Sixteen

Taylor awoke with a start. Damn it. She’d closed her eyes for half a second and drifted off.

A wave of emotion cascaded through her. She needed to move, to breathe in the night air, to find him. It was all well and good to dream about taking the fight to the Pretender, but the truth of the matter was, he was probably bringing it to her.

The walls grew too close and she stood, fast. As she rose, her holster caught on the edge of her inbox, dumping the contents to the floor.

“Son of a bitch!”

She looked at the mess, the parallel to her own emotions.

Be hunted, or be the hunter.

When it came right down to it, she knew which path she would choose.

She dropped to her knees and began assembling the mess. She’d gathered the papers and files into three significant piles when her phone rang. She reached up to her desk and pulled the phone to her. An internal call, from the switchboard.

“Lieutenant Jackson,” she answered, pushing all the morbid thoughts from her mind.

“LT, it’s Marcus. I’m out on a call, and I think you need to see this.”

She glanced at the clock, 10:11 p.m. Crap. Baldwin would be mad at her, she wasn’t supposed to be here that long. And seeing as she was deskbound, Commander Huston would be very displeased if she went out on a case in an official capacity. But Marcus Wade wasn’t prone to histrionics. Steady and smart, he was the one she counted on to see past surface appearances and into the heart of the matter. If he was calling, he actually needed her.

A quick look couldn’t hurt anything, and if the Pretender was watching… A shot in the proverbial dark, perhaps?

“It’s late. Why didn’t B-shift get the call?”

“Lincoln and I pulled it earlier. It’s taken us hours to get the body out of the water. He’s still in there, tied to something. We’ve got the OEM divers trying to get him untangled.”

That was right, Lincoln had mentioned getting called out to a drowning. And now Marcus was calling… “You have an inkling about the identity of the victim?”

“I think it might be Peter Schechter.”

Taylor groaned inwardly. Yet another teenager dead, more parents to engulf in sorrow. That would be nine of Nashville’s kids murdered in less than a week, not counting the one she’d taken down. She didn’t know how the city was going to recover. She didn’t know how she was going to recover.

“Is he a part of the Halloween massacre?”

“I don’t know. Can you come on out here? I’m at Percy Priest, a boat dock off Hamilton Creek Park. Sam’s just arrived.”

“I’ll be there in ten. Tell Sam to hang on until I can see the scene, all right?”

“Will do. Thanks, Taylor.”

Marcus clicked off. She turned the light out in her office and headed toward the motor pool at a jog. Her boots made sharp clangs against the concrete spiral up into the parking lot. Screw being on desk duty. One of her team needed her.

She grabbed the first unmarked she got to, slid behind the wheel and headed west.

J. Percy Priest Lake was the largest lake in Davidson County, over two hundred and thirteen miles of shoreline, five marinas and thirty-three boat ramps. With trails and playgrounds and fishing and boating, it was a miracle they’d found Schechter’s body so quickly. Though Taylor remembered her friend Robert Trice, who used to run OEM, the Office of Emergency Management, the department that conducted water search and-rescues, telling her that all bodies come to the surface eventually. Robert was gone now, dead too early. She missed him.

Marcus was standing off to her left, talking to Sam. The moon’s glow on the water should have been beautiful. Instead it was menacing. She didn’t like this one bit. It all felt wrong, had for weeks. She needed to do some serious assessments of her life. Because this was her dream, right? Right? To protect. To serve.

She didn’t think she was saving too many lives these days.

She stepped over to Marcus and Sam, who were deep in conversation.

“How’d they find him?” Sam was asking.

“Some guy coming down to tend his boat saw a flash of red in the water, realized it was a puffy down jacket and called 911.”

“That’s lucky. He could have been submerged for much longer. The cold water might have helped save some evidence.”

“The knots that tied him to the branch were elaborate. His jacket is weighted, too, though obviously not enough. He wasn’t meant to be found this quickly, I don’t think.”

Sam pushed her too-long bangs out of her eyes, her brown eyes sharp. “Good thing he was tied to that branch. He would have floated away, drifted down the lake, washed up somewhere else. So, Taylor, how’s Fitz?”

