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“Like the new look, Owens,” Fitz needled.
Sam rolled her eyes. “Are you ever going to start using my married name, Sergeant?”
“Naw. I like Owens. Loughley’s too hard to say.” He jostled her with his hip and smiled.
Sam dropped her bag on the folding card table that had been set up for the field command station. “Fine. Call me whatever you want. Just put that degree in. I spent too much money not to use the title.”
“Anyway,” Taylor said, getting their attention back from their game. “Sam, we were about to make entry on the scene. I haven’t been inside yet. Parks says the victim is a female Caucasian, pregnant and toasting. So let’s get this over with, okay?”
Fitz looked over to the neighbor’s house. “I think I’m gonna go next door and have a chat. Y’all have fun up there.”
Taylor watched him go. Good. Two birds, one stone. “We set, Parks?”
Parks nodded. “Tim’s here too, ready to go.” Tim Davis was the lead criminalist for Metro Nashville police. He’d started in the Medical Examiner’s office as a death investigator, then moved over to Metro in anticipation of their eventual establishment of a crime lab. Taylor always enjoyed working with the young man. He was very serious about his craft.
“No time like the present.” Taylor started for the door, Sam right behind her. The videographer was on the narrow porch, camera on the boards between her feet, ready to document their walk through. Taylor didn’t recognize her. Tim Davis was waiting patiently, kit in hand.
“Hey, Tim,” Taylor said.
“Morning, LT. Dr. Loughley. Have you met Keri McGee yet? She’s going to be doing the video feed for us this morning.”
A sunny blonde stuck out a pudgy hand. “Good to meet you, Lieutenant. I just moved up here, used to be with New Orleans Metro. Really glad to be here.”
Taylor held her hand up. “It’s good to have you. I’d shake, but I’m already gloved. Welcome to Nashville. You just stick to my six and we’ll be fine. If you need to boot, try to get back outside and don’t screw up the scene, okay?”
“Sure thing, ma’am.”
Taylor fought the urge to snap. Jesus, girl, don’t call me ma’am. I’m not old enough to be your mother. Instead, she smiled and stepped into the house.
Rotten chicken. That’s what the first olfactory note identified. Just as quickly, the coppery scent of blood, the stink of putrefaction and decomposing flesh, and a sweet, almost perfumelike scent. Not air freshener. Hmm. Taylor’s eyes adjusted as her subconscious mind worked its way through the instinct to flee. It wasn’t a natural smell, and her heart raced for a moment. A normal first reaction, borne of self-preservation, would be to get the hell out of there. A couple million years of evolution warned her—there’s danger here. She’d felt it before, knew it would pass in a second. She let herself adjust, breathing through her mouth. Sam was by her side, doing the same thing. They were trained to make it go away.
Taylor let her eyes wander the room in front of her. She was standing in a marble-floored foyer. There was a table against the closest wall with pictures in silver gilt frames—happy, smiling newlyweds against a summer-wooded backdrop. The stairs were directly to her right, hardwood covered in an ivory Berber runner. Just past the banister was the entrance into the dining room, loaded with heavy dark oak furniture, silver and crystal, an oversized china cabinet. To the left, a brief hallway that opened into a great room. The floors in the dining room were burnished oak, the great room was carpeted in the same light Berber wool.
Every few inches there were tiny crimson footprints. Little heels here, little toes there. They looked like mouse trails, in and out, back and forth, leading up and down the stairs, into the great room, and Taylor could see they trailed into the kitchen on the far side of the dining room. They were everywhere; some light, barely pink enough to mar the carpet, some outlines or edges. Closer to the stairs, a few were dark, almost seeming they would be wet to the touch. Sam drew in a deep, sharp breath.
Taylor forced her brain to shut off that emotional center which would allow her to acknowledge the desperation the child must have felt to be wandering around the house, her mother’s blood on her bare feet.
“This is Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson,” she said aloud for the benefit of the video camera. “I am the lead investigative officer at this crime scene, 4589 Jocelyn Hollow Court. I’m going to do one pass through the lower part of the structure.” Nodding at Sam, she went to the right, into the dining room, avoiding the blood. Sam picked her way after Taylor. Tim and Keri followed, the group moving as one, silently assessing.
The footprints wended their way through the dining room, under the table, and back into the kitchen. There was no rhyme or reason to the pattern, just a nomadic line of passage, typical of a youngster moving aimlessly about her home. Some areas were just faint impressions, blotches, and some were well formed. That made sense to Taylor. The blood would wear off after enough steps. With a child, her uneven toddling tread would account for the inconsistencies.
The dining room had a door that separated it from the kitchen, but it was propped open with a stuffed cat doorstop. The door was white, a six-paneled French style, covered with what looked like cherry juice finger-paints. Taylor knew what they really were; the little girl had swept her bloody hand along the door as she walked from room to room.
