Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (50 page)

Eyebrows rose all around.

“Sam noticed a sweet smell coming off the body. She bagged a whole bunch of leaves and stems, though we don’t know what kind of herbs they are yet. We need to keep this real quiet until we know what’s going on. Marcus, keep Franklin out of the loop too. It may end up being nothing.”

“Or everything,” Lincoln chimed in.

“Or everything. So no leaks. No one outside this office knows about this but Sam. Keep it that way. There’s also DNA to plug in. I want you to search through the sexual offender’s database too, see if someone’s done anything similar in any of the nearby jurisdictions. Check on the guys convicted of sexual crimes before, only on a smaller scale.  Peeping Toms, our friendly flashers. Remember we had a rash of those last year in Bellevue? Pull any of the files that look good. Also, monitor the Missing Persons listings. If he’s snatched anyone else, we need to be ahead of the game. Any calls with young girls missing, I want to hear immediately. Drag me out of whatever I’m doing.”

“Gotcha, boss. I already started running the Missing Persons list to see if anyone matching her description has popped up. So far, nothing, but I’ll keep looking.”

Lincoln’s deep, velvety smooth voice made Taylor take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. She gave him an appraising glance. He had the most beautiful skin she had ever seen, a shade somewhere between caramel and mocha latté. His straight nose led to sensually full lips. He was sensitive about the gap between his front two teeth. Taylor thought it only added to his charm.

“Lincoln, are you wearing another new suit? You’re going to go broke here soon.” Taylor loved to tease him about his obsession with clothes. He was always dressed impeccably, favoring Italian suits and couture ties. He bought his shoes from New York, beautifully worked leather that seemed to mold to his feet. He was single and spent all his money on his wardrobe.

“Well, I may have had a purchase arrive yesterday. Gotta keep looking sharp for the ladies.” He gave her a huge smile, and Taylor smiled back fondly. She privately thought he looked like Lenny Kravitz sans nose rings and could easily understand his appeal to women of all ages and races. Maybe in another life…

“So if you’re done raggin’ on me…I’ve got ViCAP running already, but I’ll go plug the herb thing in. I’ve also pulled our open case files that have a sexual component, in case one looks remotely like this. I just want to see if this guy may have been working before. When Sam has a DNA sample, I’ll get together with the TBI and take a run through CODIS, see if there are any matches to the semen."

All of the acronyms the Feds came up with amounted to alphabet soup as far as Taylor was concerned. It seemed every day the FBI or the law enforcement community came out with a new acronym for the tools they used. A new database, neoteric scientific tests, flowchart and task forces, none were immune to the alphabet game. The standard joke was that the acronyms were formed before the official names so the higher-ups could make sure the nicknames ‘worked.’ They got so busy digging through the bowl trying to see what they could put together they often fell in and drowned.

Taylor smiled at her crew in appreciation, and told them to scatter. “Rock and roll. Keep checking in with me. Fitz, let me run those files by you real quick.” She turned to her desk, then swung back. “Gentlemen? Let’s find this guy. Now.”

Seven

Taylor took the long way when she headed out to Sam’s office. Blowing by the  exit that would lead her to the morgue, she turned north and felt herself relaxing as she drove up the interstate, letting the wind from the open window blow her hair around. Thirty minutes of head-clearing drive time wouldn’t change anything. The girl would still be dead. And Sam would probably applaud her taking a few minutes to herself.

She settled into the fast lane and started passing cars, pushing eighty. Cruising mindlessly, she jumped when her cell phone chirped. She let out a deep sigh, moved over three lanes and pulled onto the shoulder.

“Yeah, Jackson.”

“Hey, LT, it’s Marcus. We got a hit on the prints.”

“That was quick. Who’s our girl?”

“Shelby Kincaid. She’s a student at Vanderbilt. She doesn’t have a record, but we got lucky. She was printed for a job she applied for at a daycare center on West End.” 

“Damn it,” Taylor said with heart. “A student at Vandy, and no one reported her missing?”

“Nope. At least there’s nothing official. Want me to call Vandy?”

