Dark and Twisted Reads: All the Pretty GirlsA Perfect EvilBone Cold (A Taylor Jackson Novel)

by J. T. Ellison

  A voice screeched out the front screen door. “Wally. Waallleeee! Stop that racket now.”

  Lincoln and Marcus looked at each other. Lincoln shrugged, gave the dog one last pat and walked to the sagging gray porch. The steps squeaked in protest as he walked up them. The slight scent of marijuana wafted to his nose. He rapped hard on the screen door.

  “Metro police,” he announced with authority. He heard Marcus guffaw in the background, ignored him and knocked again. There was rattling from inside the house, then a tired-looking woman with stringy brown hair appeared at the door. Her eyes were bloodshot, but she didn’t show any other obvious signs of intoxication.

  “Yeah? Whaddaya want?”

  Lincoln put on his polite face. “Lucy Johnson?”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “We’re here to talk to you about the incident you reported. The, uh, rape.” Lincoln looked to Marcus for support, but Marcus was very busy scratching Wally’s belly. Lincoln pursed his lips and turned back. There was a reason he was in homicide, a reason why he loved computers. He dealt with the dead, the inanimate, better than the living.

  Lucy Johnson screwed up her face as if she was about to burst into tears. Lincoln looked at Marcus, beseeching him to come rescue him. Marcus left the dog and came to the door.

  “Ms. Johnson, we just need—”

  “Miss.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s Miss Johnson.” The threat of tears past, she smiled winningly at Marcus. He glanced at Lincoln out of the corner of his eye. Maybe she just didn’t like big black men in designer suits. He stepped around Lincoln and motioned at the door.

  “Can we come in, Miss Johnson?”

  She threw a quick, desperate look over her shoulder. “Naw, let’s do it outside. This place is a mess.” She banged open the screen door, and Lincoln jumped out of the way before it came into contact with his suit. Marcus covered a laugh by clearing his throat.

  In the daylight, Lucy Johnson didn’t look quite as rough as she had in the shadows. Her hair was a day past fresh, but she had short shorts and long legs, attributes she wasn’t past using to get on the good side of the detectives. She slipped her feet into a pair of ratty plastic flip-flops and walked out into the yard, swishing her hips for maximum effect. The beagle cowered for a moment, then went to his mistress, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

  Marcus raised an eyebrow at Lincoln, who shook his head slightly. She’d responded better to Marcus, let him take the interview. Lincoln folded his arms across his chest and braced his legs so he wouldn’t have to lean on the weathered porch column for support. Marcus followed the woman into the scraggly yard.

  “I done told that Sex Crimes girl everything that happened. Didn’t think she believed me,” she said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “She just had that look about her, you know? Like she was better than everybody else. Where’s she, anyway?”

  “Detective Garrison was in a car accident, ma’am. We’re picking up the slack while she recovers.”

  Lucy shielded her eyes from the sun and looked away quickly. “She hurt bad?”

  “She’ll be fine, ma’am. I’ll tell her you asked after her. Now, we were hoping to get a little more information from you about your case. Detective Garrison mentioned you may be able to identify your attacker.”

  Lucy toed a clump of dead grass. “Well, yeah, I might’ve told her that.”

  “Does that mean you can identify him, or you can’t?” Marcus felt rather than saw Lincoln shift on the porch. This was going to be a waste of time.

  Lucy paused for a moment, as if deciding whether to tell the truth or not. Marcus was reminded of a kid caught in the candy store, debating whether to admit she had the candy in her pocket or deny its existence till her dying breath. Conscience apparently won.

  “It’s not that I can identify him, exactly. It’s just that something about him seemed really…familiar.” She drew the word out slowly, like it had never been tried before, like she wasn’t quite sure of its pronunciation.

  Marcus rubbed his chin, trying to look thoughtful. “Okay, I can understand that. You don’t want to finger the wrong man. Perfectly acceptable. How about this. Tell me where he seems familiar from.”

