Field Of Graves. J.T. Ellison

steel slab were the remains of Shelby Kincaid. She didn’t look like a sleeping child anymore. The huge Y-cut, actually shaped like a deformed U, cut from her sternum to her pubis, exposing her internal organs, which Sam was in the process of weighing. She set the mud-colored liver in the scale, dictating the weight into the microphone clipped to the front of her smock. She handed it to her assistant, who wandered off to busy himself with something. He knew Taylor and was more than a little afraid of her. Sam watched him go, chuckled, then became all business again.

      “Ventricular fibrillation. And something’s hinky with her liver.” She didn’t elaborate.

      “Okay. Wanna expound on that? I don’t know if hinky will stand up in court.”

      Sam’s forehead wrinkled. “That’s the problem. On the surface, I can’t tell you what’s wrong. I sent off the tox screen, so we should get that back quick enough. But they can’t look for anything but the obvious, and the way her organs look...my gut tells me we need to look deeper. I sent a runner with all kinds of samples to Simon’s lab—blood, urine, tissue, the works. I asked them to do a more comprehensive workup than the normal drug and alcohol screen. I’m hoping they can isolate something off the standard panel.”

      “Like what?”

      She waggled her head casually and shrugged, like a child with an important secret. “Oh, I’m thinking poison.”

      “No way. Poison? Cyanide?”

      “Not cyanide, I didn’t get an almond smell when I opened the body. I don’t know what we’re looking for, but I definitely think she ingested something, and it didn’t sit right with her system.”

      “Ingested something like what?”

      Sam gave Taylor a sweet smile. “Honey, that’s what we’re going to find out. Back to business. She was raped repeatedly. Even more bruising and tearing than I’d thought, lots of semen. We’re going to have to wait for the labs on that, too.”

      Taylor’s shoulders knotted up. “How long’s it gonna take?”

      “Well, it won’t be overnight. I’ll try to talk Simon into dropping all his other fascinating cases and handle the toxicology right away, but I can’t promise anything. As far as the semen is concerned, I can send it up to TBI with a push and have them do the rapid DNA, or I can throw it to Simon and ask him to handle it as a personal favor. We haven’t talked in a couple of days though, so he may blow me off.” She busied herself with a scalpel.

      Taylor waited for a more detailed explanation, but seeing none forthcoming, decided not to voice an opinion on the rocky relationship’s latest turn. “I already ran it by Price. It won’t be a problem. Go ahead and give it all to Simon. If you don’t want to call in one of your own, tell him it’s a favor for me, and I’ll owe him one.”

      “Got it.” She gestured toward the computer screen behind her. “The rest is basics. Height, one hundred seventy-six centimeters, weight, forty-seven kilograms. Blond hair, blue eyes. Maybe a little anorexic. No distinguishing characteristics, no tattoos, nothing out of the ordinary. Doesn’t look like she’s had any surgeries except a tonsillectomy.” She looked up, gave a wan smile. “Sorry, Charlie. Right now we’ve got a run-of-the-mill dead girl. Little Shelby didn’t put up much of a fight, nothing under her nails, no defensive wounds. That’s about as exciting as it gets.”

      Taylor sighed. She knew the drill. Nothing else could be done here until they had the lab results back. “Can I give her parents a cause of death?”

      Sam thought quietly for a moment. The parents would want every detail, and there weren’t a lot to give them. She shrugged. “Tell them we’re doing more tests and hope to have an answer for them quickly.”

      “Great, that helps a lot. All right, keep me in the loop on anything you find. And I mean anything. I don’t care how obscure it is. I can deal with Simon if you don’t want to do it yourself.” It was a dig for information, but Sam saw right through it.

      “Yeah, I may do that.”

      Taylor knew discretion was the better part of valor when it came to Sam and Simon. “Okay, then. Play nice with Simon. I think he likes you.” She grinned and walked out of the room.

      Taylor pulled out on Elliston Pike and started back downtown. As the skyline came into view, she was overcome by exhaustion. She had planned to go back to the office, maybe take the warrant over to Vandy, but it was late; their offices would be closed until the morning. There was nothing she could do tonight. She decided to hit a drive-through and go home. She called Marcus, gave him the update from Sam, told him she was out for the night, and suggested he and Lincoln should do the same.

      She stopped at the Taco Bell near her house. Eating her dinner in the car, she finished before she hit her driveway. She stumbled into the house, set her holster and gun on the coffee table, gave the cat a rub on the head, fell onto the couch, and crashed immediately.

      Again, there was a field of graves, stretching out before her. A large statue shadowed the land, covering waves of ripe wheat in sheaves, and the path forward was littered with body parts, arms and legs bent in imitations of crosses, bones shaped into grave markers. The sky was red with angry storms, and the wind whipped her hair around her face. Flowers pushed dead from the earth, black and rotted, their scent overwhelming. She walked toward the monstrous statue, the grave markers waving in synchronous motion, reaching out to touch her, strange dead hands and legs and arms draping against her body, grabbing her legs, holding her back, pulling her to the earth...

      Taylor woke with a cry, sweating, her breath coming in jagged gasps. She wiped the tears from her face. She groaned when she looked at the clock on the mantel, which read 4:15 a.m. The nightly ritual was fulfilled. She wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. She hit the shower and headed into work.

THE SECOND DAY

8

      He watched the body drift away slowly, bumping into driftwood as the current caught it and dragged it toward the shore. He felt a brief pang of sorrow. The woman had been beautiful, perfection in dimension and proportion. Until the end.

      Still, she was a worthy sacrifice. She had brought him much joy, much pleasure. It was her own fault she was dead. Dead and gone. No longer.

9

      Marcus and Lincoln were futzing around in the captain’s office when Taylor walked in. When Price went out and things were slow or on hold, the squad had a habit of congregating in there to watch TV.

      Lincoln vacated Price’s chair for Taylor to sit in. She did so gratefully. It was the one chair in the squad that was remotely comfortable.

      “Where’s Price?”

      “Ran down to talk to the chief.” Marcus rolled his eyes. “Old windbag wanted to have another press conference so he can look like he’s actually being a cop.”

      Taylor laughed. Their chief of police was about as popular as the mayor.

      “Did you find Shelby’s parents?”

      “Yeah. Reverend Spenser talked to the Bowling Green police chaplain. They did the notification, and BG’s chaplain is driving them down this morning. They’re pretty upset. Her dad’s a Baptist minister. The chaplain knew Shelby, too.”

      “Great. Lincoln, any luck on any of the databases?”

      “Nothin’ yet. Hit a dead end after her prints popped. Sam have anything new?”

      “Outside of the possible poisoning? No. She sent everything over to Simon. It’ll be a day or so before we know what the poison might be.”

      “If only we could identify the poison, I could plug it into ViCAP, maybe