Forty-Four

Taylor ran back to the front desk of Forensic Medical, where Kris was waiting for her.

“Nothing. She’s not down there. Do you have her schedule up yet?”

“Yes, and I called the doctor—she hasn’t shown there. Here, look.” Kris got up and let Taylor sit in her chair, pointed over her shoulder at the computer screen.

“It was a normal day. We had intake of three new cases, late afternoon. She was going to post them overnight, began the night shift staff meeting at ten, that’s when she realized her car was crapped out. She was going to grab dinner beforehand, and it wouldn’t start, so she decided to have someone from staff run out and get something for her. It was a typical twelve-hour shift.”

“Was Stuart in last night?”

Stuart Charisse was Sam’s favorite assistant in the morgue, a quiet, smart man who was devoted to Sam.

“Yeah, he was in. I think he got off at two o’clock.”

“Call him.”

Kris wasted no time. She moved to the right and grabbed her phone. She obviously had all the staff numbers programmed in, she simply hit a single button and put the phone on speaker. A sleepy voice mumbled, “Yeah?”

“Stuart, it’s Kris. I’m here with Lieutenant Jackson. We’re looking for Sam. Have you seen her?”

He yawned loudly. “No. Not since I left. She and Iles were going to get something to eat. She missed dinner.”

“Barclay?” Kris asked. “He was in last night?”

“Yeah. Something about his performance review. They decided to do it over Subway, I think.”

“Thank you, Stuart,” Taylor said, then cut off the phone. Kris’s face had gone white.

“Kris, what’s wrong?”

“Barclay isn’t in Nashville this week. I was talking to him when you got here. He’s in Florida. His mom is sick, he went down to help. He goes down there a lot.”

Barclay fucking Iles.

“Kris, how long have you and Barclay been dating?”

Kris was wringing her hands, the knuckles white from the force, her eyebrows touching across her forehead as she frowned. “Almost a year now. He’s a great guy. You know him, Lieutenant. I recommended him to Sam—he seemed like he’d make a really good ’gator. He went to med school for a while, he’s really smart. The rest of the staff all like him, too. He loves Sam. He loves you, too—he talks about you all the time. You’re his hero. He wants to be just like you. I actually got a little jealous once, but that was silly. I was just being insecure. But why would he lie to me? What’s going on?”

What’s going on indeed? Taylor ran back through her memories of Iles. She’d worked with him the first time not too long ago, but he’d been around the department, at the crime scenes, for months. Access. He’d have access to everything—personnel files, schedules, home addresses.

Son of a bitch.

“Kris, listen to me very carefully. I think Barclay may be someone else, someone very, very dangerous. I need you to give me every bit of information you have about him. His phone number, his address. Every picture you have. Everything you can think of that belongs to him. Right now.”