With FIELD OF GRAVES, New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison goes back to where it all began…

All of Nashville is on edge with a serial killer on the loose. A madman is trying to create his own end-of-days apocalypse and the cops trying to catch him are almost as damaged as the killer. Field of Graves reveals the origins of some of J.T. Ellison’s most famous creations: the haunted Lieutenant Taylor Jackson; her blunt, exceptional best friend, medical examiner Dr. Samantha Owens; and troubled FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin. Together, they race the clock and their own demons to find the killer before he claims yet another victim. This dark, thrilling and utterly compelling novel will have readers on the edge of their seats, and Ellison’s fans will be delighted with the revelations about their favorite characters.

Praise for the novels of J.T. Ellison

“A genuine page-turner… Ellison clearly belongs in the top echelon of thriller writers. Don’t leave this one behind.”

—Booklist, starred review, on What Lies Behind

“Thriller fanatics craving an action-packed novel of intrigue will be abundantly rewarded!”

—Library Journal on What Lies Behind

“Fans of forensic mysteries, such as those by Patricia Cornwell, should immediately add this series to their A-lists.”

—Booklist, starred review, on When Shadows Fall

“Exceptional character development distinguishes Thriller Award–winner Ellison’s third Samantha Owens novel (after Edge of Black), the best yet in the series.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on When Shadows Fall

“Full of carefully mastered clues…a true thrillfest that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very end.”

—Suspense Magazine on When Shadows Fall

“A gripping page-turner…essential for suspense junkies.”

—Library Journal on When Shadows Fall

“Bestseller Coulter (Bombshell) teams with Ellison (Edge of Black) on a thriller that manages to be both intricate and full of jaw-dropping action sequences.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Final Cut

“Shocking suspense, compelling characters and fascinating forensic details.”

—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author, on A Deeper Darkness

“Mystery fiction has a new name to watch.”

—John Connolly, New York Times bestselling author

Field of Graves
J.T. Ellison

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Joan Huston,

who championed this book way back when,

and assured me it stood the test of time.

And, as always, for Randy.

Contents

COVER

BACK COVER TEXT

Praise for the novels of J.T. Ellison

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

EPIGRAPH

Prologue

THE FIRST DAY

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

THE SECOND DAY

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

THE THIRD DAY

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

THE FOURTH DAY

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

THE FIFTH DAY

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

THE SIXTH DAY

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

CHAPTER 65

CHAPTER 66

CHAPTER 67

CHAPTER 68

CHAPTER 69

CHAPTER 70

CHAPTER 71

CHAPTER 72

CHAPTER 73

CHAPTER 74

CHAPTER 75

CHAPTER 76

Epilogue

Author Note

EXTRACT

COPYRIGHT

When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.

—Revelation 6:7–8

Prologue

Taylor picked up her portable phone for the tenth time in ten minutes. She hit Redial, heard the call connect and start ringing, then clicked the Off button and returned the phone to her lap. Once she made this call, there was no going back. Being right wouldn’t make her the golden girl. If she were wrong—well, she didn’t want to think about what could happen. Losing her job would be the least of her worries.

Damned if she did. Damned if she didn’t.

She set the phone on the pool table and went down the stairs of her small two-story cabin. In the kitchen, she opened the door to the refrigerator and pulled out a Diet Coke. She laughed to herself. As if more caffeine would give her the courage to make the call. She should try a shot of whiskey. That always worked in the movies.

She snapped open the tab and stood staring out of her kitchen window. It had been dark for hours—the moon gone and the inky blackness outside her window impenetrable—but in an hour the skies would lighten. She would have to make a decision by then.

She turned away from the window and heard a loud crack. The lights went out. She jumped a mile, then giggled nervously, a hand to her chest to stop the sudden pounding. Silly girl, she thought. The lights go out all the time. There was a Nashville Electric Service crew on the corner when you drove in earlier; they must have messed up the line and a power surge caused the lights to blow. It happens every time NES works on the lines. Now stop it. You’re a grown woman. You’re not afraid of the dark.

She reached into her junk drawer and groped for a flashlight. Thumbing the switch, she cursed softly when the light didn’t shine. Batteries, where were the batteries?

She froze when she heard the noise and immediately went on alert, all of her senses going into overdrive. She strained her ears, trying to hear it again. Yes, there it was. A soft scrape off the back porch. She took a deep breath and sidled out of the kitchen, keeping close to the wall, moving lightly toward the back door. She brought her hand to her side and found nothing. Damn it. She’d left her gun upstairs.

The tinkling of breaking glass brought her up short. The French doors leading into the backyard had been breached. It was too late to head upstairs and get the gun. She would have to walk right through the living room to get to the stairs. Whoever had just broken through her back door was not going to let her stroll on by. She started edging back toward the kitchen, holding her breath, as if that would help her not make any noise.

She didn’t see the fist, only felt it crack against her jaw. Her eyes swelled with tears, and before she could react, the fist connected again. She spun and hit the wall face-first. The impact knocked her breath out. Her lips cut on the edge of her teeth; she tasted blood. The intruder grabbed her as she started to slide down the wall. Yanked her to her feet and put his hands around her throat, squeezing hard.

Now she knew exactly where her attacker was, and she fought back with everything she had. She struggled against him, quickly realizing she was in trouble. He was stronger than her, bigger than her. And he was there to kill.

She went limp, lolled bonelessly against him, surprising him with the sudden weight. He released one arm in response, and she took that moment to whirl around and shove with all her might. It created some space between them, enabling her to slip out of his grasp. She turned quickly but crashed into the slate end table. He was all over her. They struggled their way into the living room. She began to plan. Kicked away again.

Her attacker lunged after her. She used the sturdy side table to brace herself and whipped out her left arm in a perfect jab, aiming lower than where she suspected his chin would be. She connected perfectly and heard him grunt in pain. Spitting blood out of her mouth in satisfaction, she followed the punch with a kick to his stomach, heard the whoosh of his breath as it left his body. He fell hard against the wall. She spun away and leapt to the stairs. He jumped up to pursue her, but she was quicker. She pounded up the stairs as fast as she could, rounding the corner into the hall just as her attacker reached the landing. Her weapon was in its holster, on the bookshelf next to the pool table, right where she had left it when she’d gone downstairs for the soda. She was getting careless. She should never have taken it off her hip. With everything that was happening, she shouldn’t have taken for granted that she was safe in her own home.

Her hand closed around the handle of the weapon. She pulled the Glock from its holster, whipped around to face the door as the man came tearing through it. She didn’t stop to think about the repercussions, simply reacted. Her hand rose by instinct, and she put a bullet right between his eyes. His momentum carried him forward a few paces. He was only five feet from her, eyes black in death, when he dropped with a thud.

She heard her own ragged breathing. She tasted blood and raised a bruised hand to her jaw, feeling her lips and her teeth gingerly. Son of a bitch had caught her right in the jaw and loosened two molars. The adrenaline rush left her. She collapsed on the floor next to the lifeless body. She might have even slept for a moment.

The throbbing in her jaw brought her back. Morning was beginning to break, enough to see the horrible mess in front of her. The cat was sitting on the pool table, watching her curiously.

Rising, she took in the scene. The man was collapsed on her game room floor, slowly leaking blood on her Berber carpet. She peered at the stain.

“That’s going to be a bitch to get out.”

She shook her head to clear the cobwebs. What an inane thing to say. Shock, she must be going into shock. How long had they fought? Had it been only five minutes? Half an hour? She felt as though she had struggled against him for days; her body was tired and sore. Never mind the blood caked around her mouth. She put her hand up to her face. Make that her nose, too.

She eyed the man again. He was facedown and angled slightly to one side. She slipped her toes under his right arm and flipped him over with her foot. The shot was true; she could see a clean entry wound in his forehead. Reaching down out of habit, she felt for his carotid pulse, but there was nothing. He was definitely dead.

“Oh, David,” she said. “You complete idiot. Look what you’ve made me do.”

Now the shit was absolutely going to hit the fan. It was time to make the call.

THE FIRST DAY

1

Three months later

Nashville, Tennessee

Bodies, everywhere bodies, a field of graves, limbs and torsos and heads, all left above ground. The feeling of dirt in her mouth, grimy and thick; the whispers from the dead, long arms reaching for her as she passed through the carnage. Ghostly voices, soft and sibilant. “Help us. Why won’t you help us?”

Taylor jerked awake, sweating, eyes wild and blind in the darkness. The sheets twisted around her body in a claustrophobic shroud, and she struggled to get them untangled. She squeezed her eyes shut, willed her breathing back to normal, trying to relax, to let the grisly images go. When she opened her eyes, the room was still dark but no longer menacing. Her screams had faded away into the silence. The cat jumped off the bed with a disgruntled meow in response to her thrashing.

She laid her head back on the pillow, swallowed hard, still unable to get a full breath.

Every damn night. She was starting to wonder if she’d ever sleep well again.

She wiped a hand across her face and looked at the clock: 6:10 a.m. The alarm was set for seven, but she wasn’t going to get any more rest. She might as well get up and get ready for work. Go in a little early, see what horrors had captured the city overnight.

She rolled off the bed, trying hard to forget the dream. Showered, dressed, dragged on jeans and a black cashmere T-shirt under a black motorcycle jacket, stepped into her favorite boots. Put her creds in her pocket and her gun on her hip. Pulled her wet hair off her face and into a ponytail.

Time to face another day.

She was in her car when the call came. “Morning, Fitz. What’s up?”

“Morning, LT. We have us a body at the Parthenon.”

“I’ll be right there.”

* * *

It might have become a perfect late-autumn morning. The sky was busy, turning from white to blue as dawn rudely forced its way into day. Birds were returning from their mysterious nocturnal errands, greeting and chattering about the night’s affairs. The air was clear and heavy, still muggy from the overnight heat but holding a hint of coolness, like an ice cube dropped into a steaming mug of coffee. The sky would soon shift to sapphire the way only autumn skies do, as clear and heavy as the precious stone itself.

The beauty of the morning was lost on Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, Criminal Investigation Division, Nashville Metro Police. She snapped her long body under the yellow crime scene tape and looked around for a moment. Sensed the looks from the officers around her. Straightened her shoulders and marched toward them.

Metro officers had been traipsing around the crime scene control area like it was a cocktail party, drinking coffee and chatting each other up as though they’d been apart for weeks, not hours. The grass was already littered with cups, cigarette butts, crumpled notebook paper, and at least one copy of the morning’s sports section from The Tennessean. Taylor cursed silently; they knew better than this. These yahoos were going to inadvertently contaminate a crime scene one of these days, sending her team off on a wild-goose chase. Guess whose ass would be in the proverbial sling then?

She stooped to grab the sports page, surreptitiously glanced at the headline regaling the Tennessee Titans’ latest win, then crumpled it into a firm ball in her hands.

Taylor didn’t know what information about the murder had leaked out over the air, but the curiosity factor had obviously kicked into high gear. An officer she recognized from another sector was cruising by to check things out, not wanting to miss out on all the fun. Media vans lined the street. Joggers pretending not to notice anything was happening nearly tripped trying to see what all the fuss was about. Exactly what she needed on no sleep: everyone willing to help, to get in and screw up her crime scene.

Striding toward the melee, she tried to tell herself that it wasn’t their fault she’d been up all night. At least she’d had a shower and downed two Diet Cokes, or she would have arrested them all.

She reached the command post and pasted on a smile. “Mornin’, kids. How many of you have dragged this crap through my crime scene?” She tossed the balled-up paper at the closest officer.

She tried to keep her tone light, as if she were amused by their shenanigans, but she didn’t fool anyone, and the levity disappeared from the gathering. The brass was on the scene, so all the fun had come to a screeching halt. Uniforms who didn’t belong started to drift away, one or two giving Taylor a sideways glance. She ignored them, the way she ignored most things these days.

As a patrol officer, she’d kept her head down, worked her cases, and developed a reputation for being a straight shooter. Her dedication and clean work had been rewarded with promotion after promotion; she was in plainclothes at twenty-eight. She’d caught a nasty first case in Homicide—the kidnapping and murder of a young girl. She’d nailed the bastard who’d done it; Richard Curtis was on death row now. The case made the national news and sent her career into overdrive. She quickly became known for being a hard-hitting investigator and moved up the ranks from detective to lead to sergeant, until she’d been given the plum job she had now—homicide lieutenant.

If her promotion to lieutenant at the tender age of thirty-four had rankled some of the more traditional officers on the force, the death of David Martin—one of their own—made it ten times worse. There were always going to be cops who tried to make her life difficult; it was part of being a chick on the force, part of having a reputation. Taylor was tough, smart, and liked to do things her own way to get the job done. The majority of the men she worked with had great respect for her abilities. There were always going to be detractors, cops who whispered behind her back, but in Taylor’s mind, success trumped rumor every time.