The kitchen was baby-proofed, with locking mechanisms on all the below counter cabinets. The smell of rot was more prevalent, and Taylor spied a Wild Oats bag with a package of chicken in the deep stainless steel sink. Well, that accounted for the stink downstairs. If the victim hadn’t talked to her sister for two days, and the chicken was coming back to life, then there was a good chance she’d been dead at least a day. Taylor only put chicken in the sink if she needed to defrost it and had the time to do so. That would give a convenient timeline—a day to thaw and a day to start smelling. Though it just as easily could be the victim came home from grocery shopping and didn’t get all the packages stored before her assailant appeared. They’d need a liver temp or a potassium level from the vitreous fluid for something more accurate, but it was a start. Never assume, that was her mantra.
Fruit in a basket on the granite countertop, an empty carton of organic fat-free milk, an empty yogurt container…if Taylor was going to guess, it looked like the victim had just finished eating breakfast before she vacated the room and got herself killed.
An answering machine hung on the wall, the red light indicating new messages blinking.
“Be sure someone gets those messages,” Taylor said to Tim.
Sam made a noise in the back of her throat. “I was planning on shish kebabs for dinner. Guess I’ll make a salad instead.”
The videographer didn’t comment, and Taylor shot her a glance. Keri wasn’t fazed, was simply documenting. Excellent. Taylor caught Sam’s eye and smiled. Always the jokester.
“Let’s head up.” Taylor walked slowly from the kitchen through the great room, back to the foyer, the group in her wake. The stair had a landing halfway up and turned to the left. There was blood smudged up and down the stair runner, not the same kind of hit and miss footprints they’d been seeing. Taylor asked Sam what she thought it was from.
“Baby that small can’t get up and down with a normal stepping motion. She’d have to drag herself up step by step, on her hands and knees, slide down on her bottom. If she was covered in blood…”
“Oh.” The image was vivid in Taylor’s mind.
Placing their feet in between the splashes of color, they made their way to the second floor.
“Baby gate isn’t up,” Sam noticed. “Get a shot of that, would you, Keri?”
“That explains how she was able to wander the house.” Taylor took in the setup.
To their right were three doors, all leading to bedrooms. To the left, the hall led away from the stairs. The scene was similar to below, but more intense. Distinctive tiny red footprints, defined smears along the walls. Macabre artistic skills from a young child surely affected more by confusion than anything else.
The rooms each glowed with a different palate, and the hall bath was decorated in a nautical style, reminiscent of a beach hotel. It struck Taylor. The obvious effort that had gone into decorating was apparent. And the trimmings weren’t bought at Target or Pottery Barn. The décor was top of the line, custom designed.
A quick perusal showed a guest room, an office and a nursery. Blood smears and light footprints wound in and out. Taylor followed the path. The nursery was painted in various tones of pink and lilac, with a mural of a forest on the western wall. The furniture was bleached oak; there was a mobile hanging above the oversized crib. Sunlight poured through the windows, barely checked by a light pink sheer. There was a small half bath off the nursery. Taylor glanced into the space. The smell of feces and urine was strong—a miniature plastic toilet sat on the floor next to its life-sized companion. It was full of waste. The child was toilet-trained, but without her mother to empty the basin, the little potty was full to the brim.
Nose wrinkled, Taylor walked the length of the hallway to the master bedroom. The door to the room was open wide, wedged against the wall with a small bronze mouse. Corinne Wolff liked her doors open, no question about that. The walls were painted a creamy sage, the furniture dark rattan and rosewood. Island style, a retreat for the owners. Taylor remembered seeing an ad for the same style of room in an upscale design catalogue.
The interior of the room was awash in incongruous colors. The blood had molted into a dark brown stain, except where it cast against the walls and a white shaded lamp in a deep burgundy.
They saw the feet first. The body was half hidden by the king-sized bed. They crossed the room with care. No one wanted to be responsible for mucking up any evidence they might find. The room was at least forty feet in width, the bed in the center of the back wall. There was approximately fifteen feet of space on each side. The body was in the south quadrant of the room. Taylor heard Tim scratching notes as they moved to the far side of the bedroom.
Corinne Wolff was barefoot, her legs drawn to her chest. She was half on her side and half on her stomach, facing them. Her chocolate-colored eyes were open but unseeing, the irises like gummy coffee. Her brown hair was matted with blood from an obvious gash across her forehead. Her jaw was broken, misaligned along the lower half of her face, jutting obscenely toward the ceiling. The body was crooked too; her arms stretched out as if she tried to break a fall then changed her mind. She was dressed in panties and a sports bra, a pink cashmere blanket draped over her midsection. A thick pool of blood approximately two feet in length and a foot wide surrounded her head and her torso, and a small plush toy was tucked into the crook of her arm. Footprints led around the body, away from the body, back to the body. Along Corinne’s side, the blood had been disturbed.
