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“Hi. Glad you’re here.”

“Hey, Dr. Fox.” Taylor nodded at the M.E., then stood back quietly and let Lincoln talk.

“Heard this was a possible suicide?” Lincoln walked around the pool of blood, taking it in from every angle. The young M.E. shook his head. “No suicide on this one. Execution style. He was on his knees. Shooter put the gun to his head, pulled the trigger. See the stippling? It was right up against his temple, flat on the surface. The bullet tore through his brain, went into the wall over there. Crime Scene recovered it. It’s flattened, but there’s enough to make a match if the gun is in the system. One shot to the temple, he falls face-first and to the right, landing here.”

“A temple through and through. Need a big gun for that.”

“Yeah, it’ll narrow it down.”

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Fox wasn’t much known for his chatty attitude. That was more than Taylor had heard him speak in one sitting since she’d met him, three years prior. He pointed to the body, an older gentleman by the looks of his gray hair.

“Can we move him now?”

Taylor focused on the back of the man’s head. The slight edge of comb track was still visible in the steely hair.

“Was there no—” A throat cleared, and she looked up just in time to receive a ferocious stare from Lincoln, and stopped. He smiled politely.

“There’s no identification on the body?” he asked, knowing full well that’s exactly what his boss was about to say.

“No. Nothing. Pockets were emptied. It’s probably just a robbery gone wrong.”

Lincoln was looking around the room. “This place looks deserted. Who belongs to the apartment?”

Parks handed him a paper, the classified ad circled in red felt-tip pen. “It’s vacant. A furnished rental. Checked with the landlord, he gave me the paper.”

“It’s just a robbery,” Fox interjected. “Shooter probably lives in another building, came down to score some crack.”

“Brilliantly deduced, Fox. How many robbers do you know who execute their victims like this?” Taylor was tired of this rubbish. “Roll him.”

“As you wish, Lieutenant.” He wasn’t endearing himself to Taylor this afternoon, there was no question of that. Lincoln shot her another warning look that said, Hey, you aren’t supposed to be here, go run off and get married. She glared back at him.

The body was rolled, and Fox moved out of the way. Taylor looked down. Her breath caught in her throat. She 14

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turned and screamed at the wall. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch! ”

Lincoln stood over the body for a long moment.

“That’s Frank Richardson, isn’t it?”

Taylor’s head was pounding. The dry air of Captain Price’s office coupled with the stress of finding Frank Richardson executed was going to drive her mad. She dug into her pocket, dry swallowed three Advil covered in lint. Being debriefed by her boss was not the way she’d pla

“Give me the rundown, Lieutenant.” Shit. Price didn’t use her title as a proper name unless he was pissed off.

“Richardson and I met for breakfast yesterday morning. Well, before that, he called me at home on Tuesday night. He’d just gotten back from France, was in New York. We talked for a while—he had pretty sound judgment when it came to Snow White. He pointed out there was plenty of information that didn’t make it into his actual print pieces. We agreed to meet for breakfast and pla

“After we ate we went to the paper. I got called away with the Jane Macias MP report. Frank was going to stick around, go through the files, make some notes. He came to the office last night, trying to get something to me. Lincoln and Marcus saw him, said he didn’t leave a mes

sage or a note, just said he had some information for me and would drop it by later.”

“Do you know specifically what he was looking for?”

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Price fondled his mustache and twisted the handlebars. Taylor knew they kept their shape because of liberal coatings in wax, but she was still positive that the daily, ruminative stroking was more to blame.

“Not exactly. When I left him at the paper yesterday, he’d just started pulling all the stories he’d run on the first ten Snow White cases. This is on me, Cap. I lost track of him. I was with Daphne, Jane Macias’s roommate, then we had the Spanish girl’s shooting, the two murders at the massage parlor, all that paperwork, then we went to the strip club. It was a full day. I never followed up with him.”

Taylor rested her forehead in the palm of her hand.

“This is all my fault,” she muttered.

“It’s not. There’s someone out there with an agenda. You’re not to blame.”

“Of course I am. If I hadn’t pulled him into the case, he wouldn’t be dead. There’s just no two ways about that.”

“You don’t know that. This may be a completely unre

lated incident. He may have been a target all along. What’s your gut say?”

Taylor stood and paced her boss’s office. It was much roomier than her little box downstairs. The box that had belonged to Price before he was moved up the ranks. Price was a good man. He’d always been an ally for Taylor, as well as a friend. A lesser man may have thrown her to the wolves on any number of occasions. Instead, he always had her back. She had nothing to lose by telling him what was on her mind.

“My gut says he bought it because of something he found yesterday. He came to me, to the office, said he had information for me. We find what that was, we find out who killed him.”

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“Start with the time of death. Figure out when he was killed, and you’ll be able to nail his movements after he left this office.”

“Actually, I checked. The M.E. on the scene said he’d been dead at least ten hours. So he would have to have been killed sometime between five last night, when he came to the office, and three in the morning. The call came in at two-thirty today, so it’s entirely possible that he’s been dead this whole time. We need to see if he ever made it home last night, go trace his phone calls. God, I am sick about this one.”

“Okay then. Pass along everything you have to Lincoln. This is his case, let him run the show.”

“But—”

“Taylor, there’s no but about it. You’re getting married tomorrow, in case you’ve forgotten. You need to go do the things you need to do to be ready for that. Because trust me, I won’t let you screw that up. Get out of here. Go home. Get ready for the rehearsal di

Taylor allowed herself to be shooed out of his office. She talked to Lincoln, asked him to track Frank Richard

son’s timeline, told him what she was doing. She wasn’t going home, not just yet. She needed to make a stop first. The Te