by Brenda Novak
“Well, find him too. Make sure they know which end is up. Let’s get the perimeter of this park searched, grid by grid, see if we find something. Get K-9 out here, let them do an article search. Since the roads are already shut off, tell them to expand the perimeter one thousand outside the borders of the park. I want to see them crawling around like ants at a picnic. I see any of them hanging in McDonald’s before this is done, I’m kicking some butt.”
Fitz gave her a mock salute. “I’m on it. When Sam determined she was dumped, I went ahead and called K-9, and pulled all the officers coming off duty. We may have an overtime situation, but I figured with your, um, finesse…” He snorted out the last word, and Taylor eyed him coolly.
“I’ll handle it.” She pushed her hair back from her face and re-established her hurried ponytail. “Get them ready for all hell to break loose. I’m gonna go talk to Sam. ”
“Glad to serve, love. Now go see Sam, and let the rest of us grunts do our jobs. If you decide you want the whirly-bird, give me a thumbs-up.” He blew her a kiss and marched toward the command post, snapping his fingers at the officers to get their attention.
Turning toward the building, she caught a stare from one of the older patrols. His gaze was hostile, lip curled in a sneer. She gave him her most brilliant smile, making his scowl deepen. She broke off the look, shaking her head. She didn’t have time to worry about politics right now.
Two
Taylor approached Sam cautiously, making sure she followed the ME’s path to the body. They wouldn’t be able to blame any loss of evidence on her. Pulling on her latex gloves, she tapped Sam lightly on the shoulder. Sam looked up. Anticipating Taylor’s first question, she shook her head.
“There’s no obvious cause of death—no stab wounds, no gunshot wounds. I’ll get a better idea when I get her open. Evidence of rape. There’s some bruising and tearing, a little bit of blood. He got her pretty good. There’s some dirt on her, too. Wind probably blew some stuff around last night.”
She rocked back on her heels and saw Taylor’s face for the first time. “Girl, you look like crap. When’s the last time you slept?”
“Been a while.” The sleepless nights were catching up with her. She was almost thankful when a new case popped like this; the past slid away briefly when she could focus her attention elsewhere.
Sam gave her one last appraising glance. “Hmmph.”
Dr. Samantha Owens had shoulder-length brown hair she always wore back in a ponytail, feminine wisps she couldn’t control framing her face. She often joked that she’d rather look like a girl than a ghoul when she met someone new so the first impression wasn’t one of horror. Taylor was always amused to see people scatter like rats when they found out the beautiful and composed woman was a professional pathologist. Most run-of-the-mill people didn’t want to hang out with a woman who cut up dead bodies for a living.
Unlike many of the women she and Taylor had grown up with, Sam didn’t join the Junior League, have beautiful babies and lunch at Bread & Company. Instead, she spent her time perched over the Nashville’s endless supply of dead bodies, a position she was in much too often. She was also Taylor’s best friend and was allowed liberties where others weren’t.
“I’ve been telling you, you need to get some help.”
“Hush up, Sam, I don’t want to hear it. Tell me about our girl.” Taylor let the knot in her stomach and the ache in her temples take complete hold. She had warmed up in the early morning heat, but looking at the dead girl was giving her the chills. “Fitz said she was dumped?”
Sam traced an invisible line around the body with her finger. “Definitely. She wasn’t killed here. See the livor pattern? The bottom of her legs, thighs and calves, her butt, the inside of her arms, and her back. The blood pooled in those areas. But she’s sitting up, right? The lividity wouldn’t present this way unless she had been chillin’ out on her back for a while. She was definitely dead for a few hours before she was dumped.”
Taylor looked closely at the purplish red blotches. In contrast, the front of the girl’s body looked as pale and grimy as a dead jellyfish.
“No blood, either. Maybe he’s a vampire.” Sam leered briefly at Taylor, made fangs out of her fingers, hissed. Her morbid sense of humor always popped up at the most inappropriate times.
“You’re insane.”
