J. Ellison - So Close the Hand of Death

He took her hand.

“Okay, okay. How’d the session go with Dr. Willig?”

“Victoria? Fine.”

He sensed the lie, but didn’t say anything. After the shooting, all the deaths, all those blameless lives ended, Taylor’s commander, Joan Huston, had insisted she get checked out before she returned to active duty. More than the cursory checkup required by the department after a shooting. And that meant time with Willig, Metro’s department psychologist. Taylor had spent a grand total of ten minutes with the shrink. She wasn’t in the mood to hash through the details out loud.

She looked at the ocean, the roiling waves crashing on the sand, and identified a bit too much.

Recognizing that Taylor was through talking, Baldwin sank back into the deep leather seats and retreated into his own world to check his BlackBerry. She was relieved the interrogation was over. She was still learning how to share with him. She’d been alone long enough to learn true emotional self-reliance, and the fact that she had a soul mate beyond her childhood friends could be disconcerting. She still found herself holding back, not saying everything she felt. Dr. Willig would tell her that wasn’t healthy, but she’d get there. She was going to marry Baldwin, and soon, which meant allowing those last few barriers to be battered. Thankfully, he was a patient man, and knew her well enough to back off when he felt her closing down.

They were quiet for a mile or two, until the car turned into a shell-covered driveway, the entrance to the Nags Head Police Station. The building was as informal as the rest of Nags Head-weathered gray shingles, white trim, a second story as a defense against the inevitable hurricane season flooding. The car came to a halt. Their driver got out and lit a cigarette before silently disappearing around the corner of the building.

A slim man came out the main doors, waving in welcome. He had brown hair and matching eyes, was dressed for the weather in chinos and a battered tan wool sweater.

They exited the vehicle and took the short sidewalk to him. The man smiled up at Taylor in appreciation.

“Good grief, you touch the sky, don’t you?” he said.

She heard Baldwin stifle a laugh. If she had ten cents for every time someone commented on her height…

“I try not to fly too close to the sun. Nice to meet you,” she replied.

They shook hands. “Steve Nadis, I’m the chief here in Nags Head. How ya doing?”

“Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, Metro Nashville Homicide. I’m good. And you?”

“Fine, fine. Got a whole host of strange cops and a few Feds roaming the place, but we’re all good. Come on in, I just made some coffee. Colder than a witch’s teat in a brass bra out here. Snow. This early, too. Strange weather for us. Dr. Baldwin, good to see you again.”

“You, too, Chief.”

They followed him inside the station, which held all the classic cop shop paraphernalia. Taylor felt immediately at home. There was something about being with cops-she never quite trusted people who weren’t in law enforcement. Though she’d come across her fair share of jerks behind the blue wall, for the most part, she only felt like herself around people who had been there, who could relate to her permanent mind-set. It was what made her relationship with Baldwin work so well.

They passed a wooden counter and the office assistant working behind glass, then went through a rabbit warren of hallways until they reached the door that was informally marked “Chief” with a brown-and-white placard.

The comforting scent of roasted coffee beans drifted down the hallway.

Nadis gestured to two chairs facing his desk. “How do you take it, Lieutenant? I know Dr. B here likes his black.”

“Light, please. Lots of cream and sugar.” Taylor wasn’t a huge fan of coffee, it had a tendency to tear up her insides if she wasn’t careful, but she didn’t want to be rude. She was chilled, something warm would help.

Nadis disappeared, whistling, and Taylor smiled at Baldwin. The Nags Head chief was a bit like a cheerful firefly. Fitting for a beach cop. Taylor had noticed there was a certain mentality in some of the more unique law enforcement regions. It took a special personality to live at the beach full-time, and a specific kind of person to govern those free spirits. Her own chief would be an absolute disaster in a laid-back town.

Nadis returned with the two coffees, handed them out, then sat at his desk facing them. The liveliness had disappeared from his face.

“We don’t get a lot of murders out here. I have four good people in my CID, but I knew the SBI was already involved, so we gave them a shout. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” Taylor said. “I would have done the same thing if I was in your position. Tell me, do you, they, have any leads?”

“I’m afraid not. Like I told the doc here, there’s a bunch of evidence that’s been collected, and the state boys are running the show now. Your friend’s been through a lot. Good fellow. I can see he’s been a fine cop.”

“He still is. I doubt this will derail Fitz at all.” Her tone was sharper than she intended, and she felt bad when Nadis declined his head in apology.

“Of course he still is. I didn’t mean that. Sorry.”

She shrugged it away. There were more important things to deal with. “How did he come to be here, in Nags Head?”

“We found him yesterday morning, early, wandering on the side of the road in his skivvies. Face was cut up. He couldn’t tell us how he’d gotten there.”

Baldwin interjected, “We assume they dropped him after they killed Susie. When the harbormaster found the boat, she’d been dead at least forty-eight hours, maybe more.”

Jesus.

Nadis rocked back in his chair. “A couple of agents from the west branch of the SBI found his eye earlier in the week, in that trailer near Asheville. It’s not a quick drive, over seven hours. His captor, or captors, would have had plenty of time to get him here. He was probably drugged.”

“Or he’s been here in Nags Head the whole time, on the boat. They found his eye four days ago. I wonder if the suspect just delivered the eye to Asheville to throw us off the trail,” Taylor said.

Nadis looked at her with new appreciation. “Now that you mention it, that does make more sense. Sergeant Fitzgerald was pretty nonsensical when we found him. We took him to the hospital, got him cleaned up. He couldn’t tell us much about what had happened, just his name and his badge number. He was in shock, of course. But we’d seen the alerts, called up to the FBI. Dr. Baldwin got on a plane down here, the SBI coots showed up first thing this morning, and Bob’s your uncle. That’s all we got right now.”

“Why didn’t y’all keep him in the hospital?”

“I figured you’d ask-our hospital is kind of small, and there was a food poisoning outbreak last night. They needed the bed, he was stable, so we brought him here.”

Taylor didn’t realize she was tapping her fingers on the side of her cup until Baldwin set his coffee down on the chief’s desk. “I know Lieutenant Jackson would like to see her sergeant. Can we make that happen?”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Nadis glanced at his watch. “Those SBI folks have been going at him for a couple of hours now. He’s probably ready for a break. But, Lieutenant, I need to warn you. He’s seen a lot the past few days, been through a lot. You may want to-”

“Chief, no offense, but Fitz is like a father to me. I won’t push him. But I would like to see him. If you wouldn’t mind?”

“Okay.” Nadis stood and gestured for them to follow him. The hallway seemed to go on forever, and led to a steel door. Nadis knocked twice as a warning, then inputted his code into a numbered lock, explaining as he did. “This is a secure area, we usually use it to let some of the local yahoos sleep off their buzz. We don’t have a jail, per se, here in the building, just holding cells, so this works for our needs. The corrections facility is a mile down the road.”