Lieutenant Taylor Jackson Collection, Volume 2

by J. T. Ellison

  Taylor kneeled by the chair, swept her into a hug. “Honey, this is the most wonderful news. I’m thrilled for you.”

  Sam hugged her back briefly. “Don’t tell anyone, for God’s sake. I need to warn Simon, and get to the OB. Shit, shit, shit.” But she was smiling, and the dark circles under her eyes looked a little less threatening.

  Taylor gestured toward the den door. “When you warn him, let him know I may need his services. I seriously doubt you’re going to be able to handle tox and trace for all these crime scenes, and the TBI is backed up for months. We could probably ask Baldwin to send some of the samples to his lab at Quantico, but I’d rather do this quickly and quietly. I’ll arrange for some extra funding to get Simon’s lab to help you out.”

  Sam’s husband, Dr. Simon Loughley, ran a firm called Private Match, one of the leading forensic specialty labs in the country. DNA matches for paternity were their bread and butter, which allowed Simon to take on outside work that fascinated him. He was always there in a pinch when Metro needed an immediate turnaround; the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation lab was so far behind on rape and murder samples that sometimes it was necessary to take their labs to independent, private vendors. It would cost, but Taylor didn’t anticipate that would be a problem. My God, six crime scenes in one day’s event? Even their notoriously tightfisted chief would agree with the necessity.

  She couldn’t wait for their new crime lab to open. The funding was in place, a site selected. Everything was moving forward. No more relying on the kindness of others to get their pressing forensic evidence processed.

  The dog whined at the door, jerking Taylor from her reverie.

  “Okay. On that happy note, we need to get back to work.” She looked at the blood that had soaked into the carpet where Brittany Carson had lain bleeding to death. “Wish we’d gotten here sooner. She might’ve had a better chance.”

  “How were you supposed to know? Are you telepathic now?”

  “No, but—”

  Sam shook her head. “No buts about it. You’re not a mind reader. You’ve got a killer who’s obviously thought this through very, very carefully. I’m praying this is the last call we get tonight.”

  A horrible thought dawned in Taylor’s mind. “Do you think he could have been watching, waiting for us to arrive, before he came down here and finished up with Brittany?”

  “Watching? Sure. You know how these kooks love to watch. He could have been at one of the houses at the far end of the neighborhood while we were in one of the other residences.”

  “Jesus. The media is going to have my head.”

  Sam was back to being all professional. She and Sam hadn’t hung out in a few weeks, and Taylor missed her. “Taylor, you’ve done the best you can. Let’s get back, I still have two bodies to declare.”

  “Okay. Let me tell Marcus, I’ll need to come back here later.”

  She found him in the kitchen, staring hard out the back window into nothingness. His shoulders were slumped in defeat. She knew exactly what was going through his mind. Blame, guilt. Taylor decided to give him the same pep talk Sam had just given her.

  “Hey,” she said softly. “It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”

  He met her eyes, bleak with despair. “She didn’t have a pulse earlier, Taylor. I swear it. The EMT who came couldn’t find one, either. Jesus, she’s been lying here dying while I chatted up her mom and figured a way to get the dog to leave her side.”

  Ranger sat heavily on Marcus’s feet. He reached down and petted the dog absently.

  “Did the mom have any idea what went down this afternoon?”

  “No. She’s a single mother, a nurse. Name’s Elissa. She worked late, came home and found Brittany in the den. Brittany’s a scholarship student, I did find that out. Strait-laced, shy. Her mom says there’s no way she was doing drugs voluntarily.”

  “There’s no sign of forced entry. Whoever tried to kill her, she let him in.”

  “She’s younger than the others, too. I’ve got a patrol canvassing, but this house is set back so far that no one has come forward yet to say they saw anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Then we need to start looking for the ordinary. A killer who can disappear into this neighborhood for hours unnoticed.”

  “Caucasian, then. Dressed professionally, or in a Halloween costume. It could be anyone.”

  “Could be a kid.”

  “You think another kid did this?”

  “I don’t know. But we need to take that into consideration.”