  “Well…everywhere. It’s like he’s always around, ya know? All the places I go to. The gas station for coffee, the gym, the grocery.”

  “Do you think he’s stalking you?”

  “Naw. He doesn’t realize I recognize him. It’s just that I seem to run into him everywhere I go. It’s the arms. It was the only thing I could see, you know. His face was covered, his hair was covered, but he had these arms, and they were all strong and ropy and he held me down so hard. It’s the arms that I keep seeing.” There was a catch in her throat, but her eyes were dry.

  “Ma’am, do you know his name?”

  She shook her head, miserable, trying not to cry. “No.”

  “Anything about him? The way he smelled? A certain phrase he may have used?”

  Lucy shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that.”

  “But you still think you know who it is.”

  “No, I didn’t say that. I don’t know who he is. But I recognize the car he’s in,” she added, a sly grin on her face.

  Marcus gave a hopeful glance to Lincoln, who had also gone on alert. This could be a huge break. Imagine, they could solve the Rainman case in one day while the Sex Crimes Unit had been trying for years.

  Marcus stepped a bit closer, put a hand on her arm. She didn’t jerk away, just stared at his hand like she’d never been touched before. Marcus had an inkling that she had, just not in such a gentle way. She looked up at him, looked him straight in the eye.

  “It’s an unmarked car. The man who raped me is a cop.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Christina Dale woke leisurely, cloudy and warm. She clung to the last vestiges of the dream, images from her childhood, a park, or no, was it her backyard? It was green and warm, and she could smell a hint of onion in the freshly mown grass. The sky was as blue as a robin’s egg, clear and heavy, with puffy white clouds floating by. She felt content, it was the best kind of dream, the one where you wake up and just know it’s going to be a wonderful day. A languid smile moved across her face, and as she began to swim into focus, the images drifted, blown away on the winds of her mind.

  She started to roll over and realized her body wasn’t following her brain’s command. That was weird. She must still be drunk from last night. That happened sometimes, she was still drunk when she woke up. Especially when they did those dumb drugs the college kids liked so much. The roofies always made her boneless the next day.

  She tried to reach down and massage some feeling back into her legs. Her eyes flew open and she knew something was dreadfully wrong. There was rope tied around her arms and legs. She came fully awake, panicking, adrenaline rushing through her body and bringing everything into focus. The rope cut bitterly across her ribs, her arms were stretched above her head, painfully pulling her shoulders from their sockets. She tried to wriggle but only succeeded in drawing the ropes tighter, nearly cutting off her breath.

  “Oh my God,” she moaned. It all came back to her. The lazy grin, the shock of black hair that fell across his forehead, those intense cobalt cat eyes. Her mother warned her time and time again that she was too open, too trusting, that if she kept on sleeping with every Tom, Dick and Harry she met around that she could end up hurt or dead. But who wouldn’t respond to the gorgeous creature of a man that she had stumbled out of the bar with?

  She stared around the room, trying to piece together how she’d ended up in what was obviously a mess. Had things gone too far last night? Had she asked to be tied up? She’d done it before, a small-town girl trying out new things without any repercussion.
Maybe the man—Lord, what was his name—had simply passed out after they’d fooled around. She looked to either side and only saw the empty loneliness of a motel room, stark white walls, a cheesy landscape in oranges and yellows hanging above a cut-rate TV. She was alone.

  Suddenly she heard the toilet flush and relaxed. A shadow moved along the wall and he popped into view. It was him all right, tousled and naked, looking even sexier than she had remembered.

  “Mornin’, darlin’. You wanna get me out of this and we can pick up where we left off?”

  He smiled and moved no closer, just stood watching her like a feral cat in heat.

  “Seriously, get me untied. This is starting to hurt.” She realized even before she saw the knife that he had no intention of letting her go. Ever. She opened her mouth to scream but he was on her, slapping a piece of duct tape over her mouth so all she could hear was her own hysterical cries, muffled and caught in her throat.

