Sweet Little Lies (8 page)

The cheers depressed her. The whole holiday
depressed her. As a child, she’d been wild for the fireworks, for
the cotton-candy fun of youth and mindless celebration. As she grew
older, she mourned that lost child, trying desperately to reach far
within herself to recapture that innocence. She failed.

The sky was dark now. She could see the
throngs of people heading back to whatever parking spots they had
found, children skipping between tired parents, fluorescent
bracelets and glow sticks arcing through the night. They would
spirit these innocents home to bed with joy, soothed by the
knowledge that they had satisfied their little ones, at least for
the moment. Taylor wouldn’t be that lucky. Any minute now, she’d be
answering the phone, getting the call. Chance told her somewhere in
her city a shooter was escaping into the night. Fireworks were
perfect cover for gunfire. That’s what she told herself, but there
was another reason she’d stayed in her office this holiday night.
Protecting her city was a mental ruse. She was waiting.

A memory rose, unbidden, unwanted. Trite in
its way, yet the truth of the statement hit her to the core. “When
I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things.” Or became a woman. Her days of purity were behind her
now.

Taking one last glance at the quickening
night, she closed the blinds and sat heavily in her chair. Sighed.
Ran her fingers through her long blond hair. Wondered why she was
hanging out in the Homicide office when she could be enjoying the
revelry. Why she was still committed to the job. Laid her head on
her desk and waited for the phone to ring. Got back up and flipped
the switch to the television.

The crowds were a pulsing mass at the
Riverbend Maximum Security Prison. Police had cordoned off sections
of the yard of the prison, one for the pro-death penalty activists,
another comprised the usual peaceful subjects, a third penned in
reporters. ACLU banners screamed injustice, the people holding them
shouting obscenities at their fellow groupies. All the trappings
necessary for an execution. No one was put to death without an
attendant crowd, each jostling to have their opinion heard.

The young reporter from Channel Two was
breathless, eyes flushed with excitement. There were no more
options. The governor had denied the last stay two hours earlier.
Tonight, at long last, Richard Curtis would pay the ultimate price
for his crime.

As she watched, her eyes flicked to the wall
clock, industrial numbers glowing on a white face: 11:59 P.M. An
eerie silence overcame the crowd. It was time.

Taylor took a deep breath as the minute hand
swept with a click into the 12:00 position. She didn’t realize she
was holding her breath until the hand snapped to 12:01 A.M. That
was it, then. The drugs would have been administered. Richard
Curtis would have a peaceful sleep, his heart’s last beat recorded
into the annals of history. It was too gentle a death, in Taylor’s
opinion. He should have been drawn and quartered, his entrails
pulled from his body and burned on his stomach. That, perhaps,
would give some justice. Not this carefully choreographed
combination of drugs, slipping him serenely into the Grim Reaper’s
arms.

There, the announcement was made. Curtis was
pronounced at 12:06 A.M., July 5. Dead and gone.

Taylor turned the television off. Perhaps now
she would get the call to arms. Waiting patiently, she laid her
head down on her desk and thought of a sunny child named Martha,
the victim of a brutal kidnapping, rape and murder when she was
only seven years old. It was Taylor’s first case as a homicide
detective. They’d found Martha within twenty-four hours of her
disappearance, broken and battered in a sandy lot in North
Nashville. Richard Curtis was captured several hours later.
Martha’s doll was on the bench seat of his truck. Her tears were
lifted from the door handle. A long strand of her honey-blond hair
was affixed to Curtis’s boot. It was a slam-dunk case, Taylor’s
first taste of success, her first opportunity to prove herself. She
had acquitted herself well. Now Curtis was dead as a result of all
her hard work. She felt complete.

Taylor had stood vigil for seven years,
awaiting this moment. In her mind, Martha was frozen in time, a
seven-year-old little girl who would never grow up. She would be
fourteen now. Justice had finally been served.

As if in deference to the death of one of
their own, Nashville’s criminals were silent on this night, finding
better things to do than shoot one another for Taylor’s benefit.
She drifted between sleep and wakefulness, thinking about her life,
and was relieved when the phone finally rang at 1:00 A.M.

A deep, gruff voice greeted her. “Meet me?”
he asked.

“Give me an hour,” she said, looking at her
watch. She hung up and smiled for the first time all night.