Then Martin had decided to ruin her life and nearly derailed her career in the process. She was still clawing her way back.

Taylor’s second in command, Detective Pete Fitzgerald, lumbered toward her, the ever-present unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He’d quit a couple of years before, after a minor heart attack, but kept one around to light in case of an emergency. Fitz had an impressive paunch; his belly reached Taylor before the rest of his body.

“Hey, LT. Sorry I had to drag you away from your beauty sleep.” He looked her over, concern dawning in his eyes. “I was just kidding. What’s up with you? You look like shit warmed over.”

Taylor waved a hand in dismissal. “Didn’t sleep. Aren’t we supposed to have some sort of eclipse this morning? I think it’s got me all out of whack.”

Fitz took the hint and backed down. “Yeah, we are.” He looked up quickly, shielding his eyes with his hand. “See, it’s already started.”

He was right. The moon was moving quickly across the sun, the crime scene darkening by the minute. “Eerie,” she said.

He looked back at her, blinking hard. “No kidding. Remind me not to stare into the sun again.”

“Will do. Celestial phenomenon aside, what do we have here?”

“Okay, darlin’, here we go. We have a couple of lovebirds who decided to take an early morning stroll—found themselves a deceased Caucasian female on the Parthenon’s steps. She’s sitting up there pretty as you please, just leaning against the gate in front of the Parthenon doors like she sat down for a rest. Naked as a jaybird, and very, very dead.”

Taylor turned her gaze to the Parthenon. One of her favorite sites in Nashville, smack-dab in the middle of Centennial Park, the full-size replica was a huge draw for tourists and classicists alike. The statue of Athena inside was awe-inspiring. She couldn’t count how many school field trips she’d been on here over the years. Leaving a body on the steps was one hell of a statement.

“Where are the witnesses?”

“Got the lovebirds separated, but the woman’s having fits—we haven’t been able to get a full statement. The scene’s taped off. Traffic on West End has been blocked off, and we’ve closed all roads into and around Centennial Park. ME and her team have been here about fifteen minutes. Oh, and our killer was here at some point, too.” He grinned at her lopsidedly. “He dumped her sometime overnight, only the duckies and geese in the lake saw him. This is gonna be a bitch to canvass. Do you think we can admit ‘AFLAC’ as a statement in court?”

Taylor gave him a quick look and a perfunctory laugh, more amused at imagining Fitz waddling about like the duck from the insurance ads quacking than at his irreverent attitude. She knew better, but it did seem as if he was having a good time. Taylor understood that sometimes, inappropriate attempts at humor were the only way a cop could make it through the day, so she chastised him gently. “You’ve got a sick sense of humor, Fitz.” She sighed, turning off all personal thoughts, becoming a cop again. All business, all the time. That’s what they needed to see from her.

“We’ll probably have to go public and ask who was here last night and when, but I’m not holding my breath that we’ll get anything helpful, so let’s put it off for now.”

He nodded in agreement. “Do you want to put up the chopper? Probably useless—whoever dumped her is long gone.”

“I think you’re right.” She jerked her head toward the Parthenon steps. “What’s he trying to tell us?”

Fitz looked toward the doors of the Parthenon, where the medical examiner was crouched over the naked body. His voice dropped, and he suddenly became serious. “I don’t know, but this is going to get ugly, Taylor. I got a bad feeling.”

Taylor held a hand up to cut him off. “C’mon, man, they’re all ugly. It’s too early to start spinning. Let’s just get through the morning. Keep the frickin’ media out of here—put ’em down in the duck shit if you have to. You can let them know which roads are closed so they can get the word out to their traffic helicopters, but that’s it. Make sure the uniforms keep everyone off the tape. I don’t want another soul in here until I have a chance to be fully briefed by all involved. Has the Park Police captain shown up yet?”

Fitz shook his head. “Nah. They’ve called him, but I haven’t seen him.”

“Well, find him, too. Make sure they know which end is up. Let’s get the perimeter of this park searched, grid by grid, see if we find something. Get K-9 out here, let them do an article search. Since the roads are already shut off, tell them to expand the perimeter one thousand feet outside the borders of the park. I want to see them crawling around like ants at a picnic. I see any of them hanging in McDonald’s before this is done, I’m kicking some butt.”

Fitz gave her a mock salute. “I’m on it. When Sam determined she was dumped, I went ahead and called K-9, and pulled all the officers coming off duty. We may have an overtime situation, but I figured with your, um, finesse...” He snorted out the last word, and Taylor eyed him coolly.

“I’ll handle it.” She pushed her hair back from her face and reestablished her hurried ponytail. “Get them ready for all hell to break loose. I’m gonna go talk to Sam.”

“Glad to serve, love. Now go see Sam, and let the rest of us grunts do our jobs. If you decide you want the whirlybird, give me a thumbs-up.” He blew her a kiss and marched toward the command post, snapping his fingers at the officers to get their attention.

Turning toward the building, she caught a stare from one of the older patrols. His gaze was hostile, lip curled in a sneer. She gave him her most brilliant smile, making his scowl deepen. She broke off the look, shaking her head. She didn’t have time to worry about politics right now.

2

Taylor approached Sam cautiously, making sure she followed the ME’s path to the body. They wouldn’t be able to blame any loss of evidence on her. Pulling on her latex gloves, she tapped Sam lightly on the shoulder. Sam looked up. Anticipating Taylor’s first question, she shook her head.

“There’s no obvious cause of death—no stab wounds, no gunshot wounds. Evidence of rape. There’s some bruising and tearing, a little bit of blood. He got her pretty good. There’s some dirt on her, too. Wind probably blew some stuff around last night. I’ll get a better idea when I get her open.”

She rocked back on her heels and saw Taylor’s face for the first time. “Girl, you look like crap. When’s the last time you slept?”

“Been a while.” The sleepless nights were catching up with her. She was almost thankful when a new case popped like this; the past slid away briefly when she could focus her attention elsewhere.

Sam gave her one last appraising glance. “Hmmph.”

Dr. Samantha Owens had shoulder-length brown hair she always wore back in a ponytail, feminine wisps she couldn’t control framing her face. She often joked that she’d rather look like a girl than a ghoul when she met someone new so the first impression wasn’t one of horror. Taylor was always amused to see people scatter like rats when they found out the beautiful and composed woman was a professional pathologist. Most run-of-the-mill people didn’t want to hang out with a woman who cut up dead bodies for a living.

Unlike many of the women she and Taylor had grown up with, Sam didn’t join the Junior League, have beautiful babies, and lunch at Bread & Company. Instead, she spent her time perched over Nashville’s endless supply of dead bodies, a position she was in much too often. She was also Taylor’s best friend and was allowed liberties where others weren’t.

“I’ve been telling you, you need to get some help.”

“Hush up, Sam, I don’t want to hear it. Tell me about our girl.” Taylor let the knot in her stomach and the ache in her temples take complete hold. She had warmed up in the early-morning heat, but looking at the dead girl was giving her the chills. “Fitz said she was dumped?”

Sam traced an invisible line around the body with her finger. “Definitely. She wasn’t killed here. See the livor pattern? The bottom of her legs, thighs and calves, her butt, the inside of her arms, and her back. The blood pooled in those areas. But she’s sitting up, right? The lividity wouldn’t present this way unless she had been chilling out on her back for a while. She was definitely dead for a few hours before she was dumped.”

Taylor looked closely at the purplish-red blotches. In contrast, the front of the girl’s body looked as pale and grimy as a dead jellyfish.

“No blood either. Maybe he’s a vampire.” Sam leered briefly at Taylor, made fangs out of her fingers, hissed. Her morbid sense of humor always popped up at the most inappropriate times.

“You’re insane.”

“I know. No, he did her someplace else, then dumped her here.” She looked around and said quietly, “Seriously, this feels very staged. She was put here for a reason, posed, everything. He wanted her found right away. The question is, why?”

Taylor didn’t comment, but tucked Sam’s remark into the back of her mind to be brought out and chewed on later. She knew it was worth thinking about; Sam had sound instincts. She turned back toward the command center. Seeing Fitz, she peeled the glove off her right hand, put two fingers in her mouth, and whistled sharply. He turned, and she shook her head. The helicopter definitely wasn’t going to be needed.

Taylor looked back at the girl’s face. So young. Another, so young. “Give me something to work with. Do you have a time of death?”

Sam thought for a moment. “Looking at her temp, she died sometime before midnight. Let’s say ten to twelve hours ago, give or take. Rigor’s still in, though she’s starting to break up.”

“Gives him time to kill her and get her here. Okay. Semen?”

“Oh yeah. It’s all over the place. This guy really doesn’t care about trying to be subtle. Not terribly bright. It shouldn’t be too hard to match him up if he’s in CODIS. He’s certainly not holding anything back.” She laughed at her pun, and Taylor couldn’t help a brief smile.

“How about under her nails? Did she fight back?”

Sam lifted the dead girl’s right hand. “I looked pretty closely, but I didn’t see anything resembling skin or blood. I’ll have them bag her hands and do scrapings back at the shop, but it doesn’t look like she got hold of anything. We didn’t find any ID with the body, so we’ll print her and send them over to see if you can find a match. They’ll be clear enough to run through AFIS.”

Taylor was hardly listening. She stared at the girl’s face. So young, she thought again. Man, there was going to be major fallout when they held this press conference. The statement started percolating in her head. At six o’clock this morning, the body of a Caucasian female was discovered on the steps of the Parthenon...

She looked back to Sam. “So no idea what killed her, huh?”

Sam relaxed, sitting back on her haunches. She stripped off her gloves and watched Taylor leaning in on the body.

“Hell if I know. Nothing’s really jumping out at me. Give me a break, T, you know the drill.”

“You’ll get me all the pics yesterday, right? And do the post right now. I mean—” she attempted a more conciliatory tone “—will you do the post right now?”

“I’ll bump her to the top of the guest list. There’s something else... Do you smell anything?”

“Just your perfume. Is it new?”

“See, that’s the weird thing. I’m not wearing any. I think the smell is coming from the body. And I’ll tell you, Taylor, this would be my first sweet-smelling corpse, you know?”

Taylor had noticed the scent. She inhaled sharply through her nose. Yes, there were all the usual stinks that came with a dead body: the unmistakable smell of decay, the stink of fear, the tang of stale urine and excrement. But overlaying all these olfactory wonders was a tangy sweetness. She thought hard for a moment, searching for the memory the smell triggered. The scent was somehow familiar, almost like— That was it!

“Sam, you know what this smells like? The spa across the way, Essential Therapy. Remember, I gave you a gift certificate for a massage there for your birthday? They have all those lotions and soaps and essential oil candles...”

“Wait a minute. You’re right. She smells like incense.” She stared at the body. “What if... Okay, give me a second here.” Sam reached into her kit and extracted a small pair of tweezers. She bent over and started picking through the dirt on the body.

“What are you doing?” Taylor watched Sam put a few pieces of leaves and sticks into a small white paper bag. Somewhat disgusted, she watched Sam shove her nose into the bag and breathe in deeply. “Ugh, Sam.”

“No, here.” Sam’s eyes lit up, and Taylor was tempted to back away. But Sam grabbed her hand and shoved the bag toward Taylor’s face. “Really, smell.”

Taylor wrinkled her nose, swallowing hard. It was one thing seeing the body and smelling it from a few feet away, but sticking her nose into the detritus that came from the body itself was totally gross. Grimacing, she took the bag and inhaled. The scent was smoky and floral, not at all unpleasant.

Sam’s eyes were shining in excitement. “This isn’t dirt, Taylor. These are herbs. She has herbs scattered all over her body. Now what the hell is that all about?”

Taylor shook her head slowly, trying to absorb the new discovery. “I don’t know. Can you isolate which herb it is?”

“Yeah, I can let a buddy of mine at UT in Knoxville take a look. He’s head of the university’s botany department and totally into all this stuff. I don’t think it’s just one herb, though. The leaves are all different sizes and shapes. Oh man, this is too cool.”

“Sam, you’re awful.” Taylor couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “You like this job too much.”

“That’s why I’m good at it. Tim’s our lead ’gator today. I’m going to get him set up here to bag all this stuff, and I’ll have a runner take it up to UT ASAP. You know, it would be a lot simpler if that idiot mayor would help us get our own lab capable of handling this kind of stuff. Hell, it’d be nice if we could even do tox screens in-house.”

Sam continued grumbling under her breath and stood up, signaling the end of the conversation. She waved to her team, calling them over. The body was ready to be moved.

“Wait, Sam. Did Crime Scene pick up anything else? Clothes, jewelry?”

“Not yet, but you’re in their way. She’s got enough of this crap on her that it’s gonna take them a while to collect it all. Why don’t you go back and try to find out who this girl is for me, okay? Y’all need to catch this guy, ’cause once the press gets ahold of this, they’re gonna freak the whole city. It’s not every day I have to come to the middle of Centennial Park to collect a body, much less for a staged crime scene. Look at the vultures hovering already.”