She thought for a minute. “Tell you what. Let me get over to Sam’s and see what she’s found from the autopsy. We’re going to want to tread lightly. Vandy won’t cooperate with us without some paper. Go ahead and get a subpoena started for her records. Besides, I don’t want to start a panic if we can help it. This is going to be the lead story on the news. It was sensational enough that she was found at the Parthenon. When the media finds out she was a Vandy coed, they’re going to go nuts.” She ran a hand through her hair, unconsciously combing out the wind-blown tangles. Catching a knot, she looked in the mirror in aggravation and struggled to put it into a ponytail while holding the cell phone. She lost the whole mess, hair and phone alike. She grabbed the phone from between her legs and brushed her hair out of her eyes impatiently.

“I assume there was contact information with her print card?”

“Yep.” She could hear him shuffling papers in the background before the roar of an eighteen-wheeler passing much too closely drowned him out.

“…Kentucky. Want me to…”

“Wait, wait, say that again. Couldn’t hear you over the traffic.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m pulled over to the side of Interstate 24. Where’s she from again?”

“Bowling Green, Kentucky. The contacts are Edward and Sally Kincaid. I assume they’re her parents. We need to get them notified.”

Taylor rubbed the back of her neck. “Go ahead and call Reverend Spenser. I always like to have him around when I have to do a notification. He can get in touch with the Bowling Green police, see if their chaplain’s available to do the notification. Ask him to arrange to have them driven down here, too.”

“Will do. They’re going to want to talk to you, I’m sure.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to talk with them until Sam has more definitive results. I’d like to be able to give them her cause of death, if we have one. Damn, this really sucks. Get the family notified, then we’ll go ahead with Vandy. Be delicate, Marcus. This is going to be beyond difficult for them.”

“Yeah, I imagine it will ruin their lives. I’ll talk to the chaplain and get it all arranged.”

“Thanks, man. I’ll be back after I see Sam.”

“Um, Taylor, before you go?”

“What?”

“Your dad called.”

Her father. Her chest tightened. Oh man, talk about something she didn’t need.

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“No, just that he needs to speak with you. He said it was important.”

“Yeah, it always is,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on and get in touch with Shelby Kincaid’s parents. I’ll talk to you later.”

She hung up, pushing thoughts of her father away and getting her mind back on the case. There was nothing worse than having to tell parents they’d outlived their child. She was more than a little relieved Marcus was going to handle the notification. 

She pulled back out on the interstate and took the first exit leading her back into the city. She tried not to think and, instead, enjoy the few moments of freedom she had left. A pointless endeavor. She gave up and gunned the car.

The late afternoon traffic was terrible, and it took her twenty minutes to plow her way through to Gass Boulevard. The State of Tennessee Center for Forensic Medicine was run by a private group contracted with the city. Their brand-new, twenty-thousand square foot building looked more like the local offices of a corporate giant than a morgue.

She pulled into the parking lot, more than a little jealous of Sam and her new realm. It sure beat Homicide’s crappy little office. Then again, they didn’t have dead bodies next to the break room.

She was buzzed through the door into the spacious lobby. She was facing the family viewing room, where family members of the deceased could identify their loved one’s mortal remains on closed-circuit TV.

She was thankful the new system had been put into place. It was easier for the family not to go through up-close-and-personal body identification, or deal with photographs of their dearly departed. They had a quiet, nicely furnished room, professional support, and some distance from their family member. It was a good system.

One of the grief counselors would eventually be back there with Shelby’s parents, ready to bolster and guide the family through their worst nightmares. Taylor felt chill bumps on her arms. She was glad she didn’t have to come back and deal with them tonight.

Despite the constant flow of people who entered and exited the building throughout the day and night, there was never a magazine out of place, nor a small piece of trash sitting on a side table. Taylor secretly thought members of the cleaning crew lurked in the hallways, ready to sneak into the foyer unseen to straighten and sanitize at a moment’s notice.

She waved to the receptionist, Kris, and entered the door leading to the autopsy suite. The odor hit her like a sour washrag that had been left in the shower too long. In contrast to the sweet, clean smell of the open foyer, the difference in atmosphere always surprised her. No amount of disinfectant could cover the lingering scent of death. The reek settled in her sinuses. Taylor tried to concentrate on other things as she walked in. She knew that within a few minutes the odor would dull, becoming sufferable.

