14

by J. T. Ellison

  A gust of warm air enveloped Baldwin midstride and the strains of Handel’s Water Music drifted to his ears. Fitz came out of the large wooden doors that led to the nave of the church. An avuncular smile filled his broad features. Baldwin stopped pacing for a moment, happy to have the short-lived heat and the company.

  “Son,” Fitz began, but Baldwin shook his head and held up a hand.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Son—”

  “I know what you’re going to say, Fitz.” He adopted a deep baritone with a long Southern drawl. “You haven’t known her for that long. Y’all rushed into this. She’s a wild one, Baldwin, and I mean that in a good way.” He went back to his regular voice.

  “I know you were shocked as hell to see her fall so hard for me. What you’re saying is that maybe this is for the best. Right? You haven’t approved from the beginning.” He glared at the older man. “And quit calling me son.”

  “Hey, Junior. You just don’t get it, do you?”

  Baldwin rocked back on his heels, staring at Fitz with his mouth open. The indignation grew in his chest and he couldn’t help but lash out.

  “You son of a bitch. You talked her into running, didn’t you? You gave her a way out. I know she’s been a little freaked about this big wedding thing, but…I can’t fucking believe this.” He stomped away, then whirled back, shoulders bunched, hands balled at his side. “And you stand there grinning like a fool, thinking this is funny?”

  Fitz coughed into his hand. “Funny? Naw, I wouldn’t call it funny. Your reaction is amusing, yes, but I don’t think this situation is at all humorous. How well do you really know her, son? Do you honestly believe she’d stand you up at the altar?”

  “I…” Baldwin swallowed hard. His hands unclenched, his shoulders slumped. He gritted his teeth, a small muscle in his jaw leaping to life. Did he? Did he really think that the love of his life would be so merciless and fearful as to not show up for their wedding? The lump in his chest started to dissolve, only to be replaced by a larger, much more painful knot.

  “Finally figuring it out, aren’t you, son?”

  Yes, he was. Fitz was pissed at him because he’d lost faith in Taylor. That he’d believed even for a fraction of a second that this strong, astounding, beautiful woman wouldn’t have the guts to tell him to his face that she didn’t want to be with him. The dread washed over him like a bucket of water. He looked at Fitz, seeing him for the first time. The smile wasn’t pleasant, it was tight and worried, small lines shooting between the older man’s brows.

  “Jesus, Fitz, what do you think happened to her?”

  “I don’t know, but I think it’s time to go inside and ask for help.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Sunday, December 21

  11:00 a.m.

  The 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 Mazatlán. 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 som
e 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.

  Twenty-Nine

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Sunday, December 21

  11:00 a.m.

  This was turning into a very good day.

  Charlotte had rejoiced last night, privately. Word spread like wildfire through the subterranean rooms that housed the Behavioral Science Unit, and her friends had seen fit to call and include her in the news. John Baldwin’s wedding had not taken place. His bride stood him up at the altar. To celebrate, Charlotte had opened a bottle of Piper Heidsieck, drawn a bath and masturbated furiously in the warm water.

  It wasn’t that she wished him ill. Well, maybe she did. Maybe she was just so damn happy that he was still a free man that she’d drop by his place, console him properly.

  The whisper campaign had started instantaneously. Taylor Jackson had quite literally disappeared. The limousine she’d been riding in was found in the parking lot of the driving service, right where it should be. The driver was nowhere to be found. There was a vague report about a search at the airport. Later, after sundown, a shoe had been found on the bank of the Cumberland River, one that matched the description of the shoes Jackson had been wearing. Divers were in the river until well after midnight. She had not heard the results when she decided to call it a night.

  As Charlotte had drifted off to sleep, she had a deep, satisfying knowledge that she was wanted. They needed her, her men. Both of them. All of them. Call it instinct, premonition, whatever. Maybe she would be able to save them.

  Now was the time. She left the hotel room with a bounce in her step, understanding innately that the old man and the young one, would need her more now than ever.

  Thirty

  Snow White was in the midst of a coughing fit when he saw the news on the television. The Jackson bitch was missing. He caught his breath, watched the story unfold. Rubbed his hands together painfully, massaging and massaging and massaging.

  He knew what had happened, of course. He couldn’t blame the boy. Jackson needed to be silenced. Things were going to come to a head now. It was just a matter of time before his apprentice’s impudence and recklessness flashed back on them all. A systemic cleansing was the only way to assure their safety.

  Damn that Charlotte. It was all her fault. If she hadn’t brought the young pup, hadn’t dangled the glory of his past in front of him. She was brilliant, he gave her that. And sentimental. Finagling his ring out of police evidence and back to its rightful place on his right hand was the single nicest thing she’d ever done for him.

  His crooked finger traced the outline of the magnificent ring, the crest, the ornate, raised F. It used to mean something. It was a badge of honor, of courage. It was his legacy. It gave him immutable strength, an insatiable desire to feel the life bleed from a body. He wondered about his predecessors, whether when they placed the ring upon their hand, they felt the lifeblood flowing from the metal, felt the nubile bodies calling for release.