She swept her hand toward the media trucks. Their level of activity had picked up, excitement palpable in the air. Techs were setting up lights and running around on the street by the duck pond, with cameras and portable microphones in tow. The news vans were lined up around the corner. Taylor watched Fitz and the patrol officers struggle to keep the reporters from rushing the tape to gather their precious scoops. Nothing like murder in the morning to start a feeding frenzy.

“Seriously, Taylor, you know how they are. They’ll find some way to spin this into a grand conspiracy and warn all the parents to keep their girls at home until you catch whoever did this.” She started grumbling. “It should be frickin’ illegal for the chief to have given them their own radios. Now every newsie in Nashville hovers over my shoulder while I scope a body.”

Taylor lowered her eyelids for a second and gave her best friend a half smile. “Well, honey, if it makes you feel any better, all the talking heads and their cameramen are squishing through goose poo trying to get their stories. Guess Lake Watauga has its purposes after all. Call me as soon as you have anything.”

Sam laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Split. You’re making me nervous.”

3

Taylor made a last slow circuit around the crime scene. The techs were carefully moving about, photographing the site from every possible angle. She half noticed them brushing fine black powder in the areas surrounding where the body had been found, looking for latent fingerprints.

Why the Parthenon? Why would the killer dump a body in the middle of West End? You couldn’t look in any direction without seeing students jogging from the gates of Vanderbilt, trendy yuppies coasting through the gourmet restaurants and bars, hippie granolas Birkenstocking their way to the natural food and clothing stores. It was a risky venture, even in the overnight hours.

She made a few notes, thinking about Sam’s comments. Staged. Huh. The scene wasn’t terribly gruesome compared to many she’d seen, but it did have a more organized feel to it—after all, he had made himself very vulnerable coming out in the open with a dead girl slung over his shoulder, risking the time to arrange her and scatter herbs on her naked body. He’d spent at least a few minutes setting things up. A huge chance to take that no one would be around. Even teenagers who were supposed to be in bed were out cruising through the park all night.

Taylor headed in the direction of her car and passed Sam’s lead investigator, Tim Davis, as he started up the stairs.

“Later, ’gator,” she called out.

Tim gave her a dirty look. “That joke is really getting old.”

She gave him her sweetest smile. “Tell that to Sam. She’s the one who christened you guys ’gators. Besides—” her voice dropped two octaves “—‘Death Investigator’ just sounds so, well, depressing.”

“Death is depressing, Taylor.” He smiled and turned away.

Taylor felt a brief qualm of conscience. Tim was one of the best ’gators the medical examiner’s office had and was deadly serious about his work.

She stopped walking and turned around to look at the Parthenon again. She stood quietly, staring at the huge structure. What the hell was this guy up to? A sacrifice to the goddess Athena, who guarded the murky interior of the building? She laughed, startling a goose ten feet away. It waddled off, honking in annoyance. Yeah, take that theory into the squad room. The boys would love it. She shook the image of the goddess out of her mind.

It was time to get to work. Taylor picked her way through malodorous fowl dung scattered all over the ground back to the phalanx of police cars. She needed to talk to the young couple who’d found the body before they were brought in to give their formal statements. She walked out into the control center and found Bob Miller, the first officer on the scene. He was short and stout with a bristling black mustache and impossibly white teeth.

“Officer Miller. Where do you have them?”

He flashed her a brilliant smile. “Hey, LT. He’s in my car, and she’s over with Wills.” Keith Wills was Miller’s partner and was becoming a specialist in handling witnesses of the female persuasion. “She’s still crying, but she’s calming down. Name’s Catey Thompson, he’s Devon Post. They got engaged last night, messed around until nearly dawn, then went out for a rrrromanteek sunrise stroll.” His dreadful Italian accent got a quick laugh and a headshake out of Taylor.

“Had they been drinking?”

Officer Miller returned to his normal southern twang. “Yeah, champagne. But they knocked off the heavy celebrating a few hours ago. They were pretty straight when they set out, and now...well, they’re scared sober, if they weren’t already.”

“Thanks, Miller. Will you stick around and make sure the scene stays sealed up tight for me? Fitz already has a grid search going on, and I don’t want anyone messing it up.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, pal, it’s gonna be a long day.”

He smiled and strode away. Taylor approached Wills, who was holding Catey’s hand and offering her a box of tissues.

“Hello, Officer Wills. Miss Thompson? I’m Lieutenant Jackson from the Homicide Division. I’m the lead detective investigating this murder. I’d appreciate it if you could give me your account of what happened this morning.”

Catey might be pretty, but Taylor was having a hard time seeing it at the moment. Long brown hair escaped the clip that held it back, and her brown eyes were bloodshot. Her perfectly petite nose was cherry red, and her face was swollen and blotchy from crying. She looked up, took a deep breath, and spoke in a soft, hesitant voice.

“We were walking through the park, waiting for the sunrise. We walked right up to her. I was actually annoyed that we weren’t alone. She was sitting on the top step, leaning back against the gate. I thought she was watching us. Her eyes were open, and at first I didn’t realize...” Her voice began to waver. “I thought maybe she was there to watch the sun come up, too. But she was naked and just sort of sat there, and I realized she was dead.” She began to cry again. “I started screaming, and Devon pulled me away. He took my cell phone, and I heard him calling for help, then I threw up. It was horrible. Is she really dead?” The girl was preparing to get hysterical again.

Taylor ignored the question. “Miss Thompson, this is very important. I know it’s difficult to revisit the memory, but if you could try for me, hold yourself together for a little longer?”

Officer Wills pushed the entire box of tissues into the girl’s hands, and Taylor continued. “Think very carefully. Did you see anyone else around? Maybe someone walking in the park at the same time? Did you hear a car?”

She snuffled into a new tissue. “No. I’m sure we were the only people here. It was so nice, so peaceful. My God, what happened to her? Are we safe? What if he saw us? Oh my God, oh my God, ohmyGod...” She began bawling in earnest, and Taylor patted her on the shoulder.

“I’m sure you’re perfectly safe, Miss Thompson, so don’t worry. I seriously doubt whoever killed her was hanging around. Thank you for your help. Officer Wills is going to take you downtown to make a formal statement, and then you and your fiancé will be free to go. If you remember anything, anything at all, even if you think it doesn’t matter, I want you to call me. Okay?” She handed her a card with her office and pager numbers on it. “You can call me day or night.”

Catey sniffed, trying to regain some semblance of control, dragged the tissue under her eyes, spreading raccoon rings of mascara. “Thank you, Lieutenant Jackson. Can I see Devon now?”

“We’ll get you two together downtown, all right? Thank you for your help.”

Catey nodded. Taylor stepped aside with Officer Wills.

“Do their stories match?”

“Yeah, to a tee. They’re really shook up. Do you want to talk to him, or can I take ’em now?”

Taylor felt the headache deepen. She rubbed her forehead. “Go ahead, get them out of here. Better if the cameras don’t get a shot of their faces. Thanks, Wills. You did a good job here this morning. Can you leave a copy of your report on my desk as soon as you get it done? And gather up everyone else’s, too?”

“Sure thing, LT. I’ll bring them up ASAP.”

Looking around, she corralled Fitz and told him to get back to the squad as soon as he could get away. The boys from the ME’s team had bagged the body and were rolling the stretcher toward their plain white van. Though most people wouldn’t give a medical examiner’s vehicle a second glance, the van’s circumspect attempt at discretion didn’t fool the media, who followed every movement with their cameras, even running after the van as it pulled away. With some good B-roll filler on tape, they turned for another source. Taylor was fifty feet away, walking with her head down, ostensibly looking to avoid the muck left behind by the ducks and geese. The yells started.

“Lieutenant!” screamed Channel 5.

The NBC affiliate chimed in. “Who is the victim? What was cause of death?”

Their onslaught beat in time with the throbbing in Taylor’s head. It wasn’t unusual for her to make statements at a crime scene; normally she was fine with the cameras. Taylor had striking good looks that she worked to her advantage when necessary. Huge gray eyes—the right slightly darker than the left—shifted between clear smoke and stormy steel, depending on her mood. Lips just a touch too full encased orthodontically enhanced straight white teeth, and a slightly crooked nose gave her countenance a vaguely asymmetrical aspect. She was nearly six feet, blond and rangy, with a deep voice, husky and cracked.

This particular morning, though, with dark smudges under her eyes, a hasty ponytail, and a nasty headache, she looked slightly less than ethereal.

“No comment, guys. I’m sure we’ll have something to say later on.”

“C’mon, Taylor. You need to let us know so we can make the noon report.” A flaxen-haired beauty from Channel 2, her rectangular tortoiseshell glasses sliding down her well-done nose job, stuck a mic in her face. “Just give us something,” she pleaded.

Lee Mayfield of The Tennessean gave Taylor an inquiring smile. Taylor shook her head; she’d be damned if she gave the paper’s crime reporter anything. Besides, the woman would spin it her own way and distort the facts anyway. Let her do it on her own.

“You have to give us something to go on, Lieutenant,” the latest talking head from Channel 17 admonished.

Taylor whipped around, her limited patience worn through. Spotlights glowed in her eyes, blinding her for a moment. Blinking back into focus, she said, “I said we’ll have something for you later. Now quit lurking around my crime scene. You’re making my team’s work difficult.”

Taylor turned her back on them, hurried across the small parking lot in front of Lake Watauga, jumped into her unmarked squad car. Wow, she’d let them get to her. Not very professional. It seemed every little thing got to her these days. Oh well, it would give them something fun to work on for their precious stories: Lead Investigator Loses Temper.

“Jerks,” she said vehemently, rubbing her temples. She watched the press milling around their trucks, each trying to find a spin on her blatant and sarcastic remarks.

One by one, she saw the cameras start to point at the sky. A banner day for Nashville’s reporters. A murder and an eclipse, all tied up in one tidy little package for them. The noon broadcasts really were going to be chock-full of fun.

She pulled to the east entrance of the park, noticing the Park Police weren’t letting anyone in, on foot or by car. At least they were making themselves useful.

She stopped at a light and briefly closed her eyes. The body of the dead girl was stark against her eyelids. Taylor couldn’t help but think of the terror she must have felt as her life was stripped away, and wasn’t surprised to feel the anger come. It had been like that lately.

Over the years, she’d learned how to detach herself from crime scenes. She had to; it kept her sane. After a time, she’d grown relatively numb to the atrocities she saw. Lately, though, her armor had developed cracks.

Giving the Parthenon one last glance, she realized the vibe surrounding the scene was making her very uncomfortable. She had the feeling she’d missed the message the killer was trying to send.

She turned left onto West End Avenue and registered the slow burn that had started. “I’m gonna catch you, you son of a bitch. You just wait. I’m coming.”

4

The sky darkened. The moon moved before the sun, blotting out the sunlight in momentary increments until the world became a shadowy place, darkness scarring the light.

He gazed at the miracle, oblivious to the scene in front of him and the frenzy he had created. He had been so patient. So focused. He’d interpreted the signs correctly, and now he was being rewarded.

He murmured at the sky, “...And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.”

Then it began to pass, and the man felt his heart stir once more. So many things to do.

He left the parking lot. No one noticed him.

5

Taylor followed the streets back to headquarters, swinging down Church Street toward Hooters, turning left on Second, circling the courthouse, driving past the front entrance of the Criminal Justice Center. She frowned at the attempt to modernize the architecture of the building. Someone had gotten the idea that they could take a squat, brown brick square and fancy it up with a courtyard full of benches and a rounded portico over the main doors. A nice idea, but the bevy of criminals scurrying in and out of the doors of the CJC ruined the effect.

Adding to the atmosphere was the close smell of river water, which made Taylor wrinkle her nose in disgust. The water level of the Cumberland was low, and the fetid reek didn’t help the depression of the area.

It was a busy morning. It took five minutes to find a spot. After circling twice, she finally slid into a space on Third by the back door to her offices.

Taylor went up the flight of concrete stairs leading to the side door entrance, stepping carefully around the overflowing bucket of cigarette butts in the corner of the landing. Swiping her card to gain access, she pulled open the door and made the short walk to the Homicide office. Her team was already assembling, putting together the necessities to start the murder investigation.

“Are y’all up to speed?” There were nods all around.

“Okay. I’m gonna check in with Price.”

Taylor hadn’t missed a stride as she crossed the room. Though the door was uncharacteristically closed, she walked into the captain’s office without knocking.

Captain Mitchell Price was a small, generally happy man in his early fifties, nearly bald, with an impressive mustache he took great care to groom. As the head of the Criminal Investigative Divisions, he oversaw Homicide, Vice, and all the other investigative departments. Price was on his phone when Taylor barged in, but quickly placed his finger over his mouth, hit the speaker button for her to hear, and set the handset quietly back in the cradle. He ran his hand over his shiny scalp, pushing away the last few stray strands of faded red hair, and motioned to the door, rolling his eyes at the voice now emanating from the speaker. Taylor closed the door silently behind her and took a seat across from his desk.