“I know. No, he did her someplace else, then dumped her here.” She looked around and said quietly, “Seriously, this feels very staged. She was put here for a reason, posed, everything. He wanted her found right away. The question is, why?”
Taylor didn’t comment, but tucked Sam’s remark into the back of her mind to be brought out and chewed on later. She knew it was worth thinking about; Sam had sound instincts. She turned back toward the command center. Seeing Fitz, she peeled the glove off her right hand, put two fingers in her mouth and whistled sharply. He turned, and she shook her head. The helicopter wasn’t going to be needed.
Taylor looked back at the girl’s face. So young. Another, so young. “Give me something to work with. Do you have a time of death?”
Sam thought for a moment. “Looking at her temp, she died sometime before midnight. Let’s say ten to twelve hours ago, give or take. Rigor’s still in, though she’s starting to break up.”
“Gives him time to kill her and get her here. Okay. Semen?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s all over the place. This guy really doesn’t care about trying to be subtle. Not terribly bright. It shouldn’t be too hard to match him up if he’s in CODIS. He’s certainly not holding anything back.” She laughed at her pun, and Taylor couldn’t help a brief smile.
“How about under her nails? Did she fight back?”
Sam lifted the dead girl’s right hand. “I looked pretty closely, but I didn’t see anything resembling skin or blood. I’ll have them bag her hands and do scrapings back at the shop, but it doesn’t look like she got hold of anything. We didn’t find any ID with the body, so we’ll print her and send them over to see if you can find a match. They’ll be clear enough to run through AFIS.”
Taylor was hardly listening. She stared at the girl’s face. So young, she thought again. Man, there was going to be major fallout when they held this press conference. The statement started percolating in her head. At six o’clock this morning, the body of a Caucasian female was discovered on the steps of the Parthenon…
She looked back to Sam. “So no idea what killed her, huh?”
Sam relaxed, sitting back on her haunches. She stripped off her gloves and watched Taylor leaning in on the body.
“Hell if I know. Nothing’s really jumping out at me. Give me a break, T, you know the drill.”
“You’ll get me all the pics yesterday, right? And do the post right now. I mean,” she attempted a more conciliatory tone, “will you do the post right now?”
“I’ll bump her to the top of the guest list. There’s something else…Do you smell anything?”
“Just your perfume. Is it new?”
“See, that’s the weird thing. I’m not wearing any. I think the smell is coming from the body. And I’ll tell ya, Taylor, this would be my first sweet smelling corpse, ya know?”
Taylor had noticed the scent. She inhaled sharply through her nose. Yes, there were all the usual stinks that came with a dead body: the unmistakable smell of decay, the stink of fear, the tang of stale urine and excrement. But overlying all these olfactory wonders was a tangy sweetness. She thought hard for a moment, searching for the memory the smell triggered. The scent was somehow familiar, almost like…that was it!
“Sam, you know what this smells like? The spa across the way, Essential Therapy. Remember, I gave you a gift certificate for a massage there for your birthday? They have all those lotions and soaps and essential oil candles…”
“Wait a minute. You’re right. She smells like incense.” She stared at the body. “What if…Okay, give me a second here.” Sam reached into her kit and extracted a small pair of tweezers
. She bent over and started picking through the dirt on the body.
“What are you doing?” Taylor watched Sam put a few pieces of leaves and sticks into a small white paper bag. Somewhat disgusted, she watched Sam shove her nose into the bag and breathe in deeply. “Ugh, Sam.”
“No, here.” Sam’s eyes lit up and Taylor was tempted to back away. But Sam grabbed her hand and shoved the bag toward her face. “Really, smell.”
Taylor wrinkled her nose, swallowing hard. It was one thing seeing the body and smelling her from a few feet away, but sticking her nose into the detritus that came from the body itself was a little gross. Grimacing, she took the bag and inhaled. The scent was smoky and floral, not at all unpleasant.
Sam’s eyes were shining in excitement. “This isn’t dirt, Taylor. These are herbs. She has herbs scattered all over her body. Now what the hell is that all about?”