Taylor and Sam stepped closer. “Oh, man,” Sam whispered. “That poor thing.”
“Corinne or Hayden?”
“Both.”
Taylor wasn’t sure what bothered her more, the teddy bear tucked into Corinne’s arms, the blanket draped across her seminakedness, or the plush, stuffed Gund My Doctor kit that sat by her head. Her daughter, unable to understand what was happening, had tried to help. She’d managed to get a large pretend Band-Aid stuck to the top of her mother’s hand. Hayden had tried to fix her. And then she’d lain down next to her mother, covering herself in blood.
They got the necessary pictures and videotape, then Sam set to work. She pulled back the blanket and saw the pregnancy.
“Oh, jeez. I hate this.” She felt the body. “She’s cold and malleable. The blood pool has soaked into the carpet and is tacky to the touch. I won’t know an exact time of death until I run the temp during autopsy, but this should give you a time frame to start looking at. Rigor is completely gone. Livor mortis is set, the discoloration consistent with a body lying in one position since death. She’s been dead at least thirty-six hours. I’d say she was killed right here, fell in this position and didn’t move. How far along is she, do you know? This looks like a four, maybe five-month bump.”
“I don’t know. Parks said she was pregnant, but he didn’t say when she was due. Thirty-six hours minimum? God, that little girl was here in this house with her dead mother all that time. Poor baby.”
Sam continued her examination. “With a mother who’d been violently bludgeoned to death. Blunt force trauma to the extremities, the head. Her jaw is certainly broken, she’s missing some teeth.” Sam was finishing her initial assessment, making notes in a small black reporter’s notebook. “This is a mess, T.”
“Tell me about it. I don’t see any weapon conveniently lying around, do you?”
“No. And this is too much damage to just have been someone’s fists. Tim, you hear that? You need to keep an eye out for a weapon.”
“Yes, Dr. Loughley.”
“Okay, folks. Let’s rock and roll.” Sam and Tim continued their duties, with Keri filming everything for posterity. Taylor went to the window. The cream-colored roman shades, covered with blood spatter, were at half-mast. She glanced out at the street below. The neighbors were still grouped on the opposite lawn, talking quietly amongst themselves. She didn’t see anything out of place, no one who stood out as having a more than neighborly fascination with the goings-on.
Sam stood, leaning over the body, then turned to Taylor. “It’s going to be a long day. I need to run out to the van for a couple things. Are you ready for some air?”
“Yeah.”
With a last glance at the victim, Taylor led the way out of the master and down the stairs.
When they got back to the front door, Taylor asked the question that had been burning in her mind from the moment she laid eyes on the body of Corinne Wolff.
“Just where is this husband?”
Four
The Harris family had taken refuge with the Wolffs’ next-door neighbor.
Fitz nodded to her as she came in. There were five people in the room, sitting, staring, crying. Father Ross, the department chaplain, was holding a woman who looked to be in her early fifties, with reddish hair. The woman was sobbing, nestled into the chaplain’s shoulder. The mother. The room was deadly quiet outside of the woman’s choked tears.
A dark-haired young woman met Taylor’s eye. A mixture of revulsion and longing crossed the woman’s face, quickly replaced by a hardness, an implacable blankness. Taylor had seen that look before. People hated to see her; she was the harbinger of death. But she held the answers, the clues, the reason. They needed her. Taylor guessed the woman was twenty-eight, maybe thirty. She could see the resemblance to the victim.
There was something else on this woman’s face, but Taylor pushed it away.
She was this woman’s polar opposite—where Taylor was tall, honey-blond, gray-eyed, full-lipped and broad-shouldered, this woman was five foot three or four, dark and quite athletic. Her body hummed with health and well-being; her face wasn’t exactly pretty, but what men who were being kind would call interesting. She gave Taylor another look, and this time the meaning was inescapable.
Taylor was unsettled. She never enjoyed being the object of another woman’s attention. This woman wasn’t exactly hitting on her, but she’d made her interest known. Lovely. What was up with that?
“I’m Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, Metro homicide. I’m so sorry for your loss, ma’am.”
The dark-haired woman didn’t smile, but stuck out her hand.
“I’m Michelle Harris. Corinne is my sister.”
Taylor was surprised when the woman spoke; the voice was deep and husky, that sexy, cracked sound that men always flocked to. They sounded alike.
Michelle gestured to the tear-streaked woman standing with Father Ross. “This is my mother, Julianne Harris.” She went around the room in turn, naming her family.
