1st to Die, Page 5

  She pointed to a second and third ugly incision under the left breast in a similar location to the groom’s. “Her pericardium was filled with so much blood you could’ve wrung it out like a wet dishrag.”

  “You’re getting technical again,” I said.

  “The tissuelike membrane around the heart. Blood collects in this space and compresses the muscle so that the heart can no longer fill with blood from the main return. Ultimately, it ends up strangling itself.”

  The image of the bride’s heart choking on her own blood chilled me. “It’s almost as if he wanted to duplicate the wounds,” I said, studying the knife-entry points.

  “I thought of that,” said Claire. “Straight line to the heart.”

  Raleigh furrowed his brow. “So the killer could be professional?”

  Claire shrugged. “By the technical pattern of the wounds, perhaps. But I don’t think so.”

  There was a hesitancy in her voice. I looked up and fixed on her grim eyes. “So what I need to know is, was she sexually molested?”

  She swallowed. “There are clear signs of some sort of postmortem penetration. The vaginal mucosa was severely extended, and I found small lacerations around the introitus.”

  My body stiffened in rage. “She was raped.”

  “If she was raped,” Claire replied, “it was a very bad deal. The vaginal cavity was as wide as I’ve ever seen it. Honestly, I don’t think we’re talking penile entry at all.”

  “Blunt instrument?” Raleigh said.

  “Certainly wide enough…but there are abrasions along the vaginal walls consistent with some kind of ring.” Claire took in a breath. “Personally, I’d go with a fist.”

  The angry, shocking nature of Melanie Brandt’s death shivered me again. She had been mutilated, defiled. A fist. It had a blunt, savage finality to it. Her assailant wasn’t just trying to act out his nightmare but wanted to shame her as well. Why?

  “If you can handle one more thing, follow me,” Claire said.

  She led us out through a swinging door into an adjoining lab.

  On an apron of white sterile paper lay the blood-smeared tuxedo jacket we had found next to the groom.

  Claire picked it up by the collar. “Clapper loaned it to me. Of course, the obvious thing was to confirm whose blood was actually on it.”

  The left front panel was slashed through with the fatal incision and sprayed with dark blotches of blood. “Where this starts to get really interesting,” said Claire “is that it wasn’t just David Brandt’s blood that I found on the front of the jacket.”

  Raleigh and I gaped in surprise.

  “The killer’s?” he said, wide-eyed.

  She shook her head. “No, the bride’s.”

  I made a fast recollection of the crime scene. The groom had been killed at the door; his wife, thirty feet away in the master bedroom.

  “How could the bride’s blood get on his jacket?” I said, confused.

  “I struggled with the same thing. So I went back and lined up the jacket against the groom’s torso. The slash mark didn’t quite match up with his wound. Look, the groom’s wound was here. Fourth rib. The slash marks on the jacket are three inches higher. Checking further, the damned jacket isn’t even the same brand as the pants. This is Joseph Abboud.”

  Claire winked, seeing the gears of my brain shift into place.

  The jacket wasn’t the groom’s. It belonged to the man who had killed him.

  Claire rounded her eyes. “Ain’t no professional I know would leave that behind.”

  “He could’ve been just trying to utilize the wedding as a cover,” Raleigh replied.

  An even more chilling possibility had already struck me.

  “He could have been a guest.”

  Chapter 15

  AT THE OFFICES of the San Francisco Chronicle, Cindy Thomas’s frantic brain was just barely staying ahead of her fingers.

  The afternoon deadline was barely an hour away.

  From a bellhop at the Hyatt, she had been able to obtain the names of two guests who had attended the Brandt wedding and who were still at the hotel. After running down there again last night, she had been able to put together a heart-wrenching, tragic picture — complete with vows, toasts, and a romantic last dance — of the bride and groom’s final moments.

  All the other reporters were still piecing together the sparse details released by the police. She was ahead so far. She was winning, and it felt great. She was also certain this was the best writing she’d done since arriving at the Chronicle, and maybe since she’d been an undergraduate at Michigan.

  At the paper, Cindy’s coup at the Hyatt had turned her into an instant celebrity. People she scarcely knew were suddenly stopping and congratulating her. Even the publisher, whom she rarely saw on the Metro floor, came down to find out who she was.

