by Brenda Novak
She gave herself a once over in the mirror. Knock it off, Taylor. This isn’t right. She nodded to herself in reluctant agreement and went back to Baldwin.
The kitchen had worked quickly; there was a plate of fried clams in front of her seat. She sat, noting that Baldwin had not started eating his cheeseburger. Manners. Hmmm.
Suddenly shy, she dug into her food. The clams were perfect, crunchy and smooth. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She noticed Baldwin was eating his burger as a man condemned, savoring each bite as though it was his last. It brought her up short, and she started laughing.
“You know, they’ll make you more if you want.”
“I feel like I haven’t had a chance to relax and eat in months. You know the other night at Mulligan’s was the first time I’d been in a restaurant for almost six months. I thought I’d savor the moment.”
Taylor saw the opportunity. “I’ve been wanting to ask how you were feeling. You seem to be, what’s a good way of putting it…”
“Better?”
“Yes. Better.”
He took a careful bite of his burger, giving himself a moment before he had to answer. “I guess you could say this case has caught my interest. I have a gut feeling it’s not over by a long shot.”
“The case. Of course.”
He gave her a long look, and her stomach tightened. What the hell was she doing?
“Or maybe I felt like you saved my life, and I owed you one.” He looked straight into her eyes, marveling at their chameleon qualities. In the darkness of the bar, they were lavender, her pupils dilated. She had a sexy, come-hither quality that he was having a hard time denying. He’d never seen anything so exquisite in his life. Realizing it probably showed on his face, he hastily turned away and shoved some fries in his mouth.
But Taylor had caught the moment of unguarded emotion. She didn’t know if it was gratefulness or attraction, but she reached over and touched his arm.
“I’m glad you stayed with it.” She left it at that and finished the rest of her meal.
They sat quietly, not feeling the need to talk. They’d come to some tacit agreement in their silence. Yes, the attraction was there. Yes, they both felt it. No reason to push anything.
Taylor ordered another round of beers. As they were set in front of them, her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and frowned.
“Price,” she told Baldwin, who nodded. He knew their brief idyll was just that, though he was sorry they couldn’t spend a little more time together away from the case. Maybe they’d found Jill Gates.
“Hey, Captain.” He could see the muscles in her shoulders tense. “Where? Okay, we’re on our way. Yeah, I’ve got Baldwin with me. He’ll come along.” She hung up, took a last swig of her beer.
“Price wants you to come with me to a scene.” She was frowning, her attention already pulled away, and he felt the lack of it keenly.
“What scene? Did they find Jill?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. St. Catherine’s Church caught on fire. They thought it was a lightning strike from the storm until the firefighters found two bodies shoved into a confessional. They were burned to death.”
Forty-Two
They pulled into the parking lot at the church, weaving their way through the fire engines. Large crime scene lights showed the church exterior. It was made of harled white stone and had only suffered superficial damage, but curls of smoke were still drifting through the air, a smoldering perfume clinging to the parking lot. Taylor saw Sam standing by the entrance of the church looking grim, giving directions to two men with a heavy gurney between them, and went to join her.
Sam gave the two a long look. “What took you so long?”
“So long? Price only called me ten minutes ago. We came immediately.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She frowned, nodding. “I’ve already pulled them out and we’re taking them back to the office.”
“Want to fill me in? Price didn’t give me any details.”
Sam kept nodding. She was smudged with soot and had a faraway look on her face. “Yeah. Let’s go over there.” She pointed to Taylor’s car and started walking. Taylor and Baldwin followed. “Sorry to be short, but this is freaking me out.”
“Sam?” Taylor said sharply. She was getting a little freaked out, too. Sam never got flustered at a scene.
“I’m okay, T, just a little rattled. Baldwin, are you Catholic?”
“No. I’m Episcopalian. At least I used to be. Why?”
“Just wondering. I’m Catholic. This isn’t the way I’d like to go. I don’t think I’ll make it to confession for a while. Taylor, do you have a cigarette?”
“You’re going to smoke at a fire?”