  “If we’d just gotten to her earlier,” he repeated, voice hollow.

  She got in his face, forced him to make eye contact.

  “Marcus, let’s just focus on the now. Get me a report from the hospital, and let’s take it from there. If the girl lives, post a guard on her room. She’s the only witness we have to this afternoon’s events. I need to get back to Estes—there are still two bodies that Sam hasn’t declared. Take it easy on yourself. Get the patrols to secure this house and we’ll come back to it. This one goes in the win column. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he mumbled, misery etched on his handsome features. He wasn’t fooling her. She’d need to talk him off the ledge some more, but right now she needed to attend to the rest of the dead.

  “Here, I’ve got something that will distract you. I think our killer may be watching us, waiting to see our reactions. We need to talk to everyone within one hundred yards of these crime scenes that might have a video camera trained our way. Check with the media first. They know to get some crowd shots in the B-roll, and Keri McGee will, too. I’ve noticed some of these homes have a little extra security—they may have cameras that aren’t readily visible. Get through to the security firms in the area, see if any of them service houses near the crime scenes. Can you handle that for me?”

  “Of course.” He nodded, putting away the upset, becoming all business again. His eyes shuttered and he snapped open his cell phone, started giving instructions. Taylor squeezed his shoulder and went to join Sam.

  She closed the front door and stepped onto the small porch. She stopped for a moment, took a deep breath and blew it out. What a night. Eight kids. Eight.

  She started down the steps and caught a flash out of the corner of her eye. She whipped to the side, flat up against the railing, her hand on her Glock. She heard a snap, then the rushing of feet through dry leaves. A mounted spotlight turned on in the backyard.

  “Sam, get down,” she stage-whispered, then took off around the corner of the house, yelling, “Police, stop!” The house’s lights were on a motion detector, and the heavily wooded lot was lit up like a Christmas tree. Taylor stopped for a moment, let her eyes adjust to the light, listened to the steps running away from her, stumbling into the darkness.

  “Marcus,” she yelled, but he was already next to her, gun drawn.

  “I saw the lights go on. What’s up?”

  “Someone was on the side of the house, took off running. They’re headed west, deeper into these trees. What’s on the other side?”

  “Hobbs Road. There’s nothing between us and there.”

  “Okay, slow and steady. Watch out for yourself. You take the left perimeter, I’ll take the right. Let’s see if we can’t circle around and catch him before he hits the road.”

  “You get a look at him?”

  “No. Heavy footsteps though.” Taylor wasn’t an idiot—she wasn’t about to set off without backup. She grabbed her radio. “All units, this is Lieutenant Jackson, in pursuit of an unknown subject running west toward Hobbs Road. We’re at 2135 Warfield Lane. I need a K-9 unit on the scene, repeat, get Simari and Max out here ASAP.”

  There were affirmatives, and she stowed the radio. They jogged off at slight right angles into the woods. The fog was heavier here, the leaves on the trees turned so their under-sides were showing, aglow in the feeble moonlight. The mist enveloped them—Taylor could hardly see Marcus, though he was running relatively parallel to her, within fifteen
feet.

  It got darker as they moved away from the Carsons’ backyard, and they slowed. This was no good. This was definitely no good. A small rain started up, spattering against her face. The loamy scent of rotting leaves grew stronger. She could still hear their suspect thrashing in the dark, probably fifty yards ahead of them. The thick haze and lack of light meant he’d slowed, too. That helped. She started off again, at a walk, weapon at her side.

  A hard crack made her draw up short and dive behind the nearest tree. Her Glock was tight in her palm, her forefinger alongside the trigger. Her heart hammered in her throat—what was that? She listened, felt her chest rise and fall frantically, inhaling deeply through her nose so she could catch her breath. Another sharp snap went off, then another, a whole string of cherry bombs. A firecracker, definitely not a gun. Son of a bitch.

  Something about the fact that the calendar denoted a holiday meant the fine people of Nashville felt it their duty to celebrate, and firecrackers, illegal in Davidson County, were their favorite pastime.

