WARNING: Contains discussion of rape and domestic abuse
I don’t know about you guys but I’m writing this after a Halloween/Stranger Things withdrawal, so there better be something good going on right now.
Sometime that evening, I found myself starting to cry.
I had made spaghetti carbarona….
Chris put a cello concerto by Dvorák on the stereo, but eventually we switched to the Dixie Chicks.
OK I’m rooting for Negli’s now. Negli would never make me listen to the Dixie Chicks.
Sheriff Faffy-Waffle pretends to care about Lindsay’s stupid feelings and invites her to exposit her life story again.
“Mom died of breast cancer when she was only fifty.” The irony of this certainly wasn’t lost on me.
You would think that in between breaks of swimming in his NYT bestseller money pool, Patterson would bother to look up the definition of irony. And then self-flagellate.
“What about your father? I want to know everything about you.”
Yes, I’ll take “Things Men Never Say” for 500, Alex.
Then Lindsay starts blubbering about her Negli’s and finally tells him. Oh yeah, reminder that Lindsay has not told her sister yet about her condition. The Sheriff knows and he’s only known her a few weeks. But her only surviving relative that she has contact with doesn’t. In case anyone still liked Lindsay.
Then he comforts her or something, whatever.
I think we rocked all night.
Hey hey, finally some tunes I can get into!
But something else happened during that weekend…. Something gripping, invading my sense of comfort and security.
It was something Jacobi had said that planted the thought.
“Why hasn’t he been fired yet?” Don’t worry, I get that too.
You ever read the whole book? he asked.
Which book?
Jenks’s book. Always a Bridesmaid.
The parts that matter, I replied. Why?
…
It was a setup, Jacobi said. This Phillip Campbell guy, he gets off. He pins the whole thing on someone else.
Oh COME ON. We only have a little over ten chapters left! Can’t we just wrap this up??
Then a thought from out of the blue hit me. … I stiffened. “Oh, no. Oh, Jesus, no,” I whispered.
When Jenks had lunged at me at his house, he had swung with his left hand.
When he’d offered me a drink, he’d picked up the pitcher with his left hand.
…
Claire was certain David Brandt’s killer had been right-handed.
Okay now I’ll take “overused thriller plot points” for 300, Alex.
Seriously, why is it always handedness?
Lindsay shares her suspicions with the ladies and for once they react like human beings.
“That’s a crock!” snapped Jill. “Jenks is desperate and only moderately clever. We’ve got him!”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” exclaimed Cindy.
…
I took them through Jacobi’s comment about the novel, then my lightning bolt about Jenks’s left-handedness.
“Proves nothing,” Jill said.
…
“Look,” I protested, “I want this guy as much as anybody. But now that we have all this evidence–well–it’s just so neat. The jacket. The champagne. Jenks has set up complicated murders in his books. Why would he leave clues behind?”
Because he’s a fucking author and not a murder expert. Does this mean JK Rowling is an expert in witchcraft now? Dan Brown in Art History? Stephen King in how shitty Maine is? Ever hear of the phrase “the simplest solution is probably the answer”, Lindsay?
Not that this matters. Because we saw the chapter already that revealed Lindsay is right. So instead of having any emotional attachment to this scene, we’re just waiting for her to catch up with what we know. Again. I thought we were over this.
Jill yells at Lindsay for bringing really weak evidence to the table and proposing jeopardizing her career. She and Cindy being the true MVPs of this book. So Lindsay sets about on her own to figure it out.
Over the next few days, I went back over everything we had on Joanna Wade.
First, I reread the domestic complaint she had filed against Jenks. … I read through the officers’ account of what they found at the scene. Exchanges laced with incentives. Jenks swinging wildly, clearly enraged. He had to be subdued, resisted arrest.
…
The following day, I went back out to visit Greg Marks, Jenks’s former agent.
…
[Greg] “She felt used, dropped like worn baggage. Joanna had put him through school, supported him when he first started writing. When Nick bagged law school, she even went back to her job.”
“And afterward,” I asked, “did she continue to hate him?”
