J. Ellison - Judas Kiss

Taylor toyed with a pencil. “Corinne’s mother was right. Corinne was having an affair.”

“Goes a long way toward explaining the claustrophobia that Corinne was suffering from. A psychosomatic response to infidelity. Maybe she and Henry had broken up and she found herself pregnant.”

“If they’d broken up, why did she have sex with him right before she died? And why do these-” she waved the stack of love notes taken off Corinne Wolff’s computer at him “-have recent dates? No, Corinne was still deep into the affair.”

“Well, a better question is, did Henry Anderson kill her?”

Taylor thought about that for a moment. “I think Todd did it. That level of rage-I can see Todd finding out his wife was cheating on him, maybe even learning that the baby wasn’t his child, and snapping. We have the evidence against him, the blood in his truck, on his toolbox. A stranger isn’t going to know about the drawers in her closet, that’s an intimate spot to stash the tennis racquet after you’ve beaten someone to death with it. He’s been lying from the beginning, saying he was in Savannah when he was really in Nashville, or within a tank of gas to Nashville. Why did he lie if he didn’t kill her? It’s a helluva lot easier to prove an alibi that’s real than create a false one. No, my money is still on Todd. Henry Anderson is scum, but he’s a pussy. He’s a manipulator, someone who knows what buttons to push to take advantage of people. Blatant violence seems a bit strong for him.

“But I may be wrong. It’s been ten years since I’ve had this guy on my radar. He may have changed. Obviously being in jail didn’t help him find the error of his ways and clean up. It’s entirely possible that he did kill her.”

She stopped, lost in thought again.

“You know, Baldwin, you were right. When I told you about my interview with Dr. Ricard, Corinne’s therapist, and she hinted that Corinne had a lover. You hit the nail on the head about the baby not being Todd Wolff’s.”

“What did she say exactly?”

Taylor grabbed her notebook, flipped to the pages where she’d written down her interview with Ricard.

“Here it is. ‘Instead of fighting, she acquiesced. Allowed herself to be used.’ I asked about Todd using her. She said, ‘By many people. Husband, family, siblings, lover. You’ll hit upon the truth soon enough, Lieutenant.’ Right there. Lover. She was helping Corinne deal with having an affair. Both Ricard and Katie Walberg, the OB/GYN, said Corinne was a serial monogamist. Maybe sleeping with two men at once was too much for her psyche.”

“Not sleeping with two at once. Caring about two at once. That was the problem.”

“You’re probably right. Maybe she was breaking it off with Henry and he killed her. We need to go see Mr. Anderson. Maybe he can shed some light on this.”

They stood.

“Bring your handcuffs,” Baldwin said.

“Oh, trust me. I intend to.”

T hey caravanned over to 51st Avenue in northwestern Nashville, a small section of town aptly named the Nations. It was across Interstate 40 from Sylvan Park, the mirror image of the state street routes Taylor and Sam used to trace with their parents on pilgrimages to Bobby’s Dairy Dip.

The Nations was an upstanding industrial area which quickly gave way to squalor. It was another one of those bizarre Nashville disunions, a forgotten zone in the midst of splendor and plenty. A five-block area dedicated to crime. The police presence was heavy, trying to quell the rampant drug and sex trade. They were losing the battle.

Here in this little molecular oasis of misery, the residents operated in the land time forgot. Pay phones outnumbered cell phones and were still prevalent on every street corner, graffiti-painted and piss-filled. Teenagers wandered in baggy pants and cornrows, holding forty-ounce beer cans wrapped in brown paper bags. Crime, negligence, fear, all the horrors of life seeped in under the cracks of their doors in the middle of the night, carrying away their faith in humanity. These people didn’t just distrust the police, they didn’t acknowledge their existence. Justice was meted out behind gas stations and in dirty alleyways, business conducted under broken street lamps and in fetid, unair-conditioned living rooms.

It was the perfect place for a pedophile to hide.

The left-hand turn onto Centennial Boulevard took Taylor into what could have been a war zone. Damage from a tornado that blew through Nashville in 1998 had destroyed this area, and not much had been done to return it to its previous semi-squalor. Two patrol cars slid by, both drivers put their hands out the window with their palms down-the universal cop signal for fair sailing. All is well, be careful out there. We have your back. Taylor signaled the same back to them.

Within minutes, they pulled up to the address on record for Henry Anderson. It would be generous to call the domicile a house-it was little more than a shack, the roof sagging, the windows boarded with cardboard. They could see muffled bits of the Cumberland River beyond the property. The likes of Anderson wouldn’t be accepted in a neighborhood that had expectation.

Anderson wasn’t living large. The money he was pulling in from the pornography obviously went toward something else, Taylor speculated. Drugs, perhaps. The house looked like it could double as a meth lab.

Baldwin had gotten quiet as they pulled up. She put the car into park and raised an eyebrow at him.

“This place is a dump,” he said. “Surely a criminal mastermind isn’t living in this hell. What’s he doing with his money?”

“Funny, you read my thoughts. Let’s go see.”

They exited the vehicle. Marcus got out of his Caprice. All three dressed in plainclothes, sunglasses on, looking like cops, it was no surprise that there wasn’t a single person in sight. Taylor knew they needed to show strength, not hesitate. She strode across the dust bowl that passed for a lawn in front of Anderson’s house and banged on the door.

“Police! Open up!”

Nothing.

She pounded her fist against the door again, three times, the sound echoing. Before she could hit the door a fourth time, it opened a crack. A woman peered from the bowels of the house. Taylor smelled a unique miasma of odors-fear and old garbage predominant among them.

The door opened a little wider. The woman-check that, the girl-who stood before them wasn’t smiling.

“Whaddaya want?”

Taylor could see the girl wore a uniform. She had a nametag on her left breast that read Waffle House, with Wendy written in crooked, childlike letters beneath the corporate logo. She wore a black golf visor with pinon buttons affixed to the sides. Her hair was skinned back from her face in a semblance of a ponytail, blond at the ends, the roots twisted and oily, nearly black. Her eyes were dull brown, the whites slightly red as if she hadn’t slept well or was indulging in some recreational drug.

“We’re looking for Henry Anderson.”

“Isn’t here.” She started to shut the door, but Taylor stuck the toe of her cowboy boot into the crack. She stifled a yelp as the door slammed onto her toe.

“We’d like to come in. Wendy? We’re with Metro homicide. We need to talk with Henry.”

The girl squinted at Taylor. Her teeth were showing, small and crooked, pointed inward as if they were recoiling in horror from the life their owner had chosen. Without a word, she walked away from the door.

Taylor glanced over her shoulder at Baldwin. His hand was resting on his weapon, Marcus had his holster unsnapped and his service Glock an inch out of the leather. They nodded. Taylor pushed the door open with the toe of her boot and let it swing away.