  Her heart went back to a manageable pace and she whistled to Marcus, slow and quiet. He answered, a decent imitation of a whip-poor-will, trilling at the end, and they set off again, more cautiously this time.

  She could see maybe five to ten feet in front of her. She held up again, heard the whoosh of tires on wet pavement. They were getting close to the road. Throaty, staccato barks bled in from the south. Simari had arrived, and Max, her canine companion, was on the hunt. It wouldn’t be long now. Max was nimble and quick, could take down a suspect in a fraction of the time of a human officer during a chase. It was amazing to watch, and Taylor was sorry the visibility was so bad.

  It took about a minute before she heard cries to her left. She turned and saw a thin path, jogged up it into a small clearing. Max had done his job and landed the suspect, had his strong jaw clamped around the man’s leg. Officers converged from all sides, Maglites focused on their suspect, weapons drawn. Simari called Max off with a command in German. He whined, but released the suspect’s jeans from his mouth, trotted back to his master with a satisfied air. Simari always fed Max a bloody, raw steak when he had a successful takedown; the German shepherd would be rewarded fully tonight.

  Their suspect was moaning, holding his leg like it had been amputated high across his thigh. Taylor approached him carefully, but quickly saw that he was, indeed, down for the count. Blood pooled beneath his torn jeans. Max had taken a decent chunk of flesh out of the man’s leg.

  No, it wasn’t a man. The flashlights showed a smooth, round face. This was a boy, Caucasian, no more than thirteen or fourteen. Short for his age, it seemed.

  The adrenaline was leaking away; everyone was giddy, joking and laughing. People began to disappear off into the night, back to their cars, back to the multiple crime scenes they’d been pulled away from.

  “Hope that was worth it,” she heard one officer grumble.

  No kidding. Taylor let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as Marcus snapped cuffs on the boy.

  Taylor Mirandized him, mentally cursing the new laws that forced her to do so immediately in order to question anyone suspect in the commission of a crime, then asked, “What’s your name?”

  He just shook his head, looked down at his leg.

  “I need a doctor,” he said in a surprisingly deep voice.

  “What’s your name first?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, anonymous. We’ll call an ambulance and have you transferred, but without a name, there isn’t a hospital in the city that will treat you. They don’t give it away for free, you know. They’ll need to call your parents to get payment. Sure would be a shame to lose a leg just because you want to play hardball with me.”

  The boy went whiter than the Maglite’s beam. He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “My last name is Edvin. My first name is Juri.”

  “Like a jury of your peers?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Spell it.”

  “J-U-R-I. It’s Finnish.”

  “Where do you live?”

  He squinted at her, she didn’t know if it was from pain or the Maglites pointed at him. “On Granny White Pike, near Lipscomb University,” he said at last.

  “We need to inform your parents.”

  The whites of his eyes flashed and he started to struggle again. Taylor pressed her arm across his chest, applied enough pressure that he couldn’t move without a real fight.

  “Stop that. Give me your telephone number so I can contact them, right now.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her, then mumbled seven numbers. Taylor memorized them, then let up the pressure. She signaled for the EMTs to come in. They worked quickly, cutting away the torn jeans to show an impressive row of deep punctures, placing a compression pad against the seeping wound, efficiently tying the boy to the stretcher.

  “Did you struggle when the dog bit you?” one of the EMTs asked.

  “Yeah,” Edvin mumbled. “I tried to get away. Did I hurt the dog? I punched it in the mouth when it bit me.”

  Taylor hid a smile. Max was tough, and in the throes of a kill probably hadn’t noticed an ineffectual punch thrown by a scared kid.

  “He’ll be fine,” she said. “Why did you run from us?”

  The boy was chatty now that his big scare had passed.

  “You’re cops. What else would I do?”

  “Stop when I said stop, for starters. What were you doing at the Carson house?”

  “Whose house?” But his eyes slid away, down and to the left, and Taylor knew he was lying.

  “Let’s try that again. You were at the Carson house. What can you tell us about what happened there this afternoon?”