“Hey, give me a break, okay?”
Taylor gave her one and lit it for her. “You mind filling us in?”
Sam took a long drag and coughed slightly. “Fire Department got the call right after the storm rolled through. Everyone figured a lightning strike started the fire. The guys went in full bore with the hoses, but it wasn’t too bad. Seemed to be confined to the nave and chapel. They put it out, but there was that smell, you know?”
They did know. The unmistakable sweet, sickening smell of burnt flesh had invaded their nostrils as they’d drawn close to the doors of the church.
“So they get the flames put out relatively quickly and start looking around. They followed the burn pattern to the confessionals and found them inside. The woman was on one side, the priest on the other. They’re pretty charred; it looks like the fire was started in the confessional, or damn close to it.”
Taylor was running through the scenarios when Baldwin jumped in. “So it appears intentional? They were murdered?”
“It looks that way. They have an ID on the priest. Father Francis Xavier. He wasn’t burned as badly, his wallet made it through pretty much unscathed. The bishop confirmed he was doing confessions today. He told me he was new to the church, recently moved here from Boston.”
“What about the woman?”
“She’s a mess. It looks like she was bound, her arms were behind her back and there was a little bit of cording around her wrists that made it through the fire. But there’s nothing on her as far as ID. They searched the church, there’s no purse or anything that looks like it would belong to a woman.”
“Are you going to try and do a dental on her?”
The question was lingering in the air around them. No one wanted to say the name out loud in case it would become truth, crystallized by meeting the air.
“I’m going to have to. She’s burned up pretty badly.”
“I’ll call and see if her parents are already up here. They’ll need to get her dental radiographs for us ASAP.”
“Thanks, Taylor. I’ll post her first thing in the morning.”
Sam reached over and gave Taylor a hug. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and turned back to her van.
Baldwin turned to Taylor, who looked stricken and suddenly very tired.
“Do you think it’s her?”
Taylor sighed. “Yeah.” She pulled out her cell phone and speed dialed. “Fitz? It’s Taylor. Just wanted you to know. We may have found Jill Gates.”
Forty-Three
The parking lot was full, people rushing about, yelling, panicking. The air smoldered, the scents of smoke and death lingered.
“And the angel took the censer, and filled it with the fire of the altar…”
He turned away. So much left to do.
Forty-Four
Jill woke when the needle pricked her arm. She shook her head, trying to clear her vision, focusing on the stinging in the crook of her elbow. She started to cry, then felt herself melt away into the darkness again.
She knew the drugs were making her hallucinate. She thought she was sitting in a massive green courtyard, even though she knew she was in the bed. She tried to get her bearings, looking first right, then left, but her head felt like it was tethered in place. Her arms were
bound at her side. She could only look ahead, to the expanse of green grass in front of her. There was a shadow there, a woman swaying from side to side like a cobra mesmerized by an unknown song. She tried to speak, to ask where she was, but no words came out. The shadow shifted, slowly, so slowly, side to side, and Jill heard the sound of sobbing. The woman was sad. So very sad. And suddenly she was gone, and the shadows lifted, leaving only a blank wall of green in their place.
Jill heard a voice in her head. She knew it came from the woman. She was angry now, crying and yelling. Her voice faded in and out, and Jill tried so hard to hear what she was saying, but only snatches of the woman’s voice came to her. “I will tell,” said the voice. “I will tell them what you’ve done.”
Another voice joined the mix, this one somewhat familiar, deeper, comforting. Was it soothing the woman, or trying to calm her. The voice of the woman grew fainter, and Jill could hear the soothing voice, quieter this time. “You will be honored.”
The Fifth Day
Forty-Five
Taylor and Baldwin shivered in the parking lot of the church. It was barely morning and exceptionally cool, overcast and breezy. A few times through the night, hot cups of coffee appeared magically at their elbows, borne in on a tray by a young man Taylor didn’t recognize. Despite her distaste for straight coffee, Taylor had accepted the steaming Styrofoam cups gladly, holding on to the precious warmth and choking down the bitter liquid. Baldwin had been sucking down cup after cup and was jumping around like a child on Christmas morning.
