Balliol College behind his back.
There was a voice by his shoulder. “Hey, Earth calling Memphis! Where did you go?”
Whoops.
He turned and saw Baldwin staring at him. He realized he must look daft, his teacup dangling in his hand, eyes locked on the closed door.
“Sorry. Sorry. Got distracted for a moment.”
“I’ll say. You looked lost in thought. Let’s get you downtown, then we can go over the case.”
As if he was going to be able to focus on his job.
Eighteen
T aylor revisited the events of the morning, blushing deeply when she thought about the look on the Brit’s face when she’d walked into the kitchen. Like Paris seeing Helen for the first time. How embarrassing. She tried to put the whole event out of her mind. She needed to focus. There was a lot to do today.
The bucolic drive up Old Hickory was pleasant; the green pastures of the Steeplechase on her left, the woods where she’d chased and caught the Rainman to her right. No matter where she looked in Nashville, there were reminders of her past cases, her successes and her failures. The Rainman, a serial rapist named Norville Turner who’d terrorized Nashville for ten long years, was due for trial soon. She’d have to check with A.D.A. Page to see what the exact dates were, but she knew she’d be testifying. The bastard had clocked her in the face during his attempt to flee, and she remembered the satisfaction she felt when she punched him back. She’d knocked him out; her black eye had lasted a full week. It had been a perfect ending to a bitter and difficult case.
She crossed Hillsboro and wended her way into Brentwood. Traffic was heavy, but within ten minutes the gas station appeared on her right. McKenzie stood by a department-issued Caprice, dressed in a gray suit and light blue tie that made his eyes look dark hazel, holding two cups of coffee. She pulled up next to him, hopped out of the truck, and relieved him of one of the drinks.
“You like lattes, right?” McKenzie said.
“I do. Thanks.” Taylor was trying to cut back on the Diet Cokes, using lattes for the caffeine rush.
“You want to drive?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said. They climbed in and got situated. In addition to getting the coffee, McKenzie had brought donuts from Krispy Kreme. They were still warm. Taylor selected a plain glazed and savored it. She finished it, licked her fingers, then turned the engine over.
“That was sweet of you. Thanks.”
“No problem. The hot light was on. Figured we could use some sustenance, it being this early and all.”
“That was a kind thought. By the way, we tracked down a piece of evidence last night. Remember the Picasso monograph on Hugh Bangor’s coffee table?”
“No. What was it?”
“A catalogue raisonne, a book representing the pictures and background of the artist’s life work. There was one of Picasso on Bangor’s coffee table. Tim Davis found a print that matched a sex offender named Arnold Fay. We had a long talk with Bangor. Turns out he and Fay used to be an item; Fay was the one who broke into Bangor’s house. He left the monograph as a present, and that’s how we got the print. But Tim found a page missing from the back, so we went up there last night and had another look around. We found a second monograph, this one a catalog from an event at the Museum of Modern Art, and it was missing the back page, too. Someone cut those pages out. I’ve got a call into the publishing house to see what was on the sheet. They’re supposed to fax us a copy.”
“Hey, that’s great news. You should have called me, I would have helped. You were at Hugh, I mean, Mr. Bangor’s place?”
“Yes, but it was pretty late. We stopped on a hunch.”
“Oh. Okay.” He sounded disappointed. Taylor was starting to think that the attraction Bangor had for McKenzie might just be mutual.
He sighed. “I sort of already know about Fay. I was doing some research on Bangor, looking at his background and all that yesterday. Remember when he said his partner died of AIDS five years ago? He wasn’t telling the truth. I found his name, and looked him up, too. It was the Fay guy.”
Taylor glanced over at McKenzie. “Bangor told us all about it last night. It sounds like a bad situation. Did you find anything else?”
“Not yet. I’ve had the file pulled from the archives. But I asked Mr. Bangor about it last night. It must have been after you left. The boy was thirteen when Bangor’s partner was twenty-one. He came out to his parents and introduced Fay and they freaked. They pressed charges and Fay went down for statutory. The boy was so upset by his parents’ reaction that he recanted his affair, said it was a rape, let Fay get convicted. At least, that’s what Hugh said.”
“What’s the kid’s name? Did you run his record, too?”
“I did. Christopher Gallagher. He’s in Texas now, clean. I’ll keep following up, see if he’s got an alibi. It would be a solid motive. Though coming from Texas to commit a murder seems like a lot of effort.”
“Well, think about coming from Italy. I’m not willing to disregard anything just yet.” She decided to take a chance.
“McKenzie, be careful with Hugh Bangor. We don’t know why he was targeted, and we haven’t completely determined his role in this murder. He could be an innocent, he could be implicated. Whatever you do, if you decide to get involved, wait until the case is done, okay? We don’t need any more bad press.”
“You know?” he said. He sounded miserable.
“I suspected. And it’s not a problem, okay? Just promise me that you’ll watch your p’s and q’s with Hugh.”
He was quiet for a minute. “You know my girlfriend, the one who killed herself?”
“You’ve mentioned her.”
“It was because of me. We were engaged and I called off the wedding. I just couldn’t do it. I’d been in a relationship with a man from college for a couple of years, on and off. I kept thinking that if I just got married, I could lead a normal life. But in the end, I couldn’t go through with it. She didn’t handle the news well. It was horrible. Took me two years to stop carrying around the guilt. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“Of course not. That’s your business.”
“I appreciate that. I moved up here from Orlando to get away from it all. I couldn’t take living in the same city as her parents. We’d run into each other at the grocery store. It was awful.”
“I can imagine. Okay then. It’s our little secret. Now. When the information comes in from the publishing house, I’ll need you to go through that page, run down every single detail you can. Who, what, where, when, why and how, okay? There’s something there that can help us, I feel it in my gut. You know Lincoln Ross?”
“Sure. He’s a great guy.”
“Lincoln said you’re handy with the computer. Show me what you’ve got with this, okay?”
Once she hit I-24, she drove fast, in the left lane, buzzing around slower cars and flashing her lights at the eighteen-wheelers who strayed into the left lane from time to time. She passed the 840 loop, headed into Murfreesboro. Not long now.
McKenzie kept looking over at her, like he wanted to say something else. She waited for him, watched him out of the corner of her eye. He was staring at her, trying to be subtle about it. She finally got impatient.
“You’re staring. What is it? Do I have donut on my face?”
He blushed when he realized she’d been aware that he was looking.
“Seriously, man, what is it? You’re giving me a complex.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Your scar. Is it true, the story? About how you got it?”
Taylor subconsciously ran her right hand across her neck. She rarely thought about the scar anymore, though it was there, in sharp bas-relief across her neck, the souvenir of a crazy, desperate man. Four inches of desecrated
