Gilley averted his eyes; he’d seen as much of the victim as he needed. Bransford stepped aside, stopping just short of the thickened pool of nearly black blood. Hinton stepped around him and stared.
“She mutilated sexually?” he asked.
“Irv said severe vaginal and anal tearing.”
Hinton turned. “Irv?”
Bransford, fatigued, shook his head and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Sorry. Irv Stover, the fat guy outside. Forensic investigator from the ME’s office.”
“He got a probable TOD?”
Bransford nodded. “Eighteen hours at least. Maybe longer.”
Hinton turned, squinted. “That means late last night, early this morning. When were the bodies discovered?”
“About five-thirty this afternoon. One of the girls got suspicious when she reported for work and couldn’t get in.
The lights and the heat had been turned off. She called the manager, who drove over, opened the place up, and found the two girls.”
“Hmm, strange,” Hinton offered.
“This part of town is pretty deserted late at night. Any potential customers would see the lights off and just keep on going.”
“You get a statement from the girl and the manager?”
“Yeah,” Gilley answered. “They’re clean. We took their statements, sent ‘em home.”
Hinton turned, gazing at the carnage before them. His thoughts turned briefly to how young the girl was, and how beautiful she must have been. He forced himself back to cop mode, to clear his mind, to observe clinically and record every image.
“Got an ID?”
“One Allison May Matthews, twenty-two years old, student at Middle Tennessee State University. No sheet on her.
Her clothes and purse were in a room down the hall, in a changing room, along with the other girl’s stuff. Money still in her purse. Money still in the strongbox up front as well, so it wasn’t robbery.”
“I could have told you that over the phone,” Hinton said.
He stared a moment longer at the scene in front of him, remembering the first time he’d ever seen a dead body. There was something about a corpse that just wasn’t real, he’d always thought. Maybe it was the strange, skewed angles that lifeless limbs often took; perhaps it was the pallor. Nothing alive ever got that shade of gray. Hinton had depended on that thought to keep him together through some gruesome nights, to disassociate from the horror he’d seen in his life.
“She wasn’t a pro,” he speculated. “Just picking up a few bucks spending money. Paying her way through school, maybe.” Hinton turned and faced Gilley. “Call her family yet?”
“Chaplain’s on his way,” Gilley answered.
Hinton stared at the wall above the girl. A single block letter-M-was inscribed neatly over the table in a crimson so deep it was nearly black.
Hinton turned. “Let’s check out the other one.”
Gilley stepped out of the room and down the hall to make room for the other two. “You guys don’t mind, I’ll take a pass. I’ve seen enough.”
“That bad?” Hinton asked.
“Worse’n the other one,” Bransford said, his voice low.
Hinton padded down the hall, the plastic booties sliding on the scuffed linoleum. Bransford followed a few steps behind, then paused as the Chattanooga man stopped at the doorway to the room.
“Jesus,” Hinton muttered.
“Yeah,” Bransford said. “Looks like the ME’s got a head start on the autopsy.”
The girl had been gutted like a field-dressed deer, a deep Y-incision down the front of her torso to her navel. The skin was peeled back, her internal organs obviously removed, scrambled, then shoved back in the cavity.
“Guy took souvenirs off this one,” Bransford said, staring over Hinton’s shoulder into the killing room. “We’ve searched the whole area, can’t find her nipples anywhere.”
Hinton gritted his teeth and exhaled sharply through his nostrils to control the waves that he felt rising within him.
He forced his eyes to travel up the walls, to where a foot-high letter L had been painted neatly on the wall in blood.
He winced slightly, turned to the heavy man blocking his way down the hall, away from the hellish scene.
“The ME’ll find ‘em,” he whispered.
Bransford looked down at the man, confused.
Hinton raised his upper lip in disgust. “They’re in her stomach.”
The blood seemed to drain from Bransford’s face. “You mean-? I mean, how do you know?”
Hinton ignored the question. “You’re going to have to leave the two of ‘em here,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his down ski jacket and pulling out a cell phone.
“For how long?” Bransford demanded.
Hinton extended the short antenna and punched a speed dial code into the phone, which began a series of high-pitched beeps. He turned back to Bransford with the phone to his ear.
“As long as it takes,” he said.
“As long as
finishes with-”
Hinton made a shushing sound and held the cell phone to his ear. “Hank?” he said as a voice on the other end crackled with static.
“Hank, this is Howard Hinton, Hamilton County, Tennessee, Sheriff’s Department, Homicide Squad. You need to book a flight to Nashville ASAP. We got two more for you.”
CHAPTER 3
Taylor decided a rescue was in order, so began weaving her way through the crowded room. Eighties dance music played at a volume just below the level that would make conversation difficult, but loud enough to keep the party’s energy level up. In one corner, a small group of editorial assistant types-the ink on their honors degrees in English and com-parative lit still wet-danced away on that thin line between professionally cool and unprofessionally out-of-control.
Taylor slid gracefully around two men engaged in a heated discussion over the upcoming New York senatorial race, smiling and nodding amiably at them but never losing her momentum so as not to get trapped, and made her way over to the wall.
“Frankly, I don’t care what happens to the independent booksellers anymore,” Joan spouted, her mass of tangled, dyed black hair vibrating in time to her words. She’d propped her glasses up on her head, a move that Taylor knew meant Joan Delaney was itching to get in a good fight with someone, anyone. It was important to stop her before she started talking with her hands. That, Taylor knew, meant the plug had been pulled.
“The world’s changing,” Joan shouted over the music,