Taylor took in his appearance with a smile. “Baldwin, you’re a mess.”
He gave her a hurt look and bent to examine his reflection in the side mirror of her car. He gave a halfhearted swipe at his hair, which was standing on end and pointing off in every direction like a broken compass needle. He had two days worth of stubble darkening his jaw and cheeks, and his eyes were bloodshot from the smoke and lack of sleep. He hadn’t felt so alive in months.
“Yeah, well, you look great.”
Taylor blushed and turned away. She knew he was full of it, but didn’t argue. The mark of a true southern belle: never put aside a compliment. She ran her hands through her hair, smoothed the mass into a messy ponytail. Gave him a smile.
Though it had been several hours since the fire, the reek of burnt flesh was pervasive, even without the bodies present. Taylor had been smoking all night trying to get the smell out of her nose. She’d only succeeded in giving herself a sore throat. Her voice had lowered an octave: the chill, the smoke, and the slight cold were catching up to her. She popped two Advil Cold & Sinus pills out of their blister pack and swallowed them down with the remnants of coffee sloshing around her cup. She wrinkled her nose; it had gone cold.
Baldwin rubbed his hands together and shoved them deep in the pockets of his jeans. “Do you think they’re about done in there? I’m getting hungry.”
“They should be. Let’s go check with the chief, see what’s keeping them.” They started toward the entry of the nave, but the fire chief walked out before she could reach the doors. He greeted her with a tired smile.
“Lieutenant Jackson. Long night. You’ve been freezing your tush off the whole time?”
“Yep. Fire Chief Andrew Rove, meet Dr. John Baldwin, FBI. He’s working the case with us.”
They shook, and the chief said, “FBI, huh? Well, you’ll want to know this is, without a doubt, arson. The combustible gas detector found gasoline was used as an accelerant near the confessional. Jackson, your crime scene techs are trying to lift some prints from the priest’s office; it looks like there were people in there before the fire started. Tea for three, laid out on the coffee table. How very civilized.”
“Tea for three. But only two bodies. The victims knew their killer,” Baldwin said.
“Could be. We didn’t find anything leftover, no gas cans, no rope, nothin’. Place is clean as a whistle except for the office. We’re pulling out now, there’s nothing more for us to do.”
“Thanks, Chief. I look forward to the report.”
With a nod and a small salute, he went to his truck.
Tim Davis, Sam’s death investigator on the scene, walked out of the church with several bags in his hands. Taylor jogged over to him. “Anything worthwhile?”
“I managed to picked up prints off two of the teacups. Unfortunately, the third was clean, still full of tea. Untouched. There was some liquid left in the two that I printed, I’ll run it through the mass spectrometer and see what turns up. And I’ll get these prints over to Lincoln. If I were a betting man, I’d wager they belong to our vics, so there may be nothing to compare them to if we can’t lift something off their hands. Third cup was probably the person who set the fire. Didn’t want to leave any traces behind.”
Taylor chewed on that for a minute. Baldwin was silent. She could see the wheels turning in his head.
“Good work. Get out of here, Tim. Thanks for everything.”
He waved his bags at her and walked away. Taylor turned to Baldwin, confusion settling in her eyes. She needed some time to think about what had happened. “Wanna get some breakfast?”
He looked deep into her eyes, recognizing the frustration she was feeling. “Yeah, let’s do that. I’m starved. My mama always told me, when in doubt, eat.”
They made their way to the car and headed out. They took the back roads past the huge homes in Belle Meade into Green Hills, skirted the morning traffic down Hillsboro Road and pulled into the parking lot of the Pancake Pantry, a well-established staple for breakfast in Nashville. The restaurant was so popular that an hour wait was not uncommon, but on this brisk morning, the line was blessedly absent. They had to wait ten minutes for the doors to open, both standing with hands in their pockets against the cold. Baldwin moved closer to shelter the worst of the breeze. Taylor leaned against him gratefully, happy for the contact as much as the warmth of his body.
