14

Five

T aylor was on overdrive, the new information spinning in her head. She called Baldwin the minute she hit the truck.

“Baldwin, I need you. The basic elements of this murder are different from the first three. And wait until you hear this. This one was special. She meant something to him. He rimmed her neck wound in lipstick. Like he did her lips. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I mean, it’s already such a gory wound, I would never have noticed, but Sam did, and she swabbed it and looked under the microscope and there was lipstick mixed in with the blood. It was, it was…really. It’s like he dressed her up. And there was a lot of the creamy stuff on her face.

“Sam’s going to send out the full tox screen and finish the autopsy now. She’s already confirmed the high BAL and the Roofies. She said she’d get back to me if anything major popped up. I can’t imagine what would be more major than this, I mean, it was-”

“Fascinating.”

“Not exactly the word I was going for. Sick, is more like it.”

“But ‘sick’ is fascinating, Taylor. Talk to me about the neck wound. This is definitely the first time he’s done it?”

“As far as Sam can tell. She’s going back through all the wound swabs now, but she didn’t see anything like it before. Why would he do that?”

“Why, I can’t answer. It means something to him, I’m sure. We just have to figure out what that is. Are you headed to the office?”

“I am. I’ve got more for you.”

“More? What?”

“Sam ID’d the substance we found on their faces. Get this. Frankincense and myrrh. There’s more components in the matter, but she’ll have to do more testing to gather that. We’re assuming that they were being prepared, I guess.”

“Jesus. Listen, Taylor. I’m going to be at your office when you get there. I’ll call Stuart Evanson, the new head of the BSU. He requested that I take over the case last week. I told him I’d wait, see if it solved or you asked me in. We’ll officially offer every power we have to your chief, make it legit. That work for you?”

At the moment, Taylor could think of nothing better. She’d worked cases with Baldwin before. He respected her boundaries, treated her team with respect, won over her captain, Mitchell Price, with his “It’s your case” attitude. She wanted him on the Snow White case full-time. They needed the FBI resources, anyway.

“I’m cool. I’ll see you there.”

“Taylor?”

“Yeah, hon?”

“Thanks for last night.” His voice rumbled in her ear, and he hung up before the blush could spread to her capillaries. Damn the man already. She wasn’t in love; she was in heat. That’s what all this was about.

Taylor navigated in four-wheel drive, forced to take her time to get downtown. The plows were working the streets again, the salt trucks followed dutifully. Abandoned cars littered the roadways; the tow trucks couldn’t get to them, so the plows were pushing large drifts against the driver’s-side doors that reached to the side mirrors. If the temperature didn’t rise soon, it would take days to get them unburied.

She tried to drive carefully but was impatient with the roads. Aside from the plows, four-wheel drives were the only things moving. The hospitals had put out emergency calls for people who had trucks and SUVs to help staff get to work. It was surreal, an all-white landscape with little movement-the vehicles like desultory ants after an outsized picnic.

Swerving around a public works truck, she whipped off the highway past the Tennessee Titans stadium, LP Field, and crossed the bridge over to Third, where her offices within the Criminal Justice Center waited.

She pulled into the parking lot too fast, skidding on the ice and nearly taking out a lamppost. Her pulse took a few beats to get back to normal. She hadn’t been paying attention. Again. That was all they needed, for her to wind up wrapped around a pole. She recognized a few other vehicles-Metro police didn’t get the day off when the city was snowed under.

Calmed, she got out of the truck, made her way carefully across the street and up the stairs that led to the back door of the CJC. She passed the ubiquitous ashtray and felt virtuous-she’d finally managed to quit. It had been three months since her last puff. She fumbled in her pocket for a minute, trying to get a hand on the plastic pass card that would allow her into the building. Her gloved hand was too bulky to feel anything. Swearing under her breath, she took it off and delved deep into her pocket. Her bare fingers hit hard plastic. Triumphant, she swept the key card and stamped her way into the building.

