the scenes but didn’t match anything else in the system, which meant he hadn’t been arrested anytime in the past three years. His DNA would have been entered into the system automatically if he’d been taken into custody. It didn’t mean he hadn’t been picked up somewhere else, just that the technology was behind the game. He could have something sitting in the files waiting to be inputted in any number of states, Tennessee included, and he would be right there for the taking. Instead, they had precious little to go on.
Taylor’s head was starting to swim. There was no sign of Jane Macias. If she had been taken, she would be victim number five. If the copycat followed the original Snow White’s pattern, there’d be five more to go.
The additional eighteen murders being attributed to Nashville’s killer was too big to keep contained; the leaks began immediately. Mitchell Price and Dan Franklin were trying to handle the media, but sticking solely to the Snow White’s Nashville murders. They deflected question after question to the FBI, letting them answer just how this massive killing spree had gone unnoticed. Granted, some of the original murders had happened in the fifties, sixties and seventies, and while each city knew they’d been dealing with a kook, for some reason everyone, including the FBI, had missed it until Charlotte Douglas’s eyes got on the files. It was one of those proud days for law enforcement.
Taylor started when the door to the conference room opened. She realized that she had drifted off to sleep, only for a moment, but still… She sat up, wiped a hand across her mouth and saw Baldwin staring at her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“You need some sleep,” she replied. “How’s Charlotte?” She held up a hand. “Excuse me. Dr. Douglas.” Taylor drew out the syllables, mimicking Charlotte’s haughty lockjaw accent perfectly.
Baldwin half smiled. “At the hotel, drinking cosmopolitans in the bar with a bevy of songwriters at her feet. Some band is staying there. She’s completely in her element.”
Taylor thought for a moment. Who was playing this week? She knew it was someone big… “Please tell me it’s not Aerosmith.”
“Skinny guy, big mouth, funky scarf. That’s all I saw.”
“Jesus. How in the name of God did you get hooked up with that woman?”
Baldwin took a seat at the conference table, scratched at his forehead like he could erase the memory. “We were working a case. Late night, too much to drink-hell, you don’t want to hear this. It was over before it started. She scares me. Not a decent bone in her body.”
“Well, she wasn’t shy about the fact that she’d enjoy your bone in her body anytime you’d see fit. Stay away from her.”
Baldwin smiled. “Is that an order, Lieutenant?”
Taylor got up and went to him, plopped down in his lap and put her arms around his neck. “Yeah. ’Cause you and I have a date in a couple of days, and I don’t want her fucking it up. Got it?”
He nuzzled her hair. “Got it, sugar. Besides, you know you’re the only woman for me. I was lost that first day I saw you, sitting at your desk, up to your ears in reports and Diet Coke.”
She had the image from that moment seared into her brain. “Well, I didn’t think you were too bad yourself.” She kissed him lightly, then sighed. “I don’t know how much more we can do here tonight. I’m tired and hungry and cranky. Want to cut out and grab something to eat?”
“Absolutely.”
They gathered their coats and shut the lights off to her office. Baldwin held her hand as they walked out to the parking lot, the bitter cold making her nose run.
“What are you in the mood for?” he asked. “Barbecue? We could swing into Rippy’s.”
The thought of fighting the crowds didn’t appeal to her. Rippy’s was legendary, on the corner of Broadway and Fifth, a regular honky-tonk with a view of Nashville’s touristy party life and the best pulled pork in the city. It was a happy, crowded bar with live music and a devil-may-care attitude.
“No, I want something more quiet. How about Radius 10?”
“Oh, good choice. They changed the wine list last month. Let’s go see what they did with it.”
Baldwin drove, and Taylor watched life pass her by outside the window. Even at this late hour, people jammed the streets. Second Avenue was populated with gangbangers and reckless high schoolers trying to get into the bars with fake IDs. The old staples were gone from the strip now. Her favorite late-night haunt, Mere Bulles, had pulled up stakes and moved to a much more serene location in Brentwood, twenty minutes south of town. Instead, pop and techno music blared into the night; all-hours clubs had forced Metro to maintain a presence. She was sad to see it so lost, so different from what she’d grown up with.
Baldwin turned onto Broadway and they passed through Lower Broad, the country joints and honkytonks packed with strange faces striving to see one they recognized. The songwriters hung out here-people who couldn’t make their own records but wrote for the more famous musicians, the session players who did the music on spec for submissions, all crowded the bars of Lower Broad, plying their wares.
They turned at Union Station, swung by the Flying Saucer taproom, then turned left onto McGavock, stopping in front of the valet at Radius 10. Baldwin tossed him the keys and they retreated from the noise and craziness of the city into a cool, modern space with exposed beams and an L.A. aesthetic. A very nouveau-Nashville restaurant.
Nashville had gotten schizophrenic over the past decades. The reputation as Little Atlanta was well deserved-while the country music scene still ran the show, there were many more avenues for pleasure. The stunning Schermerhorn Symphony Hall and the First Art Center drew a more refined crowd downtown, and esoteric restaurants and sophisticated bars had opened to provide succor to the cultivated set. Taylor liked these places; they were a retreat, a way to get away from her sometimes mundane world.
They ate well-pan-seared grouper for Taylor, osso buco for Baldwin-and shared a bottle of Shiraz. Sated, they leaned back in the chairs and talked in low voices about the case.
“I’m worried sick for Jane Macias.” Taylor toyed with her wineglass, the ruby liquid swirling gently in the bowl as she twisted the stem between her fingers. “I hate this, Baldwin. I don’t want to find her like we did the others. Did I tell you Giselle St. Claire’s grandparents called me today? They were so…sweet. Complimented Marcus’s interview of them, how we’re working the case. Here they are, overwhelmed with grief because their granddaughter is dead, and they are calling to provide support and let us know they’re praying for us. Don’t get that too often.”
“Were you able to track Giselle’s last moves?”
“It’s turning into a nightmare. Marcus has hit a dead end. Giselle and her grandparents were skiing in Gatlinburg. They had dinner, drove back to Nashville. They’d done a full day, were tired and went to bed as soon as they got home. Last time they saw Giselle, she was in their living room, reading a book. It wasn’t until they got up the next morning and went to get her for breakfast that they realized she was gone. We found her before they knew she was missing. Pattern is just the same as with the other girls. They disappear out of completely normal settings, no one misses them until it’s too late. At least maybe with Jane we’ve got a chance. If we just knew where to look.”
“That’s always the issue, Taylor. Have you heard from Giselle’s mother yet?”
“She’s doing a movie in Poland, can’t get back until tomorrow. With the media swarm, she’s going to make our lives difficult. God forbid someone get between a camera and Remy St. Claire. But we can handle her. There’s something else that’s bugging me. This damn signet ring. Why would that piece in particular be missing from the evidence room?”
“It could just be lost. It’s been known to happen,” Baldwin said. He reached for the decanter, poured them each a splash more wine.
“I know. But something about it is itching at me. You’re gonna think I’m crazy when I tell you this.”
“Tell me what? Let me guess. Your dad had a signet ring.”
She eyed him, unnerved. “How do you do that?”
“Your dad had a signet ring? I was just guessing.”
“No, it wasn’t him. I think he wore some sort of ring when I was little, but it was a class ring. He lost it, I remember that. He was furious. No, let me explain. Bear with me, okay?”
“Okay.” Baldwin sat back in his chair.
“I keep having this…vision, I guess you could call it. From when I was really little. We’d just moved into the big house-”
“Taylor, that wasn’t a big house. That was a fucking palace.”
