LITMIR.BIZ

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it all arranged.”

      “Thanks, man. I’ll be back after I see Sam.”

      “Um, Taylor, before you go?”

      “What?”

      “Your dad called.”

      Her father. Her chest tightened. Oh man, talk about something she didn’t need.

      “Did he say what he wanted?”

      “No, just that he needs to speak with you. He said it was important.”

      “Yeah, it always is,” she muttered.

      “What?”

      “Nothing. Go on and get in touch with Shelby Kincaid’s parents. I’ll talk to you later.”

      She hung up, pushing thoughts of her father away and getting her mind back on the case. There was nothing worse than having to tell parents they’d outlived their child. She was more than a little relieved Marcus was going to handle the notification.

      She pulled back out on the interstate and took the first exit leading her back into the city. She tried not to think and, instead, enjoy the few moments of freedom she had left. A pointless endeavor. She gave up and gunned the car.

      The late-afternoon traffic was terrible, and it took her twenty minutes to plow her way through to Gass Boulevard. The State of Tennessee Center for Forensic Medicine was run by a private group contracted with the city. Their brand-new, twenty-thousand-square-foot building looked more like the local offices of a corporate giant than a morgue.

      She pulled into the parking lot, more than a little jealous of Sam and her new realm. It sure beat Homicide’s crappy little office. Then again, they didn’t have dead bodies next to the break room.

      She was buzzed through the door into the spacious lobby. She was facing the family viewing room, where family members of the deceased could identify their loved one’s mortal remains on closed-circuit TV.

      She was thankful the new system had been put into place. It was easier for the family not to go through up-close-and-personal body identification, or deal with photographs of their dearly departed. They had a quiet, nicely furnished room, professional support, and some distance from their deceased family member. It was a good system.

      One of the grief counselors would eventually be back there with Shelby’s parents, ready to bolster and guide the family through their worst nightmares. Taylor felt chill bumps on her arms. She was glad she didn’t have to come back and deal with them tonight. Loss wasn’t something she was ever comfortable with.

      Despite the constant flow of people who entered and exited the building throughout the day and night, there was never a magazine out of place, nor a small piece of trash sitting on a side table. Taylor secretly thought members of the cleaning crew lurked in the hallways, ready to sneak into the foyer unseen to straighten and sanitize at a moment’s notice.

      She waved to the receptionist, Kris, and entered the door leading to the autopsy suite. The odor hit her: in contrast to the sweet, clean smell of the open foyer, this area was antiseptic and metallic, overlaid with chemicals, like a hospital corridor. And it was colder, sterile and overtly hygienic. The smells weren’t unpleasant. They were simply what she always associated with death.

      The odd reek settled in her sinuses. Taylor tried to concentrate on other things as she walked in. She knew that within a few minutes she’d get used to it. She always did.

      Stopping briefly in the biovestibule, she changed into a pair of disposable scrubs and went inside.

      The main autopsy suite held four fully functioning workstations, two on the wall facing Taylor, and two on the opposite wall. Sam was at the far table, the natural sunlight from the huge skylight above streaking her hair with rosy highlights.

      “Sam.”

      Sam turned toward Taylor with a look that said, Go away, I’m trying to work.

      “Sorry, Sammy, I need to talk. We’ve got an ID. Her name’s Shelby Kincaid. Went to Vanderbilt. We’re notifying her parents right now, so I wanna see what you have.”

      Sam actually looked at her this time, blinked, finally realized who was there, and said, “Oh, hey. Gear up. Vanderbilt, huh?” There was almost no inflection in her voice. She was lost in her work.

      Taylor pulled on the remaining protective gear and gloves gracefully, the motions born of too many repetitions. She donned her eye shield and joined Sam at the table. Lying on a tan plastic washable coating covering an icy, stainless 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

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