Some cruel individual was subjecting the third floor to a bastardized version of their child’s Christmas recital; strains of children’s wavering voices streamed from the fingerprint room, mixed with a heavy rap beat. The resulting discordance made a headache take root behind Taylor’s right eye. Muddy puddles of water trailed four feet into the hallway where people hadn’t knocked the snow off their boots. Clumps had collected, melting on the cream-colored linoleum. After the fact, someone had used his head and spread a copy of the morning’s Tennessean on the floor. Glancing at the headline regaling the Snow White Killer’s latest victim, Taylor tapped her boots against the wall, dropping the excess snow on a picture of the Bicentennial Mall, then stepped around the puddles and followed the hallway toward the homicide office, leaving the wailing music behind her.

Lincoln Ross rounded the corner from the opposite direction. Tall, handsome, with three-inch dreadlocks, he gave her a gap-toothed smile that hit her deep.

“Yo, LT, what up?” He gave her five, up high, down low, and she laughed at him, cheered instantly by his enthusiasm.

“And what’s up with you this morning? You’re awfully chipper.”

“Hey, you know, it’s a thang.”

“Am I to infer that the ‘thang’ is of the female persuasion?”

Lincoln grinned like a schoolboy. “Why, yes, I believe you could in-ferrr that if you’d like. Oh, sorry. I wasn’t supposed to dangle the sex carrot in front of your nose.”

She raised both hands and laughed. “Well, I’m not doing so good abstaining on my end, so don’t worry about it. What’s with the ghetto speak?”

Lincoln rolled his eyes, went back to his usual elucidated drawl. “I’ve been with my new C.I., the kid who’s ratting out Terrence Norton.”

“Oh, great. What’s Tu’shae up to now?”

“He’s hopping, actually. He scored a DJ gig in South Nashville. A lot of Terrence’s gang hang out there. We’ve got a good stakeout going with the TBI; they’re being very cooperative. But Tu’shae won’t talk to them, he’ll only talk to me. So I’m stuck ferrying all the information through to the TBI boys and girls.”

Damn the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Why couldn’t they do their own work? Cooperative or not, she needed Lincoln for these new murder cases exclusively.

“Do you have anything we can use? I’d really like to get Terrence Norton out of our hair if we can.”

“Not yet. Tu’shae hinted that Terrence is controlling the drugs running through the club, but he’s got nothing to back that up.”

Administrative bullshit, that’s how Taylor saw the ongoing situation with the local gangster, Terrence Norton. He’d been plaguing her for three years, starting as a kid with a bad attitude and a minor rap sheet. As time passed, he got stronger, more jaded and in more trouble. They’d almost nailed him for jury tampering a few months back, and the TBI had to take over the case. Lincoln was doing a great job running backup from Metro’s side, and she told him so.

Terrence was an annoyance. Taylor dismissed him from her mind; today just wasn’t the day to deal with minor miscreants.

“Let’s move on to bigger and better thugs. Are Fitz and Marcus here?”

Lincoln made a vague gesture toward the door to the homicide office. “Yeah, they’re in there. You want some coffee or something?”

“No. You might want to wait, too. Tossed my cookies already this morning, wouldn’t want to put you in the same situation. Let’s go.”

Chastened and intrigued, he followed her into their warren office and went to his desk.

Taylor’s team was a force to be reckoned with. Lincoln Ross was her computer guru, an insightful and intriguing man. His jocular seriousness was a perfect counterbalance to her ferocity, and he’d been the voice of reason too many times for her to count. He was one of the few people that she trusted implicitly.

Lincoln was partnered with Marcus Wade, the youngest detective on the force. Marcus was forced to confront his demons publicly; his lanky frame, floppy brown hair and Roman nose had garnered more than one confession from the opposite sex. He had grown as a detective, and Taylor knew how much he admired Baldwin’s profiling work. She was always worried that she might lose him to the FBI; his instinctive skills could be honed into a sharp point with the right training. He walked the line, happy to take on assignments, soaking up investigative methods like a sponge.

