14

by J. T. Ellison

  Taylor elbowed her way through the glass door. She absently gathered her long hair into a fist, slipped a stolen rubber band off her wrist and captured the blond mass in a ponytail. The young technician stepped aside to let her through the door, gazing adoringly at her like a puppy, telling her his name was Sean and if she ever needed anything, anytime, he was the guy to call. He was fawning and the tips of Taylor’s ears were pink.

  When she saw Baldwin, the blush extended down into her cheeks, flushing her with a healthy glow. Utterly charming. Beauty, brains and guts. He’d hit the trifecta when he met and fell in love with this stunning woman.

  Sean the tech spied Baldwin. A furrow creased his young brow. Not quite a man, yet he still understood the implication. He gave a half grin to Baldwin, a “Hey, you can’t blame me for trying” and professionally shook Taylor’s hand, winking as he left her in Baldwin’s company. He greeted her with a smile.

  “Went well, I thought.”

  “As good as could be expected, I suppose.”

  “You okay? About your dad, I mean.”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” She gave him a look that plainly said no, she wasn’t okay about it, but wasn’t willing to make a big deal. He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, then held the door for her.

  They exited the building, walking toward the parking lot. Baldwin sensed the shiver that ran up Taylor’s spine, knew it wasn’t from the snowy night. The Channel 17 studios were nestled in behind the Ted Rhodes Municipal Golf Course, the northwest corner of downtown Nashville. It was dark and remote; a feeling of dread washed over them both. He knew what she was thinking.

  Four girls dead on her watch. The nation paying close attention. And a ruthless killer who was having too good a time toying with her detectives. This wasn’t a happy Christmas.

  They reached his BMW, and he dropped his arm to her waist. Punched the automatic unlock on his key chain. Opened her door. Leaned in as she sat down on the smooth gray leather, ran his hand along her cheek.

  “We’re gonna get him. I swear, we’re gonna get him.”

  “I know,” she replied. “I know.”

  Three

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Monday, December 15

  11:00 p.m.

  Baldwin dropped her off at the office so she could gather her truck and tie up the day’s loose ends. She yawned as she snapped on the lights. The murder book was on her desk, all the files neatly arrayed with tabs for crime-scene photos, evidence, logs and reports from the various officers who’d participated in the scene. It had taken three hours in the freezing cold, with snow falling and hampering their efforts, to clear the scene at the Bicentennial Mall last night. They weren’t taking any chances. Every ounce of physical evidence had been collected, tagged and bagged.

  A quick check of her e-mail and in-box showed nothing that couldn’t wait until the morning. She debated for a moment. Read through the case files now, or go home and get some sleep. The thought of a warm bed, a warm body lying next to her, was too compelling. Taylor grabbed the murder book and headed out.

  The drive home was eerie. The night air crackled with an icy breeze. Snow billowed from the sky; she felt like she was driving through clouds. There were few cars out and about, and the lack of traffic made Taylor lonely. She hadn’t had time to clear her head since the Snow White case had popped. Two months of dead girls, anticipation, setbacks, false leads. The thrill of the hunt.

  The thought sobered her. The girl they’d placed in a body bag last night and carted away to be cut open didn’t enjoy the thrill of being hunted.

  The gash in the girl’s neck flooded Taylor’s mind and she nearly missed her exit off the highway. Without thinking, she hit her brakes hard, and the wet, sloppy snow declined to help. She had to manhandle the truck until the wheels caught again. She regained control and took the exit, her heart beating hard. The near miss woke her up. Adrenaline coursed through her body. Her mind refused to cooperate, to calm itself. The murder scene popped back into her head, and she went down the exact path she was trying to avoid—thinking about the case. She was so lost in thought that when she stopped, she realized she’d driven to her old house. The cabin.

  Shaking her head, she laughed at her distraction. It was only natural—they’d moved just a few weeks ago, still had boxes in the cabin to be transferred to the new house. She groaned at the thought of dealing with more boxes, put the car into Reverse without getting out. The cabin didn’t look large enough to hold very much, but when push came to shove and Taylor had finally started packing, the accumulations of her life seemed to explode exponentially.

