First to Die

Chapter 90

I HAD JUST GOTTEN TO MY DESK the following morning. I was flipping the Chronicle to the continuation of Cindy's article on Jenks's arrest when my phone rang. It was Charlie Clapper. His crime scene team had spent most of the night meticulously going over everything in Jenks's house. "You make a case for me, Charlie?" I was hoping for a murder weapon, maybe even the missing rings. Something solid that would melt Jenks's sneering defiance. The CSU leader let out a weary breath. "I think you should come down here and see." I grabbed my purse and the keys to our work car. In the hallway, I ran into Jacobi. "Rumors say," he grunted, "I'm no longer the man of your dreams." "You know you should never believe what you read in the Star" I quipped. "Right, or hear from the night shift." I pulled myself to a stop. Someone had spotted Chris and me last night. My mind flashed through the red-hot copy that was probably running through the office rumor mill. Behind my anger, I knew that I was blushing. "Relax," Jacobi said. "You know what can happen when you get caught up in a good collar. And it was a good collar." "Thank you, Warren," I said. It was one of those rare moments when neither of us had anything to hide. I winked and hit the stairs. "Just remember," he called after me, "it was the champagne match that got you on your way." "I remember. I'm grateful. Thank you, Warren." I drove down Sixth to Taylor and California to Jenks's home in Sea Cliff. When I arrived, two police cars were blocking the street, keeping a circle of media vans at bay. I found Clapper- looking weary and unshaven- catching a brief rest at the dining room table. "You find me a murder gun?" I asked. "Just these." He pointed to a pile of guns in plastic bags on the floor. There were hunting rifles, a showcase Minelli shotgun, a Colt automatic.45 pistol. No nine millimeter. I didn't make a move to examine them. "We went through his office," Clapper wheezed. "Nothing on any of the victims. No clippings, no trophies." "I was hoping you might've come across the missing rings." "You want rings?" Clapper said. He wearily pushed himself up. "His wife's got rings. Plenty of them. I'll let you go through them. But what we did find was this. Follow me." On the floor of the kitchen, with a yellow "Evidence" marker on it, was a crate of wine, champagne. Krug. Clos du Mesnil. "That we already knew," I said. He kept looking at me, as if I had somehow insulted him with the obvious. Then he lifted a bottle out of the open case. "Check the numbers, Lindsay. Each bottle's registered with a number. Look here, four-two-three-five-five-nine. Must make it go down all the more smoothly." He took out a folded-up green copy of a "Police Property" voucher from his chest pocket. "The one from the Hyatt. Same lot. Same number." Charlie smiled. The bottles were the same. It was solid evidence that tied Jenks to where David and Melanie Brandt were killed. It wasn't a weapon, but it was damning, no longer circumstantial. A rush of excitement shot through me. I high-fived the pale, heavy-set CSU man. "Anyway," Charlie said, almost apologetically, "I wouldn't have brought you all the way out here for just that." Clapper led me through the finely furnished interior of the house to the master bedroom. It had a vast picture window looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge. He took me into a spacious closet. Jenfes's. "You remember the bloody jacket we found at the hotel?" In the rear of the closet, Charlie squatted over a large shoe rack. "Well, now it's a set." Clapper reached behind the shoe rack and pulled out a crumpled Nordstrom's shopping bag. "I wanted you to see how we found it." Out of the bag, he pulled balled-up black tuxedo trousers. "I already checked. It's the other half of the jacket at the Hyatt. Same maker. Look inside; same style number." I might as well have been staring at a million dollars in cash, or a ton of stolen cocaine. I couldn't take my eyes off the pants, imagining how Nicholas Jenks would squirm now. Claire had been right. She'd been right from the start. The jacket hadn't come off the victim It had always belonged to Jenks. "So whaddaya think, Inspector?" Charlie Clapper grinned. "Can you close your case or what? Oh, yeah," the CSU man exclaimed, almost absentmindedly. "Where'd I put it?" He patted his pockets, searched around in his jacket. He finally found a small plastic bag. "Straight out of the sucker's electric razor," Charlie announced. In the bag were several short red hairs.