be able to conquer her issues that way.”
“What was the issue?”
“It seems Miss Corinne might have been dallying in someone else’s pool, if you know what I mean. Any chance you ran DNA on the fetus? She was having some sort of freak out about the baby. Was having full-blown panic attacks.”
“Of course. We’ll get all the results back at the same time. That’s interesting about Corinne’s pathology. I heard of a case like that in medical school. Woman was convinced she was carrying the anti-Christ, they had to keep her sedated because she kept trying to carve the fetus out of her stomach.”
“She was having an affair with the devil?”
“Not that I know of, unless the devil lives in New Jersey and is named Dave. They were a completely normal couple, she developed this pregnancy psychosis after it came to light that she’d been sleeping with her husband’s brother too and didn’t know who the father was. I think the case study concluded that she was just bonkers.”
“Nice, round catch-all medical term, that. Bonkers.”
“Well, I’m a pathologist, not a psychiatrist. Speak of the devil.”
Taylor turned. Baldwin was standing in the door, his tall frame filling the space completely. Arms crossed, he rested his right shoulder against the door frame. She smiled at him. He grinned back.
“You are a very bad girl. Hi, Sam.”
“Aw, how come I never get to be the bad girl?” Sam pouted and tossed a balled-up piece of paper at Baldwin, who caught it and expertly shot it into her trashcan in one sweeping motion.
“Show-off,” Taylor and Sam said in tandem, sending them both into gales of laughter.
Baldwin joined in, his good-natured laugh reverberating through the room. When they’d finished their giggles, he took a seat next to Taylor.
“Good news. Sherry has reengineered the tapes, found the splice that was put in. It was a rather sophisticated voice track, not something your everyday hump could do. Whoever did it is an expert with cameras and editing, for sure. The evidence was just couriered to your buddy Delores Norris, with copies sent to Price and the Chief of Police.”
He settled farther into his chair and crossed his legs. Taylor noticed his socks were mismatched-one had small clocks and the other minute diamonds. She bit back the laugh; he had been pretty shaken up when he got dressed. Maybe he’d make it through the rest of the day without noticing.
She looked back up and saw he’d been watching her, a crooked half smile on his face. He knew about the socks. He made a gesture with his right hand she’d come to recognize as his nonverbal rendition of “not important.”
“A couple of copies might have slipped the Net, may show up on the local and national noon broadcasts.”
Taylor felt the relief bloom in her chest. “Thank God.”
“Don’t be thanking Him, thank me.”
“You know what I mean. Thank you, of course. Do you think they’ll reinstate me?”
“They don’t have a choice. If they don’t get in touch within the hour, I’ve scheduled Sherry for a live interview on Channel 5.”
Taylor squeezed his hand in gratitude. “So we just have to wait?”
“Yep. Whatcha talking about?”
“The Wolff case. Sam has pulled a fast one, slipped some DNA slides into the system. Corinne Wolff was having sex with someone, and hopefully we’ll find out who. The husband first said they hadn’t had sex for a week before her death, then remembered they did right before he left town. But looking at the timeline, if there was active enough sperm for a DNA run, she must have had sex with someone after he left on Friday morning. Think the timing works, Sam?”
“Well, if she died Saturday morning and we pulled motile but nondiscernible sperm at the post Tuesday morning…it’ll be hard to prove an exact time, but I’m guessing she had sex with someone superlate Friday night or right before she died on Saturday morning.”
“And Todd Wolff left early Friday.”
“Ask Baldwin about the pregnancy psychosis,” Sam said.
“I need to run it down for him first-I haven’t talked about the case with him yet. He was in Virginia until yesterday.” A current ran through the room as if they’d hit a fuse box. Aiden. God, she’d forgotten he was out there. She didn’t elaborate, and neither did Baldwin. Sam picked up on the uncomfortable silence, but was wise enough not to ask.
Taylor turned to Baldwin. “Let me give you a quick precis of the case. Corinne Wolff, twenty-six, seven months pregnant with a son, her second child. Husband allegedly out of town. She was found Monday morning, beaten to death with a tennis racquet in her bedroom. She’d been dead two days.” She looked at Sam, and saw the shadows in her eyes. The Wolff crime scene still bothered both of them. Taylor continued.
“Dead two days with her eighteen-month-old daughter wandering around the house, tracking blood everywhere. The husband left Friday, didn’t talk to her all weekend. Temp shows she was killed early Saturday morning.
“Second round of look-sees into the house uncovers a sex basement where the Wolffs were making amateur porn. The reports I’ve gotten indicate that Corinne was a relative latecomer to participating, she’d always run the cameras. I just found out the girls on the video are underage, part of a pretty twisted secret society that’s running through the private schools around town.
“Corinne had high levels of lorazepam in her system, and now the news comes that she had viable semen in her. Wolff left her blood on his truck and in the basement, so we arrested him. Her sister is on the news screaming about our idiocy in investigating the case. Thanks to Miss Sam here, DNA is being run as we speak.”
Sam took a bow from her chair.
“I interviewed Corinne’s OB and her psychologist, and had a chat with her mother. The mom thinks she was having an affair, the docs claim she was having a hard time with the pregnancy, was suffering from a sort of claustrophobia about having the baby inside her. It was so bad that they needed to prescribe benzos to keep her calmed down. It’s an incongruity in the case. By all accounts, this woman was a health nut. She was seven months pregnant and still competing in her local tennis tournaments. The house was filled with all-natural foods and cleaning products. The basement, on the other hand, was this crazy sex den, full of camera equipment and sex toys. Corinne was leading two lives, no question about it.”
“Do you think her husband committed the murder?” Baldwin asked.
“It seems like the most logical place to turn. At least in the beginning. Now there are all these complicating factors. He got back from his trip a little too quick for my taste, and he’s been awfully nonchalant about things so far. Now that we can charge him with a couple of additional sex crimes, I’m thinking that might loosen his tongue. He insists he didn’t kill his wife, but there’s some pretty decent evidence to the contrary.”
“The baby isn’t his,” Baldwin said.
Taylor looked at him. “What?”
“The baby. It wasn’t her husband’s. I’d bet anything that she was pregnant by someone else. That explains the erratic behavior, the sudden dependence on psychotropic medications, the psychosis-based claustrophobia. It all fits. And if I’m right, her husband might have caught her, either in the act with her lover or just after, and killed her in a fit of fury. Pretty classic scenario, actually.”
Taylor smiled. “That’s exactly where we’ve been going with our theories. When I interviewed Corinne’s psychiatrist, she mentioned that Corinne may have had a lover. For all I know, we might have two bodies. Wolff might have caught her in the act with another man, beat her, killed the lover, then transported his body somewhere. It would explain Corinne’s blood in his truck, that’s for sure.”
Baldwin was nodding his agreement. “You’re on to something, Taylor. Did the crime scene techs find more than one type of blood?”
Taylor looked at Sam. “The DNA won’t be back on that immediately, I assume?”
Sam shook her head. “Only threw in the autopsy slides, not the evidence collected at the scene. Sorry.”
Taylor shrugged. “So no idea. I’ve been out of the case for over twenty-four hours. Fitz might have solved it already.”
“You’d have heard,” Sam said kindly. Taylor shot her a dirty look.