  As her mystery man dragged the tip of the knife slowly across her face, his cheerful grin disappeared, and he spoke only one word, the last Christina would ever hear.

  “Bye.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Taylor was back in her office, waiting for Lincoln and Marcus to return from interviewing the previous alleged victim of the Rainman. She had missed a call from Baldwin, which left her moody. She wanted to talk with him, but he was up to his ears in dead girls.

  As she fiddled with a few reports that needed to be completed, Fitz rolled in, with Marcus and Lincoln on his heels. He got to the office door first.

  “Everything okay?” he asked gruffly.

  Taylor gave him a startled look. “Everything’s fine. Why?”

  “You’re just looking a little ill, that’s all. You’re not catching something, are you?”

  Taylor waved his concern away. “Had a long night. I’m fine, really.”

  “Ready to go over what the kids got on the Rainman?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, let’s do it. But let’s go into the conference room, I don’t feel like crowding in here.” She led them to the room down the hall, then locked the door behind herself so they wouldn’t be interrupted at an inopportune moment.

  “Okay, give it to me. Marcus and Lincoln, you first.”

  Lincoln leaned back in his chair and flipped a file open in his lap. “We talked with the last victim of the Rainman, Lucy Johnson. She was victim number seven, and had told Betsy she thought she recognized the guy, right? Well, after thinking on it for a few days, she wasn’t totally sure she even wanted to point a finger. Marcus charmed her right out of her panties, so to speak, convinced her that it would be the right thing to do. Here’s where the problem is. She thinks it’s a guy that works out at her gym. She also sees him around town a lot, the Mapco when she goes for gas, Publix when she’s shopping. So he’s local to the area. Too local.”

  Taylor nodded. “Think she’s legit?”

  Lincoln shook his head. “We know he’s been working a specific geographical area. He went pretty far out of it to get to Betsy in East Nashville. All the other rapes occurred out in the west and south parts of town, Bellevue, Forest Hills, Franklin and Brentwood.”

  “Where does Lucy Johnson live?” Taylor interrupted.

  “That south part of Davidson County off Highway 100 that straddles Williamson County.”

  “And what gym does she use?”

  “She goes to the YMCA at Maryland Farms.” Lincoln was pulling more notes from his file. “At least three of the other victims work out at that gym. So that’s a connection between them. I guess I can understand why Betsy got excited when Ms. Johnson told her that she thought it was a guy from her gym.”

  “Well, that’s great, but did she identify him?”

  Marcus gave a half smile. “Well, that’s the problem. She’s a treadmill and bike, he’s apparently into the free weights. She didn’t see his face anyway, so there’s no ID to go on. She recognizes his arms.”

  Taylor looked at the file, flipping back through the witness statements. “Free weights? I thought he was supposed to have a slight build?” she asked.

  “Slight, not tall, but muscular and strong. That’s what Lucy Johnson said.”

  Fitz had been quiet throughout the exchange. “Can she pick him out of a lineup?” That was Fitz, taking it down to brass tacks.

  “It’s not a face that she remembers. It’s the arms, the body, the way he walks. She also said she hasn’t seen him at the gym in a while. So unless we pull their records and go through all of the ID cards, then get all of their arms in a lineup, there’s no way to go this route.”

  Taylor chewed her lip. “I thought you said she recognized him from around town, running errands and the like.”

  Marcus glanced at Lincoln and they shared a silent look.

  “C’mon, guys, spit it out. There’s something more to her statement. What is it?”

  Lincoln gave Marcus the barest of nods. “When she sees him around town it’s not in gym clothes. She thinks he’s driving an undercover. She thinks he’s one of ours.”

  Taylor set the file on the desk and raised an eyebrow. “Undercover, like one of our detectives undercover? Or just plainclothes?”

