Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 88

Jinx looked haunted as she told me about Clark Langston’s life and death, still afraid of her dead husband. Maybe she still loved him too.

“We were on a dirt road that circled the lake,” she said. “Boaters were packing up their gear. The road turned into a rut, overgrown with grass and weeds, and in every way deserted.

“I was still doing my GPS voice,” Jinx continued. She smiled, but it was a nervous smile. “This laughable pretense of control over my husband was inspiring me, Jack. We were now locked in a crazy game of chicken. And he was goading me, saying, ‘You think I don’t know what you’re up to?’

“I don’t know how he knew it, but an idea had occurred to me-that maybe I could get him to crash his Maserati. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to die, and if I died too, it was all right.

“I said, ‘Take the next left.’ That was the road to the national recreation area.”

I sat back in my seat and watched her face. I imagined this power struggle twenty years before, the tyrannical older man and his bride who fantasized about getting even. Emotionally, Jinx was still back there.

“It was still light enough to see,” she said to me. “I told him to take the next turn, which was onto a boat ramp. He did it, and we took the ramp going forty.

“I lost my nerve. I screamed, but Clark was having a high time scaring me, making me sorry that I’d dared him. He laughed at me, Jack. He pressed his foot down even harder on the gas.”

“Did he realize where he was?”

“I’ll never know. He might have thought he could stop the car in time and misjudged the distance. Maybe he thought that his quarter-million-dollar car would fly. All I know for sure is that he never braked.

“I undid my seat belt,” Jinx told me. Her head was lowered. She was rushing now, trying to get the story over with.

“I had the door open, and I jumped before the car hit the water. I went numb for a while after that. I heard nothing, saw nothing, thought only of reaching the shore, which wasn’t far away.

“I didn’t look back. I walked for a while, got a ride, told the police that my husband had lost control of his car.

“When they pulled the car out of the lake, Clark was still wearing his seat belt. His blood alcohol was three times the legal limit, and his death was ruled accidental. No questions.

“I went to the funeral. I cried. Then I moved to LA. I took back my maiden name, and I got my degree.”

“You bought a hotel.”

Jinx said, “Yes. Right after I graduated. I bought a hotel with the two million dollars stipulated in my prenuptial agreement. I borrowed a lot more. I renovated the whole place, reopened it as the Beverly Hills Sun, and then I bought the other two. I was in a frenzy. I needed to work, to prove to myself that my life was worth something. That I didn’t need Clark’s love-or his disdain.

“Jack, what I did at Whiskeytown Lake-I wanted him to die, then I made my wish come true.”

She had started to tear up, but she wouldn’t let herself go. She said, “I’ve been feeling that the killings in my hotels are payback for Clark’s death, for the money I got from him.”

“Jinx, did you make your husband a drunk, an abuser, a rapist? Did you make him drive off that ramp?”

I was continuing in this vein, but she stopped me. She put her hand on my chest. She was struggling to get something out.

“I’m afraid…to trust myself again…to be with a man.”

She was leaning against me.

“I feel like I want to hold you,” I said.

She looked up at me, her eyes full of tears. “I need to be held.”

I took her into my arms, and at last she cried.

I hadn’t expected to feel close to her. I didn’t even welcome the feeling, but it was undeniable. I liked Jinx a lot.