major than this, I mean, it was-”
“Fascinating.”
“Not exactly the word I was going for. Sick, is more like it.”
“But ‘sick’ is fascinating, Taylor. Talk to me about the neck wound. This is definitely the first time he’s done it?”
“As far as Sam can tell. She’s going back through all the wound swabs now, but she didn’t see anything like it before. Why would he do that?”
“Why, I can’t answer. It means something to him, I’m sure. We just have to figure out what that is. Are you headed to the office?”
“I am. I’ve got more for you.”
“More? What?”
“Sam ID’d the substance we found on their faces. Get this. Frankincense and myrrh. There’s more components in the matter, but she’ll have to do more testing to gather that. We’re assuming that they were being prepared, I guess.”
“Jesus. Listen, Taylor. I’m going to be at your office when you get there. I’ll call Stuart Evanson, the new head of the BSU. He requested that I take over the case last week. I told him I’d wait, see if it solved or you asked me in. We’ll officially offer every power we have to your chief, make it legit. That work for you?”
At the moment, Taylor could think of nothing better. She’d worked cases with Baldwin before. He respected her boundaries, treated her team with respect, won over her captain, Mitchell Price, with his “It’s your case” attitude. She wanted him on the Snow White case full-time. They needed the FBI resources, anyway.
“I’m cool. I’ll see you there.”
“Taylor?”
“Yeah, hon?”
“Thanks for last night.” His voice rumbled in her ear, and he hung up before the blush could spread to her capillaries. Damn the man already. She wasn’t in love; she was in heat. That’s what all this was about.
Taylor navigated in four-wheel drive, forced to take her time to get downtown. The plows were working the streets again, the salt trucks followed dutifully. Abandoned cars littered the roadways; the tow trucks couldn’t get to them, so the plows were pushing large drifts against the driver’s-side doors that reached to the side mirrors. If the temperature didn’t rise soon, it would take days to get them unburied.
She tried to drive carefully but was impatient with the roads. Aside from the plows, four-wheel drives were the only things moving. The hospitals had put out emergency calls for people who had trucks and SUVs to help staff get to work. It was surreal, an all-white landscape with little movement-the vehicles like desultory ants after an outsized picnic.
Swerving around a public works truck, she whipped off the highway past the Tennessee Titans stadium, LP Field, and crossed the bridge over to Third, where her offices within the Criminal Justice Center waited.
She pulled into the parking lot too fast, skidding on the ice and nearly taking out a lamppost. Her pulse took a few beats to get back to normal. She hadn’t been paying attention. Again. That was all they needed, for her to wind up wrapped around a pole. She recognized a few other vehicles-Metro police didn’t get the day off when the city was snowed under.
Calmed, she got out of the truck, made her way carefully across the street and up the stairs that led to the back door of the CJC. She passed the ubiquitous ashtray and felt virtuous-she’d finally managed to quit. It had been three months since her last puff. She fumbled in her pocket for a minute, trying to get a hand on the plastic pass card that would allow her into the building. Her gloved hand was too bulky to feel anything. Swearing under her breath, she took it off and delved deep into her pocket. Her bare fingers hit hard plastic. Triumphant, she swept the key card and stamped her way into the building.
Some cruel individual was subjecting the third floor to a bastardized version of their child’s Christmas recital; strains of children’s wavering voices streamed from the fingerprint room, mixed with a heavy rap beat. The resulting discordance made a headache take root behind Taylor’s right eye. Muddy puddles of water trailed four feet into the hallway where people hadn’t knocked the snow off their boots. Clumps had collected, melting on the cream-colored linoleum. After the fact, someone had used his head and spread a copy of the morning’s Tennessean on the floor. Glancing at the headline regaling the Snow White Killer’s latest victim, Taylor tapped her boots against the wall, dropping the excess snow on a picture of the Bicentennial Mall, then stepped around the puddles and followed the hallway toward the homicide office, leaving the wailing music behind her.
Lincoln Ross rounded the corner from the opposite direction. Tall, handsome, with three-inch dreadlocks, he gave her a gap-toothed smile that hit her deep.
“Yo, LT, what up?” He gave her five, up high, down low, and she laughed at him, cheered instantly by his enthusiasm.
“And what’s up with you this morning? You’re awfully chipper.”
“Hey, you know, it’s a thang.”
“Am I to infer that the ‘thang’ is of the female persuasion?”
Lincoln grinned like a schoolboy. “Why, yes, I believe you could in-ferrr that if you’d like. Oh, sorry. I wasn’t supposed to dangle the sex carrot in front of your nose.”
She raised both hands and laughed. “Well, I’m not doing so good abstaining on my end, so don’t worry about it. What’s with the ghetto speak?”
Lincoln rolled his eyes, went back to his usual elucidated drawl. “I’ve been with my new C.I., the kid who’s ratting out Terrence Norton.”
“Oh, great. What’s Tu’shae up to now?”
“He’s hopping, actually. He scored a DJ gig in South Nashville. A lot of Terrence’s gang hang out there. We’ve got a good stakeout going with the TBI; they’re being very cooperative. But Tu’shae won’t talk to them, he’ll only talk to me. So I’m stuck ferrying all the information through to the TBI boys and girls.”
Damn the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Why couldn’t they do their own work? Cooperative or not, she needed Lincoln for these new murder cases exclusively.
“Do you have anything we can use? I’d really like to get Terrence Norton out of our hair if we can.”
“Not yet. Tu’shae hinted that Terrence is controlling the drugs running through the club, but he’s got nothing to back that up.”
Administrative bullshit, that’s how Taylor saw the ongoing situation with the local gangster, Terrence Norton. He’d been plaguing her for three years, starting as a kid with a bad attitude and a minor rap sheet. As time passed, he got stronger, more jaded and in more trouble. They’d almost nailed him for jury tampering a few months back, and the TBI had to take over the case. Lincoln was doing a great job running backup from Metro’s side, and she told him so.
Terrence was an annoyance. Taylor dismissed him from her mind; today just wasn’t the day to deal with minor miscreants.
“Let’s move on to bigger and better thugs. Are Fitz and Marcus here?”
Lincoln made a vague gesture toward the door to the homicide office. “Yeah, they’re in there. You want some coffee or something?”
“No. You might want to wait, too. Tossed my cookies already this morning, wouldn’t want to put you in the same situation. Let’s go.”
Chastened and intrigued, he followed her into their warren office and went to his desk.
Taylor’s team was a force to be reckoned with. Lincoln Ross was her computer guru, an insightful and intriguing man. His jocular seriousness was a perfect counterbalance to her ferocity, and he’d been the voice of reason too many times for her to count. He was one of the few people that she trusted implicitly.
Lincoln was partnered with Marcus Wade, the youngest detective on the force. Marcus was forced to confront his demons publicly; his lanky frame, floppy brown hair and Roman nose had garnered more than one confession from the opposite sex. He had grown as a detective, and Taylor knew how much he admired Baldwin’s profiling work. She was always worried that she might lose him to the FBI; his instinctive skills could be honed into a sharp point with the right training. He walked the line, happy to take on assignments, soaking up investigative methods like a sponge.
Sergeant Peter Malachai Fitzgerald, known only as Fitz to the troops, was her second in command. Half father figure, half mentor, he’d been the one cheering the loudest when she’d been bumped to lieutenant, and was