  “Don’t know anyone named Carson. I was walking home. Been trick-or-treating.”

  “Without a costume? All the way to Granny White? That’s going to take you a while.”

  “I’m too old to play dress-up. And I like to walk. You scared me, I ran. Simple as dat.”

  In a fraction of a second, the boy had gone from scared and hurt to snarly and mature, talking gangster to her. She’d hit a nerve, no question about it.

  One of the paramedics made a twirly motion with his finger. She looked at him and stepped a few feet away. He joined her and whispered, “We need to transport him now. He’s bleeding pretty heavily. Dog might’ve nicked an artery.”

  She glanced back at the kid, who did look to be fading. “Okay. I’ll send Marcus with you guys. The kid’s full of crap, and I want to make sure any excited utterances are transcribed exactly. Keep an eye on him, and if he says anything, you write it down, okay?”

  “Will do, boss.”

  She motioned to Marcus, repeated the same thing and asked him to call Juri Edvin’s parents. She recited the number, waited while he wrote it in his notebook. He promised to check on Brittany Carson for her. She watched him follow the stretcher to the ambulance, the metal legs wobbly on the uneven ground. They nearly pitched the kid headfirst off the thing once.

  Shaking her head, she called Lincoln and retasked him to the crime-scene videos, then touched base with McKenzie. He was at the party, had the place on lockdown. Good God, this was a logistical nightmare. She had officers and detectives spread over half of Davidson County.

  It took less than five minutes to trek her way out of the woods and back to her car. Sam had left a note on the windshield. Needed to go. Call when you’re done.

  Taylor flipped open her cell phone. Sam answered on the first ring.

  “You catch him?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Just a kid, but he lied to me about being near the house. I’m going to drag a crime-scene tech up here and have them comb the perimeter. Something was fishy there.”

  “I’m at the fifth crime scene. I found some interesting stuff. You should come over here.”

  “Which one?”

  Sam gave her the address, and Taylor hung up. She climbed in her unmarked and drove the few streets over
to 5567 Foxhall Close, the home of victim number five, Brandon Scott.

  It was all becoming numbingly familiar: the beautifully appointed home, the incongruity of yellow crime-scene tape and people milling about, roaming in and out of the house in a coordinated plan. It looked like moving day, with forensics and blood-spatter experts.

  She made her way inside. The focus of attention was again on the second floor. She took the stairs two at a time and went to the beehive.

  Sam was standing against the wall, making notes, leaving a clear view of the body. Taylor sucked in her breath, edged closer.

  The body presented like the others, on his back, arms down by his side this time, but the carving in the boy’s chest was much more intense. There was pure fury in the slashes. They penetrated much deeper than the other bodies, so far that bone was visible. The sheets were caked with blood, the odd scent of jasmine and viscera combining in a gorge-rising miasma.

  He was partially dressed, gray sweatpants with a tie at the waist that had been disturbed—one side hung down over his right buttock. The edge of his pants was black with blood.

  Taylor swallowed, hard. “He’s been flayed,” she said. “Our killer really didn’t like Mr. Scott here.”

  Sam kicked off from the wall, stowed her notebook in her pocket, walked over to Taylor.

  “That’s an understatement. Roll him,” she instructed the death investigator who had joined them.

  The boy’s back was covered in strips of bloody channels, long and unevenly spaced.

  “What caused this?” Taylor asked.

  “Honestly?” Sam pursed her lips, a piece of her too-long bangs caught in her lip gloss. She brushed her hair away impatiently. “I think he was whipped.”

  “Whipped?”

  “Yeah. Remember Todd Wolff’s basement? He had all that sex paraphernalia down there?”

  Did she remember? That wasn’t a case she’d soon forget. She nodded, eyes veiled.

  “There’s an S&M tool called a cat-o’-nine-tails. Most are made of leather and not intended to inflict more than pain, but some have sharp, barbed tips on the ends of the separate whips. I’ve seen this before, in another case several years ago. Guy in East Nashville took one to his boyfriend. Got carried away, the guy ended up on my table. He was covered head to toe in slashes like this.”