Stopping briefly in the biovestibule, she changed into a pair of disposable scrubs and went inside.

The main autopsy suite held four fully functioning workstations, two on the wall facing Taylor, and two on the opposite wall. Sam was at the far table, the natural sunlight from the huge skylight above streaking her hair with rosy highlights.

“Sam.”

Sam turned toward Taylor with a look that said,
Go away, I’m trying to work
.

“Sorry, Sammy, I need to talk. We’ve got an ID. Her name’s Shelby Kincaid. Went to Vanderbilt. We’re notifying her parents right now, so I wanna see what you have.”

Sam actually looked at her this time, blinked, finally realized who was there, and said, “Oh, hey. Gear up. Vanderbilt, huh?” There was almost no inflection in her voice. She was lost in her work.

Taylor pulled on the remaining protective gear and gloves gracefully, the motions borne of too many repetitions. She donned her eye shield and joined Sam at the table. Lying on a tan plastic washable coating covering an icy, stainless steel slab were the remains of Shelby Kincaid. She didn’t look like a sleeping child anymore. The huge Y-cut, actually shaped like a deformed U, cut from her sternum to her pubis, exposing her internal organs, which Sam was in the process of weighing. She set the mud-colored liver in the scale, dictating the weight into the microphone clipped to the front of her smock. She handed it to her assistant who wandered off to busy himself with something. He knew Taylor and was more than a little afraid of her. Sam watched him go, chuckled and turned back, all business.

“Ventricular fibrillation. And something’s hinky with her liver.” She didn’t elaborate.

“Okay. Wanna expound on that? I don’t know if ‘hinky’ will stand up in court.”

Sam’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s the problem. I can’t tell you what the thing is. I sent off the tox screen, so we should get that back quick enough. But they can’t look for anything but the obvious, and the way her organs look…my gut tells me we need to look deeper. I sent a runner with all kinds of samples to Simon’s lab: blood, urine, tissue, the works. I asked them to look a little deeper than the normal drug and alcohol screen. I’m hoping they can isolate something off the standard panel.”

“Like what?”

She waggled her head casually, and shrugged, like a child with an important secret. “Oh, I’m thinking poison.”

“No way. Poison? Cyanide?”

“Not cyanide, I didn’t get an almond smell when I opened the body. I don’t know what we’re looking for, but I definitely think this poor thing may have ingested something, and it didn’t sit right with her system.”

“Ingested something like what?”

Sam gave Taylor a sweet smile. “Honey, that’s what we’re going to find out. Back to business. As I mentioned before, she was raped repeatedly. Lots of bruising and tearing, lots of semen. We’re going to have to wait for the labs on that, too.”

Taylor’s shoulders knotted up. “How long’s it gonna take?”

“Well, it won’t be overnight. I’ll try to talk Simon into dropping all his other fascinating cases and handle the toxicology right away, but I can’t promise anything. As far as the semen is concerned, I can send it up to TBI with a push and have them do the rapid DNA, or I can throw it to Simon and ask him to handle it. Though we haven’t talked in a couple of days.” She busied herself with a scalpel.

Taylor waited for a more detailed explanation, but seeing none forthcoming, decided not to voice an opinion on the rocky relationship’s latest turn. “I already ran it by Price. It won’t be a problem. Go ahead and give it all to Simon. If you don’t want to call in one of your own, tell him it’s a favor for me, and I’ll owe him one.”

“Got it. The rest is basics. Height, one hundred seventy-six centimeter, weight, forty-seven kilograms. Blond hair, blue eyes. Maybe a little anorexic. No distinguishing characteristics, no tattoos, nothing out of the ordinary. Doesn’t look like she’s had any surgeries except a tonsillectomy.” She looked up, gave a wan smile. “Sorry, Charlie. Right now we’ve got a run-of-the-mill dead girl. Little Shelby didn’t put up much of a fight, nothing under her nails, no defensive wounds. That’s about as exciting as it gets.”

Taylor sighed. She knew the drill. Nothing else could done here until they had the lab results back. “Can I give her parents a cause of death?”

Sam thought quietly for a moment. The parents would want every detail, and there weren’t a lot to give them. She shrugged. “Tell them we’re doing more tests and hope to have an answer for them quickly.”