LITMIR.BIZ

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diplomatic abilities. He supposed that was one reason he was still a field agent. That and a hot temper he’d been trying to control all of his life.

      The TBI’s role was to assist local law enforcement in investigating major crimes, the operative word being “assist.”

      When Officer Lovelady motioned to J.D., he followed her past the swarm of investigators and onto the restaurant’s wide porch.

      Peter Tipton spotted J.D. and Tam heading his way. He paused in his examination of the body and moved aside to give J.D. a complete view of the corpse.

      The victim—not yet positively identified as Jill Scott—sat upright in one of the numerous rocking chairs on the Cracker Barrel porch. Her eyes were shut and at first glance she seemed to be sleeping. Something swaddled in a delicate blue baby shawl lay nestled in her lap. J.D. strained to get a better look at the object.

      He took a step closer, and then stopped.

      “We thought at first it was a doll,” Tam told J.D. “But it’s not.”

      Good God almighty!

      “It’s real,” J.D. said.

      “Oh yeah, it’s real all right,” Tipton replied.

      J.D. had seen some weird sights in his time, as well as several sickeningly gruesome scenes, but never anything like this.

      “It’s a first for me,” Tipton said.

      “Yeah, me, too. Any idea who … what …?” J.D. found himself stammering, something he never did. But then he’d never seen a fresh corpse cradling the skeletal remains of a small child. He cleared his throat and asked, “Any idea how either of them died? The woman—?”

      “Asphyxiation.”

      J.D. studied the dark-haired victim sitting so serenely in the wooden rocking chair. Traffic from the nearby interstate hummed over the din of voices, conversations blending with news coverage and bystanders’ comments. Overhead the September sky was clear, the morning sun warm, the temperature somewhere in the high seventies. The beginning of a perfect pre-autumn day. But not so perfect for Jill Scott.

      “Method of asphyxiation?” J.D. asked.

      “Probably suffocation,” Tipton replied. “There’s no sign of strangulation.”

      “How long do you think she’s been dead?”

      Tipton glanced at the corpse. “She’s in full rigor. Time of death—six to twelve hours ago. I’d guess eight to ten.”

      “You don’t think she was killed here, do you?” J.D. asked.

      “She was probably killed somewhere else sometime before midnight and then brought here while it was still dark so it would be less likely anyone would see what was happening.”

      “Yeah, not much chance anyone saw something.”

      “Whoever killed her staged this little scene,” Tam Lovelady said. “He painted us a picture.”

      “Mother and child,” J.D. surmised.

      “He’s a sick son of a bitch, whoever he is.” Tam stared at the victim. “She looks so damn peaceful.”

      “He went to a great deal of trouble to dispose of her body in such a dramatic fashion.” J.D. remembered a bizarre case in Memphis when he was a rookie agent where the killer had placed his victims by the river, sitting up in a camp chair and holding a fishing pole. Weirdest thing he’d ever seen. Until now. “He’s telling us something. We just have to figure out what it is.”

      “He’s telling us that he’s fucking crazy,” Garth said, his voice a low grumble, as he came up behind them.

      “What about the child?” J.D. asked.

      “At this point, nothing more than the obvious—that the woman and the child didn’t die at the same time. So, if that’s all, J.D., I need to get back to work,” Tipton said. “We’re about ready to bag the body and the skeleton.”

      “Yeah, sure thing.” As Tipton walked away, J.D. called to him. “We’ll talk again later.”

      Tipton threw up his hand in a backward wave as he walked off.

      “Are you hanging around?” Garth asked J.D.

      “I thought I would, if you have no objections.”

      Garth shook his head. “My crime scene is your crime scene.”

      With a hard, craggy face, deep-set hazel eyes, and thinning gray hair, Garth Hudson looked every one of his fifty-some-odd years. Borderline butt-ugly, the sergeant wouldn’t win any beauty contests, but he was neat as a pin. Whenever J.D. saw the man, Garth was wearing neatly pressed slacks, a jacket, and a tailored shirt.

      J.D. and the investigators watched quietly while Tipton slipped the blue baby blanket and its contents into a body bag and then carefully handed the tiny unknown child to one of his assistants. That done, he went back to the woman in the rocking chair. He covered the victim’s head, feet, and hands with individual bags and secured them with tape.

      They stood by respectfully until the body was bagged and removed from the scene.

      Before they could resume their conversation, a series of ear-piercing screams and mournful cries stopped everyone in their tracks.

      “What the hell?” Garth’s gaze traveled around the crime scene and beyond, searching for the source of the noise.

      “I want to see her!” a female voice shouted. “If it’s my baby, I want to see her!”

      A uniformed officer rushed over to Garth. “It’s the mother. Jill Scott’s mother.”

      “Damn!” Garth huffed. “How the hell did she find out?”

      “My guess is from the live TV coverage.” Tam motioned past the crime scene tape to the horde of reporters chomping at the bit for a closer view.

      “The whole family just showed up,” the officer said. “Mom, Dad, and kid sister. The mom’s screaming her head off.”

      “Keep her out of here,” Garth said. “But tell the guys they’re to handle the family with kid gloves.”

      “Want me to take care of it?” Tam asked. “I can go talk to the family.”

      “Yeah,” Garth said. “You can handle a hysterical woman a lot better than I can.”

      When Tam gave her partner a you’re-a-chauvinist-pig glare before walking away, J.D. fell into step beside her.

      “Do you do that a lot?” J.D asked.

      Without slowing her pace, Tam said, “Do what?”

      “Handle the unpleasant tasks for your partner?”

      “Sergeant Hudson and I have been partnered for less than a month. I’m the new investigator on the homicide squad. But before then, yeah, I usually handled anything my partner thought was woman’s work. Other women. Kids. Anything that had to do with emotional issues.”

      “And you don’t mind?”

      “I don’t mind. I don’t have anything to prove. I know I’m a very good police officer and I’ll be a very good detective. And I don’t think of it as a negative thing that I’m capable of handling some of the most difficult aspects of being a police officer.”

      “And one of those difficult aspects is dealing with the victim’s family.”

      “Can you think of anything more difficult than telling a mother that her child is dead?”

      Debra Gregory tugged on the ropes that bound her red, chafed wrists to the arms of the rocking chair. Her seemingly useless struggles to free herself had eaten away skin, leaving her wrists and ankles bruised and bloody. He had secured her feet together and tied her wrists before he had

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