  All he knew was that when the ring was lost, so went his desire for blood. Of course, the ring was lost because he’d begun losing weight, losing strength. The disease was upon him, and he was racked with desire and no ability.

  The ring was back on his finger, no danger of slipping off because of the impossible, unnatural angle of the fourth digit. He had a surrogate to stroke the feeble flesh into action once again, to slip the blade through that flesh, two hands working as one. There were moments that he was his old self.

  And everything was in jeopardy now. He’d chosen poorly, allowed Charlotte to muddle his brain. His apprentice would be the death of him. He no longer cared.

  He shuffled his way from the room, the cane clunking in front of him, and climbed, higher and higher into his house. There was a girl, he could smell her, taste her, and he wanted her. Nothing would stop him now. He must fulfill this destiny.

  Thirty-One

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Sunday, December 21

  6:00 p.m.

  The homicide office was bustling with activity. Fitz poured out the dregs of yet another pot of coffee and made a fresh one. They’d gone through four pots in the past two hours. Everyone was wired and cranky, and despite all the artificial stimuli, tired. Marcus, forehead resting on his palm, scrolled through page after page of computer screens. Baldwin was on the phone with the airlines. No one had slept, everyone was fixated on their main lead—the limousine driver who’d pulled an international disappearing act.

  Lincoln was on the phone with a contact he had in the Mazatlán area—a man he knew only as Juan. He’d met him at a forensic computing conference four or five years back. His gut feeling told him Juan wasn’t the man’s real name, but that didn’t matter now. He’d sent him an e-mail earlier in the day, asking for help. They were doing the obligatory catch-up dance before they got down to business.

  “¿Hola? ¿Este Juan? Es Lincoln… Sí, hombre, ha sido mucho demasiado largo… No, mi español no es mejor. No tenemos las mujeres aquí digno de practicar encendido.”

  A bawdy laugh pulsed through the phone. “And I thought Nashville had a vibrant Latino community.” Juan’s voice was deep and cultured. Lincoln didn’t know his whole story, but thought that perhaps he’d been some sort of Argentinean or Bolivian spy. He was just too plugged in to be regular law enforcement, though he was currently serving as a chief in Mexico’s fractured police department. No, a spy would be a more romantic notion.

  Lincoln answered in English, relieved to switch back to his native tongue. “We do have a lot of very fine Latinos, but they smell me out from twenty paces. No one wants to get involved with a cop, you know?”

  “Ah, yes, my friend, I do. On to more important things. I have found your suspect.”

  Lincoln gesticulated to the rest of the homicide office. “Juan, I’m putting you on speakerphone.” He hit the speaker button and the disembodied voice raked through the air.

  “Your suspect was found on the beach. Specifically, by a cabana on the beach in front of the Pueblo Bonito Hotel. It is a very nice hotel. They did not take kindly to the intrusion, I tell you that. From a distance, it seemed he was passed out drunk on a chaise longue. Upon closer inspection, the flies gave him away.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “I am sorry to tell you this. His throat was cut. Very nasty. The hotel people were quite upset. They had to close their beach to their guests. He’s not been moved. Do you want him back?”

  Baldwin spoke up. “This is John Baldwin. I can have an FBI forensics team on-site shortly to retrieve his body.”

  “Yes, removing the body, this would be a very good idea. I believe I’d rather not know why you have a team positione
d to operate so quickly so close. My government is not happy with this imposition. This is about your woman, Lincoln tells me?”

  Baldwin took a step closer to the phone, his voice cracking. “Yes. This man was our only lead.”

  “There will be other leads, amigo. Do not lose hope.”

  Baldwin sat heavily in the chair by Lincoln’s desk. Lincoln shot him a look, then picked up the handset, ending the speaker connection. “Thank you for your help, Juan. I appreciate it.”

  “I’m sure there will be an opportunity to repay the kindness. Adiós, mi amigo. Espero que encuentres las conchas dulces y calientes.”

  It took Lincoln a moment; he repeated a few words aloud. Baldwin looked at Lincoln and for the first time in hours, cracked a smile. Juan had very crudely wished Lincoln warm and wet sexual encounters.

  Lincoln finally got the gist of what Juan had said, laughed and hung up the phone. He looked at Baldwin, who had gone back to his original position, his head in his hands.

  “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”

  “I dabble in several languages. Just so you know, your friend isn’t Mexican.” His tone didn’t brook an invitation to find out more. Lincoln took the hint, tried another tack.

  “I’ve suspected that for a while. Is there someone in particular you’d like me to get in touch with to get this taken care of?”

  Baldwin raised his head, a slight glisten in his green eyes. “No, that’s okay. Let me make the call. I know the team leader down there, he’s working the Juarez case. He’s vacationing in Puerto Vallarta for Christmas, he can get everything squared away for us quietly.” He stood, then gestured apologetically toward Taylor’s office door. No one said anything. What was there to say? Baldwin nodded slowly, a man condemned. He went into her office and closed the door behind him.

  He refused to crack. She would be so pissed at him if he fell apart now. He sat on the guest side of her desk; couldn’t bring himself to take her chair. The office smelled of her, lemongrass and gun oil. He shook it off, dialed the number. Garrett Woods answered his cell on the first ring.