Field of Graves (21 page)

“Or maybe I felt like you saved my life, and I owed you one.” He looked straight into her eyes, marveling at their chameleon qualities. In the darkness of the bar, they were lavender, her pupils dilated. She had a sexy, come-hither quality that he was having a hard time denying. He’d never seen anything so exquisite in his life. Realizing his interest probably showed on his face, he hastily turned away and shoved some fries in his mouth.

But Taylor had caught the moment of unguarded emotion. She didn’t know if it was gratefulness or attraction, but she reached over and touched his arm.

“I’m glad you stayed with it.” She left it at that and finished the rest of her meal.

They sat quietly, not feeling the need to talk. They’d come to some tacit agreement in their silence. Yes, the attraction was there. Yes, they both felt it. No reason to push anything.

Taylor ordered another round of beers. As they were set in front of them, her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and frowned.

“Price,” she told Baldwin, who nodded. He knew their brief idyll was just that, though he was sorry they couldn’t spend a little more time together away from the case. Maybe they’d found Jill Gates.

“Hey, Captain.” He could see the muscles in her shoulders tense. “Where? Okay, we’re on our way. Yeah, I’ve got Baldwin with me. He’ll come along.” She hung up, took a last swig of her beer.

“Price wants you to come with me to a scene.” She was frowning, her attention already pulled away, and he felt the lack of it keenly.

“What scene? Did they find Jill?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. St. Catherine’s Church caught on fire. They thought it was a lightning strike from the storm until the firefighters found two bodies shoved into a confessional. They were burned to death.”

42

They pulled into the parking lot at the church, weaving their way through the fire engines. Large crime scene spotlights showed the church exterior. It was made of harled white stone and had suffered only superficial damage, but curls of smoke were still drifting through the air, a smoldering perfume clinging to the parking lot. Taylor saw Sam standing by the entrance of the church. She looked grim, was giving directions to two men with a heavy gurney between them. They went to join her.

Sam gave the two a sideways glance. “What took
you
so long?”

“So long? Price only called me ten minutes ago. We came immediately.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She frowned, nodding. “I’ve already pulled them out, and we’re taking them back to the office.”

“Want to fill me in? Price didn’t give me any details.”

Sam kept nodding. She was smudged with soot and had a faraway look on her face. “Yeah. Let’s go over there.” She pointed to Taylor’s car and started walking. Taylor and Baldwin followed. “Sorry to be short, but this is freaking me out.”

“Sam?” Taylor said sharply. She was getting a little freaked out, too. Sam never got flustered at a scene.

“I’m okay, T, just a little rattled. Baldwin, are you Catholic?”

“No. I’m Episcopalian. At least I used to be. Why?”

“Just wondering. I’m Catholic. This isn’t the way I’d like to go. I don’t think I’ll make it to confession for a while. Taylor, do you have a cigarette?”

“You’re going to smoke at a fire?”

“Hey, give me a break, okay?”

Taylor gave her one and lit it for her. “You mind filling us in?”

Sam took a long drag and coughed slightly. “Fire department got the call right after the storm rolled through. Everyone figured a lightning strike started the fire. The guys went in full bore with the hoses, but it wasn’t too bad. Seemed to be confined to the nave and chapel. They put it out, but there was that smell, you know?”

They did know. The unmistakable sweet, sickening smell of burnt flesh had invaded their nostrils as they’d drawn close to the doors of the church.

“So they get the flames put out relatively quickly and start looking around. They followed the burn pattern to the confessionals and found them inside. The woman was on one side, the priest on the other. They’re pretty charred—it looks like the fire was started in the confessional, or damn close to it.”

Taylor was running through the scenarios when Baldwin jumped in. “So it appears intentional? They were murdered?”

“Seems that way. They have an ID on the priest. Father Francis Xavier. He wasn’t burned as badly—his wallet made it through pretty much unscathed. The bishop confirmed he was doing confessions today. He told me he was new to the church, recently moved here from Boston.”

“What about the woman?”

