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ment, either Metro or medical examiner, and most of the guests had their hand in the mix in one way or another. Nashville was small enough that very few members of Metro Police Department didn’t know the LT was getting hitched today.
Calls to Taylor’s cell phone were useless; Sam had it stashed in her diaper bag because Taylor didn’t have room for it.
Baldwin fought the urge to strip off his jacket and run howling into the parking lot. Damn it, where the hell was that woman? How could she do this to him?
A gust of warm air enveloped Baldwin midstride and the strains of Handel’s Water Music drifted to his ears. Fitz came out of the large wooden doors that led to the nave of the church. An avuncular smile filled his broad features. Baldwin stopped pacing for a moment, happy to have the short-lived heat and the company.
“Son,” Fitz began, but Baldwin shook his head and held up a hand.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Son—”
“I know what you’re going to say, Fitz.” He adopted a deep baritone with a long Southern drawl. “You haven’t known her for that long. Y’all rushed into this. She’s a wild 14
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one, Baldwin, and I mean that in a good way.” He went back to his regular voice.
“I know you were shocked as hell to see her fall so hard for me. What you’re saying is that maybe this is for the best. Right? You haven’t approved from the begi
He glared at the older man. “And quit calling me son.”
“Hey, Junior. You just don’t get it, do you?”
Baldwin rocked back on his heels, staring at Fitz with his mouth open. The indignation grew in his chest and he couldn’t help but lash out.
“You son of a bitch. You talked her into ru
ders bunched, hands balled at his side. “And you stand there gri
Fitz coughed into his hand. “Fu
“I…” Baldwin swallowed hard. His hands unclenched, his shoulders slumped. He gritted his teeth, a small muscle in his jaw leaping to life. Did he? Did he really think that the love of his life would be so merciless and fearful as to not show up for their wedding? The lump in his chest started to dissolve, only to be replaced by a larger, much more painful knot.
“Finally figuring it out, aren’t you, son? ”
Yes, he was. Fitz was pissed at him because he’d lost faith in Taylor. That he’d believed even for a fraction of a second that this strong, astounding, beautiful woman 258
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wouldn’t have the guts to tell him to his face that she didn’t want to be with him. The dread washed over him like a bucket of water. He looked at Fitz, seeing him for the first time. The smile wasn’t pleasant, it was tight and worried, small lines shooting between the older man’s brows.
“Jesus, Fitz, what do you think happened to her?”
“I don’t know, but I think it’s time to go inside and ask for help.”
Twenty-Eight
Nashville, Te
Sunday, December 21
11:00 a.m.
The banks of the Cumberland River were rocky and icy. Leftover snow had been tromped through by the searchand-rescue teams, turning it a smoky gray. A helicopter hovered overhead, the whapping drone desultory. Search and Rescue had been revised to Recovery. Slumpedshouldered men and women wandered the bank, looking at each other blankly. It didn’t seem possible. Taylor Jackson, drowned in the river that fed vibrant life to her city.
John Baldwin stood on the VIP platform overlooking the River Stages facility. In happier times, the concrete pad would be filled with A-list partygoers reveling in the music of the most famous and popular bands. Now the platform was a staging area for the search. For the recovery. After ninety minutes, it wasn’t technically a “search”
anymore. The Nashville Fire Department, faces ashen and 260
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drawn, had called in the Office of Emergency Management Rescue unit. Cadaver dogs were on the bank of the river, two black Labs shivered in the boats floating on the icy sur
face. OEM had launched a craft loaded with the FISH, the side-view sonar that would be able to distinguish between a lumpy log and a body in the murky, fast-flowing water. No one needed to say it aloud. In water this cold, Taylor wouldn’t have lasted more than five minutes. Logic told them there was a body out there somewhere. The only thing to do was drop the sonar and see what they could see. Which was absolutely nothing. After several hours, the call came to put the drag bar in the water. OEM’s Search and Rescue volunteers were doing everything possible to find her body before the river swept her away, the massive currents flowing north toward Kentucky. Baldwin’s face was hard, worn. The lines around his eyes were etched deep, like a vein of quartz ru
dent.
The guests had been sent home from the church. The wedding party, stiff with worry, made their way to the homicide offices. Calls were made, people traced. The limousine service was practically raided; the limousine that had been dispatched and carried the bride into the ne
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therworld found on-site. There were two major problems. There was no trace of Taylor in the car. Video surveillance from the Hermitage Hotel showed the license plate did not match the manifest. It was a decoy. Lincoln was ru
The arranged driver of the real limousine was long gone, disappeared into the night. A check of his bank accounts showed a five thousand dollar deposit and a Visa charge for a plane ticket to Mazatlán. The plane had left at four in the afternoon, the same time the wedding was supposed to be under way. A man matching the driver’s description had boarded the plane on time. Video from the airport came in and confirmed. A theory was formed. He had been paid to leave town.
After hours of fruitless searching, with no sign what
soever of Taylor, their leads were diminished to nothing. The dreaded call had come right before 10:00 p.m. A white satin mule had been found on the west bank of the Cumberland River. Photographs confirmed that it matched the pair Taylor had been wearing, the brand and size an exact match to the empty box found in her hotel suite. Time stopped for them all.
Baldwin took a gulp from a coffee cup with Tigermart on the label. Some kind soul was refueling the troops from a local convenience store, he had no idea who. He’d been a part of rescue teams before. With no remains, at some point they would have to stop actively dragging the river. Rescue would continue searching until the body was found. And they always found the body. It might not be immediate, but time and flowing water had a way of spitting out what didn’t belong.
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Inevitability at the hands of nature wasn’t a comfort to Baldwin. Scenarios drifted through his mind, visions of Taylor’s adipocere-covered corpse emerging twenty miles downriver in a month. So often, that’s how it happened. He choked back a sob at the thought, tossed the rest of the now-bitter coffee over the railing. Fuck. He wasn’t helping things by standing there making himself sick to his stomach. He needed to do something. He wouldn’t accept that she was gone, not like this.