Authors: J.T. Ellison
She nodded. Her breathing was returning to normal, and she opened her eyes, shocked to see how scared Baldwin looked. She gave him a weak smile and tried to make a joke.
“You’ve never seen a southern belle have a fainting spell?”
“That was no fainting spell, Taylor. You had a nice, full-blown panic attack. This happen a lot?”
“Can we not talk about this here? I’m fine.” She’d recovered enough to take a drink of the soda in front of her. Great, the waitress had seen the whole thing too. But when she looked behind her, the woman was standing at the kitchen door cracking jokes with the dishwasher. Thank God.
“You don’t look fine, Taylor.”
“Baldwin, let it go, okay?” Her voice rose and she sounded ridiculous to herself. Of course he’d recognize a panic attack; he was a psychiatrist after all. Which meant he’d want to get to the bottom of it. She just wasn’t up for analysis right now. She gave a conciliatory smile. “I’m fine, really. Just too much caffeine, not enough sleep, and I’m coming down with something. Inner ear’s all messed up. I need to get some antibiotics or something. Don’t worry about it, okay?”
He still looked doubtful, but took a deep breath and backed off. She’d talk about it in her own time. “Okay. What do you want to eat?”
“A lot. I’m starved.”
The waitress came back, and Taylor thought she could see concern on her face, but she was all business, taking their orders and bustling off.
Baldwin wanted to defuse the moment, so he tried a different tack.
“I knew you in high school, you know.”
“What?” Taylor was shocked. She knew most everyone she’d attended school with. And she’d figured Baldwin was in his late forties. She gave him a good once over, and decided he was definitely younger than that. Years had melted off in the past few days. She could now see he was much closer to her own age.
“I transferred in to Father Ryan my senior year. You were a sophomore, I think. Pretty little thing.”
She blushed. “I can’t believe I don’t remember you. I always hung out with the older crowd. Sam was dating Simon Loughley. He’s the guy that runs Private Match. He was a senior when we were sophomores. Did you know him?”
“Knew of him. I kept to myself a lot.”
“Why’d you transfer in so late? Where were you before?” Taylor realized she was anxious to learn more of Baldwin’s background. She blamed it on simple southern nosiness, but knew she was trying to get closer, to figure him out.
A brief look of pain shadowed his face. “My folks died my junior year. Car accident. We lived over by Old Hickory Lake. My aunt was on the west side of town. She took me in and moved schools on me. I wasn’t too thrilled about it, but I didn’t have much of a choice. She was trying to do what was best for me.” He took a long drink of water, and the smile returned. “She was a crazy old bat, kept after me constantly. I loved her, though, and respected her wish to see me complete my education, just like my parents wanted. She pushed me from Father Ryan into a college in Virginia, Hampden-Sydney.”
“I know of it. All boys, right?”
“Yep. I met a psych teacher there I liked, and he suggested I go on to med school. So I hit up Johns Hopkins, they accepted, then I got the JD to go with the MD and the other degrees, and here I am.”
“Where’d you go to law school?”
“George Washington. That’s how I got into the FBI, actually. I met Garrett Woods, my old boss, at a symposium on campus. He recruited me hard, and it seemed like it would be fun. So I joined up, did my fieldwork, and he pulled me into the BSU after a few years. That’s where it all went downhill.” He realized he’d been babbling, so he tried to turn it around. “What about you? Where’d you end up?”
“Criminal justice at University of Tennessee in Knoxville. My parents were so proud.” Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. “Having their only child run off to be a cop was the last thing they wanted. Oh my God, I completely forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
She shook her head. “Oh, it’s nothing. My father called me a couple of days ago. With the case and all, I managed to block it out.”
“You don’t talk with him much?”
“Nope. Win isn’t...well, we had a falling-out a few years back. When I said that my parents weren’t thrilled I wanted to be a cop, I wasn’t kidding. He was never around, anyway, like he could have influenced any of my decisions.” She was pulling away again, back into her protective shell.
“It mustn’t have been easy to be Win Jackson’s daughter.”
She looked up and laughed. “So you know all about it, huh?”
“Not all of it. Some. I was out of state when he was indicted.”
“Such a proud day for me. Four counts of interference and tampering with an election of a circuit court judge. God, I thought I was going to die. I saw it all on the news. They didn’t even have the decency to let me know what was happening until it was all over. My mom divorced him while he was inside. She remarried and moved to Aspen with her new husband, who’s some sort of ski gigolo. We don’t have much in common anymore, you know?
“But good ol’ Win spent his three years at the Club Fed, came back all changed. Righteous, full of remorse for all those years he’d ignored his only child. Decided if I was going to be a cop, damn it, I was going to be chief of police. Starts calling around, trying to find ways to get me into plainclothes. Can you imagine? A convicted felon trying to call in favors? I could have died.”
Baldwin almost laughed. The thought of Taylor Jackson needing Daddy’s help to make it on the force struck him as patently absurd. “I assume you got wind of it and shut him down?”
“With a vengeance. Had to make sure everyone I had ever come in contact with knew it, too. I was getting shit from every corner. I was very nearly forced to quit, had to stay in uniform an extra year, which really pissed me off. The worst thing about it—I
was
getting promoted. I’d passed the sergeant’s exam right when he decided to help my career along. He set me back instead. So we don’t have a lot of father-daughter time, if you know what I mean.”
“Why do you think he called now?”
“God only knows. Probably heard the director of the FBI was leaving and wanted to let me know he’s trying to get my name in the hat.”
Baldwin’s face darkened, and Taylor knew she had tripped right into his own nightmares. She decided she needed to change the subject, get back on safe ground.
“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.
The story continued, but Taylor threw the paper on her desk without reading the rest of it. She started swearing under her breath. “Of all the damn fool things to print above the fold, for God’s sake. That woman is going to be the death of me. Is she sleeping with Franklin now? I swear to God, I’m going to kill that man with my bare hands if I find out he’s even helped her across the street. The ‘University Killer’? Who decided to give him a nickname? I’m going to charge that woman with obstruction one of these days, watch me...”
Baldwin was enjoying the rant. “I assume you have a problem going with this Lee Mayfield?”
Taylor huffed out a breath. “No. Well, yes. I mean, it’s her problem, not mine. A few years back, she misquoted me in an article that nearly got us sued. She had to print a huge retraction. She’s had it in for me ever since. She’s been eating up the Martin case. Tearing me to pieces for months.”
Fitz had entered the room as she was finishing her tirade. He patted her on the arm. “Don’tcha worry about it, darlin’. She’s a full-blown, grade-A idiot, and everyone knows it. Just let it go.”
He turned the volume up on the TV. The Channel 5 anchor wore a knowing smile. Taylor was struck at how the media always seemed to enjoy reporting on a tragedy. She turned away, fuming, but looked back when she heard what the anchor was saying.
“Despite the article printed in
The Tennessean
this morning, our sources have confirmed that there has been no identification of the female body found overnight at St. Catherine’s Church. According to a spokesperson from Forensic Medical, the male victim has been positively identified as Father Francis Xavier, a recent transfer from the Boston Archdiocese.”
“Go, Sam!” Taylor threw her pen at the TV. She picked up the paper and stuck her tongue out at the headline. The tension dissipated for a moment.
Price chose that moment to return to the office to find his detectives laughing their heads off.
“I’d really like to know what’s so damn funny,” he said indignantly. The tone of his voice was too much, and the gales of laughter started again. Price tried to look stern, but giggled a bit himself; they were all getting punchy from the lack of sleep and the pressure of the case, but he quickly sobered them up.
“Okay, kids, knock it off. Has anyone slept?”