14 - J. T. Ellison [89]
Murder. That was the only word for it. She sure as hell hadn’t gone into the river in the middle of winter by accident.
The guests had been sent home from the church. The wedding party, stiff with worry, made their way to the homicide offices. Calls were made, people traced. The limousine service was practically raided; the limousine that had been dispatched and carried the bride into the netherworld found on-site. There were two major problems. There was no trace of Taylor in the car. Video surveillance from the Hermitage Hotel showed the license plate did not match the manifest. It was a decoy. Lincoln was running down the lists of other limousines in the area, trying to match the plates.
The arranged driver of the real limousine was long gone, disappeared into the night. A check of his bank accounts showed a five thousand dollar deposit and a Visa charge for a plane ticket to Mazatlán. The plane had left at four in the afternoon, the same time the wedding was supposed to be under way. A man matching the driver’s description had boarded the plane on time. Video from the airport came in and confirmed. A theory was formed. He had been paid to leave town.
After hours of fruitless searching, with no sign whatsoever of Taylor, their leads were diminished to nothing. The dreaded call had come right before 10:00 p.m. A white satin mule had been found on the west bank of the Cumberland River. Photographs confirmed that it matched the pair Taylor had been wearing, the brand and size an exact match to the empty box found in her hotel suite. Time stopped for them all.
Baldwin took a gulp from a coffee cup with Tiger-mart on the label. Some kind soul was refueling the troops from a local convenience store, he had no idea who. He’d been a part of rescue teams before. With no remains, at some point they would have to stop actively dragging the river. Rescue would continue searching until the body was found. And they always found the body. It might not be immediate, but time and flowing water had a way of spitting out what didn’t belong.
Inevitability at the hands of nature wasn’t a comfort to Baldwin. Scenarios drifted through his mind, visions of Taylor’s adipocere-covered corpse emerging twenty miles downriver in a month. So often, that’s how it happened. He choked back a sob at the thought, tossed the rest of the now-bitter coffee over the railing. Fuck. He wasn’t helping things by standing there making himself sick to his stomach. He needed to do something. He wouldn’t accept that she was gone, not like this.
Thoughts crowded his mind. He knew there was a lockbox high on the shelf of a closet in the bonus room of the new house that held all of her papers, her will, her wishes. He’d never looked at any of that information. She’d told him she wanted to be an organ donor and didn’t want to be kept alive if she was brain-dead, but that’s as far as they’d gotten. Would she want to be buried in Tennessee? Cremated? If they didn’t find a body, what would he do for her? Did her will cover provisions for—
“Stop!” he said aloud. “Stop it,” he said again, softer this time. He was getting way ahead of himself. She wouldn’t give up on you so easily.
Bolstered, he made his way to the command table. Mitchell Price was still on scene, waiting for some news. Baldwin approached him, taking the older man’s arm. Price turned to Baldwin, eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep. His mustache drooped, his bald pate glistened with frosted sweat.
“Captain, anything new?”
Price shook his head. “They aren’t getting any hits on anything down there, Baldwin. The river temperature is too cold to sustain her if she went in. The divers are having a hard time themselves. It’s not looking good, son.”
Why has everyone