wanted to start getting possessive. Sparrow was a pretty girl, prettier than she knew, trim and athletic, with an adorable crossbite. Charlotte had seduced her three weeks ago, after a long evening celebrating the close of their first case as a team. They’d done the girl thing, slipped off to the bathroom together, and Charlotte had locked the door behind them and let Sparrow go down on her while she sat on the counter with her legs spread wide.
Goodness, she was starting to feel quite warm. Mmm, maybe Baldwin and Sparrow? No, probably not. Baldwin seemed a bit too parochial for all that. But it made for a nice fantasy. This was the way she preferred to live her life, with one partner of each sex on the hook. Hard and soft, dark and light. She smiled to herself, then opened her computer, just barely pushing the image of the three of them intertwined on Baldwin’s office floor from her mind. She needed to focus. This case, this stupidly named case, was driving her mad.
She didn’t understand men who committed crimes against children. Adult-on-adult violence, yes, she could fathom that. It was one of the things that made her a good profiler-she had a certain empathy with the killers. For her dissertation she’d interviewed more than forty serial offenders, and almost all of them had given new information in their cases. One had even coughed up the location of a body-shocking, considering he’d been using it as leverage to keep his privileges.
Yes, she was good with killers. She’d excelled in her classes, gotten her Ph. D. in record time, had been snapped up by the Bureau right out of school. She’d worked her way into the BAU with a combination of intelligence and sheer guts. But working cases involving children was not her forte.
Sparrow came into her office with a stack of files.
“More sex offenders to interview today.” She barely brushed her arm against Charlotte’s shoulder as she placed the folders on the desk.
Charlotte scooted her chair back a little and swiveled so she could see Sparrow face on. She raised an eyebrow and waited in silence. She knew what was coming.
“I tried calling you last night. I thought we were supposed to meet up.”
“You called?” Charlotte feigned innocence-God, she should win an Oscar for that tone. “I must have slept right through it. Yesterday was so awful, and I had a lot to drink last night. I’m sorry, honey.”
Sparrow blushed at the endearment. “Well, maybe tonight? We could get Indian. I know how much you love it. Drink some wine, unwind a little?”
“Maybe tonight, sugar. We’ll have to see what the day brings though, right? Lord knows there’s a creep out there just waiting to be caught. Let’s go get him, yeah?”
She ran her fingernail up Sparrow’s leg, then flipped her chair back into the proper position and pulled the first file off the stack. Sparrow, firmly dismissed, hesitated a moment, then left her in peace.
Yes, this was going to be very, very complicated.
Seventeen
Nashville 8:50 a.m.
T he CJC sat baking in the late fall sun, heat shimmering off the building’s bricks. Taylor hadn’t realized just how warm it was today-after the previous night’s chill, it felt almost like summer. Crazy weather for the first of November.
People flowed in and out of the building, officers in uniform and plainclothes detectives, random strangers looking for the courts, black and white and yellow and brown, all mingling into one stew of justice. The diversity of Nashville was never better represented than in this one spot-the Criminal Justice Center in the morning.
She parked the Lumina in the back lot and headed inside, up the stairs to the landing that held a new industrial ashtray, dark gray and heavy plastic, with a slot at the top for the spent cigarettes to disappear into. Though she’d quit more than a year before, she still had cravings now and then. She had to admit it was nice not seeing used butts sticking up like matchstick men arrayed for battle from the depths of the reusable kitty litter that used to serve as sand.
She swiped her card and entered, wondering just how many times she’d followed this exact route in the past. Hundreds, thousands of times. Always hurrying into the office to work on the most pressing cases. She rather envied her old boss Mitchell Price his new late-night office hours.
The place was buzzing with activity, the hallways full of people moving between appointments. Nodding to faces she recognized, she stopped at the soda machine-she desperately needed a Diet Coke this morning. Cold can in hand, she entered the homicide offices.
Commander Huston was standing by Marcus Wade’s desk, flipping through a manila file folder.
“Morning, ma’am,” Taylor said.
Huston turned and nodded to her. The woman was no-nonsense, five foot six, a runner with muscled calves and a compact body, veins protruding in her forearms. She wore no makeup. Her hair was short and hand-styled over her ears, a light brown streaked with blond from excessive time in the sun. She’d been training for a marathon, and Taylor knew she ran fifteen miles after work every evening. She admired the dedication Huston put into her life-work and running took all of her focus and she was good at both.
And she let Taylor manage things in Homicide, which was even better.
Huston turned and gestured to Taylor’s office. The two women went inside and shut the door. Huston took the chair opposite the desk.
“Fill me in, Lieutenant. What’s happening?”
“We have some crazies, that’s what’s going on. The letter sent to the paper was marked at the end in blood with a grouping of symbols that look to be pagan. McKenzie is at the library right now, trying to make sense of them. There was a phrase under the bloody marks, ‘Blood is intensity, it is all I can give you.’ Tim Davis is running through everything now, getting what he can from it.”
“Prints? Delivery method?”
“I don’t know about the prints yet, and the letter was found on the floor in the ground-floor hallway-that’s the back entrance near the printing presses. Those doors are locked-only Tennessean employees can get inside that way. Their security guy figures someone shoved the letter through the doors, but he didn’t see it happen on film. We’ve got the tapes. I’ll have Lincoln look through them and see if he can spot anyone. What I’m worried about is the film.”
As she spoke, she tapped in the address of the video. She swiveled her monitor toward Huston, made sure the volume wasn’t overly loud. When the screaming started, she didn’t want the entire building to come running.
Huston watched for a few minutes, pale under her tan, then met Taylor’s gaze with worried brown eyes.
“What can we do?” she asked.
Taylor clicked the stop button. The screen froze, the wide-fanged mouth mocking her. “I’ve already asked Lincoln to get in touch with the company and get it pulled from the site. I can’t imagine they’ll fight us on this. I need to check in with him, see where we stand.”
“You’re meeting with the administration at Hillsboro this morning?”
“Yes, ma’am. Ten.”
“It’s nearly nine now, I’d best let you get to work. Keep me informed, especially about this movie. I’ve heard from the hospital. Young Brittany Carson is not doing well. She isn’t expected to make it, it’s just a matter of time. She never regained consciousness. Too much damage done by the drugs, I suppose. I’m sorry, I know you worked to save her.”
Taylor sighed deeply. “I work to save them all, ma’am. It seems to be a losing battle somedays.”
“Yes, it does, Lieutenant. Yes, it does. Make sure your detectives talk to the department psychiatrist by the end of business today. I’m sensing this case will be bothering everyone for quite some time. That goes for you, too.”
“I’ll pass the word along. Ma’am, I have a request. Forensic Medical is going to be overloaded on this case, and the multiple toxicology screens and DNA runs are going to take weeks if we send them to TBI.”
“Yes, they will. What do you propose?”
“In the past, we’ve used a company called Private Match to do time-sensitive work. I’d like to get permission to have the samples sent there for testing.”