“Damn it, Price. When are you going to have some answers for me?” Mayor Meredith Robbins was yelling loud enough that even with the door closed, Taylor knew the rest of the squad could hear her strident voice. “When are your people going to get their asses in gear? A girl shows up dead in the middle of Centennial Park, which is going to be closed for God knows how long while your teams wander around, and we’ve got the Arts and Crafts Fair this weekend. There are trucks full of crap ready to get in there and unload, and I’m the one who has to smooth out all the granola-filled feathers. It’s too late to cancel this thing now. There’s going to be hell to pay if you can’t get the park open immediately. And all you can tell me is ‘you’re working on it’? I want some answers, and I want them now!”

Taylor mouthed the word bitch to Price, then turned away, smiling. Meredith Robbins was a thorn in the department’s side. The woman was a self-serving, nasty politician whose only concern was making herself look good, the citizens of Nashville be damned. How she got elected in the first place was still a mystery to Taylor.

Turning back to Price, she twirled her finger around and raised an eyebrow. He smiled and nodded, interrupting the tirade.

“Um, Mayor, we’re working things as fast as we can. I’m sure we’ll have some answers for you very soon. And the sooner we can get off this call, the sooner I can get the details from Lieutenant Jackson.”

“Fine. Get back to me the moment you have some new information. And get the damn park opened back up. If the vendors start canceling because of this, I will hold you personally responsible.”

Price sighed loudly for effect and said, “If anything, Meredith, I’d assume the curiosity factor is going to draw people to the park, not drive them away.” The comment hit its mark, and she backed down a bit.

“No more excuses. Get the park open. And tell that lieutenant of yours to be nicer to the media.” She hung up the phone with a bang, and Price slowly clicked off the speaker. He looked at the phone with distaste, and then raised a hairy red eyebrow at Taylor.

“Well, that was fun. She is such a pain in the ass. Ignore her—I’ll deal with it. But tell me you have something for me.”

Taylor took in a deep breath. “Sam thinks the scene was staged, and I have to agree. She’s going to get the girl’s prints over here ASAP. As soon as they show up, we’ll start looking for a match. That’s my number one priority. I want to give this girl a name, and find out where she’s from.”

“What other thoughts did our intrepid ME have?”

“There was plenty of semen for a sample, so I’d like to ask Sam to send it over to Private Match instead of TBI. I want to see if we can get a quick hit in CODIS.”

“You don’t think it’s this yahoo’s first rodeo?”

“I don’t. The whole thing felt off to me.”

Price sat back in his chair. “How off?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see more. The scene was definitely staged.”

“Great. Just what we need.”

“No kidding. So are you cool with me sending the DNA to Simon Loughley? The tox screen will go to him automatically anyway. This way, he can handle the whole case.”

Partly because of Meredith Robbins’s actions over the past three years in office, the MNPD still didn’t have their own forensics lab. She had suggested that if the department wanted their own lab, they could cut employees to get the necessary budget requirements, and Metro had no intention of cutting their officers. So they were beholden to other official labs for results. They hated sending high-profile DNA to the FBI labs for comparison, because even with a push there could be a wait of a year or so. The TBI, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, was the next best bet, but they too could drag out the final results over several months. Their only choice for fast-track cases was private labs. It wasn’t standard operating procedure, but there were times and cases that necessitated a quick turnaround. Private Match had done work for them in the past. Taylor trusted them, and trusted Sam’s abilities to finagle the work quickly. Plus, Simon Loughley had been a friend for many years. He could be counted on to do the work fast, and get it right.

Price played with one end of his mustache. “No, I think we’ll be able to handle it. If this is going to be as high profile as you think, we can’t afford any bureaucratic funding roadblocks. You heard the mayor. I’ll pin it on her if I can’t make it happen. Surefire way to get it through. This may be a great opportunity to hit her again with the new forensic lab proposal...”

“Good idea. I’ll let you handle that,” Taylor said. “Getting back to reality... Our witnesses aren’t going to be much help. They didn’t see another soul. We’re hoping that will change when they get a chance to calm down.” She gestured toward the ceiling. A huge, dark brown watermark in the corner caught her eye, distracting her for a moment. Her voice trailed off, then she addressed him again.

“Price, there’s something else. There were some sweet-smelling herbs scattered on the body. Sam’s sending samples to a buddy to get a quick ID, but this changes the complexion of this case. They have to be part of the staging, because I doubt some drunk wandered by and threw a posy on her.”

“Herbs? What kind of herbs? What the hell is that about?”

“I have no idea, but we’ll have to keep a tight rein on that little tidbit. It could be a signature, and we really don’t want it getting out.”

“This place is leaking like a sieve, Taylor. You keep that deep, okay? Nobody hears about it outside of your detectives.” He leaned back in his chair. “So how do you want to run this? You’ve got a few open cases on your plate right now, but this should take priority.”

“Yeah, we have several that are on the burner, and two very active. I can offload them on Fitz, let him run them, and if this pops, we can pull him back in. He can manage things out of here for me if anything happens. Plus, I think it would be good to bring Marcus Wade in to back me up on this. He needs the experience.”

“Works for me. Which cases do you want to give Fitz?”

“The Lischey Avenue murder from last week. The one the paper picked up and ran with? Little Man Graft murdered Lashon Hall, Terrence Norton saw the whole thing, but he’s not talking. That one.”

Price groaned and Taylor grinned. Anytime the news got involved in their cases, something was bound to go wrong.

“Mayfield didn’t do us any favors, did she?”

“No.”

“Little Man and Norton are getting to be frequent fliers with Metro.” He shook his head, frowning. “Think you can nail them for this one? I’m getting tired of their antics.”

Taylor barked a laugh. “It’s not me, Price. Blame it on their peers. I made a solid case two months ago on an assault charge against Terrence, and the jury acquitted him in forty-five minutes. Anyway, I haven’t been able to shake anyone loose on Lischey Avenue. There is a fourteen-year-old kid who witnessed the murder, but his mom has him in hiding and won’t let him make a statement. I begged and pleaded, but she said no way. I don’t blame her—these guys are absolutely ruthless. There’s a better than even chance he’ll get himself killed if he talks.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I want Fitz to work his magic on Terrence. See if he can scare anything out of him. Lashon was supposedly his best friend, so maybe Fitz can appeal to the kid’s conscience. If not, we don’t have enough to charge Little Man with this murder, but he is on probation. If Terrence will give it up, we can get him on a weapons charge at the very least. And then charge Terrence as an accessory. Like I said, it’s a mess.”

“Let Fitz go to town. He’ll nail one of them on something, and the rest will topple like dominoes.”

“That’s what I’m hoping. I was gonna pull him in on this anyway.” She got quiet for a minute. “There is one that I wanted to handle myself, but I can turn it over if you want. Suicide last week, seventeen-year-old boy. There’s something way hinky about this one. Rescue got the call that a kid committed suicide. They responded and found the boy shot in the bathroom, but he’d been dead for a few hours. The father made the 911 call. When the officers arrived, he told them he and the boy were sitting side by side on the bed in the father’s bedroom, having an argument. He claims the boy reached over him to the bedside table, pulled the father’s .44 out of the drawer, stood up, walked three feet to the bathroom door, put the gun to his right temple, and pulled the trigger. Sort of an I’ll show you gesture.

“When I got on scene, the father had hidden the gun in a basket across the hall from his room. His kid was lying there in a mess of blood and brains, and the dude asked me if he could step out for a bite to eat. I almost shot him myself. I think the father shot the kid, set the whole scene up.”

“Anything to back up your theory?”

“Instinct. Plus the wound didn’t have any contact burns, but it was such a mess that we’re waiting for the autopsy to come back to get the trajectory. The father has a record of domestic assault—the mother disappeared three months ago. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s lying to us. I’d like to find the mother. May be more than one murder there.”

“Are you comfortable handing it over to Fitz?”

“Yeah, he can handle it fine. I just want the bastard nailed.” She stood, swiping her hands down her thighs to smooth out the invisible wrinkles in her jeans. “I’ll pull the files and brief Fitz. He’s already familiar with both of these cases.” She started for the door, but Price held up a hand.

“Hey, sit back down for a minute.”

She did, wary. “What’s up?”

He swiped back another rather invisible strand of hair. “Julia Page called from the DA’s office. The Special Investigative Grand Jury has scheduled your testimony on the remaining charges of the Martin case. You’re on call to appear sometime Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how things are progressing. Julia is pleased with the state of things so far. She wanted me to let you know.”

Taylor was astounded that Price could call it “the Martin case” with such nonchalance. Four CID detectives, three in Vice and one in Homicide, had been complicit in one of the largest and most professionally run methamphetamine labs the state of Tennessee had ever seen, and in the death of a twelve-year-old girl. Not to mention Taylor’s own involvement in the case. She had uncovered the scheme. And ended it with a finality that was unmatched.

Testifying in front of the special grand jury was no big deal, especially now that she’d been cleared. She’d be asked detailed questions, and she’d give detailed answers. It was David Martin who would haunt Taylor for the rest of her life. Detective David Martin. He wouldn’t be arrested, indicted, or even charged with running the scheme. Because he was dead, and Taylor had killed him. But that had been self-defense. The grand jury said so.

She smiled at Price. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Taylor, I think—”

“Price, it’s all good. Really. I’m all set to testify against Martin’s partners. I have everything laid out. As for the rest of it—” she sighed “—I’m doing my best to put it all behind me. The shrinks cleared me. Internal Affairs cleared me. The DA’s office and the GJ cleared me. It is past, gone, forgotten.” That’s it, girl, she thought to herself. Keep up a brave front. He doesn’t need to know about the whispers from the other officers, the panic attacks, that you can’t sleep without horrific nightmares.

Price stared at her for a split second longer, and she wondered if he knew everything she’d been thinking without her saying a word. But the moment passed and he nodded.

“Then go find me a name for our Parthenon girl.”

6

Taylor closed the door quietly behind her. She took two steps and tripped over a ream of paper. She fell into her desk, banging her leg on the corner of a half-opened drawer. She bit back a curse, rubbed at the bruise. Surveyed her kingdom.

The Homicide squad was crammed cheek to jowl into a crappy forty-by-forty-foot bull pen. The close quarters meant no privacy and constant distractions. At least there were fewer bodies to deal with. Six months earlier, the decentralization of Violent Crimes had created several distinct Homicide Units. Each city sector now housed a grouping of general detectives who handled everything from fistfights in bars to aggravated assaults to murders in the projects. In Nashville, Homicide covered the full gamut of physical crimes.

Taylor’s group was unique. She ran an elite squad of detectives nicknamed “The Murder Squad.” They were the most successful shift in the CID. What made Taylor’s team different from Nashville’s other homicide detectives was the element of mystery in their jobs. If a violent crime occurred that resulted in a death, and there was no suspect, they caught the case. If the trail went cold after twenty-four hours, it was theirs. If another shift didn’t want to deal with a case, it fell into their laps.

Taylor was proud of her team of detectives. They had an incredibly high close rate, nearly 86 percent, which had its good and bad points. It got them excellent press and made the department look good, which meant perks all around like interesting cases, less scrutiny, and more freedom for outside work.

But success was always tempered with a desire to see failure. There were the detectives who dumped their loads simply because they wanted to see her fail. She hadn’t made a lot of friends when she’d killed David Martin, even though he was as dirty as they came. There were grudges aplenty among the detectives who’d worked with him. In some minds, if she’d just come forward with what she suspected, Detective Martin could have been charged and tried with his partners instead of killed. No one wanted to see a cop dead, even if he was a bad guy.

Which would have been fine by her, if Martin hadn’t tried to kill her first.

She was on shaky footing. Her once-carefree demeanor had changed. Her actions were tempered with caution. Her words more measured and thought out. She was on edge all the time, though she thought she was doing a pretty good job of hanging in there. At least in public.

The news that she would testify again this week was actually welcome. She just wanted to get it over with so she could put it all behind her. Though she knew as soon as the grand jury handed down the indictments, the plea bargaining would start, then the trials. It wasn’t going to end, not really, for a very long time. And there was nothing she could do to erase the memory of David Martin, dead on her billiards room floor.

None of it mattered. She had a job to do, and she was going to do it.

Fitz came into the squad room, whistling.

“Ahh, Mr. Fitz. Thank you for joining our little party.”

“Don’t mention it. I strive to achieve perfect timing.”

“And so you have.” She sat on the edge of her desk. “Okay guys, let’s get started.”

Marcus Wade, her wet-behind-the-ears rookie, and Lincoln Ross, her seasoned computer expert, faced her expectantly. Fitz took a seat across from her. He was her veteran; they’d been together for years now. Between the four of them, Taylor was pretty certain they could crack any case that came their way.