Taylor shook her head slowly, trying to absorb the new discovery. “I don’t know. Can you isolate which herb it is?”
“Yeah, I can let a botanist buddy of mine at UT take a look. He’s totally into all this stuff. I don’t think it’s just one herb, though. The leaves are all different sizes and shapes. Oh man, this is too cool.”
“Sam, you’re awful.” Taylor couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “You like this job too much.”
“That’s why I’m good at it. Tim’s our lead ‘gator today. I’m going to get him set up here to bag all this stuff, and I’ll have a runner take it up to UT ASAP. You know, it would be a lot simpler if that idiot mayor would help us get our own lab capable of handling this kind of stuff. Hell, it’d be nice if we could even do tox screens in-house.”
Sam continued grumbling under her breath and stood up, signaling the end of the conversation. She waved to her team, calling them over. The body was ready to be moved.
“Wait, Sam. Did Crime Scene pick up anything else? Clothes, jewelry?”
“Not yet, but you’re in their way. She’s got enough of this crap on her that it’s gonna take them a while to collect it all. Why don’t you go back and try to find out who this girl is for me, okay? Y’all need to catch this guy, ‘cause once the press gets a hold of this, they’re gonna freak the whole city. It’s not everyday I have to come to the middle of Centennial Park to collect a body, much less for a staged crime scene. Look at the vultures hovering already.”
She swept her hand toward the media trucks. Their level of activity had picked up, excitement palpable in the air. Techs were setting up lights and running around on the street by the duck pond with cameras and portable microphones in tow. The news vans were lined up around the corner. Taylor watched Fitz and the patrol officers struggle to keep the reporters from rushing the tape to gather their precious scoops. Nothing like murder in the morning to start a feeding frenzy.
“Seriously, Taylor, you know how they are. They’ll find some way to spin this into a grand conspiracy and warn all the parents to keep their girls at home until you catch whoever did this.” She started grumbling. “It should be frickin’ illegal for the chief to have given them their own radios. Now every newsie in Nashville hovers over my shoulder while I scope a body.”
Taylor lowered her eyelids for a second and gave her best friend a half smile. “Well, honey, if it makes you feel any better, all the talking heads and their cameramen are squishing through goose poo trying to get their stories. Guess Lake Watauga has its purposes, after all. Call me as soon as you have anything.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Split. You’re making me nervous.”
Three
Taylor made a last slow circuit around the crime scene. The techs were carefully moving about, photographing the site from every possible angle. She half noticed them brushing fine black powder in the areas surrounding where the body had been found, looking for latent fingerprints.
Why the Parthenon? Why would the killer dump a body in the middle of West End? You couldn’t look in any direction without seeing students jogging from the gates of Vanderbilt, trendy yuppies coasting through the gourmet restaurants and bars, hippy granolas Birkenstocking their way to the natural food and clothing stores. It was a risky venture, even in the overnight hours.
She made a few notes, thinking about Sam’s comments. Staged. Huh. The scene wasn’t terribly gruesome compared to many she’d seen, but it did have a more organized feel to it—after all, he had made himself very vulnerable coming out in the open with a dead girl slung over his shoulder, spending the time to arrange her and scatter herbs on her naked body. He’d spent at least a few minutes setting things up. A huge chance to take that no one would be around. Even teenagers who were supposed to be in bed were out cruising through the park all night.
Taylor headed in the direction of her car and passed Sam’s lead investigator, Tim Davis, as he started up the stairs.
“Later, ‘gator,” she called out.
Tim gave her a dirty look. “That joke is really getting old.”
She gave him her sweetest smile. “Tell that to Sam. She’s the one that christened you guys ‘gators. Besides,” her voice dropped two octaves, “‘Death Investigator’ just sounds so, well, depressing.”
“Death is depressing, Taylor.” He smiled and turned away.
Taylor felt a brief qualm of conscience. Tim was one of the best ‘gators the medical examiner’s office had and was deadly serious about his work.