“She’s a mess. It looks like she was bound, her arms were behind her back, and there was a little bit of cording around her wrists that made it through the fire. But there’s nothing on her as far as ID. They searched the church. There’s no purse or anything that looks like it would belong to a woman.”

“Are you going to try and do a dental on her? Match it to our missing girl?”

The question was lingering in the air around them. No one wanted to say the name out loud in case it would become truth, crystallized by meeting the air.

“I’m going to have to. She’s burned up pretty badly.”

“I’ll call and see if her parents are already up here. They’ll need to get her dental radiographs for us ASAP.”

“Thanks, Taylor. I’ll post her first thing in the morning.”

Sam reached over and gave Taylor a hug. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and turned back to her van.

Baldwin turned to Taylor, who looked stricken and suddenly very tired.

“Do you think it’s her?”

Taylor sighed. “Yeah.” She pulled out her cell phone and speed dialed. “Fitz? It’s Taylor. Just wanted you to know. We may have found Jill Gates.”

43

The parking lot was full, people rushing about, yelling, panicking. The air smoldered, the scents of smoke and death lingered. A shiver of excitement went through him. It was happening, just as he planned, as he’d been told.

“And the angel took the censer, and filled it with the fire of the altar...”

He turned away. So much left to do.

44

Jill woke when the needle pricked her arm. She shook her head, trying to clear her vision, focusing on the stinging in the crook of her elbow. She started to cry, then felt herself melt away into the darkness again.

She knew the drugs were making her hallucinate. She thought she was sitting in a massive green courtyard, even though she knew she was in the bed. She tried to get her bearings, looking first right, then left, but her head felt as if it was tethered in place. Her arms were bound at her side. She could only look ahead, to the expanse of green grass in front of her. There was a shadow there, a woman swaying like a cobra mesmerized by an unknown song. She tried to speak, to ask where she was, but no words came out. The shadow shifted, slowly, so slowly, side to side, and Jill heard the sound of sobbing. The woman was sad. So very sad. And suddenly she was gone, and the shadows lifted, leaving only a blank wall of green in their place.

Jill heard a voice in her head. She knew it came from the woman. She was angry now, crying and yelling. Her voice faded in and out, and Jill tried so hard to hear what she was saying, but only snatches of the woman’s voice came to her. “I will tell,” said the voice. “I will tell them what you’ve done.”

Another voice joined the mix, this one somewhat familiar, deeper, comforting. Was it soothing the woman, trying to calm her? The voice of the woman grew fainter, and Jill could hear the gentle voice, quieter this time. “You will be honored.”

THE
FIFTH
DAY

45

Taylor and Baldwin shivered in the parking lot of the church. It was barely morning and exceptionally cool, overcast, and breezy. A few times through the night, hot cups of coffee appeared magically at their elbows, borne in on a tray by a young man Taylor didn’t recognize. Despite her distaste for straight coffee, Taylor had accepted the steaming foam cups gladly, holding on to the precious warmth and choking down the bitter liquid. Baldwin had been sucking down cup after cup and was jumping around like a child on Christmas morning.

Taylor took in his appearance with a smile. “Baldwin, you’re a mess.”

He gave her a hurt look and bent to examine his reflection in the side mirror of her car. He took a halfhearted swipe at his hair, which was standing on end and pointing off in every direction like a broken compass needle. He had two days’ worth of stubble darkening his jaw and cheeks, and his eyes were bloodshot from the smoke and lack of sleep. He hadn’t felt so alive in months.

“Yeah, well, you look great.”

Taylor blushed and turned away. She knew he was full of it, but didn’t argue. The mark of a true southern belle: Never put aside a compliment. She ran her hands through her hair, smoothed the mass into a messy ponytail. Gave him a smile.

Though it had been several hours since the fire, the reek of burnt flesh was pervasive, even without the bodies present. Taylor had been smoking all night trying to get the smell out of her nose. She’d succeeded only in giving herself a sore throat. Her voice had lowered an octave. The chill, the smoke, and the slight cold were catching up to her. She popped two Advil Cold & Sinus pills out of their blister pack and swallowed them down with the remnants of coffee sloshing around her cup. She wrinkled her nose; it had gone cold.

