? I don't understand. What's your concern?" "My concern," Raleigh said, "is that I don't want the de58 partment intruding on the grief of the families with a lot of hypotheticals until we have more to go on. We may or may not have the killer's jacket. He may or may not have been a guest." "Who do you think it belonged to, the rabbi?" He flashed me a quick smile. "It could've been left there to set us off." His tone seemed suddenly different. "You're backing off?" I asked him. "I'm not backing off," he said. "Until we have something firm, every old boyfriend of the bride or casualty of some corporate downsizing Gerald Brandt had a hand in could be rolled out as a possible suspect. I'd rather the spotlight wasn't aimed back at them unless we have something firm to go on." Here it was. The spiel. Packaging, containment. Brandt and Chancellor Weil, the bride's father, were VIPs. Find us the bad guys, Lindsay. Just don't put the department at any risk along the way. I chuffed back, "I thought the possibility that the killer could've been at that wedding was what we had to go on." "All I'm suggesting, Lindsay, is let's get some confirmation before we begin ripping into the sex life of the best man." I nodded, all the while fixing in on his eyes. "In the meantime, Chris, we'll just follow up on our other really strong leads." We stood there in edgy silence. "All right, why do you think the killer changed jackets with the groom?" I asked him. He leaned back against the edge of a cement retaining wall. "My guess is that he was wearing it when he killed them. It was covered with blood. He had to get out undetected. The groom's jacket was lying around. So he just switched." "So you figure he went to all that trouble making the slash mark and all, thinking no one would notice. Different size, different maker. That it would just slip by. Raleigh, why did he leave it behind? Why wouldn't he stuff the bloody jacket into a bag? Or roll it under his new jacket?" "Okay," Raleigh conceded, "I don't know. Your guess is?" I didn't know why he had left it behind, but a chilling possibility was beginning to form in my mind. "Possibility one," I answered, "he panicked. Maybe the phone rang or someone knocked at the door." "On their wedding night?" "You're starting to sound like my ex-partner." I started toward the Hall, and he caught up. He held the glass doors open for me. As I walked through, he took my arm. "And number two?" I stood there, looking squarely into his eyes, trying to assess just how far I could go with him. "What's your real expertise here, anyway?" I asked. He smiled, his look confident and secure. "I used to be married." I didn't reply. Possibility two: A fear was building inside me. The killer was signing his murders? He was toying with us? Purposely leaving clues? One-time crime-of-passion killers didn't leave clues like the jacket. Professionals didn't, either. Serials left clues.