All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [39]
It was quiet this morning. Granted, most of the weekly departmental meetings were going on, so none of the brass was around. She wondered briefly if anyone had found out about Betsy, but dismissed it. That wasn’t her job right now. Her job was to look over the Rainman case.
As she passed the Homicide office, she felt a moment of bitterness toward Baldwin. Her most interesting murder in weeks had been slipped right out from under her, another tasty case whisked away into FBI jurisdiction. She understood, but she couldn’t stop the sense of disappointment. Not that a serial rapist was anything to sneeze at. On the contrary, the Rainman had proved so elusive over the past few years that she welcomed the chance to look at the files, see if she could find anything that the other detectives had missed.
But she wished, for a brief moment, that she was out on the road, tracking the Southern Strangler.
She walked through the overcrowded Homicide office. Even though a number of detectives from each of the three shifts had been moved to other offices, discarded junk remained. There were still sixteen tiny workstations packed into the room, but carpenters had begun reassembling the cubicles to make the spaces larger and more open. They’d end up with ten or so workstations: a little more private and a lot less cramped. She couldn’t wait for things to be done.
With the reorganization, Taylor had moved up in the world. She’d taken over Captain Price’s office when he’d moved to the second floor to be with the rest of the administrative corps. The desk, the chairs and, more important, the door, were now hers. She’d offered to share with Fitz, allowing him some privacy when she wasn’t around, but he’d turned her down. He liked being out with the troops. Though she was a scant few feet away, she understood. The separation was palpable, and was taking some time to get used to. She still started when anyone knocked on the door frame. She rarely shut the door, it seemed only fair that she have the same lack of privacy that her detectives had.
The normally bustling office was peacefully silent. She knew two of her detectives, Marcus Wade and Lincoln Ross, were in court this morning. She’d sent Fitz home to get some sleep. The rest of the night shifts had gone home. She had the place to herself.
She was used to solitary time, almost always welcomed it. With Baldwin around, that was changing. He spent a lot of time working from her home. His technical transfer to Nashville’s field office as the mid-state profiler meant he could curtail his travel, make his own hours, participate in cases that interested him. If a major case popped, like the Strangler, he was pulled in to work it. He was still the FBI’s leading behavioralist, albeit one in semiretirement.
They weren’t officially living together, but he’d taken over her home office, and she was secretly pleased with the messy decor. She felt like she belonged to someone for the first time, and if that meant he messed up her office, so be it. He also messed up the kitchen, but she’d forgive him just about anything if he cooked dinner. So many nights she came home tired and unwilling to put out that extra effort.
Since the “incident,” as she liked to call it—it was nicer than blurting out “when I got my throat cut”—she found herself more tired than usual. The doctors said that was normal. The gash in her throat had severed an artery; her blood loss had been exponential. “You nearly died,” they said. “Give yourself a break,” they said. “The body doesn’t bounce back that easily.” It had taken three months before her voice had returned to normal. Always a bit throaty, she was now downright husky, which Baldwin loved. He teased that she would make a great late-night radio announcer, or a phone-sex operator. She ignored his jibes, and worked hard on her rehab. There was a time when they thought she’d never