It swung open…revealing the bright, stylishly decorated apartment of Joanna Wade.
“Anyone here?” I shouted.
No one answered.
There was no one in the living room. Same for the dining room, kitchen. A coffee mug in the sink. The Chronicle out and folded to the Datebook section.
No sign that I was in the home of a psycho. That bothered me.
I moved on. Magazines — Food and Wine, San Francisco — on the coffee table. A few yoga posture books.
In the bedroom, the bed, unmade. The entire place had a relaxed, unforbidding feel.
Joanna Wade lived like any ordinary woman. She read, had coffee in her kitchen, taught exercise, paid her bills. Killers were preoccupied with their victims. This didn’t make sense.
I turned into the master bath. “Oh, damn it!” The case had made a last, irrevocable turn.
On the floor, in her workout tights, was Joanna Wade.
She was leaned against the tub looking at me, but not really — actually, she was still looking at her killer. Her eyes were wide and terrified.
He had used a knife. Jenks? If not him, then who?
“Oh, Christ,” I gasped. My head was spinning and it hurt.
I hurried over to her, but there was nothing I could do. Everything had twisted again. I knelt over the dead woman as a final, shuddering thought filled my mind:
If it wasn’t Joanna, who was Chris following?
Chapter 122
WITHIN MINUTES, two blue-and-whites screeched to a stop outside. I directed the patrol officers upstairs to the grisly body of Joanna, but my thoughts had turned to Chris. And whoever he was following.
I had been up in the apartment for ten, maybe twelve minutes, without a word from him. I was worried. He was following a murderer, and a murderer who had just killed Joanna Wade.
I ran downstairs to an open patrol car. I called in what had happened to Command Central. A riot of doubts was crashing in my mind.
Could it somehow have been Jenks after all? Could Jill have been right? Was he manipulating us, right from the start? Had he set everything up, even the sighting in Pacific Heights?
But if it was him, why? Why, after I had told him I believed him? Why would he kill her now? Was Joanna’s death something I could have prevented? What in hell was going on? Where was Chris, damn it?
My cell phone finally beeped. To my relief it was Chris.
“Where are you? You had me scared to death. Don’t do that to me.”
“Down by the marina. The suspect’s in a blue Saab.”
“Chris, be careful. It’s not Joanna. Joanna’s dead. She was stabbed a bunch of times in her apartment.”
“Dead?” he repeated. I could feel the frantic question slowly sinking into his mind. “Then who the hell is driving the Saab up ahead of me?”
“Tell me where you are exactly.”
“Chestnut and Scott. The suspect just pulled up to the curb. The suspect is getting out of the car.”
Somehow, this sounded familiar. Chestnut and Scott? What was down there? In the tumult of blue-and-whites screeching up in front of Joanna’s building and reporting in, I raked my mind for a connection.
“He’s heading away from the car, Lindsay. He’s starting to run.”