J. Ellison: All the Pretty Girls

“Guess.” Taylor shaded her eyes, watching Baldwin slink through the crime scene, an overgrown cougar smelling fresh blood.

“He’s here to profile the killer because there’s a pattern,” Fitz answered, following Taylor’s gaze. There would only be one reason for a profiler to be playing in their sandbox.

“Two before her. We have a possible ID at least. Jessica Ann Porter. From Mississippi. Where’s Lincoln?”

“Back at the car with Marcus.”

“He needs to work his magic on the computer. Tell him I want to have all the information the feds have on these murders. The first was the girl from Alabama, the coed that went missing and was found in Louisiana in April. The second one was taken from Baton Rouge in June and dumped in Mississippi. Have him pull all the particulars, and let’s see what we have to work with. The feds held back information on the cases, including the fact that the killer is transporting a hand from the previous victim to the new dump site. I’m sure Baldwin will share all that he knows, but I want to have our own file going on this guy.”

“You sure he’ll give you everything?”

Taylor winked and gave Fitz a full-watt smile, her gray eyes flashing in the white air. “I’m sure.”

Taylor was putting the finishing touches on a Bolognese sauce. She tasted, stirred in another spoonful of oregano, tasted again. Hmm. Garlic. Another clove went into the pot and she shut the lid, savoring the rich spiciness that wafted through the steam.

The light was failing outside, darkness rapidly approaching. She busied herself cutting up a fresh five-grain baguette, wrapping it in foil and setting it in the warming oven to toast. She took a sip of wine, a lovely Chianti from the Montepulciano region of Tuscany that she’d discovered with the help of the owner of her local wine store. She called the man Geppetto because of his resemblance to the cartoon version of Pinocchio’s father. He was a kindly man with a droopy gray mustache and excellent taste in Super Tuscans. He loved the nickname, but allowed no one but Taylor to bestow it upon him. She smiled and took a deeper drink.

With nothing to do but wait for the sauce to finish cooking, she sat at the kitchen table, sipping wine and watching the lightning bugs hover over her deck. Her home was simple, a log cabin she’d bought for herself years earlier, cozy, tucked in the rolling hills of the Tennessee central basin. She had deer and rabbits, and had seen a fox with her kits trailing behind earlier in the year. Privacy, quiet, all the things an overworked homicide detective needed.

Her thoughts drifted, inevitably, to the earlier crime scene.

Sam had directed the scene, gotten Jessica’s body ready for transport. The body, dehydrated and warm, had proved difficult to handle, and the transporter had lost his grip when they brought her up to the gurney. He dropped the head of the bag, and the flies had buzzed angrily. Taylor cursed the muggy weather-death wasn’t easier in the cold, but it was more bearable.

What kind of killer were they dealing with? Consensual sex, then strangulation and mutilation, like a bad date gone horribly wrong. Taylor knew Baldwin’s profile would fill in some of the answers.

Jessica Porter was being autopsied in the morning. Taylor would be there, a show of respect as well as an attempt to get ahead of Jessica’s killer. Clues were always available-even the most fastidious killer left something of himself behind. The fact that this could be his third murder was upsetting, to say the least.

The missing hands bothered her. Death as a rule was never pretty. Taking the girl’s hands was an obvious attempt to conceal her identity. Dropping her in a lonely field in ninety-degree heat would do the rest. But why in the world would he deliver the hand of the previous victim to the new crime scene?

Taylor was caught off guard when Baldwin explained the killer’s signature. She’d asked the obvious question. Where is the other hand?

He’d given her a mirthless laugh. “That’s the question we all want to figure out.”

They could have easily missed it. Hell, they’d gotten lucky. The Realtor who was listing the land for sale had dropped by to put a new number on his sign. He was overwhelmed by the smell of rotting flesh, and had called the police when he found the body. Fate had been on their side this day. If it weren’t for that they might have missed Jessica Porter for a few weeks, maybe more. Enough time for the heat and the bugs and the vermin to do their job, making it very difficult to identify the remains. The killer was no dummy.

But they’d found Jessica, and now they had a line on the killer. Taylor was wondering about the connection between Jackson, Mississippi and Nashville when she heard the front door open.

“How’s my favorite debutante?”

She shot a nasty look toward the owner of the boisterously deep voice, which made him grin. Covering the few yards to her in three quick strides, he grabbed her and pulled her into a rough embrace. She nestled her nose in the hollow above his collarbone and sighed. He smelled good, fresh. There was no scent of lingering death, just soap and cedar. She nuzzled him once more, then pushed him away, hard. He stumbled back, putting up a hand like he could stop the torrent that was about to come.

“Dammit, Baldwin, why didn’t you tell me?”

“We’re having pasta, I presume? It smells great.”

Her look was murderous and he gave her a sheepish shrug. “What did you want me to do, Taylor? How was I supposed to know he was going to come to Nashville? The Porter girl went missing three days ago, and I didn’t get the call right away. Next time I’ll be sure to roll over and casually mention that a girl has been kidnapped in Mississippi, you might want to be on the lookout for her body here in town. Hell, Taylor, give me a break. I didn’t have a clue where he’d be heading. I didn’t even know it was the Strangler until I looked at her body.”

He reached out as if to stroke her cheek, but she turned away and went to the stove. She busied herself stirring the sauce.

“C’mon, sweetie. If I thought I had a handle on this guy, I would have told you sooner. He hasn’t been active for a month. In the wind, totally. We have so little to go on, things are being held together with a wing and a prayer. He doesn’t give us a lot to work with. Missing hands and dead bodies.”

Taylor turned back to face him. His green eyes were clouded with worry, the salt-and-pepper hair standing on end. She knew that he’d been running his hands through it, trying to make his mind work harder.

“Missing hands and dead bodies seem like an awful lot to me.” She sounded peevish and felt idiotic. There was no reason to be mad at Baldwin, he was just doing his job. A job he wanted her to do with him. It looked as if they were going to have the chance to work together, just like he wanted.

“Are you setting up a task force?”

“It’s me at the moment. I knew I could work with you on it, so I’m freelancing. There’re two other guys working the old cases-Jerry Grimes and Thomas Petty, I’ll share information with them, they’ll share with me. You know how it is.”

Baldwin had been acting in a consultant capacity, on loan from the FBI to Metro Nashville Homicide, for three months now. His help had proved invaluable to her cases. Of course, sharing a bed with him wasn’t such a bad perk.

She gave him an appraising smile. “You work fast. Talked to Price, have you?”

He sat at the table, nodding. “Garrett Woods made the call.” Woods was Baldwin’s boss at the FBI, and friends with Mitchell Price, the head of the Criminal Investigations Division for Metro. Homicide was his responsibility.

Taylor turned back to the stove. “I’m hungry. We can talk about this later.”