When the hostess finally came to unlock the doors, Baldwin held the door for Taylor. Inside, she caught a glimpse of a flyer in the window. The poster featured a large picture of a smiling Jill Gates. The headline read Have You Seen Jilly? Under her picture were her vital statistics, what she was last seen wearing, and the phone number to the Homicide office. Taylor felt all the breath being sucked out of her body.
Taylor looked up and down the street and realized there were posters tacked in all the windows and stapled over the latest band announcements on the telephone poles. She felt sick to her stomach. She’d just seen Jill Gates, and she didn’t look anything like the smiling woman in the picture.
She didn’t know how she managed to make it to the table; her legs were wobbly, her vision blackening. She felt the chair slide in under her, heard Baldwin order her a Diet Coke, but nothing was registering. She tried to breathe, but the panic attack was on her. She bent at the waist, trying not to faint.
She had no idea how long it took her to get it back together. She heard Baldwin muttering softly in her ear and realized he was sitting in the chair next to her, holding on for dear life. She was mortified to have fallen apart in front of him, not to mention in such a public venue. She drew in a few gulps of air. Her head started to clear, and she sat up. Baldwin let her go and leaned back into his chair, his eyes full of concern.
“You okay?”
She still had her eyes closed but nodded. Her breathing was returning to normal, and she opened her eyes, shocked to see how scared Baldwin looked. She gave him a weak smile and tried to make a joke.
“You’ve never seen a southern belle have a fainting spell?”
“That was no fainting spell, Taylor. You had a nice, full-blown panic attack. This happen a lot?”
“Can we not talk about this here? I’m fine.” She’d recovered enough to take a drink of the soda in front of her. Great, the waitress had seen the whole thing, too. But when she looked behind her the woman was standing at the kitchen door cracking jokes with the dishwasher. Thank God.
“You don’t look f
ine, Taylor.”
“Baldwin, let it go, okay?” Her voice rose and she sounded ridiculous to herself. Of course he’d recognize a panic attack; he was a psychiatrist, after all. Which meant he’d want to get to the bottom of it. She just wasn’t up for analysis right now. She gave a conciliatory smile. “I’m fine, really. Just too much caffeine, not enough sleep and I’m coming down with something. Inner ear’s all messed up. I need to get some antibiotics or something. Don’t worry about it, okay?”
He still looked doubtful, but took a deep breath and backed off. She’d talk about it in her own time. “Okay. What do you want to eat?”
“A lot. I’m starved.”
The waitress came back, and Taylor thought she could see concern on her face, but she was all business, taking their orders and bustling off.
Baldwin wanted to diffuse the moment, so he tried a different tack.
“I knew you in high school, you know.”
“What?” Taylor was shocked. She figured she knew most everyone who she’d attended school with. And she’d figured Baldwin was in his late forties. She gave him a good looking over, and decided he was definitely younger than that. Years had melted off in the past few days. She could now see he was much closer to her own age.
“I transferred in to Father Ryan my senior year. You were a sophomore, I think. Pretty little thing.”
She blushed. “I can’t believe I don’t remember you. I always hung out with the older crowd. Sam was dating Simon Loughley. He’s the guy that runs Private Match? He was a senior when we were sophomores. Did you know him?”
“Knew of him. I kept to myself a lot.”
“Why’d you transfer in so late? Where were you before?” Taylor realized she was anxious to learn more of Baldwin’s background. She blamed it on simple southern nosiness, but knew she was trying to get closer, to figure him out.
A brief look of pain shadowed his face. “My folks died my junior year. Car accident. We lived over by Old Hickory Lake. My aunt was on the west side of town; she took me in and moved schools on me. I wasn’t too thrilled about it, but I didn’t have much of a choice. She was trying to do what was best for me.” He took a long drink of water and the smile returned. “She was a crazy old bat, kept after me constantly. I love her, though, and respected her wish to see me complete my education, just like my parents wanted. She pushed me from Father Ryan into a college in Virginia, Hampden-Sydney.”