  As she pulled away from her old life, the phone rang. She clicked the speakerphone on. Sam’s ebullient voice spilled from the speaker.

  “It’s the same stuff.”

  “Jesus, you’re there late. Why do you sound so happy? That means he’s definitely killed a fourth.”

  “I’ve got enough to run it through LCMS. I’ll get an idea of what this is, finally.” Liquid chromatography mass spectrometry had failed them in the earlier cases. At least now they’d have an idea of what they were dealing with.

  “That’s great, Sam. Don’t stay up too late.”

  As she got back on the right road, the gaping wound in Janesicle’s neck wormed its way to the surface.

  John Baldwin was relatively content. He’d closed his last case, his field office was under the control of a surrogate acting director. No orders to take over the Snow White case had come. He had nothing official to do but get married. His most pressing concern at the moment was Taylor.

  A fire was roaring in the fireplace, and Taylor stood five feet from him, a cup of hot chocolate held tightly, trying to force the numbness away. She’d come home with her hands practically blue. He considered her profile as she looked out the window, a study in concentration. She was miles away. A rare southern blizzard surrounded them. Snow continued to plummet from the sky, piling onto the Japanese maple bushes in the front yard so rapidly that they bent like old men.

  Despite the late hour, a disembodied male voice spoke, deep and languorous.

  “Listen to the following statements. How would you respond? Buon giorno, signora. Lei parla l’inglese? Dove siamo? Come si dice ‘Piazza San Marco is here’ en italiano?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. It’s going too fast. Jeez, this is the easy stuff, too.” Taylor snapped the off button on the CD player remote, shaking her head and smiling.

  “What’s wrong, cara?” he crooned, egging her on.

  Taylor focused on her fiancé with narrowed eyes. “Vaffanculo,” she spat, then grinned at him. Baldwin guffawed in surprise.

  “Where’d you learn that one?”

  “You like? I’ve got more.”

  She had that crazy sexy smile going, the one that held great promise. The mismatched gray eyes flashed. He played with her. “Now, Taylor, there’s no need for that kind of language. You’ll get yourself in trouble if you say that over there, anyway. How is it you have trouble with the most simple commands, yet you can curse like a sailor in perfect gutter Italian? No, don’t answer that,” he said, holding up a hand. Taylor’s lips had pursed, ready to spew out what he assumed was another charming epithet.

  “Relax, sweetheart. You know more than you think you do. I’ve watched you go through these tapes for weeks. Trust me, we get over there, you’ll be fluent in days. I promise. You’re just distracted.”

  He went to the stereo, turning the power off. He glanced around their living room—a spacious compilation of curved arches and exposed beams. Their new home was more like what he and Taylor had each grown up in, elegant and airy, whitewashed walls with simple accents. They both loved it the moment they saw it. The exterior was brick and stone, a Georgian colonial that bordered on federalist, a style so popular in this section of the South. They had much more room than furniture. The plan was to buy the accompanying furnishings and art on their trip. And stock their burgeoning wine cellar.

&nb
sp; Over there. Italy. Italia. They had scheduled three weeks for a romantic honeymoon, and Taylor had been bound and determined to teach herself the language before they left. He loved to watch her learn, to see the phrases tumble from her lips.

  “Distracted. Why would you think that?” She turned back to the window and stared at the winter wonderland that comprised their new front yard, the cul-de-sac and the other houses in the neighborhood. The problem was, there were no defining characteristics between them all. Everything was white. Fifteen inches of white.

  And a killer was out there, plotting his next murder. Damn. He watched her mood shift, playful to alert and serious.

  “Four new murders, Baldwin. Sam’s call all but confirms it. Snow White is really back. Or is this a copycat? If he is, he’s a damn good mimic. And we look like a bunch of monkeys fucking a football.”