“What’s happening at Centennial?”

“There’s nothing turning up on the grid search,” Fitz said. “And we haven’t found any witnesses. Even Adidas claims to have been asleep on his personal bus bench, like a good little boy.”

Adidas, so named for his labeled gym bag from the sporting goods company, was one of Nashville’s many homeless citizens and a well-known fixture around the park, but not a threat to anyone but the pigeons. “Was he sober?” Taylor smiled to herself. Fat chance of that.

“Naw, he was reeking like a distillery. He must have lit it up last night. Didn’t even hear the sirens this morning.”

“Too much to ask to have a witness, I guess. Okay, boys. Here’s what’s going to happen. Price and I decided Fitz is going to take over some of my cases so I can focus on our murder this morning. Is that cool with you, Fitz? I’m going to keep you in the loop on everything that happens, and if we need to pull you back in full-time, we’ll do it. I’m hoping we can wrap this up quickly, but if not...”

“Fine by me. You gonna let the kid here run with you?” He pointed at Marcus Wade, who sat up straighter in his chair. This was the highest-profile case he’d ever been tapped to work.

“Yep, that’s the plan. If you would be so kind as to wrap up the park and file your report, I’d appreciate it. Then you can start messing around with my stuff.”

“Sure thing.” He gave her a smile, and Taylor thanked whatever being had sent Fitz her way. Any other detective would have gotten snotty or hurt by the request to stand down, but Fitz knew enough about the politics not to worry. Taylor knew he would never suspect her of cutting him out of a case to take the glory for herself. He had told her from the beginning that her move to lieutenant would cut back some of his responsibilities and allow him the space to prepare for a graceful retirement from the force in a few years. Taylor returned the smile with gratitude.

She turned to Marcus. The kid was handsome, with long brown hair and puppy-dog brown eyes. He made a good impression to the outside. Taylor knew under his happy-go-lucky exterior, he was smart, and despite his lack of experience, she was happy to have him. Eagerness was sometimes a better quality in a detective than years on the job; people got staid and used to their own methods. Taylor liked Marcus’s fresh perspective in her investigations.

“Marcus, you work with the Metro spokesman, Dan Franklin. He needs to be briefed so he can give a statement. I want to be in complete control of all the info before we talk to anyone. So no leaks about anything, okay? Hopefully we’ll have an ID on this girl and can inform her next of kin, maybe even a cause of death, and we can release it in the statement. The mayor’s pressing for something official ASAP.” Taylor snorted through her nose. “She’s pretty fired up. The big arts and crafts fair starts Friday, and she’s pushing to get the scene cleared and the park open.”

“Got it.”

“And, Marcus? I know you and Lee Mayfield have been seeing each other. No preferential treatment, and no pillow talk. Okay?”

Marcus turned three shades past eggplant and looked at his desk. It wasn’t a huge secret that he had been dating the crime reporter for The Tennessean.

“Umm, actually, I broke it off. She’s not very cool. I’ll talk to Franklin.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Well, maybe I’m not. Forget about her. You’re right, she isn’t cool at all.”

She felt badly that Marcus had been forced to air that tidbit in front of everyone, but such was life. Lee Mayfield was a bitch, and Taylor was happy Marcus had gotten her out of his system. She would sink her claws into any man she thought would give her some scoop. At least the kid learned his lesson early.

She focused on Lincoln. He was wearing a beautiful blue suit, white shirt, and purple tie today.

“Linc, I want AFIS set and ready. Number one priority is putting a name on this girl.”

AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, would run the dead girl’s prints through the local fingerprint database. If there wasn’t a match, the prints would go into the huge national AFIS database.

“Will do.”

“If we get a hit, I want you to track down where she’s from so we can go check it out. Go through the whole drill. I want you to run everything through the computers. Go up to the Intelligence Unit, log into the ViCAP database. Upload our details, and check for any similar MOs.” ViCAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program database maintained by the FBI, would look for any similar crimes that matched the description of their murder. “Cover the gamut. Look for killings with and without rapes, and unsolved violent rapes. And we have something unique to run through ViCAP. Check for herbs or dried flowers found at murder scenes.”

Eyebrows rose all around.

“Sam noticed a sweet smell coming off the body. She bagged a whole bunch of leaves and stems, though we don’t know what kind of herbs they are yet. We need to keep this real quiet until we know what’s going on, so Marcus, keep Franklin out of the loop, too. It may end up being nothing.”

“Or everything,” Lincoln chimed in.

“Or everything. So no leaks. No one outside this office knows about this but Sam. Keep it that way. There’s also DNA to plug in. I want you to search through the sexual offender database, too, see if someone’s done anything similar in any of the nearby jurisdictions. Check on the guys convicted of sexual crimes before, only on a smaller scale. Peeping Toms, our friendly flashers. Remember we had a rash of those last year in Bellevue? Pull any of the files that look good. Also, monitor the missing persons listings. If he’s snatched anyone else, we need to be ahead of the game. Any calls with young women missing, I want to hear immediately. Drag me out of whatever I’m doing.”

“Gotcha, boss. I already started running the missing persons list to see if anyone matching her description has popped up. So far, nothing, but I’ll keep looking.”

Lincoln’s deep, velvety smooth voice made Taylor take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. She gave him an appraising glance. He had the most beautiful skin she had ever seen, a shade somewhere between caramel and mocha latte. His straight nose led to sensually full lips. He was sensitive about the gap between his front two teeth. Taylor thought it only added to his charm.

“Lincoln, are you wearing another new suit? You’re going to go broke here soon.” Taylor loved to tease him about his obsession with clothes. He was always dressed impeccably, favoring Italian suits and couture ties. He bought his shoes from New York, beautifully worked leather that seemed to mold to his feet. He was single and spent all his money on his wardrobe.

“Well, I may have had a purchase arrive yesterday. Gotta keep looking sharp for the ladies.” He gave her a huge smile, and Taylor smiled back fondly. She privately thought he looked like Lenny Kravitz sans nose rings, and could easily understand his appeal to women of all ages and races. Maybe in another life...

“So if you’re done raggin’ on me... I’ve got ViCAP running already, but I’ll go plug the herb thing in. I’ve also pulled our open case files that have a sexual component, in case one looks remotely like this. I just want to see if this guy may have been working before. When Sam has a DNA sample, I’ll get together with the TBI and take a run through CODIS, see if there are any matches to the semen.”

All of the acronyms the Feds came up with amounted to alphabet soup as far as Taylor was concerned. It seemed every day the FBI or the law enforcement community came out with a new acronym for the tools they used. A new database, neoteric scientific tests, flowchart, and task forces—none were immune to the alphabet game. The standard joke was that the acronyms were formed before the official names so the higher-ups could make sure the nicknames “worked.” They got so busy digging through the bowl trying to see what they could put together they often fell in and drowned.

Taylor smiled at her crew in appreciation, and told them to scatter. “Rock and roll. Keep checking in with me. Fitz, let me run those files by you real quick.” She turned to her desk, then swung back. “Gentlemen? Let’s find this jerk. Now.”

7

Taylor took the long way when she headed out to Sam’s office. Flying by the exit that would lead her to the morgue, she turned north and felt herself relax as she drove up the interstate, letting the wind from the open window blow her hair around. Thirty minutes of head-clearing drive time wouldn’t change anything. The girl would still be dead. And Sam would probably applaud her taking a few minutes to herself.

She settled into the fast lane and started passing cars, pushing eighty. Cruising mindlessly, she jumped when her cell phone chirped. She let out a deep sigh, moved over three lanes, and pulled onto the shoulder.

“Yeah, Jackson.”

“Hey, LT, it’s Marcus. We got a hit on the prints.”

“That was quick. Who’s our girl?”

“Shelby Kincaid. She’s a student at Vanderbilt. She doesn’t have a record, but we got lucky. She was printed for a job she applied for at a day care center on West End.”

“Damn it,” Taylor said with heart. “A student at Vandy, and no one reported her missing?”

“Nope. At least there’s nothing official. Want me to call the school?”

She thought for a minute. “Tell you what. Let me get over to Sam’s and see what she’s found from the autopsy. We’re going to want to tread lightly. Vandy won’t cooperate with us without some paper. Go ahead and get a subpoena started for Kincaid’s records. Besides, I don’t want to start a panic if we can help it. This is going to be the lead story on the news. It was sensational enough that she was found at the Parthenon. When the media finds out she was a Vandy coed, they’re going to go nuts.” She ran a hand through her hair, unconsciously combing out the windblown tangles. Catching a knot, she looked in the mirror in aggravation and struggled to put it into a ponytail while holding the cell phone. She lost the whole mess, hair and phone alike, and cursed. She grabbed the phone from between her legs and brushed her hair out of her eyes impatiently.

“I assume there was contact information with her print card?”

“Yep.” She could hear him shuffling papers in the background before the roar of an 18-wheeler passing much too closely drowned him out.

“...Kentucky. Want me to—”

“Wait, wait. Say that again. Couldn’t hear you over the traffic.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m pulled over to the side of Interstate 24. Where’s she from again?”

“Bowling Green, Kentucky. The contacts are Edward and Sally Kincaid. I assume they’re her parents. We need to get them notified.”

Taylor rubbed the back of her neck. “Go ahead and call Reverend Spenser. I always like to have him around when I have to do a notification. He can get in touch with the Bowling Green police, see if their chaplain’s available to do the notification. Ask him to arrange to have them driven down here, too.”

“Will do. They’re going to want to talk to you, I’m sure.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to talk with them until Sam has more definitive results. I’d like to be able to give them her cause of death, if we have one. Damn, this really sucks. Get the family notified, then we’ll go ahead with Vandy. Be delicate, Marcus. This is going to be beyond difficult for them.”

“Yeah, I imagine it will ruin their lives. I’ll talk to the chaplain and get it all arranged.”

“Thanks, man. I’ll be back after I see Sam.”

“Um, Taylor, before you go?”

“What?”

“Your dad called.”

Her father. Her chest tightened. Oh man, talk about something she didn’t need.

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“No, just that he needs to speak with you. He said it was important.”

“Yeah, it always is,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on and get in touch with Shelby Kincaid’s parents. I’ll talk to you later.”

She hung up, pushing thoughts of her father away and getting her mind back on the case. There was nothing worse than having to tell parents they’d outlived their child. She was more than a little relieved Marcus was going to handle the notification.

She pulled back out on the interstate and took the first exit leading her back into the city. She tried not to think and, instead, enjoy the few moments of freedom she had left. A pointless endeavor. She gave up and gunned the car.

The late-afternoon traffic was terrible, and it took her twenty minutes to plow her way through to Gass Boulevard. The State of Tennessee Center for Forensic Medicine was run by a private group contracted with the city. Their brand-new, twenty-thousand-square-foot building looked more like the local offices of a corporate giant than a morgue.

She pulled into the parking lot, more than a little jealous of Sam and her new realm. It sure beat Homicide’s crappy little office. Then again, they didn’t have dead bodies next to the break room.

She was buzzed through the door into the spacious lobby. She was facing the family viewing room, where family members of the deceased could identify their loved one’s mortal remains on closed-circuit TV.

She was thankful the new system had been put into place. It was easier for the family not to go through up-close-and-personal body identification, or deal with photographs of their dearly departed. They had a quiet, nicely furnished room, professional support, and some distance from their deceased family member. It was a good system.

One of the grief counselors would eventually be back there with Shelby’s parents, ready to bolster and guide the family through their worst nightmares. Taylor felt chill bumps on her arms. She was glad she didn’t have to come back and deal with them tonight. Loss wasn’t something she was ever comfortable with.

Despite the constant flow of people who entered and exited the building throughout the day and night, there was never a magazine out of place, nor a small piece of trash sitting on a side table. Taylor secretly thought members of the cleaning crew lurked in the hallways, ready to sneak into the foyer unseen to straighten and sanitize at a moment’s notice.

She waved to the receptionist, Kris, and entered the door leading to the autopsy suite. The odor hit her: in contrast to the sweet, clean smell of the open foyer, this area was antiseptic and metallic, overlaid with chemicals, like a hospital corridor. And it was colder, sterile and overtly hygienic. The smells weren’t unpleasant. They were simply what she always associated with death.

The odd reek settled in her sinuses. Taylor tried to concentrate on other things as she walked in. She knew that within a few minutes she’d get used to it. She always did.

Stopping briefly in the biovestibule, she changed into a pair of disposable scrubs and went inside.

The main autopsy suite held four fully functioning workstations, two on the wall facing Taylor, and two on the opposite wall. Sam was at the far table, the natural sunlight from the huge skylight above streaking her hair with rosy highlights.

“Sam.”

Sam turned toward Taylor with a look that said, Go away, I’m trying to work.

