“I don’t know,” I admitted. I had gone th
rough three treatments.
Sometimes I felt strong. At other times, especially in the afternoon, I felt like a ghost of myself. “Medved said he’d review my red cell count next week.”
Cindy arrived next. She was wearing a halter top under a man’s plaid shirt, a pair of embroidered jeans. She was very pretty, and city cool. I hadn’t spoken to her since Monday, when I had let her run with the story of the second killings. Even holding her story back for a day, she had still scooped the city.
“I guess I’m buying,” she announced. She tossed us a new business card with the bright red logo of the Chronicle on it. I read the card, Cindy Thomas, Reporter, Metro Crime Desk.
We toasted her with warm congratulations, then we roasted her a little, just to keep her ego in check. What else were friends for?
I told them that the travel agents and wedding planners had led nowhere. “A couple of things really bother me,” I said. “The gun. …Sexual killers don’t usually change methods. The methods are part of the sexual thrill.”
“It’s a strange combination,” agreed Claire. “He’s so in control when he plans his strikes. He seems to know everything. Where they’re married, room numbers, what their honeymoon itinerary is. How to get away. Yet, when he kills, he’s close to rage. It’s not enough to merely kill them. He has to defile.”
I nodded. “That’s the key. He’s striking at weddings, something about them is intolerable to him. But I think his obsession’s with the brides. Both of the grooms were dispatched quickly. It’s as if they didn’t even matter to him. But the brides…that’s his real fascination.
“So where would this guy go,” I asked aloud, “to scout potential victims? If you wanted to kill brides, where would you check them out?”
“They had to choose a ring,” suggested Claire. “A jeweler.”
“Or City Hall,” said Cindy. “They’d need a license.”
I looked at her and chuckled. “It would sure fit if a government employee was behind this.”
“Postal employee.” Claire and Cindy spoke simultaneously.
“Photographers,” said Claire.
I could see a twisted bastard hiding behind the lens. They were all good possibilities. It only required time and manpower to check them out before the killer struck again.
“This bride business isn’t exactly my expertise,” I said to Claire. “That’s why you’re here.”
“What happened to all that three sharp cookies crap?” She laughed. “And the part about my being a top-notch M.E.?”
There was a ripple of frustrated laughter around the table. We all took another sip of beer. The Women’s Murder Club. This was good. No men allowed.
“Where’s the goddamn link?” I asked. “He wants us to find it. That’s why he’s leaving clues. He wants us to uncover the link.”
Everyone was silent, lost in thought.
“I can feel it,” I went on. “In the ceremony, the celebration, he finds something that drives him into psychopathic rage. Something he needs to stamp out. Hope, innocence? The husbands he kills right away. But the brides? How does he find the brides?”
“If he’s living in this twisted dream world,” said Cindy, thinking aloud, “he would go to where the fantasy was the strongest, the most vivid. He might want to build up his anger by observing them in an unsuspecting state.”
Then Claire looked at us with a spark in her eye. “I was thinking, I’d go where they bought their wedding dresses. That’s where I would pick the victims out.”
Chapter 46
WHEN I GOT TO WORK the following morning, there was a fax from Hartwig listing the partners at Sparrow Ridge. I gave them to Jacobi to check. Then I called my contacts at both wedding planners, White Lace and Miriam Campbell.
I wasn’t expecting much. So far, everything had come back empty. To my shock, both planners confirmed it.
Melanie Brandt and Becky DeGeorge had bought their dresses at the same place.
The Bridal Boutique at Saks.
It was the first tangible link between the two cases. It could lead to nothing, but I felt in my bones it had the real, promising sensation of something good.