“What?” A voice floated down the stairs, tinged with impatience.
“You need to see this. I think the ceiling is wet.”
The clatter of footsteps on the stairs assured Taylor that her fiancé was making the trek from their bedroom on the second floor down to her, in the room directly below, posthaste. He appeared at her side, joined her in craning his head toward the living room ceiling. A dark gray stain was moving across the joint, treading a thin line of damp. As they stared, a small drop of water beaded up from the end of the discoloration. Neither of them moved as it grew, larger and larger, then broke off and fell with a muffled plop onto Baldwin’s shoulder.
They sprang into action, no words needed. Baldwin sprinted back upstairs toward the bathroom to turn off the water. Taylor went to the kitchen and came back with a spaghetti pot. She stood under the dribble, catching droplets of water as they rushed through the surface of the drywall and fell to earth.
God, what next?
Baldwin came back to the living room with a step-ladder. “This house is built on an Indian burial ground, Taylor. I swear it. I turned the water off. We can set the pot on this. It might help keep the carpet dry.” He positioned the ladder under the leak and took the container from Taylor, setting it on the top. A happy plink rewarded his efforts.
They shared an exasperated laugh. In the month they’d been home from their pseudo-honeymoon, everything that could go wrong with their relatively new house had. A fitting metaphor for their life. No matter what they planned, how they tried, they couldn’t seem to get onto the right page and make it official. Taylor was content to remain unmarried. Baldwin was starting to come around to her way of thinking.
“Who do you want me to call? The home warranty place?” He started for the kitchen.
“Yeah. The number is in the folder in the server. They’re going to have to send out a plumber now, we can’t wait.”
He opened the drawer and pulled out an overstuffed file folder. “Okay, I’ll make the call. But I’ve got to finish packing. My flight leaves at ten-thirty.”
Taylor gave the ceiling a last hard stare, then joined Baldwin.
“Here, give me that. I’ll call. You go on and finish packing. Besides, the plane leaves when you tell it to. Director.”
He shot her a look. “I’m not the Director. I’m the Acting Director while Garrett has this stupid surgery. That just means I get to push his pencils around his desk and pretend to look important for two weeks. Seriously, I’d rather stay here, fight with the plumber.”
Garrett Woods, director of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and Baldwin’s boss, had called the previous evening. He’d gone for his routine yearly physical and ended up hospitalized, scheduled for a triple bypass. He needed someone he trusted to hold down the fort. Baldwin was the obvious choice. Taylor hoped it wasn’t a play to get him to come back and run the BSU permanently. There’d been quite a shake-up while Taylor and Baldwin were in Italy, celebrating what should have been their honeymoon. The man who’d been leading the BSU, Stuart Evans, had been summarily fired after a personnel issue made headlines. The Bureau wasn’t a big fan of having their personal laundry aired in the media. Garrett Woods took the position again, leaving his number three in the bureau spot. He hadn’t been happy working at that level anyway, was thrilled to return to the BSU and make things right with his investigative divisions and behavioral analysis unit profilers.
“You need to go tend to Garrett’s cases. And make sure he listens to the doctors. I can’t believe he’s so sick.”
“Me neither. He seems so indestructible to me, always has. So you think you can handle this?”
She kissed him, then pulled back and raised an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah. It’s just a little leak.”
“Okay, then. I’m going to finish packing.” With a pat on her rear, he left the kitchen. She smiled after him. God, what a goof she’d become. Fools in love…
And their love nest was falling in around their ears. This would be the fourth time she’d had to call for service since they’d moved in two months ago. There had been contractors crawling all over the place for silly little issues—a broken fan blade on the heater, a squirrel who’d nested in the crawlspace and chewed through some electrical wiring, a faulty thermostat on the freezer. Now a leak in the master bath. They were making their bones with the warranty company. She got the plumber’s name and number, left them a message, then went upstairs, determined to make Acting Director Dr. John Baldwin regret that he was leaving for two weeks and prove her point. The Gulf-stream couldn’t exactly leave without him.