“Sorry, Sammy, I need to talk. We’ve got an ID. Her name’s Shelby Kincaid. Went to Vanderbilt. We’re notifying her parents right now, so I wanna see what you have.”

Sam actually looked at her this time, blinked, finally realized who was there, and said, “Oh, hey. Gear up. Vanderbilt, huh?” There was almost no inflection in her voice. She was lost in her work.

Taylor pulled on the remaining protective gear and gloves gracefully, the motions born of too many repetitions. She donned her eye shield and joined Sam at the table. Lying on a tan plastic washable coating covering an icy, stainless steel slab were the remains of Shelby Kincaid. She didn’t look like a sleeping child anymore. The huge Y-cut, actually shaped like a deformed U, cut from her sternum to her pubis, exposing her internal organs, which Sam was in the process of weighing. She set the mud-colored liver in the scale, dictating the weight into the microphone clipped to the front of her smock. She handed it to her assistant, who wandered off to busy himself with something. He knew Taylor and was more than a little afraid of her. Sam watched him go, chuckled, then became all business again.

“Ventricular fibrillation. And something’s hinky with her liver.” She didn’t elaborate.

“Okay. Wanna expound on that? I don’t know if hinky will stand up in court.”

Sam’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s the problem. On the surface, I can’t tell you what’s wrong. I sent off the tox screen, so we should get that back quick enough. But they can’t look for anything but the obvious, and the way her organs look...my gut tells me we need to look deeper. I sent a runner with all kinds of samples to Simon’s lab—blood, urine, tissue, the works. I asked them to do a more comprehensive workup than the normal drug and alcohol screen. I’m hoping they can isolate something off the standard panel.”

“Like what?”

She waggled her head casually and shrugged, like a child with an important secret. “Oh, I’m thinking poison.”

“No way. Poison? Cyanide?”

“Not cyanide, I didn’t get an almond smell when I opened the body. I don’t know what we’re looking for, but I definitely think she ingested something, and it didn’t sit right with her system.”

“Ingested something like what?”

Sam gave Taylor a sweet smile. “Honey, that’s what we’re going to find out. Back to business. She was raped repeatedly. Even more bruising and tearing than I’d thought, lots of semen. We’re going to have to wait for the labs on that, too.”

Taylor’s shoulders knotted up. “How long’s it gonna take?”

“Well, it won’t be overnight. I’ll try to talk Simon into dropping all his other fascinating cases and handle the toxicology right away, but I can’t promise anything. As far as the semen is concerned, I can send it up to TBI with a push and have them do the rapid DNA, or I can throw it to Simon and ask him to handle it as a personal favor. We haven’t talked in a couple of days though, so he may blow me off.” She busied herself with a scalpel.

Taylor waited for a more detailed explanation, but seeing none forthcoming, decided not to voice an opinion on the rocky relationship’s latest turn. “I already ran it by Price. It won’t be a problem. Go ahead and give it all to Simon. If you don’t want to call in one of your own, tell him it’s a favor for me, and I’ll owe him one.”

“Got it.” She gestured toward the computer screen behind her. “The rest is basics. Height, one hundred seventy-six centimeters, weight, forty-seven kilograms. Blond hair, blue eyes. Maybe a little anorexic. No distinguishing characteristics, no tattoos, nothing out of the ordinary. Doesn’t look like she’s had any surgeries except a tonsillectomy.” She looked up, gave a wan smile. “Sorry, Charlie. Right now we’ve got a run-of-the-mill dead girl. Little Shelby didn’t put up much of a fight, nothing under her nails, no defensive wounds. That’s about as exciting as it gets.”

Taylor sighed. She knew the drill. Nothing else could be done here until they had the lab results back. “Can I give her parents a cause of death?”

Sam thought quietly for a moment. The parents would want every detail, and there weren’t a lot to give them. She shrugged. “Tell them we’re doing more tests and hope to have an answer for them quickly.”

“Great, that helps a lot. All right, keep me in the loop on anything you find. And I mean anything. I don’t care how obscure it is. I can deal with Simon if you don’t want to do it yourself.” It was a dig for information, but Sam saw right through it.

“Yeah, I may do that.”

Taylor knew discretion was the better part of valor when it came to Sam and Simon. “Okay, then. Play nice with Simon. I think he likes you.” She grinned and walked out of the room.

Taylor pulled out on Elliston Pike and started back downtown. As the skyline came into view, she was overcome by exhaustion. She had planned to go back to the office, maybe take the warrant over to Vandy, but it was late; their offices would be closed until the morning. There was nothing she could do tonight. She decided to hit a drive-through and go home. She called Marcus, gave him the update from Sam, told him she was out for the night, and suggested he and Lincoln should do the same.

She stopped at the Taco Bell near her house. Eating her dinner in the car, she finished before she hit her driveway. She stumbled into the house, set her holster and gun on the coffee table, gave the cat a rub on the head, fell onto the couch, and crashed immediately.

Again, there was a field of graves, stretching out before her. A large statue shadowed the land, covering waves of ripe wheat in sheaves, and the path forward was littered with body parts, arms and legs bent in imitations of crosses, bones shaped into grave markers. The sky was red with angry storms, and the wind whipped her hair around her face. Flowers pushed dead from the earth, black and rotted, their scent overwhelming. She walked toward the monstrous statue, the grave markers waving in synchronous motion, reaching out to touch her, strange dead hands and legs and arms draping against her body, grabbing her legs, holding her back, pulling her to the earth...

Taylor woke with a cry, sweating, her breath coming in jagged gasps. She wiped the tears from her face. She groaned when she looked at the clock on the mantel, which read 4:15 a.m. The nightly ritual was fulfilled. She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. She hit the shower and headed into work.

THE SECOND DAY

8

He watched the body drift away slowly, bumping into driftwood as the current caught it and dragged it toward the shore. He felt a brief pang of sorrow. The woman had been beautiful, perfection in dimension and proportion. Until the end.

Still, she was a worthy sacrifice. She had brought him much joy, much pleasure. It was her own fault she was dead. Dead and gone. No longer.

9

Marcus and Lincoln were futzing around in the captain’s office when Taylor walked in. When Price went out and things were slow or on hold, the squad had a habit of congregating in there to watch TV.

Lincoln vacated Price’s chair for Taylor to sit in. She did so gratefully. It was the one chair in the squad that was remotely comfortable.

“Where’s Price?”

“Ran down to talk to the chief.” Marcus rolled his eyes. “Old windbag wanted to have another press conference so he can look like he’s actually being a cop.”

Taylor laughed. Their chief of police was about as popular as the mayor.

“Did you find Shelby’s parents?”

“Yeah. Reverend Spenser talked to the Bowling Green police chaplain. They did the notification, and BG’s chaplain is driving them down this morning. They’re pretty upset. Her dad’s a Baptist minister. The chaplain knew Shelby, too.”

“Great. Lincoln, any luck on any of the databases?”

“Nothin’ yet. Hit a dead end after her prints popped. Sam have anything new?”

“Outside of the possible poisoning? No. She sent everything over to Simon. It’ll be a day or so before we know what the poison might be.”

“If only we could identify the poison, I could plug it into ViCAP, maybe broaden the scope a little.” Lincoln’s eyes were shining. He loved playing with the technical stuff.

“Once we have it identified, you can put it in the system, but not before. We need to keep it quiet, like the herbs. Especially with her parents.” She looked pointedly at Marcus, a silent warning to keep his own counsel outside of the squad room.

Price’s phone rang, and Taylor picked it up. “Homicide... Okay, thanks.” She cradled the phone. “Marcus, Shelby’s parents are here. Wanna go out and get them?”

“Damn, they’re early. I’ll meet you in the interview room.” He stood, brushing invisible lint from his pants. Taylor could see the air of discomfort that washed over him; facing grieving family members wasn’t his favorite thing to do either. He squared his shoulders and walked out. Taylor gave Lincoln a small smile.

“Do we have any coffee or anything we can offer them?”

“I’ll go make some.”

“Thank you. If the chaplains are out there, see if they want some, too. I’d best go save Marcus. Bring the coffee when it’s ready.”

He smiled in acknowledgment and left the office. Taylor pulled her hair out of its ponytail, unsuccessfully attempting to smooth it down. Impatiently reholstering the unruly mess, she squared her own shoulders and marched the short distance to the interview room in the hall. Marcus already had Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid inside. A box of tissues had miraculously appeared at Mrs. Kincaid’s elbow.

The Kincaids were small, unassuming people, easily in their late fifties. Mrs. Kincaid’s eyes were rimmed in red, but there were no tears threatening to overflow. Mr. Kincaid had a vacant look on his face but seemed to be holding up. Marcus introduced Taylor. She pulled up a chair.

“Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid, thank you so much for coming down. I am so sorry for your loss.” Her cliché was worn but sincere. Mrs. Kincaid nodded and sniffed. Shelby’s father took control of the meeting.

“Where is our daughter, Lieutenant? We want to see her.”

“Could we get you anything to drink? Coffee, water...”

Mr. Kincaid cut her off sharply. “No. Where is our daughter?”

Taylor looked at Marcus, signaling him to tell Lincoln to forget the coffee. He stuck his head out the door, gestured to Lincoln, then stepped back in and shut the door behind him, lounging quietly against it.

Taylor took a deep breath. She had a feeling this wasn’t going to go well. “She’s still at the medical examiner’s office, sir. We had to do an autopsy to see...”

Mrs. Kincaid lost it. “You cut our baby open? How could you do that?” She started crying. Her husband put a hand on her arm. She immediately quieted.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but her death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner at the scene. We’re required by law to conduct an autopsy.” Taylor hated having to give that pat line to a child’s parents, but there was no way to cushion the blow. “There was no identification found with the body, so in order to obtain an identification we had to follow protocol. That’s how we found out who she was. I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

Mrs. Kincaid reached for a tissue and buried her face in it, dignified sobs leaking out. Again her husband squeezed her arm. Taylor didn’t think it was meant in a kindly way. She got the impression he was uncomfortable with open displays of emotion, which seemed interesting for a man of the cloth.

“Lieutenant, Detective Wade said Shelby was murdered. Who did it? I want to know who killed our baby.”

“We don’t know yet, sir, but we’re doing our very best to find the killer and arrest him. We have some evidence that will be helpful...”

“DNA?”

The advent of TV cop shows made every layman an expert in criminal investigations.

Taylor nodded. “Yes, sir, we do have some DNA evidence.”

The light went out of his eyes, and he rubbed his chin. “Was she raped?”

Taylor didn’t want to go into detail. “We believe that may be the case, sir, but we won’t have any answers until the laboratory results come back.”

“How was she murdered, Lieutenant?” Mrs. Kincaid had finished crying. Taylor could see the steel creeping back into her eyes. When Taylor didn’t answer immediately, the woman’s voice softened. “It’s only fair that we should know. Was she shot? Strangled?”

“No, ma’am. There were no obvious signs to tell us how she died. The medical examiner is doing a number of tests to see what killed your daughter. We won’t know anything until the toxicology reports come back.”

Mr. Kincaid jumped in again, cutting his wife off. “You don’t know what killed her? Then how do you know she was murdered?”

Taylor decided honesty was the best policy. “Shelby was found at the Parthenon, sir, with no clothes on and signs that she’d been raped. The scene felt staged. Until the tests are back, I’m afraid that’s as much as I know at this point. You’ll be the first to hear when we find something conclusive. Can you tell us a little bit about your daughter?”

Mr. Kincaid gave her a dirty look. “There’s nothing to know. Shelby was a good girl. She didn’t drink. She didn’t do drugs. She worked hard for her grades. She was on scholarship. What exactly are you asking?”

In spite of his escalating tone, Taylor gave him a reassuring smile. “Sir, I meant nothing by the remark. The better I know your daughter, the quicker I can find her killer. Do you know if she was seeing anyone, had a boyfriend at school?”

Mr. Kincaid jumped in quickly. “She didn’t have time for a boyfriend.”

His wife looked at Taylor and said softly, “She would have told me. We are—were—very close.” She swallowed hard, forcing herself to stay in control. “When can we see our daughter, Lieutenant? When can we take her home?”

Shelby’s parents weren’t going to be much help. She got the feeling that even if Shelby did have a boyfriend, Mr. Kincaid wouldn’t know about it. Though she may have confided in her mother... Taylor made a mental note to follow up with her privately.

“I’ll have an officer take you to the medical examiner’s office. They won’t be able to release the b—Shelby until there is a definitive cause of death, but there are things that need to be taken care of. Marcus? Could you arrange to have Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid taken over to the ME’s office?” He nodded and left the room silently.

Taylor pulled a card out of her wallet. “I’ll probably need to speak with you again, at a more appropriate time, of course. In the meantime, if you think of anything that may be helpful, please call me.” She started to hand the card to Mrs. Kincaid, but Mr. Kincaid reached out and grabbed it.