“He’s as good as can be expected. He’s been through a lot.”

Sam gave her a critical, assessing look. “So have you. You need to think about taking some more time off. You’re still on leave anyway, why are you here?”

“Because Marcus called me. I’m fine, really. I need to stay busy. If I sit around for another day I’m going to go mad. I won’t touch anything, I promise.”

Sam spoke softly, so only Taylor could hear. “You were hardly sitting around this morning. I heard what happened. Are you okay?”

Taylor nodded. “Yes. Just do me a favor, be aware, all right? I don’t want to take any chances. You guys are too precious to me to risk getting involved in the Pretender’s little game.”

“Not such a little game,” Sam said, a grim smile on her face.

They heard water splashing, then a deep male voice rang out in the gloom. “We got ’im!”

All the noise around her ceased. They brought the body out slowly, trying not to lose any evidence, though the victim had obviously been in the water for several days. Covered in the beginnings of adipocere, a thick, gummy wax made of decomposing fatty tissues, the gases in his body had finally pushed him to the point of buoyancy and he had floated to the surface.

The still-folded stretcher crouched like a metal spider on the uneven ground. The ’gators had a bag laid out, ready to receive the remains. With a splash, four men strong-armed the body into place.

Sam immediately beelined for the corpse, tsking in her typically Southern way. Taylor hung back for a moment, watching. She didn’t want to interrupt Sam’s communion with the dead. Sam shouted back over her shoulder, “Come on, then. I know you want to take a peek.”

Taylor edged forward until she was parallel with what used to be the body’s face. Trying not to breathe, she leaned in for a closer look. Male, late teens, it seemed. The skin was gray and doughy, wet with water and bloated tissue. Bits of matter stuck in the brown hair. There was too much damage to his face to be able to tell for sure, but she was certain they’d just found Peter Schechter. Gut instinct, maybe, or just process of elimination. He was their only missing person tonight, and this body fit the description they had in the system.

“Looks like him, bless his heart,” Sam said. She knew about the boy’s profile, everyone did. He’d been missing for five days, long enough that every cop in the city was on high alert.

“Anything leap out at you?” Taylor asked.

“You know better than that, cookie.”

“I do, but I thought I’d try.”

Sam went to her bag and dug in for a thermometer. “Best get the priest out of bed, though. I don’t want to drag this out any longer than I have to, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. Can you ID him tonight, do you think?”

“I have the dental records back at the office. I’ll call Mike Tabor on my way, see if he can’t swing by and take a quick look. It’s late, but Tabor asked to be informed if we found anything. If it’s the kid, we’ll want to get his parents notified before this all leaks.”

“You can say that again.” Taylor stepped away, let Sam do her work. Sorrow flooded her. What a waste. What a goddamn waste. At least she didn’t get the sense that this was the work of the Pretender. She didn’t think she could handle another death on her conscience.

Marcus was taking notes, face pinched in the artificial light. The scent of rotting flesh permeated the scene. Floaters were the worst. Decomposition mingled with dank winter water created an unmistakable miasma especially designed to help turn even the strongest of stomachs, like three-day-old roadkill drenched in a moldy blanket. He gave her a weak smile.

“Sam’s going to try to ID the body tonight. Have you called Father Victor?” Taylor asked.

“Yes, just did. He’s aware I may need him.”

“Good. I’m happy to go back to the morgue with Sam, let you continue running things out here while we work on the identification. You won’t have to rush.”

Relief flooded his face. It was going to be a late night regardless—splitting up the duties would make things go quicker.

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Not a bit. I’ll call you as soon as we know something.”

“Thanks, Taylor. I owe you one.”

She punched his shoulder lightly. “Yeah, yeah.”

She went back to her cruiser, grabbed her cell. She needed to let Baldwin know what she was up to. He wasn’t going to be happy about it, but in truth, she was. She needed the distraction. Working a murder, even peripherally, would keep her mind off the one she planned to commit.