The phone rang as she hit the second stair. What now? She backtracked, went to the kitchen and saw the number on the caller ID.
“Hi, Fitz,” she answered.
Sergeant Peter Fitzgerald, her second in command, greeted her brusquely. “I know it’s your day off, but you need to come in. We’ve got a murder that’s going to have fleas.”
“Who?”
“Some sweet little mother out in Hillwood. I’m hearing words like Laci and Peterson.”
Taylor shuffled her fingers through a notepad that sat next to the phone, ready for an urgent message. No, thank you. I’m not in the mood for a murder. I think I’ll pass. But she couldn’t. She was the homicide lieutenant, and if her team needed her, that meant she would show.
“Fine. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be on the road.”
“The fed gone yet?”
“He’s finishing packing.”
“Well, go kiss his pretty little face goodbye and get your ass down here. We need you.”
She hung up and the phone rang again. The plumbers. They greeted her warmly. Of course they would, she’d be sending their children through college if this was more than a simple leak. They said their technician would be out in an hour. She told them where she’d hide a key, then ran up the stairs. Baldwin was zipping his suitcase.
“You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Good, come on. I’ll drop you off. I have to go in.”
“Who died?”
Ah, the bliss of living with a fellow law enforcement officer. He just got it.
“Fitz says it’s a young mother. It must be catching on fire for him to drag me in on my day off.” She pulled a black sweater over her gray T-shirt and went into the offending bathroom. She brushed out her hair and gathered it into a ponytail, frowned at the toilet, where she assumed the leak had generated, then went to her closet and grabbed a pair of boots. Hitching up the legs of her jeans, she slipped into the Tony Lamas without sitting down and jumped up once, landing softly to set her heels and drop the pant legs. Ready.
Baldwin was standing in the doorway to the master, watching with a bemused smile on his face. “Thirty seconds flat. Not bad. You look stunning.”
Taylor rolled her eyes at him. “Let’s go, lover boy. The sooner you get to Quantico, the sooner you can come home.”
Three
Taylor met Fitz in the parking lot of the Criminal Justice Center. Clouds scudded across the graying sky. Despite the beauty of spring in Nashville, the weather was wholly schizophrenic. Sunny one minute, stormy the next. She took off her sunglasses and slipped one temple into her sweater collar.
“Yo,” Fitz called, pointing to a white Chevy Impala, his official department issued ride. “I gotta run back to the office for a second. Want a drink?”
Taylor nodded her head and started for the car. She took the passenger’s side, pushing the seat back to accommodate her long legs. Fitz disappeared into the bowels of the CJC and returned a few minutes later with two Diet Cokes. He slid into the driver’s seat, handed over the soda. She cracked the lid and sipped, then put the can between her thighs.
The sun popped out for a brief second, enough to blind her, so she put on her new Ray-Bans, a purchase she made in the duty-free in Milan’s Malpensa airport. They were wide and black and made her feel glamorous, a tiny homage to her new European sentiments. Traveling in a foreign c
ountry with a native speaker of the language had the tendency to make you feel more. She’d been on several trips overseas before, but had never experienced them the way she’d experienced the three weeks touring Italy with Baldwin.
She was having trouble acclimating. She missed the slow easiness of Italian life—the languid drives, the frequent stops for food and wine, the symmetrical beauty of the olive groves and vineyards and cypress-lined drives, the feeling that she was very, very young. And if she were being absolutely truthful, it had been damn nice to have three whole weeks without a single dead body.
The clouds smothered the burgeoning sunlight again, but she left the glasses on. Annoying, that’s what these transitional months were. She wanted it to be one or the other, warm or cold, sunny or cloudy.
Fitz pulled out of the parking lot.
“How ya doing?” he asked.
“I have a leak in my bathroom,” she pouted.
“I told you not to buy a new house. If you’d gotten one constructed like they should be, something solid, like those great old Victorians in East Nashville, you wouldn’t be having these problems.”
