J.T. Ellison - Judas Kiss

Taylor rolled her eyes at him. “Let’s go, lover boy. The sooner you get to Quantico, the sooner you can come home.”

Taylor met Fitz in the parking lot of the Criminal Justice Center. Clouds scudded across the graying sky. Despite the beauty of spring in Nashville, the weather was wholly schizophrenic. Sunny one minute, stormy the next. She took off her sunglasses and slipped one temple into her sweater collar.

“Yo,” Fitz called, pointing to a white Chevy Impala, his official department issued ride. “I gotta run back to the office for a second. Want a drink?”

Taylor nodded her head and started for the car. She took the passenger’s side, pushing the seat back to accommodate her long legs. Fitz disappeared into the bowels of the CJC and returned a few minutes later with two Diet Cokes. He slid into the driver’s seat, handed over the soda. She cracked the lid and sipped, then put the can between her thighs.

The sun popped out for a brief second, enough to blind her, so she put on her new Ray-Bans, a purchase she made in the duty-free in Milan’s Malpensa airport. They were wide and black and made her feel glamorous, a tiny homage to her new European sentiments. Traveling in a foreign country with a native speaker of the language had the tendency to make you feel more. She’d been on several trips overseas before, but had never experienced them the way she’d experienced the three weeks touring Italy with Baldwin.

She was having trouble acclimating. She missed the slow easiness of Italian life—the languid drives, the frequent stops for food and wine, the symmetrical beauty of the olive groves and vineyards and cypress-lined drives, the feeling that she was very, very young. And if she were being absolutely truthful, it had been damn nice to have three whole weeks without a single dead body.

The clouds smothered the burgeoning sunlight again, but she left the glasses on. Annoying, that’s what these transitional months were. She wanted it to be one or the other, warm or cold, sunny or cloudy.

Fitz pulled out of the parking lot.

“How ya doing?” he asked.

“I have a leak in my bathroom,” she pouted.

“I told you not to buy a new house. If you’d gotten one constructed like they should be, something solid, like those great old Victorians in East Nashville, you wouldn’t be having these problems.”

“No, Fitz, I’d just have termites and gang-bangers. No thanks. Gentrification just isn’t my thing.”

“Spoiled.”

“Not. We just wanted something…airy.”

Fitz laughed. “Airy my ass. You wanted something big enough for that damn pool table and a passel of kids.”

Taylor turned to him, suspicious. “What in the world makes you say that?”

He looked at her with one eyebrow cocked. It made his face look crooked, like Popeye full of ruddy wrinkles. “You don’t?”

“Don’t what?”

“Want to have a pack of brats with the fed.” He said it so calmly she went on immediate alert.

“Where are you hearing this stuff? I’ve never said anything about having a baby. We can’t even manage to get married, so I’m hardly gunning for offspring. I don’t know if that’s something I ever want to do.” She looked out the window, watched the edge of downtown Nashville slip away like a veil was lifted. Brick and cement became foliage. They were on West End, heading out to Hillwood. A bucolic drive through the suburbs. Was that prompting Fitz’s question?

“Okay, girlie, I’m convinced. But I’m hearing this crime scene might be a bit off-putting. If you were fixing to get yourself knocked up, I might encourage you to skip this one, look the other way.”

“Jesus Christ, Fitz, tell me what’s at the scene.”

“Parks is there. Hey, there’s a picture in the visor. Grab that, wouldja?”

Good, Taylor thought. Bob Parks was as level-headed a patrol officer as Metro employed. If there was something wild at a crime scene, he would know how to tamp it down so the press couldn’t get too insane. She unfolded the sun visor, expecting a crime scene photo. Instead, a picture of a boat dropped into her lap. She turned it around so it faced up. It was pretty, white with tall sails, sliding through impossibly blue water.

“Yes…?”

“Parks said it was a little gruesome out there, that’s all.”

“No, I mean, what’s with the boat?”

“Thinking of buying it.”

Taylor looked at the photo again. It was…well, it was a boat. That’s as far as she went with sailing. Not her forte.

“When are you planning to drive this boat?”

“Jeez, LT. It’s called sailing. And it’s for when I retire.”

Fitz clamped his mouth shut. Taylor recognized the action—he was finished talking about it. He’d warned her about the scene and lobbed a bombshell about the future; that was as far as he was willing to go. Great.

An ambulance whipped past them, coming from the opposite direction. Going to St. Thomas, she thought. She mentally crossed herself, as she did every time she heard a siren. After thirteen years on the force, five of them in Homicide, she wasn’t so jaded that she still couldn’t have some compassion for the strangers in this world who might need a little looking over.

She toyed with her new engagement ring. The post-engagement pre-marriage ring, actually. When he’d first proposed, Baldwin had given her a stunning two-carat Tiffany sparkler, with delicate baguettes parading around the platinum band. Gorgeous, but impractical. And since the wedding hadn’t gone off—no fault of her own, she’d been unceremoniously Tasered and flown unconscious to New York with poor Baldwin standing at the church waiting for her—the new ring was a representation of a second chance.

He’d arranged to slip away for a few moments in Florence, then shown up for dinner at a little place they’d fallen in love with called Mama Gina’s, a flush around the crinkles of his intense emerald eyes. To the delight of their regular waiter, Antonio, and the rest of the restaurant patrons, he’d dropped to one knee and presented her with a new ring. One that held an even deeper promise. The five Asscher cut diamonds twinkled from their platinum channel setting. Baldwin told her each diamond represented the next five years of their lives together, and he’d buy her another in twenty-five years.

Aside from the romantic notion of it, the practicality of the ring touched her. It was flat. It didn’t catch on things like the Tiffany. And it wouldn’t get in her way if she had to fire her weapon unexpectedly. The gesture was overwhelming, and she’d almost told him to find a church that very moment. He knew what she was thinking, and that had been enough. She hadn’t decided whether she was ready to try again.

She dragged herself back to reality when Fitz harrumphed at her. He was turning onto Jocelyn Hollow Road, and Taylor could see the parade of vehicles lined up at the end of the normally quiet street.

The attendance to an unnatural death often seemed a three-ring circus to the uninitiated. The entrance into the cul-de-sac was blocked by a confluence of vehicles. There were five Metro blue-and-white patrol cars. First responders had already left the scene. Whenever 911 dispatched the police, the closest fire engines and an ambulance were actually sent before the squad cars. Standard operating procedure. The clues were apparent; there was no hurriedness, no rush. There was nothing that could be done for this particular victim, so the next steps were being taken.

The why had begun.

Fitz stopped the vehicle three houses away and they exited the car, making their way to the command station at the base of the driveway. A sign on the black mailbox had the name WOLFF in curly letters. Taylor always wondered exactly why people would want to advertise their names on their domiciles. An address she could understand, but the name…it seemed silly. And a safety issue. The last thing in the world she would ever do is publicize where she lived. Of course, she wouldn’t know what name to put on the mailbox. Jackson? Baldwin? Jackson-Baldwin? That just sounded like a funeral home.