WMC - First to Die

Chapter 76

and stared at it. "It is me," he declared. "But the lady, though quite beautiful, I don't recognize. If I can ask, where's this picture from?" "The San Francisco opening of Crossed Wire." "Ah," he sighed, as if that classified something for him. I watched the gears in his brain start to shift for the right response. He was definitely smart, and a pretty good actor. "I meet a lot of people at these events. It's why I try to avoid them. You say this was that girl who was killed in Cleveland?" "We were hoping this was someone you might've remembered," I replied. Jenks shook his head. "Too many fans, not much appetite to meet them, even the really pretty ones, Inspector." "The price of fame, I imagine…" I took the photo back, thumbed it for a moment, then slid it back in front of him. "Nevertheless, I have to come back to this particular fan. I'm curious why she doesn't stick out for you. From all those other fans." I withdrew a copy of a Northwest Bell phone bill from my folder and handed it to him. On it were several highlighted calls. "This is your private number?" Jenks held the copy of the bill. His eyes dimmed. "It is." "She called you, Mr. Jenks. Three times in just the past few weeks. Once… here, I circled it for you, for twelve minutes only last week. Three days before she was married, then killed." Jenks blinked. Then he picked up the photo again. This time he was different: somber, apologetic. "Truth is, Inspector," he took a breath and said, "I was so, so sorry to hear what had taken place. She seemed, in the last month, so full of anticipation, hope. I was wrong to mislead you. It was foolish. I did know Kathy. I met her the night of the photo there. Sometimes, my fans are rather impressionable. And attractive. At times I, to my detriment, can be an impressionable man." I wanted to lunge across the table and rip Nicholas Jenks's impressionable face off. I was certain he was responsible for six vicious murders. Now he was mocking us, and the victims. Goddamn him. "So you're admitting," Raleigh interjected, "that you did have a relationship with this woman." "Not in the way you're insinuating," Jenks replied. "Kathy was a woman who hoped to satisfy her own vague artistic aspirations through an association with someone engaged in the act of creating. She wanted to write herself. It's not exactly brain surgery, but I guess if it was so damn easy we'd all have a book on the bestseller list, right?" Neither of us responded. "We spoke, maybe met, a few times over a few years. It never went beyond that. That's the truth." "Sort of mentoring?" Raleigh suggested. "Yes, that's right. Good choice of words." "By any chance" -- I leaned forward, no longer able to control my tone" were you mentoring Kathy in Cleveland last Saturday, the night she was killed?" Jenks's face turned granite like "That's ridiculous. What an inappropriate thing to say." I reached into the folder one more time, this time taking out a copy of the security photo of the killer arriving at the Hall of Fame. "This is a security photo from the night she was killed. Is that you, Mr. Jenks?" Jenks didn't even blink. "It might be, Inspector, if I had been there. Which I categorically was not." "Where were you last Saturday night?" "Just so I understand," he said, stonily, "are you suggesting I'm a suspect in these crimes?" "Kathy Kogut talked, Mr. Jenks." I glared at him. "To her sister. To her friends. We know how you treated her. We know she left the Bay Area to try to get away from your domination. We know things were going on between you right up to the wedding night." I wouldn't take my eyes off Jenks. There was nothing in the room but him and me. "I wasn't in Cleveland," he said. "I was right here that night." I ran the whole body of evidence by him. From the bottle of Clos du Mesnil left behind at the Hyatt, to his involvement in the real-estate trust that owned Sparrow Ridge Vineyards, to the fact that two of the murders had been committed with nine-millimeter guns and according to the state, he owned one. He laughed at me. "This is not what you're basing your assumptions on, I hope. "I got that champagne ages ago." He shrugged. "I don't even recall where it is." "You can locate it, I assume?" Raleigh asked, then explained that it was a sign of respect that we were asking him to turn it over voluntarily. "Would you mind supplying us with a hair sample from your beard?" I asked. "What!" His eyes met mine with a churlish defiance. I imagined the look Melanie Brandt might have seen as he attacked her. What Kathy Kogut saw as he raised his gun to her head. "I think," Nicholas Jenks finally answered, "that this fascinating interview has come to an end." He held out his wrists. "Unless you're intent on taking me away, my lunch is waiting." I nodded. "We'll need to follow up. On your whereabouts. And on the gun." "Of course," Jenks said, standing up. "And should you need any further cooperation- feel free to request it through my attorney." I assembled the photographs and put them back into the folder. Raleigh and I got up. At that moment, the attractive strawberry blonde from the photographs walked into the room. She was undeniably pretty, with gentle, aquamarine eyes, a pale complexion, long, free-flowing hair. She had a tall dancer's body, and was dressed in thigh-length leggings and a Nike T-shirt. "Chessy!" Jenks exclaimed. "These are officers from the San Francisco Police Department. My wife, inspectors." "Sorry, Nicky," Chessy Jenks apologized. "Susan's coming over. I didn't know you had guests." "They were just leaving." We nodded stiffly, moved toward the door. "If you could locate what we talked about," I said to him, "we'll send someone by to pick it up." He gazed right through me. I hated to leave without taking him in, and to have treated him with kid gloves. But we were still a few steps away from an arrest. "So," Chessy Jenks smiled and said, "has my husband finally gone homicidal?" She went up to Jenks, clasped his arm in a teasing way. "I always told him, with those creepy crawler characters he writes about, it was inevitable." Could she know? I wondered. She lived with him, slept with him. How could she not be aware of what was going on inside his head? "I truly hope not, Ms. Jenks," was all I said.