  Metro was covering some demonstration in Mill Valley about a construction rerouting that had built up traffic near a school zone.

  She was writing page one.

  As she typed, she noticed Sidney Glass, her city editor, coming up to her desk. Glass was known at the newspaper as El Sid. He parked himself across from her with a stiff sigh. “We need to talk.”

  Her fingers slowly settled to a halt as she looked up.

  “I’ve got two very pissed-off senior crime reporters itching to get into this. Suzy’s at City Hall awaiting a statement by the police chief and the mayor. Stone’s put together profiles on both families. They have twenty years and two Pulitzers between them. And it is their beat.”

  Cindy felt her heart nearly come to a stop. “What did you tell them?” she asked.

  In El Sid’s hardened eyes, she could see the greedy first-team crime staff, senior reporters with their own researchers, trying to hack their way in and carve this story up. Her story.

  “Show me what you’ve got,” the city editor finally said. He came around, peered over her shoulder, read a few lines off the computer screen. “A lot of it’s okay. You probably know that. ‘Anguished’ belongs over here,” he said, pointing at the screen. “It modifies ‘bride’s father.’ Nothing pisses Ida Morris off like misplaced modifiers and inversions.”

  Cindy could feel herself blushing. “I know, I know. I’m trying to get this in. Deadline’s at…”

  “I know when deadline is.” The editor glowered. “But down here, if you can get it in, you can get it in right.”

  He studied Cindy for what seemed an interminable duration, a deep, assessing stare that kept her on edge.

  “Especially if you intend to stay on this thing.” Glass’s generally implacable face twitched, and he almost smiled at her. “I told them it was yours, Thomas.”

  Cindy repressed an urge to hug the cranky, domineering editor right on the bull pen floor. “You want me at City Hall?” she asked.

  “The real story’s in that hotel suite. Go back to the Hyatt.”

  El Sid began to walk away with his hands, as always, thrust into his trouser pockets.

  But a moment later, he turned back. “Course, if you intend to stay on this story, you’d better find a police source on the inside — and quick.”

  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 foun
d? I don’t understand. What’s your concern?”

  “My concern,” Raleigh said, “is that I don’t want the department 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.

  Chapter 17

  THE WINDOW that Phillip Campbell was staring out had a startling view of the bay, but he didn’t really notice the sights. He was lost in his thoughts. It’s finally started. Everything is in play, he was thinking. The City on the Bay will never be the same, will it? I will never be the same. This was complicated — not what it seemed to be but beautiful in its own way.

  He had closed his office door, as he always did when he was absorbed in research. Lately, he had stopped catching lunch with his coworkers. They bored him. Their lives were filled with petty concerns. The stock market. The Giants and the 49ers. Where they were headed on vacation. They had such shallow, simple, middle-class dreams. His were soaring. He was like the moguls thinking up their new, new things over in Silicon Valley.

  Anyway, that was all in the past. Now he had a secret. The biggest secret in the world.

  He pushed his business papers to the corner of his desk. This is the old world, he thought. The old me. The bore. The worker bee.

  He unlocked the top left drawer of his desk. Behind the usual personal clutter was a small gray lockbox. It was barely large enough to hold a packet of three-by-five-inch cards.

  This is my world now.

  He thought back to the Hyatt. The bride’s beautiful porcelain face, the blossoms of blood on her chest. He still couldn’t believe what had taken place. The sharp crack of the knife ripping through cartilage. The gasp of her last breath. And his, of course.

  What were their names? Oh, Jesus Christ, he’d forgotten. No, he hadn’t! The Brandts. They were all over the newspapers and the TV news.

  With a key from his chain, he opened the small box. What spilled out into the room was the intoxicating spell of his dreams.

  A stack of index cards. Neat and orderly. Alphabetically arranged. One by one, he skimmed through them. New names… King…Merced…Passeneau…Peterson.

  All the brides and grooms.

  Chapter 18

  SEVERAL URGENT MESSAGES were on my desk when I got back from the morgue. Good — urgent was appropriate.

