All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [4]
Fitz swept a beefy arm up and looked at his watch. The chase had been going on for nearly two hours now. “They put that spike strip down about five minutes ago. Wheels should start coming off here soon.”
“There you go.” Marcus pointed to the screen, where a large piece of tire had flown from the back wheel of the Jag, narrowly missing the pursuit car. His brown eyes were shining, excited. Fitz gave him a grin, the kid was just so young.
“You ever done a chase, Marcus?” he asked, leaning back, arms over his prodigious belly.
“No, but I have done all the training for it. I can drive, man, I can drive.”
“Remind me not to give you the keys. It’s over now.” Lincoln Ross stood and stretched, brushing invisible wrinkles from his charcoal-gray Armani suit. “He starts running on rims, they can do a Pitt Maneuver and knock him out. See, there it is.”
The pursuit car slipped up on the Jag like a black-and-white snake, then gently bumped the back right fender. In a textbook reaction, the driver of the Jag spun out, slamming into a guardrail, losing a fender, and came to rest facing traffic. In an instant, vehicles surrounded him, cops with long guns and sidearms pointed at him. No escape.
The TV anchors congratulated themselves on a story well covered, predicting it would be anywhere from five minutes to five hours before the standoff would be over. Promising not to break away from the coverage until there was a resolution, they brought in the experts, a former police officer and a hostage negotiator, for the requisite public speculation of the criminal’s past. A producer somewhere in New York turned off the five-second delay a moment too soon, and the detectives stared as the door to the Jaguar opened. The suspect jumped out, dragging a woman out of the driver’s-side door by the hair.
There was frantic movement on the ground, a quick tightening of the cordon around the kidnapper. The suspect looked up in the air, making sure the overhead helicopter had a moment to focus its long lens on his grinning face. He pulled the woman upright, lifted his arm and shot her in the head. He was gunned down before she hit the ground, the pandemonium obvious. The network went black for a heartbeat, then focused on the face of the shocked anchor. He looked green.
“Like I said, damn glad we don’t live in California,” Fitz grumbled.
The phone rang and he answered, listening carefully while jotting a few notes. “We’re on it.”
“What’s up?” Marcus had leaned so far back in his chair that he threatened to tip over on his back.
“Body out in Bellevue. I’ll go. I’ll call Taylor from the car.”
Lincoln and Marcus were up immediately. “We’re coming, too,” Marcus said. “I know I don’t want to sit around here anymore. Do you, Lincoln?”
“Hell, no.”
They marched dutifully from the office, gathering suit jackets and keys on the way out. Lincoln grinned, happy at last for an excursion. “At least there won’t be a car chase.”
The day was stifling, humidity in the high nineties, a threat of rain on the horizon. Though it was full light, the sun was not shining. A thick miasma of haze blanketed the sky, turning the blue to gray. Nashville in the summer.
The crime scene was populated with sweating men and women. Their movements were sluggish, practiced, not at all urgent. Several wore masks to shelter their fragile sinuses from the smell. A decomposing body in ninety-degree heat could fell even the strongest professional.
They were assembled in a grassy field at the Highway 70 and Highway 70 South split, near the westernmost edge of Davidson County. The area was known as Bellevue, only fifteen minutes from downtown. Another couple of miles and Cheatham County would have the job. It was Metro Homicide who had gotten the call instead. Taylor had felt the same sense of boredom her