“No, Fitz, I’d just have termites and gang-bangers. No thanks. Gentrification just isn’t my thing.”
“Spoiled.”
“Not. We just wanted something…airy.”
Fitz laughed. “Airy my ass. You wanted something big enough for that damn pool table and a passel of kids.”
Taylor turned to him, suspicious. “What in the world makes you say that?”
He looked at her with one eyebrow cocked. It made his face look crooked, like Popeye full of ruddy wrinkles. “You don’t?”
“Don’t what?”
“Want to have a pack of brats with the fed.” He said it so calmly she went on immediate alert.
“Where are you hearing this stuff? I’ve never said anything about having a baby. We can’t even manage to get married, so I’m hardly gunning for offspring. I don’t know if that’s something I ever want to do.” She looked out the window, watched the edge of downtown Nashville slip away like a veil was lifted. Brick and cement became foliage. They were on West End, heading out to Hillwood. A bucolic drive through the suburbs. Was that prompting Fitz’s question?
“Okay, girlie, I’m convinced. But I’m hearing this crime scene might be a bit off-putting. If you were fixing to get yourself knocked up, I might encourage you to skip this one, look the other way.”
“Jesus Christ, Fitz, tell me what’s at the scene.”
“Parks is there. Hey, there’s a picture in the visor. Grab that, wouldja?”
Good, Taylor thought. Bob Parks was as level-headed a patrol officer as Metro employed. If there was something wild at a crime scene, he would know how to tamp it down so the press couldn’t get too insane. She unfolded the sun visor, expecting a crime scene photo. Instead, a picture of a boat dropped into her lap. She turned it around so it faced up. It was pretty, white with tall sails, sliding through impossibly blue water.
“Yes…?”
“Parks said it was a little gruesome out there, that’s all.”
“No, I mean, what’s with the boat?”
“Thinking of buying it.”
Taylor looked at the photo again. It was…well, it was a boat. That’s as far as she went with sailing. Not her forte.
“When are you planning to drive this boat?”
“Jeez, LT. It’s called sailing. And it’s for when I retire.”
Fitz clamped his mouth shut. Taylor recognized the action—he was finished talking about it. He’d warned her about the scene and lobbed a bombshell about the future; that was as far as he was willing to go. Great.
An ambulance whipped past them, coming from the opposite direction. Going to St. Thomas, she thought. She mentally crossed herself, as she did every time she heard a siren. After thirteen years on the force, five of them in Homicide, she wasn’t so jaded that she still couldn’t have some compassion for the strangers in this world who might need a little looking over.
She toyed with her new engagement ring. The post-engagement pre-marriage ring, actually. When he’d first proposed, Baldwin had given her a stunning two-carat Tiffany sparkler, with delicate baguettes parading around the platinum band. Gorgeous, but impractical. And since the wedding hadn’t gone off—no fault of her own, she’d been unceremoniously Tasered and flown unconscious to New York with poor Baldwin standing at the church waiting for her—the new ring was a representation of a second chance.
He’d arranged to slip away for a few moments in Florence, then shown up for dinner at a little place they’d fallen in love with called Mama Gina’s, a flush around the crinkles of his intense emerald eyes. To the delight of their regular waiter, Antonio, and the rest of the restaurant patrons, he’d dropped to one knee and presented her with a new ring. One that held an even deeper promise. The five Asscher cut diamonds twinkled from their platinum channel setting. Baldwin told her each diamond represented the next five years of their lives together, and he’d buy her another in twenty-five years.
Aside from the romantic notion of it, the practicality of the ring touched her. It was flat. It didn’t catch on things like the Tiffany. And it wouldn’t get in her way if she had to fire her weapon unexpectedly. The gesture was overwhelming, and she’d almost told him to find a church that very moment. He knew what she was thinking, and that had been enough. She hadn’t decided whether she was ready to try again.
She dragged herself back to reality when Fitz harrumphed at her. He was turning onto Jocelyn Hollow Road, and Taylor could see the parade of vehicles lined up at the end of the normally quiet street.