Baldwin rubbed his hands together and shoved them deep in the pockets of his jeans. “Do you think they’re about done in there? I’m getting hungry.”

“They should be. Let’s go check with the chief, see what’s keeping them.” They started toward the entry of the nave, but the fire chief walked out before she could reach the doors. He greeted her with a tired smile.

“Lieutenant Jackson. Long night. You’ve been freezing your tush off the whole time?”

“Yep. Fire Chief Andrew Rove, meet Dr. John Baldwin, FBI. He’s working the case with us.”

They shook, and the chief said, “FBI, huh? Well, you’ll want to know this is, without a doubt, arson. The combustible gas detector found gasoline was used as an accelerant near the confessional. Jackson, your Crime Scene techs are trying to lift some prints from the priest’s office; it looks like there were people in there before the fire started. Tea for three, laid out on the coffee table. How very civilized.”

“Tea for three. But only two bodies. The victims knew their killer,” Baldwin said.

“Could be. We didn’t find anything leftover, no gas cans, no rope, nothin’. Place is clean as a whistle except for the office. We’re pulling out now, there’s nothing more for us to do.”

“Thanks, Chief. I look forward to the report.”

With a nod and a small salute, he went to his truck.

Tim Davis, Sam’s death investigator on the scene, walked out of the church with several bags in his hands. Taylor jogged over to him. “Anything worthwhile?”

“I managed to pick up prints off two of the teacups. Unfortunately, the third was clean, still full of tea. Untouched. There was some liquid left in the two that I printed. I’ll run it through the mass spectrometer and see what turns up. And I’ll get these prints over to Lincoln. If I were a betting man, I’d wager they belong to our vics, so there may be nothing to compare them to if we can’t lift something off their hands. Third cup was probably the person who set the fire. Didn’t want to leave any traces behind.”

Taylor chewed on that for a minute. Baldwin was silent. She could see the wheels turning in his head.

“Good work. Get out of here, Tim. Thanks for everything.”

He waved his bags at her and walked away. Taylor turned to Baldwin, confusion settling in her eyes. She needed some time to think about what had happened. “Wanna get some breakfast?”

He looked deep into her eyes, recognizing the frustration she was feeling. “Yeah, let’s do that. I’m starved. My mama always told me, ‘When in doubt, eat.’”

They made their way to the car and headed out. They took the back roads past the huge homes in Belle Meade into Green Hills, skirted the morning traffic down Hillsboro Road, and pulled into the parking lot of the Pancake Pantry, a well-established staple for breakfast in Nashville. The restaurant was so popular that an hour wait was not uncommon, but on this brisk morning, the line was blessedly absent. They had to wait ten minutes for the doors to open, both standing with hands in their pockets against the cold. Baldwin moved closer to shelter her from the worst of the breeze. Taylor leaned against him gratefully, happy for the contact as much as the warmth of his body.

When the hostess finally came to unlock the doors, Baldwin held the door for Taylor. Inside, she caught a glimpse of a flyer in the window. The poster featured a large picture of a smiling Jill Gates. The headline read
Have You Seen Jilly
? Under her picture were her vital statistics, what she was last seen wearing, and the phone number to the tip line. Taylor felt all the breath being sucked out of her body.

Glancing up and down the street, Taylor realized there were posters tacked in all the store windows and stapled over the latest band announcements on the telephone poles. She felt sick to her stomach. She’d just seen Jill Gates, and she didn’t look anything like the smiling woman in the picture.

She didn’t know how she managed to make it to the table; her legs were wobbly, her vision blackening. She felt the chair slide in under her, heard Baldwin order her a Diet Coke, but nothing was registering. She tried to breathe, but the panic attack was on her. She bent at the waist, trying not to faint.

She had no idea how long it took her to get it back together. She heard Baldwin muttering softly in her ear and realized he was sitting in the chair next to her, holding on for dear life. She was mortified to have fallen apart in front of him, not to mention in such a public venue. She drew in a few gulps of air. Her head started to clear, and she sat up. Baldwin let her go and leaned back into his chair, his eyes full of concern.

“You okay?”