Field of Graves(55)
“Anyway, I wanted to go to UT. Sam went there to be with Simon, so I went there, too. Familiarity, you know? Only I’m not half as smart as Sam. She went on to med school, and I came back here and joined the force. That’s it.”
“Are Sam and Simon still together?”
“Yeah. They have been taking it very slowly. Every time I think they’re going to take the next step, something always comes up. Sam’s become the master of relationship procrastination. I think settling down scares the crap out of her. Simon gets so upset with her. He wants kids yesterday, and she won’t marry him until she’s ready to do that. They love each other, so they’ll work it out. Eventually.”
They were silent for a moment, each reveling in their new information on the other.
“So what happened with your shooting?” Baldwin asked.
Taylor was caught off guard. She stared at him blankly, visions of bullets and blood dancing through her brain. She immediately went on the defensive. “Why do you want to hear about it? Has Price said something to you?”
Baldwin shook his head. “No, no. Sorry, it’s none of my business. I’ve just been wondering what happened, that’s all. I haven’t heard the story, and I’d rather get it from your mouth than the rumor mill.”
Taylor was bristling like a cornered cat. “There’s no story to hear. We had a cop who was dirty. I found out. He tried to kill me. I shot him. That’s it.” She stopped herself before she told him everything. I killed a man who at one time I thought was my friend. And more.
Taylor’s cell phone chirped. She answered it with relief.
“Jackson...Yeah?...Okay, we’ll be there in a minute.” She clicked off. No more intrusions into her private world. All business, that was the way she needed to keep things with John Baldwin. He could be more dangerous than a loaded pistol pointed at her forehead. She felt a pang of sadness; she had enjoyed their breakfast, minus her little panic attack. She stood and gestured for him to follow.
“That was Price. Jill’s parents brought in her dental records. Time to go to work.”
46
The squad room resembled a horror flick, with zombies dominating the room and halls. It had been a long couple of days for everyone.
Jill Gates’s parents had arrived from Huntsville. They called and talked with Taylor from their downtown hotel, which had luckily made it through the storm unscathed. She told them they had found a body. Jill’s father immediately made the short trip back to Huntsville, retrieved his daughter’s dental records, and had driven the radiographs back to Nashville. He and his wife had taken Taylor’s advice to stay put in their hotel until some sort of identification had been made. They’d agreed and seemed rather calm for the circumstances. Jill’s mother was absolutely convinced that the body they had found at the church was not her daughter. She claimed she would know in her heart if her Jilly had died, and she just didn’t think it was her child dead in the morgue.
Taylor didn’t try to dissuade her. Let Sam do a positive ID, then they could deal with the fallout.
Lincoln had been on the computers all night, searching through ViCAP and the regional missing person databases while Taylor and Baldwin oversaw the investigation at the church. He greeted them with sleep in his eyes, his suit rumpled and hair flattened on one side from where he had rested his head in his hand for the better part of the night.
“You find anything?” he asked.
“Nothing yet. There are missing person flyers all over town for Jill. Someone mounted a pretty big campaign. How about you?”
“We’ve been getting calls all night about possible missing women,” Lincoln said. “Four different women, three of them Vandy students. We had to chase them all down. Two were from parents who hadn’t talked to their daughters in a couple of days. Happily, both of them called back to say they’d gotten in touch. One was a roommate who’d gotten concerned when her friend didn’t come home, but that one showed up drunk and sound asleep at the Pi Kappa Alpha house this morning.”
“That takes care of the three Vandy girls. Who’s the fourth?”
“Pro who calls herself Mona Lisa. She’s working with that program over at St. Augustine’s, what is it, Magdalene House? She’s got some sort of medical condition and hasn’t shown up for her treatments in a week. Magdalene’s worried she may have gone back on the street. I threw it to Vice. They’ll be able to track her down better than we can.”
“Good call. What else?”
“Other than our MP report rate is skyrocketing? I guess you haven’t seen the news yet this morning, or the paper? Mayfield’s on another witch hunt.” With that warning, Lincoln threw her a copy of the front page of The Tennessean. She saw the huge headline, groaned, and settled in to read, with Baldwin looking over her shoulder.
Metro Police Baffled at Murder Spree
BY LEE MAYFIELD, CRIME REPORTER
Sources within the Metro Nashville Police Department confirmed early this morning that the body found last evening in the burned-out husk of St. Catherine’s Catholic Church in West End are the remains of Vanderbilt student Jill Gates. Gates was reported missing only yesterday. Despite the attempts of the Metro Police and the lead investigator, Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, to find her before she suffered the fate of students Shelby Kincaid and Jordan Blake, the University Killer has struck again.