Field Of Graves. J.T. Ellison

nodded and headed away purposefully. Taylor shot Sam a knowing look. Poor kid just didn’t like dead bodies. He’d have to get over it if he wanted to survive on her team.

      “Fitz, do me a favor, stick around in case they come up with anything.”

      “Righto. I’ll ring if anything shows up.”

      “Thank you, sir. Sam? Let’s do this.”

      Forty minutes later, Sam had the body zipped into a bag and loaded into the back of the unmarked ME van. A small crowd had formed at the top of the hill, and Officer Wills was roping the area off to keep out the curiosity seekers. Taylor followed Sam up the hill, got into her car, and moved out, lost in thought.

      Her cell phone rang. She was going to have to turn the thing off; she’d never get anything done if she spent all her time answering calls. She stifled the thought when she saw the caller ID. Sam’s personal number. She clicked on the Talk button.

      “I’m right behind you. What’s up?”

      “I didn’t want to announce it in front of everyone. I took samples of the muck on her back. Smelled it when I got into the car. There was no unique scent, but the composition looks similar to the herbs we picked off of Shelby.”

      Taylor’s heart skipped once, then started again in a rush. “You’re telling me this is the same guy?”

      “I definitely don’t want to go there yet. I need to have this analyzed and do the post. But two girls in two days, with similar presentations? Taylor, this isn’t good.”

      “No kidding. I’ll see you in a minute.” She hung up the phone and looked at the car passing her on the left. A harried mom with three kids in the back, all laughing and making faces at her as they blew past. They had no idea what waited for them when they got older.

      Taylor felt the sadness well up inside her and tears prick her eyes. She shook it off and concentrated on an image of the dead girls.

13

      Taylor patiently watched Sam gently slice and dice their floater. Once they had retrieved some messy but usable prints and sent them to Lincoln, she’d decided to stay out of the way. Sam was working fast, looking for any similarities inside the two dead girls while she went through the remaining steps of her post.

      Taylor’s phone rang again, and she decided to take a breather and answer it outside. It was Lincoln.

      “Hey, Taylor, how’s it going over there?” The scratch of a match and a quick breath out gave her away. “Smoking again?”

      “Let me worry about my own lungs. What’s up?”

      “I’ve got an ID on the floater.”

      “Whoa, you are good. I didn’t know if the prints were going to be usable at all. So who is she?”

      “Her name is Jordan Blake. But I don’t think you’re going to want to hear the rest.”

      Taylor sank down on the steps, pulling hard on the cigarette, as if a lungful of carbon monoxide would lessen the blow from whatever bad news Lincoln was about to spring. “Shoot.”

      “I played a hunch, started with our local AFIS database. It kicked back several possible matches. I eyeballed them to see if we were close. One was.”

      “Oh, God no, don’t tell me.”

      “She’s a junior at Vanderbilt, Taylor. We have a serious problem on our hands.”

      Taylor began to pace the sidewalk in front of Sam’s building, her mind churning. Two girls dead, both murdered, both from the biggest local college campus? This was going to bring everyone out of the woodwork.

      “Lincoln, get your butt into Price’s office. Let him know what you’ve got. Has anyone filed a missing persons report on her?”

      “I haven’t found one yet. When Sam gives me a solid time line, I’ll be able to get more specific, but I’ve gone through the past month’s reports and haven’t found any matches, which is totally bizarre. I mean, a Vandy student not being reported missing for this long, by anyone? Something’s not jibin’ here, LT.”

      “None of this is jibin’, Lincoln. Go on and tell Price what’s up, let him decide how to proceed. Sam should be done with the post soon, so I’ll come in the minute I have the preliminaries. And, Lincoln? Don’t tell anyone about this. Fitz and Marcus are fine, but no one else. Price is going to call the shots from here, okay? We’re going to have media crawling all over us, and we don’t want to make a misstep.”

      “You think it’s the same guy?”

      “I don’t know. Until Sam finishes the post and we run all the evidence, there’s no way to know. But the posing, the staging, the sexual assault—we may be dealing with more than a simple predator.”

      “A serial,” he said, and she heard the teeniest bit of excitement in his voice.

      “Possibly. And that, my friend, is top secret information. I’ll be there shortly. Be good.”

      “You, too. Oh, hey. There’s a big front headed our way. We’re supposed to have bad weather for the next few days. Be careful.”

      Taylor clicked off the phone, tossed the cigarette under the wheel of a relatively new Mustang convertible. Lincoln wasn’t kidding. The sky was darkening, and she could smell the storm; the dry tang of rain getting stronger by the minute. She looked to the west, saw the first lightning strike. Maybe the storm would improve her mood; she always loved a good rain.

      Knowing she could put it off no longer, she headed back in to give Sam the bad news.