  Baldwin slipped behind Taylor, putting his arms around her waist. He started whispering in her ear. “Siete il mio amore. Non posso attendere per spendere il resto della mia vita con voi. Avete la faccia di un angelo. Need me to translate?”

  She spun in his arms, her breath hot on his cheek. Obviously she caught the gist of what he’d said. He gave her a wink. It never failed.

  “You’re an easy woman, Taylor. Mutter a few words in a foreign language and here you are, rubbing up against me like a cat.” He brushed a kiss against her generous mouth, smiling as she bit his lip.

  “I may be easy, Dr. Baldwin, but at least I’m not cheap.” She pulled away and punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Do you think they’ll have the street plowed by morning?”

  Baldwin looked out the window. “We can hope.”

  Taylor cracked her neck. Snow. Murder. The look in her gray eyes was blatant—if the roads weren’t clear by tomorrow, she would murder someone herself.

  Baldwin slipped an arm around her waist, drawing her back to him. “We could…”

  “No, we couldn’t. That was the deal. I want our wedding night to be special. You can hold out a little longer. All I asked is that we try to abstain for a week. A week wasn’t that much to ask.”

  He smiled and pulled her close. “But we already…” He kissed her softly, tasting chocolate, but she fought to leave the circle of his arms. Breath ragged, she pushed him away, gave him a weak smile.

  “Stop. Four more days. Okay? Let’s just make it through this week, and we’ll be horizontal before you know it. I just can’t think about anything but that poor girl right now.”

  Baldwin adjusted his fly and gave her his most wicked smile. “Let me help you forget.”

  Taylor lay in the bed, realizing she was sleeping with her eyes wide shut. It was an old trick she used, keeping her eyes closed as if asleep, but seeing everything behind the lids. Usually, it worked to allow her mind to process whatever kept her awake, yet she felt rested when she finally succumbed and got out of the bed. It wasn’t working.

  She opened her eyes, taking in the dim light of the room. Baldwin was asleep on his left side, back to her, and she knew he was out by the soft whispery snores emanating from his pillow. Lucky bastard. Since they’d moved to the new house, he’d been sleeping like a baby. It might have been the bed—a king-size sleigh that afforded them much more room than they actually needed. They could each stretch out and not worry about banging into the other. She missed the old bed, but only briefly. Who was she kidding? She loved to luxuriate in the crisp sheets, to stretch her extremely long legs all the way to the end of the bed and still have several inches to spare.

  She did just that, easing the tension in her shoulders with a bit of stretching, tensing and releasing. Maybe a game would take her mind off the case. No sense lying here staring at the ceiling.

  The pool table was housed in the bonus room over their three-car garage. Taylor walked out of the master, slipping the door closed with a gentle click. A night-light showed her the path. She walked down the long, wide hallway past empty rooms. Rooms that should hold promise but mocked her with their very emptiness. Marriage. Babies. Yawning mouths of black-haired, red-lipped girls, all in a row.

  Fuck it all. She jogged the last few steps down the hall until she reached the open space that housed the vast majority of her old life.

  She flicked the lamp and the room filled with soft yellow light. Closing the door carefully behind her, she went to the pool table, whipped the cover off and bunched it into a ball. Tossing it on the couch, she went back to the table, racked the balls and took a moment to stretch again, two vertebrae in her neck unkinking with a pop. Better. Loosened up, she took the break, cracking ball after ball into their respective pockets.

  She ignored the faces hanging on the wall. She’d turned the poolroom into a makeshift office, someplace she could spend her nights thinking about the murders while she tried to relax. Elizabeth Shaw, Candace Brooks and Glenna Wells all smiled down on her. At least they’d been identified quickly. This new victim was nameless.

  Smack—Snow White.

  Smack—Janesicle.

  Smack, smack, smack—wedding, copycat, four dead girls.

  The tension drained and she found her rhythm. She’d find this guy. She always did.

  She was four games of nine ball in when the door opened.