  “She doesn’t know. She doesn’t seem to know a lot of things, but she’s certain she saw him get into one of the white Caprices. She recognized the way a cop in Mapco walked, thinks he works out at her gym and that he showed up at her door and raped her. It’s a little thin.”

  “Does she know the cop’s name?”

  “No, but she gave a really blasé description of him. Jarhead it sounds like. I don’t know, Taylor, I can’t imagine we could make an arrest based on how someone walked. And this Lucy Johnson didn’t seem screwed in too tight, if you know what I mean. It could be that she’s just seeing phantoms. Rape can be very traumatic.”

  “Thank you for the lesson, Marcus.” Taylor gave him a smile. “But I’m not willing to overlook anything right now. Let’s talk to Betsy and find out what she thinks. Could you handle that? I think she’s being released today, you could run over to her house. And boys, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to look over your shoulders. We don’t want the press camped on her doorstep, you know?”

  “Sure, LT, no problem.” Marcus sat back in his chair. “Wonder why he only hits when it rains?”

  Taylor waited to see if anyone would answer, then chimed in. “Because the rain washes away his sins. Not to mention the evidence.”

  All three men looked at her, nodding slowly. Well, that made sense.

  As Marcus and Lincoln left to go speak with Betsy Garrison, Taylor signaled for Fitz to stay behind.

  “What’s up?” he asked, twiddling a pencil between his meaty fingers.

  “Julia Page came to see me. Seems she’s a little worried about our friend Terrence Norton’s ability to beat each and every rap he’s fallen for.”

  “Yeah, I heard about the reluctant witness getting shot by some runner out of Atlanta. Guy had an outstanding warrant, too—he’s cooling his heels here while Atlanta scrambles to get him back. They want him bad, think he’s a bagman for one of their biggest dealers. They want to play let’s make a deal with him, and soon. You know how these guys seem to disappear into the earth as soon as their bosses get threatened.”

  “Yeah. Page seems to think it all goes deeper than that. She thinks he was brought in to silence the witness just in case he changed his mind about testifying. Thinks Terrence set it up.”

  “Anything’s possible. Little shit like Terrence, he could have it in him. I didn’t think he’d gotten quite to that level, but…”

  “Would you be willing to look into it for me? See just how strong Terrence has gotten? Page would love to get him for tampering, intimidation, anything that could take him down.”

  Fitz stood and stretche
d, his ample belly reaching for the sky. “Sure, I’ll get with her, talk to a couple of confidential informants. See what the word on the street is. I gotta tell you, he’s starting to insulate himself pretty well. May be a bigger mess than we expect.”

  “Uninsulate him for me. The drug and gang scene is strong enough here, we don’t need another player in the mix. Deal with Vice, whoever you need to talk to. But keep it quiet.” She chewed on her pencil for a moment. “Page thinks the seeds of corruption may go even deeper. All the way to the bench.”

  Fitz guffawed. “I wouldn’t worry my pretty head about that. Terrence doesn’t have that much pull. Besides, Hamilton was ticked as hell at Page because the jury acquitted Terrence this time. I heard he was really hot for her ass, and not in a good way.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. Just pursue the witness/jury angle with Page, see if you can turn anything up. Keep your ear to the ground, work a couple of sources, see what shakes loose.”

  “You got it, sugar. Rather be dealing with a criminal I can understand anyway. Drug dealers, pimps, the regular Nashville nasties. I hate this serial killer shit.”

  * * *

  Taylor was gathering up her things, trying to tidy up, when her phone rang.

  “Lieutenant Jackson.”

  “Taylor, it’s Mitchell. I need you to do me a favor.”

  “Since you’re my boss, anything you ask me to do is actually considered a direct order.”

  Her smart-ass remarks usually made him laugh, and this was no exception. “While I appreciate that you’re my subordinate, I have a feeling you’re running the whole show regardless. I understand you were at the accident scene this morning where Whitney Connolly lost her life?”

  “I was. Sam and I were having coffee around the corner, so I tagged along. Why, is something wrong?”