14 - J. T. Ellison [76]
“There really is. Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. Just a little something for your wedding night.”
She gave him a dirty look.
“Oh, stop it. We’re just wrapping presents. So why don’t you go home?”
She looked at him, deep in the eyes, and he sighed. “Okay. Okay. You can stay. But you still can’t go in your office.”
Moments like this, she wondered who was really in charge of the unit.
Lincoln’s phone rang, and he and Marcus stopped horsing around so he could answer it. He rolled his eyes and nodded, hanging up without a word.
“Body. Who wants to go?”
“Me,” Taylor stood. When they all started in griping at her, she shot them a look. “Lincoln’s primary. I’m just going along for the ride. It will be like I’m not even there. Let’s go.”
As they packed it up and left, Taylor’s emotions were mixed. Every time they got called out now, she expected to find the mutilated body of Jane Macias. Damn, she wanted to catch this guy before they blew the country.
Twenty-Five
Nashville, Tennessee
Friday, December 19
3:00 p.m.
To Taylor’s frustration, Lincoln talked about everything but the Snow White murders as they drove to West Nashville, looking for the address they’d been given. He refused to be engaged in speculation, insisted that she stop worrying about the case. Taylor sensed Fitz’s influence in Lincoln’s adamant state.
A follow-up call with more details had them on their way to an apartment complex on West End, to a shooting that looked like a possible suicide. It did not sound like a Snow White case, which meant Jane was still out there, somewhere. Dead or alive, Taylor didn’t know.
The address wasn’t matching up with the streets they were seeing. Taylor called in, got confirmation that the call had been off the mark. Instead, they took West End to West Meade, continued on Highway 70 over Nine Mile Hill and pulled into the parking lot of the Iroquois Apartments. They were well past West End and into Bellevue. Whoever made the dispatch call must have been new and from the east side of town—people often confused the areas west of Interstate 65. Nashvillians called it Old Hickory disease. The road appeared on all four quadrants of town. Though logic dictated you could get from one side of town to the other on the street, that was a fallacy. A confusing fallacy.
They were met by the somber white van belonging to the medical examiner’s office, a crime-scene tech and Bob Parks, who escorted them into a dingy apartment that smelled of latent fire damage, bacon grease and Clorox, an altogether terrible olfactory combination.
A bespectacled young man was standing over the body, a puddle of blood at his feet. He looked up, gave them a blank smile.
“Hi. Glad you’re here.”
“Hey, Dr. Fox.” Taylor nodded at the M.E., then stood back quietly and let Lincoln talk.
“Heard this was a possible suicide?” Lincoln walked around the pool of blood, taking it in from every angle.
The young M.E. shook his head. “No suicide on this one. Execution style. He was on his knees. Shooter put the gun to his head, pulled the trigger. See the stippling? It was right up against his temple, flat on the surface. The bullet tore through his brain, went into the wall over there. Crime Scene recovered it. It’s flattened, but there’s enough to make a match if the gun is in the system. One shot to the temple, he falls face-first and to the right, landing here.”
“A temple through and through. Need a big gun for that.”
“Yeah, it’ll narrow it down.”
Fox wasn’t much known for his chatty attitude. That was more than Taylor had heard him speak in one sitting since she’d met him, three years prior. He pointed to the body, an older gentleman by the looks of his gray hair.
“Can we move him now?”
Taylor focused on the back of the man’s head. The slight edge of comb track was still visible in the steely hair. “Was there no—” A throat cleared, and she looked up just in time to receive a ferocious stare from Lincoln, and stopped. He smiled politely.
“There’s no identification on the body?