  Baldwin stood in the frame, hair mussed, sleep marks creasing his left cheek. He whistled a low tune and she melted. He looked so damn unbearably cute that Taylor couldn’t help herself. All the bad thoughts left her. The worries, the frustrations, disappeared. She put the cue stick back in its holder, went to him. Took him by the hand and wordlessly led him back to the bedroom.

  Four

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Tuesday, December 16

  6:40 a.m.

  Taylor rose early, gritty-eyed from the lack of sleep. She left Baldwin in the bed, tucked a pillow in his arms, and felt her heart break when he smiled and murmured into it. Seeing him like that, remembering what he’d done to finally get her to sleep, made all her worries about the wedding seem silly.

  Long legs ensconced in a pair of jeans, she slipped into her favorite old Uggs and pulled on a creamy cable sweater. She stopped in the kitchen briefly, grabbed a banana and a granola bar, then got in the 4Runner. She backed into a drift of snow in the driveway, but the powerful truck slid through it easily.

  The neighborhood was beautiful, sheer and pure, a white only produced by snow fallen from a crisp wintry sky. She felt like she was in the mountains; the deciduous trees masquerading as heavy evergreens with black trunks and feathery limbs coated in ice, the sky cerulean, a shade rarely seen during a Southern winter. The beauty cheered her, and she left the quiet subdivision in a good mood. Moved by the weather. Sheesh. She was getting soft.

  Out in the suburbs, the side roads were unplowed and impassable to all but four-wheel drives, but the main roads were relatively cleared and not yet icy. She was careful, made her way to the Starbucks drive-through, got her now standard nonfat, sugar-free vanilla latte and headed toward work.

  The autopsy of Janesicle was scheduled for seven, and Taylor intended to witness. Maybe Sam would have the results back from the LCMS tests. If this was definitely victim number four, it would be a hard secret to keep.

  She flipped on the XM, used the remote to scroll through the stations until she found some music she liked. No talk radio for her this morning, and she’d given up on the holiday channels after the third murder. It just didn’t feel right to be listening to such joyful exuberance when girls’ bodies were stacking up like cordwood in the morgue. She needed mindless noise, distraction. She settled on a U2 tune and mouthed the words as she made her way down the highway. The roads were virtually empty and she felt freer than she had in months.

  Little by little, as she closed the distance to Forensic Medical, her heart grew heavier. When she entered Gass Street, she turned off the radio.

  Sam’s offices were housed in a corporate-looking building up the road from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Taylor had been here so often that Sa
m had issued her a badge that allowed her access after hours. Or before hours, when necessary. They’d have a skeleton staff on a day like today, but Taylor knew Sam would be there.

  And she was, already prepped. Taylor could see her, distorted through the crisscross wire embedded in the glass of the industrial door. The air was cool and clean in the compartmented vestibule where she slipped out of her clothes and boots, sliding blue plastic clogs and doctor’s scrubs on. She put her street clothes in a locker. No sense making her clothes reek for the rest of the day. With the new gear in place, she went through the door into the autopsy suite. The chemical scent of death greeted her like an old friend. She hardly noticed it anymore.

  Sam nodded as she entered the room, already dictating into a hands-free mike clipped to her headgear.

  The body of Janesicle Doe lay on the cream-colored plastic slab that encased the stainless-steel table underneath. She was so white; cold, clammy flesh, with that big, black grin across her throat. Taylor felt the gorge rise in the back of her own throat and swallowed hard. Inappropriate reaction. She hoped Sam hadn’t noticed. Taylor was as detached as the rest of them, but something about this girl was breaking all her protocols.

  The individual murders hadn’t bothered her in the beginning. Well, not that much. Not like this.

  “Taylor, did you notice? She’s got that same stuff on her temples.”

  Taylor stepped closer, bent over the body. On either side of the girl’s face, two smears of a whitish substance glistened under Sam’s light. They looked like streaks of moonlight.

  “Appears to be identical material. Any chance the labs are back on it?”

  “We should have an answer by the time I finish her up. We didn’t get anything usable from the earlier samples, they were too degraded.” Sam started working her way systematically through the Jane Doe’s hair.