Field of Graves(57)

“I hope it’s not too late for you?”

“I’ll take midnight margaritas with you anytime.”

“It’s wine, does that work?”

“Of course. Let me change and we can dig in.”

Though the house technically belonged to them both, Simon generally didn’t show up unannounced. Despite the fact they had bought the house together nearly ten years ago, he kept his own apartment on West End. Hypocrite that she was, Sam freely gave him her body, but wouldn’t agree to officially “live together” until they were married. It was supposedly a nod to her Catholic roots, but if she were honest with herself, she was just scared of settling down. It had always seemed so permanent to her. After the past few days she’d had, the loss and senselessness of the murders, a domestic commitment was something she was willing to think about. She was tired of fighting it, and tired of being alone.

Once she’d freshened up, they sat down to the meal, opened a bottle of wine, and Sam told Simon everything. It felt so good to talk with him, to get all her worries off her chest. He was one of the few who could understand what she went through day in and day out, and she loved him for it. They’d been bickering lately, and she hadn’t had his shoulder to cry on for a few weeks. She spilled all the worries that had built up since they’d last spoken: her fears for Taylor and her surprise at the attraction between her and Baldwin. Simon thought of Taylor as a little sister. He shared Sam’s concern, but assured her Taylor would land on her feet. She always did.

He’d cleared the table and gotten Sam settled in the living room. He came back in the room with a nervous smile playing on his face. Before she knew what was happening, Simon was kneeling in front of her, pulling out a ring box.

“No midnight margaritas, but how about some diamonds, instead? I can’t wait anymore, Sam. I want to marry you. I want a family with you. I want to spend the rest of my days making you happy. Will you marry me? Please?”

She was so shocked that he was actually proposing she barely registered what he was saying. Before she could stop herself, she’d said yes, and the ring was on her finger.

She looked down at her hand again. The diamond was huge, set in platinum and bordered by diamond baguettes. She was still trying to remember exactly what Simon had said, but all she could remember was saying yes, and he swept her off her feet and made love to her the rest of the night.

The phone rang, startling her from her reverie. She dropped the scalpel in her lap and caught it between her knees. An absurd memory flooded her mind—her father, lecturing on the virtues of abstinence when she was a teenager getting ready to leave on her first big date. He had handed her an aspirin as she was going out the door. She looked at him quizzically and asked what it was for. He replied in his booming voice, “If you sit all night with that balanced between your knees, young Simon here won’t be able to make any moves on you.” He’d dissolved into laughter, and Sam and Simon, both blushing furiously, had scurried away as quickly as possible. Her father would have been proud; she hadn’t given in to Simon’s relentless begging for another two years, the night of their senior prom.

Shaking her head and giggling under her breath, she answered the phone.

“Dr. Owens, it’s Tim. Thought you’d want to know I’m bringing in a body. Female pulled out of Old Hickory Lake this morning by a couple of fishermen.”

Sam drew in a quick breath. She hadn’t even started the autopsy of the girl they’d found in the church. She was waiting for Taylor to bring over the dental X-rays from Jill Gates’s father. Another body could be another chance of finding Jill. Damn.

Tim read her thoughts. “It’s not her, Doc. Sorry, I forgot to tell you, she’s black. Looks like a drowning.”

She blew out a breath. “Well, at least the break in the pattern means this victim isn’t part of the Vanderbilt series. No ID?”

“Actually, yes, there is. An ID card that says her name is Tammy Boxer.”

“ID card? Like a license, but not a license to drive?”

“Yep. Address is over on Dickerson Road.”

“Working girl?”

“Could be. I don’t know. Looks like she’s been under the water for a while.”

“Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll see you soon.”

She clicked off, shaking her head. Dead prostitutes weren’t a rare occurrence in Nashville. The police had actually built a database specifically for their postmortem identification. Since many of the girls went by aliases, the midnight shift patrolled their most common hunting grounds, pulling over to chat and check them out. Dickerson Road, also known as Hooker Alley, was an area with the worst offenders. The officers would go over the girls’ information and run their sheets, then take Polaroid pictures and fingerprints and note any tattoos or characteristics. They got as much contact information as they could glean from the girls, though most of it was bogus. They’d use it to track down family, or pimps, should the need arise.

This information was fed into the database, and when a girl showed up dead, she was much easier to identify. Sam had ridden along when they first implemented the program, amazed at the lack of concern the prostitutes showed when they went through the process. It seemed they didn’t realize, or care, that the police were doing this so they could identify them when they were pulled out of a Dumpster the next morning.