14

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All
rights reserved.

“
And now Snow White lay a long, long time
in the coffin, and she did not change, but looked as if she were
asleep, for she was as white as snow, as red as blood, and her hair
was as black as ebony.”

—The Brothers Grimm, Snow White

Would the bastard ever call?

Smoke drifted from the ashtray where a fine
Cohiba lay unattended. Several stubbed out butts crowded the glass,
competing for space. The man looked at his watch. Had it been
done?

He smashed the lit cigar into the thick cut
crystal, neglecting to extinguish it fully. It smoldered with the
rest as he stalked through his office. He went to the window, grimy
panes lightly frosted with a thin layer of freezing condensation.
It was cold early this year. With one gloved finger, he traced an X
in the frost. He stared out into the night. Though nearly midnight,
the skyline was bright and raucous. Some festival on the grounds of
Cheekwood, good cheer, grand times. If he squinted, he could make
out headlights flashing by as overpaid valets squired the vehicles
around the curves of the Boulevard.

He tapped his fingers against the glass,
wiping his drawing away with a swipe of leather. Turning, he
surveyed the room. So empty. So dark. Ghosts lurked in the murky
recesses. The shadows were growing, threatening. Breath coming
short, he snapped on the desk lamp. He gasped, drawing air into his
lungs as deeply as he could, the panic stripped away by a
fluorescent bulb. The light was feeble in the cavernous space, but
it was illumination. Some things never change. After all these
years, still afraid of the dark.

The bare desk was smeared with ashes, empty
except for the fine rosewood box, the ashtray and the now silent
telephone. The room too was spartan, the monotony broken only by
the simple desk, a high back leather chair on wheels and three
folding chairs. He opened the humidor and extracted another of the
40th anniversary Cohibas. He followed the ritual—snipping off the
tip, holding the lighter to the end, slowly twirling the cigar in
the flame until the tobacco caught. He drew deeply, soothing smoke
pouring into his lungs. There. That was better.

The isolation was necessary. He didn’t like
people seeing him this way. It was better if they perceived him as
the strong, capable man he’d always been, not this crippled
creature, this dark entity with gnarled hands and a bent back. How
would that image strike fear?

Not long now. Fear would be his pale horse,
ridden from the backs of red-lipped girls. His duplicates. His
surrogates. His replacements.

The ringing of the phone made him jump.
Finally. He answered with a brusque “Yes?” He listened, then ended
the call.

An unhurried smile spread across his face,
the first of the night. It was time. Time to start again, to
resurface. A new face, a new body, a new soul. With a last glance
out the window, he snubbed out the cigar, closed up the humidor and
braved the shadows. Moving resolutely toward the door, he
disappeared into the gloom.

***

The phone was ringing. Somewhere in the
recesses of her brain, she recognized the sound, knew she’d have to
answer. But damn it, she was having a really nice dream. Without
opening her eyes, Taylor Jackson reached across the warm body next
to her, positioned the receiver next to her ear and grunted,
“Hello?”

“Taylor, this is your mother.”

Taylor cracked an eyelid, tried to focus one
eye on the glowing clock face. 2:48
A.M.

“Who’s dead?”

“Goodness, Taylor, you don’t have to be so
gruff.”

“Mother, it’s the middle of the night. Why
are you calling me in the middle of the night? Because you have
some kind of bad news. So if you could just spit it out so I can go
back to sleep, I’d appreciate it.”

“Fine. It’s your father. He’s gone missing.
From THE SHIVER.”

A rush of emotion filled her, and she sat up,
swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Win Jackson. Winthrop
Thomas Stewart Jackson IV, to be exact. Her illustrious father,
gone missing? Taylor let the lump settle in her throat, blinked
back the uncharacteristic tears that had come to the surface.

Her father. Her chest tightened. Oh man, she
didn’t even want to think what this might mean. Missing. That
equals dead when you’re gone from a boat in the high seas, doesn’t
it?

Father. Amazing how that one word could
trigger an avalanche of bitterness. She heard the rumors fly
through her head like migrating birds. Daddy got his little girl a
place in the Academy. Daddy bought his little girl a transfer out
of uniform into homicide. Daddy gave the mayor a major campaign
contribution and bought his little girl the Lieutenant’s title.
Good ole Win Jackson. Corporate raider, investment banker, lawyer,
politician. An all around crook, wrapped up with a hearty laugh
into a deceptively handsome package. Win was a Nashville legend. A
legend Taylor tried to stay as far away from as possible.