The attendance to an unnatural death often seemed a three-ring circus to the uninitiated. The entrance into the cul-de-sac was blocked by a confluence of vehicles. There were five Metro blue-and-white patrol cars. First responders had already left the scene. Whenever 911 dispatched the police, the closest fire engines and an ambulance were actually sent before the squad cars. Standard operating procedure. The clues were apparent; there was no hurriedness, no rush. There was nothing that could be done for this particular victim, so the next steps were being taken.
The why had begun.
Fitz stopped the vehicle three houses away and they exited the car, making their way to the command station at the base of the driveway. A sign on the black mailbox had the name WOLFF in curly letters. Taylor always wondered exactly why people would want to advertise their names on their domiciles. An address she could understand, but the name…it seemed silly. And a safety issue. The last thing in the world she would ever do is publicize where she lived. Of course, she wouldn’t know what name to put on the mailbox. Jackson? Baldwin? Jackson-Baldwin? That just sounded like a funeral home.
A crowd of people had gathered directly across the street, standing in the yellowish grass, waiting. Recognizing the authority in Taylor’s stride, they started yelling when she came close. One voice rose above them all.
“What happened? We have a right to know what’s going on at the Wolffs’.” Fear made the man’s voice tremble.
Taylor turned, took in the speaker. He was an older man, with black hair that looked suspiciously dyed. Unshaven, thick glasses, pajama bottoms, jean jacket over a dirty sleeveless undershirt. Her immediate thought was widower and she stopped, feeling sorry for him.
Realizing he’d caught her attention, he repeated the question. “What’s going on in there? Did something happen to Corinne or to Todd? Is Hayden okay? My God, you can’t protect us from anything, can you? You and that damn police chief, you’ve got this all locked up, don’t you?” He swiped a handkerchief across his nose.
“Sir,” Taylor began, but the rest of the crowd began in on her. The sentiments turned from fear to vitriol in a heartbeat.
“All you do is give speeding tickets!”
“The gangs are running this town!”
“We live out here in the suburbs and expect to be safe. This is a good neighborhood. I’m going to talk to Chan
nel Five about this. Phil Williams should be checking you out!”
Taylor held up her hands for silence. “People, please. My name is Taylor Jackson, and I’m the lieutenant in charge of the homicide division. I haven’t even been briefed on this incident. Perhaps you’d like to give me some time to get acquainted with the scene and determine what’s happened before you tear me apart?”
They grumbled, but the logic shut them up.
“Thank you. Please know that we’ll be doing everything in our power to solve this case. I appreciate that you’re upset, and I can’t blame you. But let me get a sense of the scene, and I’ll come back and talk to each of you again. All right?”
She stepped away before the crowd could respond. She’d be talking to them. Interviewing them. Trying to ascertain if there was someone in that mix who’d had a hand in the murder she was about to dissect.
“Fitz, can you get their names? Just in case. I don’t want to miss anyone.”
“Sure,” he answered, pulling a notepad from his shirt pocket.
She crossed the street and met up with Bob Parks. He was twiddling his finger in the curled edge of his mustache, ruminating to a uniformed officer about the chances of the Tennessee Titans after a scandal-rocked combine.
“Hey, how’s my favorite LT? You happy to be home from your grand tour?”
“Not really, Parks, but thanks for asking. I’d hop on a plane back in a heartbeat. Don’t give up on the Titans too soon, my friend. They’ll recover. In the meantime, go root for the Predators.”
He looked shocked. “Hockey? Are you kidding, LT? I’m a pigskin man, tried and true. I’m a Volunteer. I bleed orange.” He thumped his chest with a closed fist. Fervent was an understatement when it came to fans of the University of Tennessee football team.
“Well, our Volunteers need to take the SEC Championship this year or Phil Fulmer will wake up to a moving van in his driveway. Besides, being a good Tennessee fan, you should understand the importance of us having a well-rounded professional sports system to augment the college faithful. We need to sign the UT boys when they graduate, right?”
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