All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [19]
“So tell me what’s happening. You got the background on Shauna Davidson for me, right?”
“I did. Wasn’t a mall rat like I thought, she wasn’t working. Taking some summer courses, but that’s it. The idle rich…” He smiled at Taylor and she shot him the bird. He laughed and continued. “She’d been out with some friends after class. No one has a lot of details to share yet. We’ll get it, don’t worry.”
“Okay then. We’ll have to report all the information to Special Agent Baldwin, he’s going to be working the case.”
“Taylor, about Baldwin.”
“What? What about him?”
He looked at her hard and she realized he knew exactly what type of housekeeping she and Baldwin were doing. Fitz had always been able to figure her out.
She blushed. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s not worry about that right now. Let’s focus on this for the moment, then we can go over all the information you got on Shauna Davidson. Let me ask you this. Is Betsy okay?”
Fitz took one last lung-numbing drag on his cigarette and extinguished it. He pulled out a pack of gum, politely offering it to Taylor. She pulled out a piece and looked at him, waiting. He took his time unwrapping the silvery stick, as if gathering his thoughts. She wondered if he was debating whether to listen to her admonition about discussing her personal life with Baldwin, but he was back in professional, not personal, investigator mode.
“I don’t have the whole story, but I got a call right before you showed up. She’s gonna make it, but they had to take her into surgery to clean something up, some kind of blood pooling in her eye cavity. He broke her cheekbone, Taylor. Beat the shit out of her.”
“That’s not his MO.”
“Nope. He usually ties ’em up and does ’em, then takes off. But this one was personal. Tied her up, raped her, then beat the shit out of her. She managed to get an arm free after an hour of struggling and called her partner, Brian Post, to come get her and take her to the hospital. It wasn’t until she was there that they called Price. Wanted to keep it as quiet as possible. We don’t need the press crawling all over this one. ‘The Rainman’ strikes lead investigator. They’d have a field day with it.”
“Brave girl, keeping her cool like that.”
“You can say that again. I talked to Post, he told me she was totally calm, cool and collected about the whole thing. Only got upset when they told her that they needed to go in and fix the, whaddaya call it…”
“Occipital orb?” Taylor interjected, making a good guess.
“Yeah, that’s it. She was upset that she’d be out of it for a while and couldn’t help with the investigation. Broken face and she wants back in immediately. Ballsy chick, that one.”
Taylor agreed. She didn’t think she could handle herself nearly as well in the same situation. She knew she hadn’t when she’d been the one in the hospital.
“So what do they want us to do?”
“They want us to go through the house and do the crime scene. They don’t even want the CSIs out here, that’s how deep this is getting buried. So far, only you, Price, the chief, her partner and me know. They’d like to keep it that way.”
“Do you have a crime scene kit with you? And a camera?”
He gestured to his feet, where a large case that looked like a tackle box sat. “Picked it up on my way over.”
“Thank you for thinking ahead. Here’s my question. Don’t you think the Rainman will get pissed if he doesn’t see his handiwork on the news?”
“I think Betsy wants to deal with that later.”
“Okay, I’m cool with that. But we need to get a statement from her regardless.”
“Post already did that. When we’re done here, we can head over to Baptist and pick it up, talk to her if she’s out of surgery.”
Taylor contemplated the back door, the lock obviously jimmied. They had a job to do, so they may as well get on with it.
“Let’s do it.”
They snapped on latex gloves, slipped soft booties over their own boots and started