Sitting on the edge of her bed in her
darkened bedroom, the thought of him evoked a rich scent, some
expensive cologne he’d gotten in London and insisted on importing
every year for Christmas.

She heard her Mother shouting in her ear.

“Taylor? Taylor, are you there?”

“Yes, Mother, I’m here. What was he doing out
on THE SHIVER anyway? I didn’t think he was sailing anymore.”

“Well, you know your father.”

No, I don’t.

“He decided to take the yacht to St. Bart’s.
St. Kitts. Saint, oh, who knows. One of those Caribbean islands.
I’m sure he had some little slut with him, sailed off into the
sunset. And now it seems he may have gone overboard.”

There was no emotion in Kitty Jackson’s
voice. Devoid of emotion, of love, of feelings. Taylor wondered
sometimes if her mother’s heart had ceased to beat.

“Have the Coast Guard been called in?”

“Taylor, you’re the law enforcement… person.
I certainly don’t know the answer to that. Besides, I’m leaving the
country. I’m wintering in Gstaad.”

“Huh?”

“Skiing. October through January. Don’t you
remember? I sent you the itinerary. I won’t have time to deal with
this and get packed.”

The petulant tone made razor cuts up Taylor’s
spine. Kitty’s first concern had always been Kitty. For Christ’s
sake, her husband was missing. It was possible he had gone
overboard, was dead… but that was Kitty for you. Always ready with
a self-absorbed tale of woe.

“Thank you for letting me know, Mother. I’ll
look into it. Have a lovely vacation, won’t you? Goodbye.”

Taylor clicked off the phone before her
mother could respond.

Jesus, Win. What kind of trouble have you
gotten yourself into now?

Taylor started to roll back into place,
determined to get at least another hour of sleep when the phone
rang again. Now what? She looked at the caller ID, recognized the
number. Answered in a more professional tone than she’d used with
her mother.

“Taylor Jackson.”

“Got a dead girl you need to come see.”

“I’ll be right there.”

JUDAS KISS

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All
rights reserved.

Michelle Harris sat at the stoplight on Old
Hickory and Highway 100, grinding her teeth. She was late. Corinne
hated when she was late. She wouldn’t bitch at her, wouldn’t
chastise her, would just glance at the clock on the stove, the
digital readout that always, always ran three minutes ahead of time
so Corinne could have a cushion, and a little line would appear
between her perfectly groomed eyebrows.

Their match was in an hour. They had plenty
of time, but Corinne would need to drop Hayden at the nursery and
have a protein smoothie before stretching in preparation for their
game. Michelle and Corinne had been partners in tennis doubles for
ages, and they were two matches from taking it all. Their yearly
run at the Richland club championship was almost a foregone
conclusion; they’d won seven years in a row.

Tapping the fingers of her right hand on the
wheel, she used her left to pull her ponytail around the curve of
her neck, a comfort gesture she’d adopted in childhood. Corinne
hadn’t needed any comfort. She was always the strong one. Even as a
young child, when Michelle pulled that ponytail around her neck,
the unruly curls winding around her ear, Corinne would get that
little line between her brows to show her displeasure at her elder
sister’s weakness.

Remembering, Michelle flipped the hair back
over her shoulder with disgust. The light turned green and she
gunned it, foot hard on the pedal. She hated being late for
Corinne.

Michelle took the turn off Jocelyn Hollow
Road and followed the sedate, meandering asphalt into her sister’s
cul-de-sac. The dogwood tree in the Wolffs’ front yard was just
beginning to bud. Michelle smiled. Spring was coming. Nashville had
been in the grip of a difficult winter for months, but at last the
frigid clutch showed signs of breaking. New life stirred at the
edges of the forests, calves were dropping in the fields. The
chirping of the wrens and cardinals had taken on a higher pitch,
avian mommies and daddies awaiting the arrival of their young.
Corinne herself was ripe with a new life, seven months into an easy
pregnancy—barely looking four months along. Her activity level kept
the usual baby weight off, and she was determined to play tennis up
to the birth, just like she’d done with Hayden.