“My father, Matthew Harris. My sister, Nicole Harris. Carla Manchini, Corinne’s neighbor. We’re waiting for my brother Derek, he’ll be here shortly. Do you know who did this to my sister?”
“Not yet, unfortunately. We’re early into this investigation, Ms. Harris.”
“It’s Miss.”
Taylor cocked her head to the side for a brief instant, then replied, “Miss Harris. Sorry. Where’s your sister’s daughter?”
The smaller of the two sisters, Nicole, spoke, her voice stronger than she looked. “She’s taking a nap in the back room. Poor thing was absolutely exhausted. Once the paramedics said she was fine, we gave her a bath, fed her and got her down. She seemed all right, physically.”
“Why, Lieutenant? Hayden didn’t have anything to do with this.” Michelle Harris was sharp-tongued, challenging. Taylor forgave her, poor girl’s sister was dead, but ignored her for a moment. She turned to the other sister.
“Nicole, right?” The girl nodded.
“You gave her clothes to the officer? We’re going to need to process them as evidence.”
She nodded. “That crime technician officer was with us when we changed her. We did everything just how he told us to.”
“That’s good. We appreciate your help. Sergeant Fitzgerald will help me gather your statements. Mrs. Manchini, I’d like to speak with you alone. Can we go into another room?”
“You don’t want to talk to me first?” Michelle asked.
Taylor met Michelle Harris’s eyes. They were as odd as Taylor’s own, a blue so clear you would almost say they were transparent. Taylor’s were gray as a cloudy sky, one slightly darker than the other.
“I want to speak with everyone who is here. I just need some information from Mrs. Manchini to start. Please, bear with me. I’m afraid it’s going to be a long day. Mrs. Manchini?”
The woman stooped when she stood, unable to straighten all the way. She gestured to the hall, and Taylor followed her out of the room. She stopped walking when she heard the deep voice of Corinne’s father speaking.
“You okay, sweetheart?”
Taylor edged back to the living room entrance, careful to stay out of sight. Eavesdropping. She could see into the room perfectly; there was a mirror on the opposite wall above a small writing desk that reflected their actions. Fitz had his back to her, was talking to Father Ross.
Michelle Harris turned and grabbed onto her father, the words pouring out of her like a spigot left on during a summer drought. “Oh, Daddy. I don’t know if I am. I don’t think I’ll ever get the image of Corinne laying there on the floor all bloody, with Hayden next to her, out of my mind.”
“I know, honey. It must have been horrible.” He pulled her in close, and Michelle melted into his arms. Taylor felt a pang of jealousy. Michelle’s father was her savior, her protector.
“Haven’t you heard from Derek yet?”
“He’s in that infernal lab class until noon. I’m going to head over to Vanderbilt now, be waiting for him when he leaves. I don’t want him to hear this from an outsider. I’ll bring him back here with me. Will you be okay for a little while?”
“I’ll be fine, Daddy. Once I talk to the detective, I’ll sit with Mom. You and Derek take your time. He’s going to be a mess.”
“Yes, he is. Thank you for understanding. You always were my good girl. I love you, Shelly. Take care of Nikki too. She’s not as strong as you and your mom.” He hugged her tight to his chest, and Taylor turned away. A grieving family. Why did that make her feel so empty?
Mrs. Manchini had led Taylor into her bedroom. Her chintz bedroom. Unlike the coolly decorated perfection of the Wolffs’ house, everything here smacked of homemade kitsch.
The master was small, about half the size of the house next door. A four-poster bed with a canopy and frilly lace pillows took up much of the space. Cliché, Taylor thought, then mentally chided herself. The Manchini house did seem a caricature of itself, the woman who owned it a shadow of a real person, insubstantial. Carla Manchini could have been anywhere from forty-five to sixty-five, with outdated wire glasses, thinning blond hair in a partially grown-out perm and slightly crooked teeth. Her parents must have decided that they weren’t quite bad enough to invest the money into fixing. As a result, when she spoke, a snaggletooth incisor appeared on the right upper side, and her lips folded around it as if not sure what they were meant to do.
Taylor realized Carla had been talking and focused.
“I’m not sure what you want with me, Lieutenant. I didn’t know them next door very well, no, I didn’t. I mind my own business over here at Manchini’s casa, yes, I do. I’m not a spy, don’t go looking into my neighbors’ backyards, I truly don’t.”
Taylor looked at the woman, wondering why she was so adamant. She wouldn’t meet Taylor’s eye, just sat on her bed, her gaze flitting about as she twisted her hands together.
“Actually, ma’am, I’m just wondering if you’ve noticed anything funny over the past few days.”
The woman shook her head solemnly. “I surely didn’t.”
“Nothing?”