Sergeant Peter Malachai Fitzgerald, known only as Fitz to the troops, was her second in command. Half father figure, half mentor, he’d been the one cheering the loudest when she’d been bumped to lieutenant, and was thrilled to be working for her. Fitz had been a rookie homicide detective when Taylor joined the force, and they’d gotten on like a house on fire from day one. She still remembered their first crime scene together, seeing him lumber up to her, wondering whether he was going to make some crack about how cute she looked with that utility belt around her waist, and wouldn’t she like a new tool for her belt. Instead, he’d considered her gravely for a moment, then asked what her impressions were.

She always felt he should have gotten the lieutenant’s position before she did, but knew he didn’t want it. Bureaucracy and making nice with the brass wasn’t his idea of a good time. He was happy to let her draw the heat.

The homicide offices were overly warm; an appropriated space heater propped against the far wall was stuck on high. The television that hung from the corner ceiling was on, blaring Stormtracker weather updates from Channel 5. The combination made the room loud and toasty to the point of stifling. Taylor crossed the few feet to her office and opened the door to a draft of relatively cool air. She set her gloves on her desk. The little room was cramped, a television tuned to a different channel blared from the filing cabinet. One of the boys had been watching Oprah. She flipped back to the weather alert.

A sorry-looking fern sat next to the television. Taylor glanced around, spied a bottle of water that had a few sips left. Tipping it into the plant, she watched the soil absorb the water in a frantic attempt at sustaining life. She wasn’t much with plants, felt sorry for the fern. There was another bottle of water on the desk, unopened, so Taylor took it and emptied it into the plant. It was gone as quickly as she could pour it. Terrible. She’d be an awful mother; she couldn’t even keep a plant watered.

Where the hell did that thought come from? She threw the empty bottle in the trash, the plastic-on-plastic thud appeasing her sudden penchant for violence. She shook her head, muttered sorry to the fern.

A cough made her jump. Fitz was standing in the door, staring at his boss with a baleful eye.

“Let me guess. You’re sad for the plant.” His voice was thickened by years of former cigarette smoke. The deep grumble was comforting.

“Well, it is alive. Sort of.”

“And you think it has feelings? Or that it understands English?”

She raised an eyebrow and looked Fitz over. His face was weathered and lined, tan even in the early days of winter. Blue eyes dark as blueberries usually held a twinkle, an unspoken joke or gibe. He was twenty years her senior and starting to look his age. Taylor attributed that to the weight loss-he’d dropped at least thirty pounds in the past few months-a concerted effort to slim down paying off in wrinkles. Still barrel-chested and stubborn, Fitz glared at her, obviously irritated.

“My, you’re in a mood this morning. Who peed in your cornflakes?”

“You did. Why didn’t you call me about the lipstick and the damn oil?”

Taylor spied the cause of Fitz’s sudden consternation over his shoulder. Baldwin tried to look innocent but failed miserably.

“Oh, I see. Fitz, I wasn’t holding out on you. I was more, trying to keep my stomach in control, okay? I just wanted to get here first. Since you’ve heard all about it, tell me what you think.”

Baldwin joined Fitz in the doorway and blocked her in. Fitz shifted, trying to look intimidating.

“I think this is one sick fuck and you’d be better off leaving him to us and going off to get married without this on your conscience.”

She didn’t smile. “Oh, Fitz, that’s sweet of you to say, but it’s not going to happen. Now, Baldwin, why don’t you stop sending emissaries, and let’s try to catch this guy before the wedding. How’s that for a plan?”

“Taylor-”

She held up one hand. The look on her face brooked no more arguments, and the men stepped aside, allowing her to step out of the cramped space.

Marcus Wade was waiting for her, a soft suede jacket thrown over his arms. He’d excelled during their last case and had been promoted to detective second grade; the new jacket was a reward to himself for the pay raise. He looked eager as a puppy this morning, a nice counterpoint to the now-rancorous environment. The air of excitement around him was palpable. Taylor knew he had something for her.

“Whatcha got?”

A broad smile crossed his features. “An ID on the latest Snow White. Her name’s Giselle St. Claire.”