14

Twenty-Eight

Nashville, Tennessee Sunday, December 21 11:00 a.m.

T he banks of the Cumberland River were rocky and icy. Leftover snow had been tromped through by the search-and-rescue teams, turning it a smoky gray. A helicopter hovered overhead, the whapping drone desultory. Search and Rescue had been revised to Recovery. Slumped-shouldered men and women wandered the bank, looking at each other blankly. It didn’t seem possible. Taylor Jackson, drowned in the river that fed vibrant life to her city.

John Baldwin stood on the VIP platform overlooking the River Stages facility. In happier times, the concrete pad would be filled with A-list partygoers reveling in the music of the most famous and popular bands. Now the platform was a staging area for the search. For the recovery.

After ninety minutes, it wasn’t technically a “search” anymore. The Nashville Fire Department, faces ashen and drawn, had called in the Office of Emergency Management Rescue unit. Cadaver dogs were on the bank of the river, two black Labs shivered in the boats floating on the icy surface. OEM had launched a craft loaded with the FISH, the side-view sonar that would be able to distinguish between a lumpy log and a body in the murky, fast-flowing water.

No one needed to say it aloud. In water this cold, Taylor wouldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. Logic told them there was a body out there somewhere. The only thing to do was drop the sonar and see what they could see. Which was absolutely nothing. After several hours, the call came to put the drag bar in the water. OEM’s Search and Rescue volunteers were doing everything possible to find her body before the river swept her away, the massive currents flowing north toward Kentucky.

Baldwin’s face was hard, worn. The lines around his eyes were etched deep, like a vein of quartz running through a Paleolithic stone. Taylor’s murder, if he could bring himself to call it that, had frozen his heart in time. He only breathed when he realized he wasn’t. He didn’t know if the pain would ever cease. He stood, hands gripping the railing, the December winds blowing his hair about, and held himself back from jumping into the river below. He’d asked to be on the dive team. His request had wisely been denied.

Murder. That was the only word for it. She sure as hell hadn’t gone into the river in the middle of winter by accident.

The guests had been sent home from the church. The wedding party, stiff with worry, made their way to the homicide offices. Calls were made, people traced. The limousine service was practically raided; the limousine that had been dispatched and carried the bride into the netherworld found on-site. There were two major problems. There was no trace of Taylor in the car. Video surveillance from the Hermitage Hotel showed the license plate did not match the manifest. It was a decoy. Lincoln was running down the lists of other limousines in the area, trying to match the plates.

The arranged driver of the real limousine was long gone, disappeared into the night. A check of his bank accounts showed a five thousand dollar deposit and a Visa charge for a plane ticket to Mazatlan. The plane had left at four in the afternoon, the same time the wedding was supposed to be under way. A man matching the driver’s description had boarded the plane on time. Video from the airport came in and confirmed. A theory was formed. He had been paid to leave town.

After hours of fruitless searching, with no sign whatsoever of Taylor, their leads were diminished to nothing. The dreaded call had come right before 10:00 p.m. A white satin mule had been found on the west bank of the Cumberland River. Photographs confirmed that it matched the pair Taylor had been wearing, the brand and size an exact match to the empty box found in her hotel suite. Time stopped for them all.

Baldwin took a gulp from a coffee cup with Tiger-mart on the label. Some kind soul was refueling the troops from a local convenience store, he had no idea who. He’d been a part of rescue teams before. With no remains, at some point they would have to stop actively dragging the river. Rescue would continue searching until the body was found. And they always found the body. It might not be immediate, but time and flowing water had a way of spitting out what didn’t belong.

Inevitability at the hands of nature wasn’t a comfort to Baldwin. Scenarios drifted through his mind, visions of Taylor’s adipocere-covered corpse emerging twenty miles downriver in a month. So often, that’s how it happened. He choked back a sob at the thought, tossed the rest of the now-bitter coffee over the railing. Fuck. He wasn’t helping things by standing there making himself sick to his stomach. He needed to do something. He wouldn’t accept that she was gone, not like this.

Thoughts crowded his mind. He knew there was a lockbox high on the shelf of a closet in the bonus room of the new house that held all of her papers, her will, her wishes. He’d never looked at any of that information. She’d told him she wanted to be an organ donor and didn’t want to be kept alive if she was brain-dead, but that’s as far as they’d gotten. Would she want to be buried in Tennessee? Cremated? If they didn’t find a body, what would he do for her? Did her will cover provisions for-

“Stop!” he said aloud. “Stop it,” he said again, softer this time. He was getting way ahead of himself. She wouldn’t give up on you so easily.

Bolstered, he made his way to the command table. Mitchell Price was still on scene, waiting for some news. Baldwin approached him, taking the older man’s arm. Price turned to Baldwin, eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep. His mustache drooped, his bald pate glistened with frosted sweat.

“Captain, anything new?”

Price shook his head. “They aren’t getting any hits on anything down there, Baldwin. The river temperature is too cold to sustain her if she went in. The divers are having a hard time themselves. It’s not looking good, son.”

Why has everyone started calling me son? Baldwin wondered. First Fitz, now Price. He dismissed the welling anger, knew Price didn’t mean anything by it. It was meant to be a comforting term. It wasn’t their fault that it made his heart shrivel up even more. His dad had called him son, his mom, too. But they’d been gone so long, he could barely remember how their voices sounded. The sweet timber of his mother’s Southern belle diction floated through his mind but was gone the moment he recognized it. Damn it.

Price had turned and was guiding Baldwin back toward his vehicle. “Listen, let’s get back to headquarters. There’s nothing we can do here now. If she went in last night, Baldwin, chances are she’s gone. Let’s go see if we can confirm that she went in at all. Okay?”

Baldwin looked over his shoulder, stared out over the murky water. Price was right.

They buckled in for the short drive back to the CJC. It was time to start fresh.