Steven Womack: By Blood Written

“Got an ID?”

“One Allison May Matthews, twenty-two years old, student at Middle Tennessee State University. No sheet on her.

Her clothes and purse were in a room down the hall, in a changing room, along with the other girl’s stuff. Money still in her purse. Money still in the strongbox up front as well, so it wasn’t robbery.”

“I could have told you that over the phone,” Hinton said.

He stared a moment longer at the scene in front of him, remembering the first time he’d ever seen a dead body. There was something about a corpse that just wasn’t real, he’d always thought. Maybe it was the strange, skewed angles that lifeless limbs often took; perhaps it was the pallor. Nothing alive ever got that shade of gray. Hinton had depended on that thought to keep him together through some gruesome nights, to disassociate from the horror he’d seen in his life.

“She wasn’t a pro,” he speculated. “Just picking up a few bucks spending money. Paying her way through school, maybe.” Hinton turned and faced Gilley. “Call her family yet?”

“Chaplain’s on his way,” Gilley answered.

Hinton stared at the wall above the girl. A single block letter-M-was inscribed neatly over the table in a crimson so deep it was nearly black.

Hinton turned. “Let’s check out the other one.”

Gilley stepped out of the room and down the hall to make room for the other two. “You guys don’t mind, I’ll take a pass. I’ve seen enough.”

“That bad?” Hinton asked.

“Worse’n the other one,” Bransford said, his voice low.

Hinton padded down the hall, the plastic booties sliding on the scuffed linoleum. Bransford followed a few steps behind, then paused as the Chattanooga man stopped at the doorway to the room.

“Jesus,” Hinton muttered.

“Yeah,” Bransford said. “Looks like the ME’s got a head start on the autopsy.”

The girl had been gutted like a field-dressed deer, a deep Y-incision down the front of her torso to her navel. The skin was peeled back, her internal organs obviously removed, scrambled, then shoved back in the cavity.

“Guy took souvenirs off this one,” Bransford said, staring over Hinton’s shoulder into the killing room. “We’ve searched the whole area, can’t find her nipples anywhere.”

Hinton gritted his teeth and exhaled sharply through his nostrils to control the waves that he felt rising within him.

He forced his eyes to travel up the walls, to where a foot-high letter L had been painted neatly on the wall in blood.

He winced slightly, turned to the heavy man blocking his way down the hall, away from the hellish scene.

“The ME’ll find ‘em,” he whispered.

Bransford looked down at the man, confused.

Hinton raised his upper lip in disgust. “They’re in her stomach.”

The blood seemed to drain from Bransford’s face. “You mean-? I mean, how do you know?”

Hinton ignored the question. “You’re going to have to leave the two of ‘em here,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his down ski jacket and pulling out a cell phone.

“For how long?” Bransford demanded.

Hinton extended the short antenna and punched a speed dial code into the phone, which began a series of high-pitched beeps. He turned back to Bransford with the phone to his ear.

“As long as it takes,” he said.

“As long as what takes?” Bransford asked irritably. “The families are going to want the bodies as soon as the ME

finishes with-”

Hinton made a shushing sound and held the cell phone to his ear. “Hank?” he said as a voice on the other end crackled with static.

“Hank, this is Howard Hinton, Hamilton County, Tennessee, Sheriff’s Department, Homicide Squad. You need to book a flight to Nashville ASAP. We got two more for you.”

Late Saturday night, Manhattan Taylor Robinson stepped out of the tiny kitchen just off the main room of her renovated SoHo loft and surveyed her guests. Against the exposed brick wall across from Taylor, her boss, Joan Delaney, leaned forward in rapt conversation with Michael Schiftmann’s editor, Brett Silverman. Taylor frowned, hoping that Joan wasn’t off on another of her dia-tribes about the sad state of the publishing industry.

Taylor decided a rescue was in order, so began weaving her way through the crowded room. Eighties dance music played at a volume just below the level that would make conversation difficult, but loud enough to keep the party’s energy level up. In one corner, a small group of editorial assistant types-the ink on their honors degrees in English and com-parative lit still wet-danced away on that thin line between professionally cool and unprofessionally out-of-control.

Taylor slid gracefully around two men engaged in a heated discussion over the upcoming New York senatorial race, smiling and nodding amiably at them but never losing her momentum so as not to get trapped, and made her way over to the wall.

“Frankly, I don’t care what happens to the independent booksellers anymore,” Joan spouted, her mass of tangled, dyed black hair vibrating in time to her words. She’d propped her glasses up on her head, a move that Taylor knew meant Joan Delaney was itching to get in a good fight with someone, anyone. It was important to stop her before she started talking with her hands. That, Taylor knew, meant the plug had been pulled.

“The world’s changing,” Joan shouted over the music,

“and the independents are dinosaurs who’ve refused to adapt to an evolving marketplace. If Amazon.com sells more of my clients’ books, then they deserve to beat out the mom-and-pop bookstores.”

Good God! Taylor thought. Brett Silverman’s father owns a bookstore in Hartford!

Taylor sidled up to the two women just as the color was rising in Brett Silverman’s pale, drawn face. Brett was in her late thirties, a couple of years older than Taylor, and had been around long enough to gain the kind of confidence necessary to deal with the likes of Joan Delaney, but not long enough to let Joan’s over-the-top opinions slide off her without leaving skid marks.

“Hello, ladies,” Taylor interjected. “Has anyone seen the star of the evening?”

“Yeah, where is he anyway?” Joan demanded, her already shrill voice rising a notch.

“No,” Brett said quietly. “He disappeared a while ago.”

“Well, he was upstairs powdering his nose earlier,” Taylor said, “and said he’d be down in just a few. I wondered if you’d had a chance to ask him how this latest leg of the tour was going.”

Brett turned, plainly relieved to steer the conversation in another direction. “I talked to Carol Gee yesterday afternoon. He drew a good crowd at Davis-Kidd. People lined up for hours.”

“How about Birmingham and Atlanta?” Taylor asked.

“We were speculating on whether the deep South was ready for Michael Schiftmann.”

Brett shrugged her shoulders, her sheer silk blouse sliding loosely across her freckled skin. “Not so good. Atlanta, maybe twenty. The Little Professor in Birmingham was a bust, though. Less than ten …”

Taylor grimaced. “Jeez, and the Times list was already out.”

Brett smiled. “Maybe once you get west of the Hudson, the New York Times best-seller list doesn’t carry as much weight.”

“Bite your tongue, girl!” Joan snapped. “We live and die by The List.”

Taylor took Brett’s left elbow softly in her right hand.

“Maybe we need to make some adjustments before the last leg of the tour kicks off. Why don’t you and I step into the kitchen for a moment and make some notes.”

“Yes,” Brett said, her eyes thanking Taylor in advance.