  Charlie Clapper from CSU. Preliminary report in. Some reporters: from the AP, local television stations. Even the woman from the Chronicle who had left me her card.

  I picked at a grilled chicken and pear salad I had brought up as I dialed Clapper back. “Only good news,” I joked, as his voice came on the phone.

  “In that case, I can give you a nine hundred number. For two bucks a minute they’ll tell you anything you want to hear.”

  I could hear it in the tone of his voice. “You got nothing?”

  “Tons of partials, Lindsay,” the CSU chief replied, meaning inconclusive prints his team had lifted from the room. “The bride’s, the groom’s, the assistant manager’s, housekeeping’s.”

  “You dusted the bodies?” I pressed. The killer had pulled Melanie Brandt up off the floor. “And the box of champagne?”

  “Of course. Nothing. Somebody was careful.”

  “What about off the floor? Fibers, shoeprints.”

  “Besides the pee.” Clapper laughed. “You think I’m holding out on you? You’re cute, Lindsay, but I get off on bagging killers more. Meanwhile, I’ve got someone running that tux jacket under the microscope. I’ll let you know. Roger wilco.”

  “Thanks, Charlie,” I muttered disappointedly.

  As I flipped further through my stack of messages, Cindy Thomas’s name came to the top.

  Normally, I wasn’t in the habit of phoning back reporters in the middle of an ongoing investigation. But this one had been smart and cool making her way up to the crime scene, yet kind in backing off when she had me cornered in the bathroom.

  I found her at her desk. “Thanks for calling me back, Inspector,” she said in an appreciative tone.

  “I owed you, I guess. Thanks for cutting me some slack at the hotel.”

  “Happens to us all. But I have to ask: Do you always react so personally at a crime scene? You’re a homicide detective, right?”

  I didn’t have the time or heart to get into a battle of wits, so I used Jacobi’s line. “It was a wedding. I always cry at them. What can I do for you, Ms. Thomas?”

  “Cindy…. I’m going to do you a favor. When I reach five, maybe you’ll do one for me.”

  “We have a homicide, a very bad one. We’re not going to play Let’s Make a Deal. And if we meet again, you’ll find I’m not my cheeriest when I feel indebted.”

  “I guess what I was hoping for,” she said, “was to hear your spin on the bride and groom.”

  “Doesn’t Tom Stone cover homicide for the Chronicle?” I asked.

  I heard her take in a breath. “I won’t lie to you. I normally handle local interest out of Metro.”

  “Well, you got yourself a real story now. ‘Marriage Made in Heaven Ends Up in Hell.’ You’re quick out of the gate.”

  “Truth is, Inspector,”
— her voice grew softer — “I’d never seen anything like that before. Seeing David Brandt lying there… on his wedding night. I know what you must think, but it’s not just about the story. I’d like to help any way I can.”

  “I appreciate that, but since we’ve got all these eager people with badges walking around here. We ought to give them a shot? Anyway, you should know that you sneaking your way up to the thirtieth floor didn’t exactly get me invited to the commissioner’s for brunch. I had tactical responsibility at the crime scene.”

  “I never thought I’d actually make it through.”

  “So we’ve established we don’t know who owes whom here. But since it’s my dime…”

  The reporter’s voice went back to a peremptory tone. “I called to get your reaction to a story we’re going to break later today. You know the groom’s father runs a buyout firm. Our business editor pulled off Bloomberg that they backed out of a proposed agreement at the last minute with the third-largest Russian automaker, Kolya-Novgorod. Brandt was providing up to two hundred million dollars for a significant stake. Kolya’s one of those Russian conglomerates taken over by a new branch of black-market capitalists. Without the cash, I’m told it’s virtually bankrupt. My source tells me the mood got very fractious.”

  I laughed. “Fractious, Ms. Thomas? I might be getting a little fractious myself.”

  “Apparently, some of the Russians were left hanging with their Uncle Vanyas out.”

  I laughed again. “Conspiracy to commit murder is a federal crime,” I told her. “If there’s something to it, you should make the call to Justice.”

  “I just thought I’d let you know. In the meantime, you want to throw me a comment on any other possibilities you’re looking into?”

  “Sure. I’d feel safe in saying that they’re ‘ongoing.’”