Steven Womack: By Blood Written

Music City’s first Hispanic female homicide investigator-

announced. “You know how my mom hates me to miss Sunday dinner.”

“I know,” Bransford said, his voice guttural and strained.

“I hate to call you all in on a Sunday, but this one’s a no-brainer. Had to do it.”

To Bransford’s left, near the door, a well-dressed, neatly groomed man in a dark suit stood with an almost military bearing. Clasped in his hands was a leather-bound, three-ring portfolio bulging with papers. Seated in a folding chair next to the man was Howard Hinton, the homicide investigator from Chattanooga.

Bransford rapped his knuckles on the wooden podium and cleared his throat again.

“Okay, folks, listen up. As most of you know, we had a double murder last night down on Church Street near Baptist Hospital. Little place tucked away in an old strip mall called Exotica Tans.”

Two of the younger investigators in the back row whooped at the mention of the tanning salon.

“As you might have guessed, there was a lot more going on in those tanning booths than the simple nurturing of melanomas.”

More hoots followed as Bransford held up his hands, palms out, for silence.

“Yeah, real funny, you clowns, except for the fact that two coeds from MTSU were literally slaughtered and set out on display.”

Bransford looked down at his notes. “The first victim was a nineteen-year-old Caucasian female, one Sarah Denise Burnham. No sheet, no warrants, no record. The second was Allison May Matthews, twenty-two years old, also Caucasian female. No file on her, either.”

Bransford looked back up, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and forced his eyes to focus on the now silent faces in the squad room. “What we’ve got here are two young girls who we figure were picking up some extra cash to get through school. We’re trying to track down someone from the MTSU

registrar’s office to get their school records, but this being Sunday, we haven’t had much luck.

“Gary’s taking primary on this one, and he’ll be assigning chores after this briefing is over. The entire Murder Squad is on task force for this one. Even though these two girls were working their way through school at a hand-job joint, they still came from regular families, and believe me, folks, there are some mothers and fathers out there right now demanding to know when we’re going to catch the animal that did this. Even the mayor called the chief’s office on this one.

And you all know what that means.”

“Yeah,” a voice called out from the back of the room.

“Shit flows downhill.”

Amid the ensuing laughter, Bransford turned to his left, caught the eye of the man in the dark suit, then nodded to him.

“This is the real reason, though, that we’re putting all we got into this one,” Bransford announced loudly, “and it’s not the mayor’s phone call. It appears from the crime scene and the results of the lab investigation that we may have a celebrity at work. Seems that our tanning salon murderer may be a pro. We’ve got a gentleman in from Washington who’s going to tell us what we’re in for and who we’re looking for.

I’m going to turn this discussion over to him now, and after that, Detective Gilley will meet with you briefly.

“Then,” Bransford added, stepping away from the podium and moving to one of the folding chairs in the front row,

“he’s going to go home and go to bed if I have to throw him in the back of a squad car to get him there.”

“Oh, poor baby,” Jack Murray cooed. Murray was the new-est member of the Murder Squad, having just transferred in from Vice a little over six months ago.

“Yeah,” chimed in Maria Chavez. “You poor, delicate little rosebud.”

Gilley turned, grinning. “How’d you guys like to spend the rest of the day Dumpster diving in the snow?”

“If you kids don’t play nice,” Bransford intoned, “I’ll have to send you to your rooms without supper.”

The dark-suited man approached the podium, opened his leather case, and spread it out in front of him.

“Quiet everybody,” Bransford growled. “Listen up.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the man said. “Good morning.

I’m Special Agent Henry Powell of the FBI. I’m assigned to VICAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and within VICAP, I’m a supervisory agent with CASMIRC.”

Powell surveyed his audience and noticed several raised eyebrows.

“I know,” he said, smiling, “and I agree. Washington has terminal acronym disease. CASMIRC is the Child Abduc-tion and Serial Murder Investigative Resources Center, which is the rapid response component of CIRG, the Critical Incident Response Group. What this means in plain English is that when a crime is committed and the local authorities decide or suspect that this crime might be the work of someone who has done this before, then I get called. Last night, I was just finishing my dinner when Sergeant Hinton, your colleague down in Chattanooga, examined the crime scene on Church Street and called me at home. It took him about two sentences to convince me I needed to get down here fast.”

Maria Chavez raised her hand, and Powell nodded to her.

“How did Sergeant Hinton get called up here from Chattanooga?”

Bransford turned in his seat and faced the group. “Hint and I go back a long way. The Metro crime lab was consulted several years ago when a similar murder occurred in Hamilton County. I called him after Gary called me to the crime scene. Then he called Agent Powell.”

“So we leapfrogged from one to the next,” Powell continued, “and, as you’ll see, for good reason.”

Powell stepped out from behind the podium and leaned against it, his right elbow cocked at an angle. “Now without giving you my complete semester-long FBI Academy course called Intro to the Psychopathology of Serial Killers 101, let me just start by telling you that the two victims of last night’s murder were, we believe, murdered by the guy whom we’ve dubbed in-house the ‘Alphabet Man.’ Any of you ever heard of him?”

Powell’s eyes wandered left and right, searching for a response.

“Good,” he said, his easygoing smile returning. “That means, for once, we’re doing our jobs. We’ve emphasized with this particular perp more than any other case in my experience the absolute necessity of keeping this guy’s signature just between ourselves. For once, the news media hasn’t put this together. If they ever do, we’re screwed.”

Powell paused, and as he did, a hand rose in the back of the room.

“Yes?”

Jack Murray leaned back in his folding chair and cradled his hands behind his head. “The guy leaves a signature?”

“Yes, practically speaking. I’ve investigated over two hundred cases in which the homicide was considered the likely work of a serial killer. In those two hundred-plus cases, I’ve seen the work of about two dozen perps and have interviewed fourteen of them after capture. In the case of each one, there was some aspect to the crime that was so unique and repeated so much that it became a signature aspect to the crimes. It was, so to speak, the guy’s calling card.”

“So what’s our guy’s calling card?” Murray asked.

Powell stepped away from the podium and over to the wall. “Detective Gilley,” he said, flipping the switch to turn off the overhead lights. “Why don’t we just show them our guy’s signature?”

Gilley nodded, then stood and walked to the small table holding a slide projector at the back of the room. As he turned on the projector-the fan clattering as its ancient motor sputtered to life-Powell slowly lowered the screen from its holder on the wall above the podium. Gilley pressed the control button, and the first slide came into view on the dingy gray screen.