“I believe she continued to try and sue him. After they split up, she tried to sue him for a lien against future earnings. …”
…
I felt sorry for Joanna Wade. But could it drive her to that kind of revenge? Could it cause her to kill six people?
…
It had been Joanna who had first mentioned the book. Who felt cheated, spurned, and carried a resentment far deeper than what she had revealed. Joanna, the Tae-Bo instructor who was strong enough to take down a man twice her size. Who even had access to the Jenkses’ home.
Have I stated yet how much I absolutely despise this twist? Yeah, sure, lets go for the bait and switch murderer. Only this time, turns out its the victim of abuse rather than the abuser! How edgy and shocking of me! And it’s framed like she’s a crazy person who thinks of herself as “Phil” when she does murder.
And you want to know what the worst part about that is? It means that the chapter where Jenks brutally rapes his wife in detail was doubly pointless. Meant to make us clutch our pearls and build up for this exploitative twist. It’s disgustingly irresponsible writing.
Just, no. Take this back to the kitchen please.
Ugh, so Lindsay goes on this stupid date with Sheriff Faffy-Waffle and she now tells him about her new suspicion. She faints because dem Negli’s and nothing funny happens.
Then Lindsay needs more attention so she goes to see Jenks to run her suspicions by him. Don’t ask me why.
Surprisingly, Jenks thinks it’s his former agent, Greg, who’s suspicious, not Joanna.
[Jenks] “He feels like I owe him my fucking career. I’ve cost him millions. Since I left, he hasn’t gotten a worthwhile client. And he’s violent. Marks belongs to a shooting club.”
You raped your wife.
“You told me your ex-wife’s been to your house.”
“Maybe once or twice.”
“So, she’d have access to certain things. Maybe the wine? Maybe what was in your closet?”
Jenks seemed to contemplate the possibility for a moment, then his mouth crinkled into a contemptuous smile. “Impossible. No. It isn’t Joanna.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He looked at me as if he were stating an understood fact. “Joanna loved me. She still does. Why do you think she hangs around, covets a relationship with my new wife? Because she misses the view? It’s because she cannot replace what I gave her. How I loved her. She is empty without me.”
Am I supposed to want Lindsay to find the actual killer or what? Because I could care less as long as this guy dies.
Jenks monologues some more and reveals that Joanna used to work at Saks. Oooooo.
Against all logic, I was growing surer and surer that Nicholas Jenks might not be the killer. Oh, brother!
Lindsay brings her new information to da club but Jill is still resistant. Then she remembers the plot has only fifty pages left so she agrees to authorize a search of Saks.
Oh yeah, then Lindsay goes to the doctor’s and finds out she’s responding to treatment. I’m so relieved I could shit. She calls up the Sheriff and invites him to her apartment for some celebratory caboodling.
I put my finger to his lips. “Tell me that you love me.”
“I do love you,” he said.
“Tell me again, like you did at Heavenly. Tell me that you won’t ever leave me.”
Turns out we’re actually reading the novelization of Fatal Attraction. Huh.
I took his shirt off–slowly, very slowly–then his trousers. He must’ve felt like the delivery boy who had stumbled into a sure thing. He was as hard as a rock.
I drew him to the bed, and for the next hour we did the one thing I knew I would have missed most in the world.
We were in the middle of things when I felt the first terrifying rumbling.
Somewhere a top is having a war flashback.
“It’s a goddamn quake,” I said.
Oh, phew, it’s just a pointless scene again.
I ran to the window. The city was still there. … Then it was still….
…
I started to laugh. The list. I was thinking. The skybox. Now an earthquake. This sucker’s starting to get pretty long.
My beeper went off. I cursed, rolled over, glanced at the screen.
It was the office.
“Code one eleven,” I told Chris.
Emergency Alert.
…
It was Roth buzzing me. …
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Dusting off some debris,” I said, and smiled toward Chris.
“Get in here. Get in here fast,” he barked.
“What’s going on, Sam? This about the quake?”
“Uh-uh,” he replied. “Worse. Nicholas Jenks has escaped.”
GASP! Better tune in next week where we. Finish. This. Shit.
Canon Fodder 