Chapter 77

"WHAT DID SHE MEAN BY THAT?" ChessyJenks asked her husband, confused, after the police inspectors left the house. Jenks brushed her away. He paced over to the large French doors leading out to the Pacific. "Idiots," he muttered. "Amateurs. Who the hell do they think they're dealing with?" He felt a prickly, stabbing heat racing over his shoulders and back. They were stupid, tiny-minded. Beetles. That's why they were cops. If they had any brains, they'd be doing what he was doing. Living high over the Pacific. "That's why they dig landfills," he replied distractedly. "A place for cops to feel at home." Chessy picked up the wedding photo from the coffee table and set it back in its rightful spot. "What did you do now, Nick?" Why did she always drive him to this? Why did she always need to know? She came over, looked at him with those lucid, patient eyes. As always, his anger leaped up in a flash. He didn't even realize he had hit her. It was just that suddenly his hand hurt and Chessy was sprawled on the floor- and the bamboo table on which the pictures were had toppled over- and she was holding her mouth. He shouted, "Don't you know when to keep away from me? What do you need, a road map?" "Uh-uh, Nick," Chessy said. "Not here… not now." "Not here what?" he was shouting. He knew he was shouting, losing control. That the staff might hear. "Please, Nick," Chessy said, pulling herself off the floor. "Susan will be here soon. We're going to lunch." It was the notion that Chessy thought she could just sit there and judge him that really set him off. Didn't she see who she really was? Just some blonde with freckles he had picked out of a cattle call and turned into God's gift to Martha Stewart. He grabbed her by the arm and put his face inches from her beautiful, terrified eyes. "Say it!" The arm he held was trembling. A tiny stream of mucus ran out of her nose. "Jesus, Nick…" That's what he liked, her fear of him, even though she never showed it in public. "I said say it, Chessy." He twisted her arm behind her back. She was breathing heavily now, sweat forming under her T-shirt. Her little tits poked through. When she glared back at him with her paltry defiance, he twisted harder, digging his fingers into her arm. He shoved her toward the bedroom, her bare feet stumbling along. In the bedroom he kicked the door shut. Who did the lead cop think she was? Coming in here… accusing him like that. In her cheap Gap ensemble. What a fucking insolent bitch. He dragged Chessy into the clothes closet. Hers. It was dark in there. Only the dark and her sobs and the pervasive smell of her perfume. He pushed her forward against the wall, rubbed himself against her buttocks. He pulled Chessy's gym shorts down, her panties along with them. "Please," she cried. "Nicky?" He found the familiar place where her small cheeks parted. He was very hard, and he pushed himself in deep. He was driving himself inside Chessy. "Say it," he gasped. "You know how to make it stop. Say it." "Ruff…," she finally murmured in a tiny whisper. Now she was loving it, as she always did. It wasn't bad- it was good. They all ended up wanting and loving it. He always picked them so well. "Ruff," she whimpered. "Ruff, ruff. Is that what you want, Nick?" Yes, that was part of what he needed. It was all he expected from Chessy. "You love it, Chessy," he whispered back. "That's why you're here."