She stopped walking and turned around to look at the Parthenon again. She stood quietly, staring at the huge structure. What the hell was this guy up to? A sacrifice to the goddess Athena, who guarded the murky interior of the building? She laughed, startling a goose ten feet away. It waddled off, honking in annoyance. Yeah, take that theory into the squad room. The boys would love it. She shook the image of the goddess out of her mind.
It was time to get to work. Taylor picked her way through malodorous fowl dung scattered all over the ground back to the phalanx of police cars. She needed to talk to the young couple who’d found the body before they were brought in to give their formal statements. She walked out into the control center and found Bob Miller, the first officer on the scene. He was short and stout with a bristling black mustache and impossibly white teeth.
“Officer Miller. Where do you have them?”
He flashed her a brilliant smile. “Hey, LT. He’s in my car, and she’s over with Wills.” Keith Wills was Miller’s partner and was becoming a specialist in handling witnesses of the female persuasion. “She’s still crying, but she’s calming down. Name’s Catey Thompson, he’s Devon Post. They got engaged last night, messed around until nearly dawn, then went out for a rrrromanteek sunrise stroll.” His dreadful Italian accent got a quick laugh and a head shake out of Taylor.
“Had they been drinking?”
Officer Miller returned to his normal Southern twang. “Yeah, champagne. But they knocked off the heavy celebrating a few hours ago. They were pretty straight when they set out, and now…well, they’re scared sober, if they weren’t already.”
“Thanks, Miller. Will you stick around and make sure the scene stays sealed up tight for me? Fitz already has a grid search going on, and I don’t want anyone messing it up.” She clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, pal, it’s gonna be a long day.”
He smiled and strode away. Taylor approached Officer Wills, who was holding Catey’s hand and offering her a box of tissues.
“Hello, Officer Wills. Miss Thompson? I’m Lieutenant Jackson from the Homicide Division. I’m the lead detective investigating this murder. I’d appreciate it if you could give me your account of what happened this morning.”
Catey could have been pretty, but Taylor was having a hard time seeing it at the moment. Long brown hair escaped the clip that held it back, and her brown eyes were bloodshot. Her perfectly petite nose was cherry red, and her face was swollen and blotchy from crying. She looked up, took a deep breath and spoke in a soft, hesitant voice.
“We were walking through the park, waiting for the sunrise. We walke
d right up to her. I was actually annoyed that we weren’t alone. She was sitting on the top step, leaning back against the gate. I thought she was watching us. Her eyes were open and at first I didn’t realize…”Her voice began to waver. “I thought maybe she was there to watch the sun come up too. But she was naked and just sort of sat there, and I realized she was dead.” She began to cry again. “I started screaming, and Devon pulled me away. He took my cell phone, and I heard him calling for help, then I threw up. It was horrible. Is she really dead?” The girl was preparing to get hysterical again.
Taylor ignored the question. “Miss Thompson, this is very important. I know it’s difficult to revisit the memory, but if you could try for me, hold yourself together for a little longer?”
Officer Wills pushed the entire box of tissues into the girl’s hands, and Taylor continued. “Think very carefully. Did you see anyone else around? Maybe someone walking in the park at the same time? Did you hear a car?”
She snuffled into a new tissue. “No. I’m sure we were the only people here. It was so nice, so peaceful. My God, what happened to her? Are we safe? What if he saw us? Oh my God, oh my God, ohmyGod…” She began bawling in earnest, and Taylor patted her on the shoulder.
“I’m sure you’re perfectly safe, Miss Thompson, so don’t worry. I seriously doubt whoever killed her was hanging around. Thank you for your help. Officer Wills is going to take you downtown to make a formal statement, and then you and your fiancé will be free to go. If you remember anything, anything at all, even if you think it doesn’t matter, I want you to call me. Okay?” She handed her a card with her office and pager numbers on it. “You can call me day or night.”
Catey sniffed, trying to regain some semblance of control, dragged the tissue under her eyes, spreading raccoon rings of mascara. “Thank you, Lieutenant Jackson. Can I see Devon now?”
“We’ll get you two together downtown, all right? Thank you for your help.”
