All The Pretty Girls

“He raped the lead investigator of his case? Are you kidding me?”

Price sighed, and Taylor’s heart reached out to him.

“He damn near killed her. She’s been taken to Baptist, but the scene needs some control and the chief asked for you personally.”

“Uh-oh, that can’t be good.”

The Metro Nashville Police Department had come under new management, and the rank and file weren’t pleased with the choice.

“He wanted a ranking female on the case. You’re the homicide lieutenant. If she dies it falls under our auspices anyway. Maybe he’s using some foresight, or maybe he just wants to make it look good for the press. I don’t know. Things have been crazy down here this morning. The B shift caught two project murders, and with that Shauna Davidson girl missing… Either way, if you can extricate yourself from whatever you’re doing, I’d appreciate you getting over there and letting me know what’s happening.”

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J.T. Ellison

Taylor felt a brief moment of panic. Surely he didn’t know what she had actually been up to. She weighed the thought, then decided no, he was just being fu

“You’re making assumptions, Captain.”

“I just figured you might be trying to have a life, Lieutenant. Now get over there and do me proud.” He hung up the phone, leaving Taylor with an odd sense of satisfaction. She knew it had probably been Price’s idea that she step into the case.

She set the phone back in its cradle and glanced across the room at Baldwin. His phone had rung but she hadn’t noticed. As he talked quietly, a sense of dismay crossed his rugged features. That couldn’t be good. He gave her a half smile and said goodbye to whoever had decided to ruin his morning. He came back to the bed, sliding between the sheets and giving her a small kiss.

Taylor threaded her fingers in his dark hair, too long by Bureau standards and perfect by hers. Silver bled from his temples and it curled slightly at the nape of his neck. She slipped her hand down, rubbing his neck softly.

“Bad news, babe?” she asked.

“I have to go to Georgia. They’ve found Shauna Davidson.”

And those four words stopped the gentleness of their morning.

Eight

Taylor was on full alert when she arrived at Betsy Garrison’s home. Betsy lived in East Nashville, once the habitat of drug lords and crack whores. But the neighborhood was “coming back,” as the residents liked to say. Hip new restaurants nestled in with Victorian homes, restored to within an inch of their former glory. Young professionals ruled the area, BMWs and Lexus SUVs gleaming in the driveways, ones bought with earned money rather than by illegal means. Trees soared into the sky with abandon, even the birds and squirrels had taken on a prosperous hue.

But the street where Betsy lived seemed to be in mourning on this rainy day. When Taylor rolled up in her black Xterra, she only recognized one other car parked strategically along the street, a beat-up Ford F-150 pickup. She sighed. No marked cars for this trip. You could say the police were undercover, protecting one of their own. There was no yellow crime scene tape blowing giddily in the breeze. No news vans lined the 58

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street. Word had been kept quiet, a need to know only, nothing broadcast over the air, all calls made to private phones and cells. An ambulance hadn’t even made its way down the narrow streets. Betsy had been taken out her back door and stuffed into the waiting car of her partner in Sex Crimes to be transported to the hospital. Taylor shook her head at the ratty truck. Fitz definitely needed new wheels. But he stubbornly refused, swearing to stand by his rust bucket until the bitter end. From the looks of it, the end wasn’t far off. She pulled behind it, stepped carefully to the curb to avoid the puddle in the gutter, and snapped open her umbrella. She walked quickly up the driveway and around to the back door of the house. Fitz was standing there, the ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips. It was lit, and though Taylor felt a rush of a

“Justifying your addiction to the noxious weed to your doctors in your head again?”

Taylor gave him an affectionate smile. Fitz just knew her too well. They’d worked together for several years, and despite the fact that she was nearly twenty years his junior and a woman to boot, he’d never had a problem with her being his boss. Just the opposite, he had been the one who’d stood by her promotion to lieutenant last year when many in the force did not. And he was one All the Pretty Girls

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of the few who didn’t mind the new chief, either, but that was Fitz. Always willing, near retirement and couldn’t give a care to politics. Besides, the new chief had restructured the department in such a way that Fitz had gotten a promotion and pay raise, which did nothing but improve his mood. More to retire on, as he jovially put it. Now Homicide was set up so that Fitz was the sergeant and had six detectives working under him. He reported only to Taylor, and she, as the department lieutenant, reported only to Mitchell Price. It was a topheavy hierarchy, but the people of Homicide had managed to come out unscathed and with more power than they had before. Price, being the captain, had control over all the CID, Criminal Investigations Division, and the lieutenants for each division reported to him and him alone. It gave him more authority but less oversight, so he depended heavily on his LTs to make all right in the world for him. He now reported directly to the chief, and the political headaches were worth it to him since he could keep his people out of the fray.

Taylor sucked on her cigarette and forced the thoughts of doctors’ disapproving glares out of her head as she ran two long fingers along the scar on her throat. She gave Fitz a brief hug, tamped the half-smoked cigarette out on the sole of her cowboy boot and pocketed the butt. No sense disturbing the crime scene.

“So tell me what’s happening. You got the background on Shauna Davidson for me, right?”

“I did. Wasn’t a mall rat like I thought, she wasn’t working. Taking some summer courses, but that’s it. The idle rich…” He smiled at Taylor and she shot him 60

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the bird. He laughed and continued. “She’d been out with some friends after class. No one has a lot of details to share yet. We’ll get it, don’t worry.”

“Okay then. We’ll have to report all the information to Special Agent Baldwin, he’s going to be working the case.”

“Taylor, about Baldwin.”

“What? What about him?”

He looked at her hard and she realized he knew exactly what type of housekeeping she and Baldwin were doing. Fitz had always been able to figure her out. She blushed. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s not worry about that right now. Let’s focus on this for the moment, then we can go over all the information you got on Shauna Davidson. Let me ask you this. Is Betsy okay?”

Fitz took one last lung-numbing drag on his cigarette and extinguished it. He pulled out a pack of gum, politely offering it to Taylor. She pulled out a piece and looked at him, waiting. He took his time unwrapping the silvery stick, as if gathering his thoughts. She wondered if he was debating whether to listen to her admonition about discussing her personal life with Baldwin, but he was back in professional, not personal, investigator mode.