14. J.T. Ellison

Cap. How’s Florida?”

      Captain Mitchell Price was on a long-overdue vacation. Or trying to be. Calling him in Florida was a sure sign that the shit was hitting the fan back in Nashville. He didn’t bother to play along.

      “What’s wrong?”

      “Other than our happy little Snow White murderer decided to off Remy St. Claire’s daughter, nothing much. How’s the fishing?”

      Taylor almost laughed when the groan came through the phone loud and clear.

      “Do I need to come back?”

      “Well, I think we can handle it, but if Remy blows into town and there are cameras at the ready, the chief’s gonna get involved.”

      “I got a call from Quantico. Baldwin there?”

      “He’s right here. I asked him in this morning—the official request just came through. Two items came up from yesterday’s murder. The substance we’ve been trying to identify is a compound that has frankincense and myrrh in it. We’re about to discuss that right now. The second thing is he’s escalating. He killed that girl at the scene, and rimmed the neck wound in lipstick.”

      The curse words were clear and loud, and Taylor envisioned the man’s mustache jerking up and down in response to the utterances. It almost made the conversation bearable.

      When he finished cursing, he sighed.

      “I’ll make a reservation.”

      Baldwin tapped Taylor on the shoulder, then spoke. “Hey, Price, no need. I’ll send the plane for you.”

      “Thanks, Baldwin, that’s mighty nice of you. I love having the Bureau on my cases. I’ll see y’all tonight. Let’s get St. Claire notified and get this ball rolling. Jeez, what a way to ruin a vacation.”

      He clicked off, and Taylor looked at Baldwin, the question apparent on her face. He didn’t respond, so she asked.

      “Should we…?”

      Baldwin shook his head. “No, no, no, we are not canceling the wedding.”

      “Could cause some bad press. Lead investigator heads off on honeymoon….”

      “Screw them. No. We are not canceling.”

      She patted him on the forearm. “Okay, sweetie, okay. Just throwing out options. I’m going to go get the Santa Barbara police on the phone, see if they can’t get a chaplain roused to go notify Remy. And see if Father Ross is available to go talk to her grandparents, since they were primary caregivers. We’ll need to interview them, anyway, find out what they know about Giselle’s last steps. You’re in it now. Get ready for the shit to hit the fan.”

      Taylor, Fitz, Marcus and Lincoln sat around the conference table, reviewing the facts of the Snow White cases. Taylor’s stomach had settled, they had sandwiches from Panera, a froufrou delicatessen, and a round of fruit tea, that bizarre Southern concoction. Baldwin had demurred on the lunch offer, instead leaving to procure the FBI plane for Price. They were shoveling in the food, needing fuel for the long day ahead. The room fairly hummed with their intensity.

      Four dead girls, each murdered more horrifically than the last. A serial killer who’d been dormant for years. Among the paper lunch boxes, the murder files were spread before them, white elephants in their midst.

      Nashville hadn’t seen much in the way of serial killers, per se. They had plenty of serial rapists, and many high-profile murders. But the vast scope of the Snow White Killer hadn’t ever been repeated. The terror, the manipulation, the horrific crime scenes—Snow White held the title for the worst their town had ever seen. Ten girls. Now there were four more. Most likely not by the hand of the original Snow White, but by someone with close ties to him.

      The evidence from the earlier murders alone was staggering. Ten murder books, ten evidence files and conclusion files drawn after each case. The paperwork was overwhelming, but Taylor had gone through it all. More than one hundred boxes were stacked along the back wall of the conference room, ready for battle when called upon. Each previous victim had a stack. On the wall above the boxes, the photographs of the victims were hung, a head shot side-by-side with a blown-up picture from their individual crime scenes. The similarities were mesmerizing. Taylor caught herself staring at the pictures, thinking, man, twenty years. That’s a long time to be dormant. Where did you go?

      Taylor’s gaze went around the room, stopping in turn on each victim, a silent tribute. She’d done this every day for two months.

      The first murder occurred in January 1986. A young woman went missing from an evening out with friends. Her body was found a week later, her lips painted in a wide red grin, brutally assaulted, raped and her throat cut. Her name was Tiffani Crowden. The brand of lipstick was identified as Chanel Coco Red. She was the first confirmed kill for the Snow White Killer. Each subsequent murder scene was identical, though he never left the bodies in the same place twice.

      The next victims were Ava D’Angelo, an eighteen-year-old waitress, and Kristina Ratay, who attended the prestigious all-girls’ school called Harpeth Hall. In late October 1986, Colette Burich was killed; she worked as a nanny for a wealthy family.

      In early 1987, Evelyn Santana, a Belmont coed whose parents were well-respected doctors in town, showed up dead. In late summer, Danielle Seraphin and Vivienne White, both French exchange students, were found together in Centennial Park, slain in a double homicide.

      In 1988 there were three more murders, Allison Gutierrez, Abigail McManus and Ellie Walpole. Each girl was found with her throat cut in various parks around the Nashville area.

      And then he stopped. She wished she knew why. And why it had started again.

      Ritual complete, Taylor brought her attention back to the table. There was a separate pile of information in front of them. On the top was the key piece of evidence from the killings—the letter written by the Snow White Killer back in 1988. A polite fuck you, you’ll-never-catch-me type of communication to the police. Every bite Taylor took, her eyes were drawn to the letter. She just knew, in the way of all good detectives, that there was something in the killer’s words that would help solve the cases. There must have been something in the old files that the detectives who handled the cases back in the eighties had missed.

      That was next on Taylor’s agenda, speaking to the homicide detective from the case. His name was Martin Kimball, and he’d retired the year before Taylor joined the homicide team. She needed to interview him, glean all she could from his memory. She hoped it was solid and intact.

      Taylor swallowed her chicken salad and mused. She also needed to talk to the reporter who’d handled these cases from the beginning. She’d been trying to reach the man but had been stymied; he was in Europe. He was due back tomorrow, and he was aware that she needed to talk to him. Those were her next steps, talking to Martin Kimball and Frank Richardson, the Tennessean reporter.

      She put down her sandwich and started in on her Kettle chips.

      “So,” she crunched, “the crime scene was clean. No new evidence. Talk to me. Why are we so sure that this isn’t the Snow White Killer?”

      “We’ve gone over this a million times,” Fitz grumped at her.

      “I just want to have all the information in front of me to think on. Start talking, old man.”

      “Naw, I’ll go. He still has half a sandwich left.” Marcus threw the older man one of his trademark puppy-dog grins, and Fitz nodded his thanks.

      “Yeah, let the little man speak,” Lincoln teased.

      Marcus responded with a halfhearted “Shut up, Lincoln.” Taylor was reminded of two wildly diverse brothers, two boys who loved to razz each other. They all interacted in a family dynamic. The closeness of their unit simply escalated their success rate. Taylor oversaw all of Homicide, Fitz was her sergeant—the troops reported to him. But this core group of four was responsible for an eighty-six percent close rate on their individual cases, a