“Thank you for your help, Lieutenant. We’d like to see our daughter now.”

“Of course, sir.”

Marcus stuck his head in and nodded. “I have an officer ready to escort you there.”

Taylor stood and put out a hand. Mr. Kincaid looked past it, but Mrs. Kincaid reached out, barely touching her fingers to Taylor’s. They were shaking.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” She followed her husband out.

Taylor sat back at the table, cradling her head in her hands. Marcus came back in and sat across from her.

“So, what do you think?”

“Well, I think Mrs. Kincaid knows more than she’s saying. Maybe we should take a run at her without her husband.”

“I agree,” Taylor said. “He shot the boyfriend issue down awfully quick. Maybe Shelby confided in her mother and left Daddy out of the loop. Let’s give them a few days. It’s possible Mrs. Kincaid will get in touch with us.”

“So what now?”

“What now? Let’s take the subpoena on over to Vandy and see what we can dig up about Shelby.”

10

Marcus was quiet on the drive to the campus, and Taylor let him stew in his thoughts until they reached the parking lot.

“What’s on your mind, Marcus?” There was no answer. “Helloo. Earth to Marcus.” She poked his knee and he jumped.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Taylor. Lost in my own little world.”

“And what’s happening in your little world?”

“I don’t know. I’m getting a weird vibe.”

“That narrows it down. Care to explain?”

He sighed and looked out the window. “I don’t really know. When we talked to Shelby’s parents, they seemed rather emphatic that she was all work and no play. Seems to me a preacher’s kid away from home for the first time may have gotten herself into a little bit of trouble here or there.”

“You’re probably right. Let’s go see if she’s really been their sweet little girl.”

The campus was lit with the colors of fall, fallen leaves strewn across the quads. It seemed serene, tranquil, untouched by the tragedy. Boys played football, and coeds watched them in admiration; students rode their bikes down the street, calling to one another. It was so bucolic, it almost made her nervous. Picture-postcard perfect—the calm before the storm. Clearly news hadn’t spread about the murder. Taylor didn’t know if she’d rather they panic or be unaffected.

They got out of the car and walked to Kirkland Hall, the college’s administration building. Sitting on a stone bench in front of the edifice was a man in his early forties. He had a thick mustache, matching light blond hair, and a shiny badge pinned to the front of his pristine tan uniform. Taylor groaned aloud. The man smiled and gave them a little wave. He didn’t get up, just sat with his legs spread wide in front of him, a small manila folder sitting quietly next to him.

Taylor tried for politeness. “Chief Graber. How are you this fine morning?”

“Not well, not well at all. I assume you’re here because one of my students is dead, and you’ve come to give your condolences. To apologize that no one from Metro bothered to contact me when you discovered the Parthenon girl was a Vandy student. To ask for any and all cooperation my police force can give to your investigation. That about sum it up?”

Taylor didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Graber wasn’t going to make this easy. She softened her tone.

“Chief... Charles. You know that the past twenty-four hours have been a madhouse. We’ve only known that Shelby Kincaid was a Vandy student since—”

“Since you ID’d her body, yesterday. For God’s sake, Taylor, did you think I wasn’t going to find out?” Graber jumped up and started to pace the portico. He had a strange gait. One leg seemed to snap in front of him as he walked. Taylor saw Marcus staring and decided it was the perfect moment to introduce him.

“Marcus Wade, I’d like you to meet Charles Graber, chief of the Vanderbilt Campus Police. And a royal pain in my ass.”

“I guess you two already know each other?” Marcus asked.

“Since ninth grade. She dated my little brother at Father Ryan. Broke his heart, too.”

Graber’s tone wasn’t lost on the young detective, and Taylor went crimson under Marcus’s grin.

“Charles, please. Now isn’t the time. We need to focus on Shelby Kincaid. We have a court order for her records. I figured the school’s administration wasn’t going to be terribly cooperative, so we’ve preempted them.”

Graber picked up the manila folder. “And I figured you’d be thorough enough not to show up empty-handed. Here, I’ll trade you.” He handed her the folder. Taylor nodded sharply at Marcus, who pulled out the legal documents from his inside coat pocket. He handed them to Graber, who didn’t even glance at the paperwork.

“I can save you some time, Taylor. I know my way around this campus better than you do. I’m happy to help.”

Taylor caught the note in his voice, and couldn’t help but feel for the man. His campus police were much more than glorified security guards. They had all the powers of a metro police force, only with a smaller area to govern. But he had no jurisdiction over this particular crime. Taylor knew he didn’t want the glory. He was genuinely sorry that one of the school’s students had been murdered. But it was her case, and she wanted to run it her way. And she owed him nothing but civility. He still held a grudge, about his brother, and other things, and she tired quickly of his relentless barbs.

“Tell you what. If we run into trouble, I’ll give you a call, have you smooth the road. Sound okay?”

“Hell, Taylor, when have you ever had any trouble smoothin’ the road? You’ve got a gun. You can shoot your way clear. You do it enough. I’ll be in my office if you need anything.”

Taylor bit her lip, forced herself not to respond. He gave her half a smile, turned his back, and walked away. The hitch in his walk was more pronounced from behind.

Marcus looked at Taylor. “Another friend of David Martin?”

She shook her head. “Yeah.”

“Jerk.”

She wanted to smile, but opened the folder in front of her and read quickly, pleased her voice didn’t waver.

“Okay, Marcus, she was in Carmichael Towers East. The roommate’s name is Vicki Chen. Let’s go have a chat with her.”

They set off across the quad, leaves crackling beneath their feet. Shaking off Graber’s comments, Taylor looked around at the young and carefree as they simply existed. They had nothing more serious to worry about than their next test, their next meal, their next party. No dead bodies lined up in rows at the morgue, no bugs crawling through eye sockets, no sense of their own mortality. Maybe they didn’t watch the news, or if they had heard that one of their own was cooling rapidly in a coffin-sized refrigerator, they simply didn’t care.

Taylor sensed the anxiety creeping up her spine. There was nothing she could do to keep any of them safe. She couldn’t stop the rapes, the murders, the abuse. The thematic judgments began rolling through her brain. I can’t help. I can’t stop them; when one goes down, another meaner and uglier one pops up in its place. Why am I doing this anymore? Why, why, why do I even want to be a cop anymore?

She was starting to hyperventilate. Marcus was looking at her strangely. She felt light-headed, but refused to make an ass out of herself in front of her youngest detective. She bent down, looking to anyone who cared as if she were tying her shoe.

“Too bad cowboy boots don’t have laces,” she murmured. She sucked in a couple of breaths, felt her heart slow. Looked up at Marcus, gave him a halfhearted smile. He smiled back quizzically, but didn’t ask if she was okay. She wasn’t, but she’d never admit it to him. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone.

11

Shelby Kincaid, by all accounts, was the good girl her parents insisted she was.

Her roommate, Vicki Chen, met them in the dorm room they’d shared. Chen was pretty, with long, dark hair; small, rectangular glasses; jeans tucked into a pair of brown UGGs, the tops of which were turned down to show the interior fleece. She looked like every other student on the Vanderbilt campus.

And she was devastated by her friend’s loss.

“I just don’t understand how this could happen. She was happy, she was working hard, we had tickets for R.E.M., for God’s sake. You know how quickly that show sold out? She had no reason to wander off.”

Taylor had asked Marcus to talk so he could get more interview experience. With a nod from her, he kept pushing.

“Wander off?”

Chen waved a hand in the air. “She must have, to cross paths with a killer. This is Vanderbilt. It’s Nashville. It’s safe here. That’s why all of our parents want us to go to this school, because it’s so safe.”

Taylor wanted to tell her it wasn’t true—there were no safe schools, safe places. Death could strike anywhere, anyone. But she bit her tongue.

“Tell me more about Shelby’s personality, Vicki. What was she like?” Marcus asked.

“Shy. Quiet. She spent most of her time in the library. She was an engineering student, a damn good one. Straight A’s every semester, carrying a 4.0 GPA. She had to keep the scholarship—her parents can’t afford to send her here.”

“What is tuition now?” Taylor asked.

“We’re at thirty-one thousand, and that’s only tuition, doesn’t include books and meals and housing. It’s gotten very expensive to attend Vandy, and the scholarship kids depend on the help. Shelby had a full academic ride, and she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize it.”

“So she’s a good student,” Marcus said. “What else?”

Chen played with the tips of her hair. “Shelby was popular with her teachers, and she seemed happy most of the time. Content. She was pretty homesick, though. She called home several times a week. No car, so she couldn’t head back there on weekends like some of the local students do.”

“How’d she get around?”

“The kindness of strangers. Oh my God, I didn’t mean that. I meant friends. I’m sorry, she just kept to herself so much, didn’t let people in. Even me. She wasn’t super close to anyone here.”

“What was she doing in the days leading up to her disappearance?”

“Nothing. The girl led a pretty dull life. She stayed on campus for the fall break, but most of us do, it’s party time for four days straight. For Shelby, it was extra time to study. She had exams coming up, and preparing was her main focus for the weekend.”

Marcus took a note. “And when was the last time you saw her?”

“Friday night. I talked her into coming to dinner at Willy’s Diner. You know the place, right? It’s easy to walk to, cheap, pretty popular. I practically dragged her kicking and screaming—she didn’t want to waste the cash. But she’d been working so hard, I knew it would be good for her to get out. We hit Willy’s at 6:45 p.m. Around eight, I noticed Shelby hadn’t come back to the table after a bathroom break. I didn’t think much about it—we’d already paid, were just hanging out at that point. I actually laughed it off, figured she’d gone back to the room.” She bowed her head. “I am such a jerk. If I’d paid more attention, maybe she’d still be alive.”

Marcus soothed her. “You can’t think like that, Vicki. It sounds to me you were doing all you could to look out for your roommate.”

A few tears trickled down her face. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t enough, was it? I got back at eleven thirty or so. Shelby wasn’t here, so I assumed she’d gone back to the library. In the morning, no Shelby, and her bed was untouched. Around lunchtime, I went to the library to check on her, wondering if she’d fallen asleep in the carrels. She wasn’t there. I called Metro, but they told me she’d have to be missing for at least twenty-four hours before they could get involved. I didn’t want to call her parents—I was afraid I’d freak them out. She could have been anywhere, you know? By the time Metro would talk to me about filing a report, you’d already found her.”

“What about a boyfriend?” Taylor asked. “Was she seeing anyone?”

She could see the hesitation on Chen’s face, though she answered quickly. Too quickly.

“Are you kidding? Shelby wouldn’t have any time for a boyfriend. I’ve never seen her in the company of any of the men on campus.”

The answer was so pat, so confident, so final, Taylor didn’t buy it. Especially when Chen started to cry in earnest, almost as if she wanted to distract them.

“You’re sure about this? Is it possible she was seeing someone and simply hadn’t told you?”

Chen shook her head, wiping the tears from her face with a red bandana. “No. No way.”

Taylor gave Marcus the whirlybird finger. Time to wrap it up.

He stood, handed the girl a card. “Thank you for your time, Miss Chen. Please call us immediately if you remember anything relevant.”

Taylor and Marcus left the sobbing Chen and wandered back into the quad. Taylor spotted two boys smoking, walked over to bum a cigarette. Marcus watched her with concern, and she gave him a wink. The only time she smoked anymore was when she was really stressed out, but she tried to give him a carefree attitude as cover. Quitting was awful. She felt bad enough about her occasional slips without disapproving glances from her teammates.

She walked back to him, knew he’d seen her slide the spare behind her ear. Appreciated the lack of comment.

“Anything stand out from Chen’s interview?” she asked.

“She was evasive about the possible boyfriend. We need to pursue that angle if at all possible. I think Shelby was seeing someone and didn’t want people to know. Her dad, especially.”

She rewarded him with a big smile. “Excellent. Exactly right. So who was Shelby seeing when she was supposed to be studying at the library? And why was it so important to keep the relationship secret?”

Before he could comment, her phone rang.

“Jackson.”

“It’s Fitz.”

“Thanks for that. I do have caller ID on this thing. What’s up?”

“We’re opening the park back up. Crime Scene got exactly squat, no trace, no worthwhile prints, no ID or clothes. She may well have flown there and landed on those steps.”

Taylor laughed. “That’s about the best logic I’ve heard today. What’s Sam up to?”

“She wrapped things up about an hour ago. She said she’s sending over the autopsy report. Everything’s square with Loughley, too.”

“Hmm. Did you call him?”

“Nope, she did it all by her pretty little self. Why?”

“Nothing, just curious. We’re not getting too much over here either, other than the distinct impression Shelby Kincaid has a secret lover. We’re on our way. You need anything while I’m out?”

“If you get by Jack’s Bar-B-Que, you could grab me some pulled pork, buns, and a Bud,” he said hopefully.

“Mmm, sounds good. Skipping the beer, though. Sorry.” She clicked off her phone and snapped it back onto her waistband.

“Okay, Marcus, let’s get some lunch and head back to the office.”

Taylor took a last drag on her cigarette and flicked it away into the bushes. Saw a figure over Marcus’s shoulder. Chief Graber was standing by Carmichael Towers. He wasn’t smiling. Taylor ignored him, turned her back, and they started walking back to their car.

Taylor’s cell phone rang again as she touched the handle to the driver’s side door. “Yes?”

“Hey, T, it’s Fitz again. You’re gonna have to skip the food. How about meeting me at the sidewalk behind the River Stages.”

Taylor rolled her neck to the left with a loud pop. “And I’m hungry too. What’s so interesting behind the stage, Fitz?”

“How’s about another dead girl?”

Her heart sank.

“Oh no. We’re on our way. Give us five minutes.” She clicked off, looked over at Marcus, who was lounging with his arms across the top of the car, watching the coeds.

“Get in, slugger. We’ve got us another body.”

12

Taylor and Marcus drove back downtown in silence. Riverfront Park was only a few blocks from police headquarters. The body had conveniently washed up in their backyard. They parked and walked toward River Stages, a popular summer concert venue. Fitz waved cheerily at them.

“Come on down and meet our next contestant.” He led them down to the river.

Taylor shook her head and smoothed a stray hair behind her ear. As they neared the water, she saw the tarp over a lump on the riverbank. Marcus stayed a few feet behind her.

“Okay, Fitz, what do you have?”

He pointed unnecessarily at the body. “Well, there we have another dead girl. Boat passin’ by saw something in the weeds, came by for a closer look. She was facedown—they used a grappling hook to turn her over, called 911.”

“Who got here first?”

“Who else? Officer Wills. Happened to be on Second Avenue when the call came—he was here within a minute.”

“Good, good. At least we know he didn’t screw anything up.”

Marcus was shifting from the ball of one foot to another like a small child who needed to go to the bathroom. Taylor caught the movement.

“Okay, Marcus?”

“Yes, ma’am. Though two girls in two days is a little creepy for me.”

“Yes, it is. But that’s what you get when you work Homicide. Let’s go take a look, shall we?”

They made their way to the water’s edge. Taylor leaned in and pulled the tarp back from the body, grimacing at the smell. She hated floaters.

A young woman’s ruined face stared back at her. “Damn,” she said softly. She pulled the tarp the rest of the way back, careful not to disturb anything lying beneath it. The girl was naked, bloated with the buildup of gases that had brought her to the surface. There were five distinct stab wounds on her torso. At least it would be a little simpler to determine what killed this one.

She started to replace the tarp when she heard Sam a few yards away.

“Go ahead and leave it off, Taylor. I need to take a look.” She tripped on some unidentifiable piece of trash and she fell into Marcus, cursing under her breath. He grabbed on for dear life to the first available appendage. It happened to be her left breast. She barked a laugh and gave him a smile that only deepened his blush.

“God, Sam, I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay, cookie. Nice catch.” She winked and he recovered nicely, giving her a charming smile back.

“Hey, T. You’re keeping me a little busy, ya know?”

“Yep.” Taylor stepped back from the body to give Sam room to set up. She did so quickly, knelt next to the girl’s body, poking and prodding.

“Stabbed a few times, huh? She hasn’t been in the water too terribly long, maybe a week.” She picked up one of the girl’s white, puffy, wrinkled hands. “Washerwoman’s hands. There’s probably enough skin left for prints. We’ll see. She’s not too old either—I’m guessing between eighteen and twenty-two.” She reached around and rolled the girl onto her left side, picking at the detritus stuck to the girl’s limp body. She scraped some of the dirt into a bag and stuck the bag into the pocket of her jacket. “Hmm.” She rolled her into her previous position carefully and stood up. “Was anything found with her?”

Officer Wills tripped down the bank to join the party. “No, ma’am. We’ve been searching up and down the bank, and there’s nothing out of place.”

“Okay. Let’s have one of the ’gators take a look around. Hey, Taylor?”

“Yup?”

“I’m going to get her back to the office, see if I can get anything to ID her with. And I’m going to post her now, instead of waiting until the morning. Come with?”

“Guess I should. Marcus, head back to the office and tell Lincoln to start another round of database searches. Since she’s been dead awhile, there may be a missing persons report on her. If we get any prints, I’ll bring them over.”

Marcus nodded and headed away purposefully. Taylor shot Sam a knowing look. Poor kid just didn’t like dead bodies. He’d have to get over it if he wanted to survive on her team.

“Fitz, do me a favor, stick around in case they come up with anything.”

“Righto. I’ll ring if anything shows up.”

“Thank you, sir. Sam? Let’s do this.”

Forty minutes later, Sam had the body zipped into a bag and loaded into the back of the unmarked ME van. A small crowd had formed at the top of the hill, and Officer Wills was roping the area off to keep out the curiosity seekers. Taylor followed Sam up the hill, got into her car, and moved out, lost in thought.

Her cell phone rang. She was going to have to turn the thing off; she’d never get anything done if she spent all her time answering calls. She stifled the thought when she saw the caller ID. Sam’s personal number. She clicked on the Talk button.

“I’m right behind you. What’s up?”

“I didn’t want to announce it in front of everyone. I took samples of the muck on her back. Smelled it when I got into the car. There was no unique scent, but the composition looks similar to the herbs we picked off of Shelby.”

Taylor’s heart skipped once, then started again in a rush. “You’re telling me this is the same guy?”

“I definitely don’t want to go there yet. I need to have this analyzed and do the post. But two girls in two days, with similar presentations? Taylor, this isn’t good.”

“No kidding. I’ll see you in a minute.” She hung up the phone and looked at the car passing her on the left. A harried mom with three kids in the back, all laughing and making faces at her as they blew past. They had no idea what waited for them when they got older.

Taylor felt the sadness well up inside her and tears prick her eyes. She shook it off and concentrated on an image of the dead girls.

13

Taylor patiently watched Sam gently slice and dice their floater. Once they had retrieved some messy but usable prints and sent them to Lincoln, she’d decided to stay out of the way. Sam was working fast, looking for any similarities inside the two dead girls while she went through the remaining steps of her post.

Taylor’s phone rang again, and she decided to take a breather and answer it outside. It was Lincoln.

“Hey, Taylor, how’s it going over there?” The scratch of a match and a quick breath out gave her away. “Smoking again?”

“Let me worry about my own lungs. What’s up?”

“I’ve got an ID on the floater.”

“Whoa, you are good. I didn’t know if the prints were going to be usable at all. So who is she?”

“Her name is Jordan Blake. But I don’t think you’re going to want to hear the rest.”

Taylor sank down on the steps, pulling hard on the cigarette, as if a lungful of carbon monoxide would lessen the blow from whatever bad news Lincoln was about to spring. “Shoot.”

“I played a hunch, started with our local AFIS database. It kicked back several possible matches. I eyeballed them to see if we were close. One was.”

“Oh, God no, don’t tell me.”

“She’s a junior at Vanderbilt, Taylor. We have a serious problem on our hands.”

Taylor began to pace the sidewalk in front of Sam’s building, her mind churning. Two girls dead, both murdered, both from the biggest local college campus? This was going to bring everyone out of the woodwork.

“Lincoln, get your butt into Price’s office. Let him know what you’ve got. Has anyone filed a missing persons report on her?”

“I haven’t found one yet. When Sam gives me a solid time line, I’ll be able to get more specific, but I’ve gone through the past month’s reports and haven’t found any matches, which is totally bizarre. I mean, a Vandy student not being reported missing for this long, by anyone? Something’s not jibin’ here, LT.”

“None of this is jibin’, Lincoln. Go on and tell Price what’s up, let him decide how to proceed. Sam should be done with the post soon, so I’ll come in the minute I have the preliminaries. And, Lincoln? Don’t tell anyone about this. Fitz and Marcus are fine, but no one else. Price is going to call the shots from here, okay? We’re going to have media crawling all over us, and we don’t want to make a misstep.”

“You think it’s the same guy?”

“I don’t know. Until Sam finishes the post and we run all the evidence, there’s no way to know. But the posing, the staging, the sexual assault—we may be dealing with more than a simple predator.”

“A serial,” he said, and she heard the teeniest bit of excitement in his voice.

“Possibly. And that, my friend, is top secret information. I’ll be there shortly. Be good.”

“You, too. Oh, hey. There’s a big front headed our way. We’re supposed to have bad weather for the next few days. Be careful.”

Taylor clicked off the phone, tossed the cigarette under the wheel of a relatively new Mustang convertible. Lincoln wasn’t kidding. The sky was darkening, and she could smell the storm; the dry tang of rain getting stronger by the minute. She looked to the west, saw the first lightning strike. Maybe the storm would improve her mood; she always loved a good rain.

Knowing she could put it off no longer, she headed back in to give Sam the bad news.

14

Sam was stripping off her gloves and shield when Taylor walked back in. Her heart reached out to her friend. Taylor was exhausted—that much was readily apparent. Her hair was spilling down from her ponytail, her shoulders were slumped, and there was no bounce in her step. Her eyes were so gray Sam thought rain could pour out of them at any moment, and the smudges underneath were getting worse. She looked as if she had a cold starting on top of it all; she’d been sniffing for most of the afternoon. Sam went to her and surprised her with a quick hug. Taylor hugged her back, quick and hard.

“You look like crap, Taylor. You need to get some sleep and some sinus medicine.”

“Thanks, Mom.” She gave her a halfhearted smile. “I don’t have good news.”

“Neither do I. You want to go first?”

“You go on ahead.”

“Well, this one’s cause of death was definitely from the stab wounds. There were two deep ones, got right into her heart. She didn’t suffer long. The other wounds are perimortem, and different. They’re vicious, ragged wounds with notches, two more in her chest and one right in the gut. Just missed her liver. From the clean stabs, it looks like he used a regular knife with a serrated blade; the flesh on one side of the wound is torn.”

“And the others?”

“Same knife, I think, but he turned it after it went in. Spun it around. A little extra to make it hurt worse. There’s no way to know for certain which were first, but there was a lot of bleeding. She was alive for the torture, unfortunately.”

Taylor blew out a breath. “You’re saying ‘he’ a lot.”

“She was raped, repeatedly, over a length of time. There was enough tissue left to show healed tears on both her vagina and anus. There were also fresh tears. Couldn’t get any semen—it was washed away by the river—but she was being roughed up for a while before she died. And...”

“And?”

“She may have been poisoned as well. She looks a lot like Shelby on the inside. Her liver has the same characteristics. I took all the samples and had them run over to Simon. I asked him to drop everything and analyze them.”

“Sam, this isn’t good. Same guy, same point of origin? I’m praying we don’t have a serial on our hands.”

“You had news to share, too. What was it?”

“Lincoln got an ID. Her name is Jordan Blake. She’s a junior at Vanderbilt.”

Sam was quiet for a moment, then whispered under her breath, “Damn.”

“Yeah, damn is right. Do you have any idea when she was killed?”

“She hadn’t been in the river for more than a week. Four or five days would be my guess. He could have tossed her in anywhere south along the Cumberland, and it took her this long to float upstream, or she was weighted and broke free. My bet is the latter. He threw her away like a piece of trash, Taylor. There wasn’t any of the reverence or—” She paused, bit her lip. “I don’t want to say gentleness of the other kill. But Shelby’s death didn’t seem as careless. This one—Jordan—she pissed him off.”

“Was she killed before Shelby?”

“I don’t know. I can’t say for sure, not with the water damage.”

“What about the herbs?”

“Like I said, I can’t be sure whether they were herbs, though the stuff I scraped off looked similar to what we got off Shelby. The thing is, if the composition is the same, he was with the body after she washed up on shore. Further proof he weighted her, then let her come to the surface to be found.”

“Or...wherever he had her, he unweighted her, scattered the herbs on her back, and let her float in.”

Sam thought about that for a minute. “Okay, that works for me, too. If he had spread them after she was on the bank, they wouldn’t have been wet, and these were definitely mucky. But recent, the water would wash them away quickly. He was right there, Taylor.”

Sam watched Taylor fiddle nervously with a ring on her right ring finger. It was a thin silver band, very plain. She’d picked it up in Hawaii on a brief vacation and hadn’t bothered to take it off since. It held some symbolic meaning to her. One night, when they’d been very drunk, she told her it was a circle of life and a circle of death. Sam was aghast when Taylor said she didn’t want to take it off, that it was a constant reminder of her failings. Sam had to resist the impulse to reach over and wrench the ring right off Taylor’s finger and throw it in the trash. Taylor Jackson had no failings that Sam could see, other than caring too damn much about her job.

“Taylor, there’s one other thing.”

“More? What?”

“She was pregnant. About six weeks along.”

Taylor could do nothing but stare. The thoughts were flying, bouncing off each other like bumper cars. None were coming together.

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