Saturday night, Nashville
“I never thought I’d say this, but thank God it’s so cold,” Detective Gary Gilley said as he shivered in the frigid wind of a February night. “Imagine the stink if this was July.”
Lieutenant Max Bransford fumbled with his disposable butane lighter, cupped his hands around it, and struggled to light his thirty-eighth Marlboro of the day. Bransford compulsively tracked his daily cigarette intake. Each week, he tried to lower his average in a now months-long attempt to cut down. He braced himself against the wind that had roared out of Canada days earlier from near the Arctic Circle, swept through the Great Plains and Texas, then circled as it always seemed to through the mid-South on its way up the East Coast. Nashville, Tennessee was three degrees colder tonight than Toronto.
Bransford leaned against the side of the building and shielded the lighter. After a few seconds, he managed to get the end of the cigarette lit. He and Gilley were ten feet beyond the yellow crime-scene tape, a safe enough distance not to contaminate the scene with ashes.
“I wish them son of a bitches would get here,” Bransford griped. “My wife’s going to have my ass if I don’t get home soon.”
“That’s not a problem I have very often,” Gilley said.
“Given that my wife wants as little of my ass as possible.
What the hell … Feeling’s mutual, I guess.”
Bransford looked at his watch. “What time did they leave?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I just know what time we called them.
They’ve had time to get here. It ain’t but a couple of hours to Chattanooga even if you’re not in a hurry.”
“Maybe that’s it,” Bransford said. “Maybe they ain’t in a hurry.”
“Would you be?” Gilley asked offhandedly. He turned back toward the small building, to the doorway where a uniformed officer stood guard blocking the entrance from the news media and curious onlookers.
Irv Stover, the paunchy, late middle-aged forensic investigator from the medical examiner’s office, exited the building. He wore an ill-fitting white shirt, a stained tie, and a down ski parka that made him look like Alfred Hitchcock doing a clumsy imitation of the Michelin tire man. He strained and managed to step clumsily over the crime-scene tape without tearing it, then approached the two detectives and hunched his shoulders against the wind.
“We can tag ‘em and bag ‘em as soon as those Hamilton County boys get a look. Where the hell are they?”
“Beats the shit out of me,” Gilley said.
“Wish they’d get here,” Stover said. “There’s a movie on Showtime tonight I want to catch.”
Behind the three men, the blinking neon sign above the doorway flashed EXOTICA TANS over and over in the deepening night.
“That damn thing’s giving me a headache, Gary,” Bransford said, turning away from the vibrant hot-pink, blue, and red neon. “Reach in there and turn it off, will you?”
Just then, a white and blue squad car with the markings of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department pulled into the parking lot. It came to a stop, and a large man in a gray suit, with a blue ski parka as an overcoat, exited the car.
“Hey, Hint,” Bransford called.
“Hey, Max,” the man called back. “Sorry we’re late.
There’s a helluva wreck on I-24 down around Manchester.”
“Howard,” Bransford said, motioning, “this is Detective Gary Gilley, Metro Murder Squad. Gary, meet Sergeant Howard Hinton, Chattanooga Homicide.”
The two homicide investigators shook hands as Hinton gazed at the crime-scene tape flapping slowly in the icy wind.
“So where’s the party?” he asked.
Bransford motioned with his head toward the crime-scene tape.
Hinton sighed. “Let’s get it over with.”
Irv Stover reached into the large side pocket of his ski parka and extracted a plastic bag. “Here,” he said. “You’ll need these.”
The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department detective opened the small bag and pulled out a pair of slip-on disposable booties and latex gloves. Stover turned, walked back toward the white ME’s van as Bransford, Gilley, and Hinton stepped wearily over the crime-scene tape and into the building where the two slaughtered girls lay. They walked through the tiny reception area with the cheap, office furniture warehouse desk and tacky green vinyl sofa, then down a narrow hallway lined with cheap paneling, their gloved hands clasped behind them to avoid inadvertently touching anything. A pasty-faced investigator carrying a large strobe-equipped Nikon and a heavy camera bag backed out of a door to their right. There wasn’t enough room in the dimly lit hallway for the men to pass each other. The crime-scene tech took three steps backward to make room for the three detectives.
“You guys about finished?” Bransford asked.
“Yeah,” the tech answered. “Just wrapping up here.”
Bransford turned to Hinton. “This’s the first one you come to. Be careful,” he warned. “The floor’s still kinda sticky.”
“I’ll watch it.”
The three men stepped single-file into the room, Bransford leading, with Hinton in the middle, and Gilley a couple of steps behind. The room was perhaps twelve by fifteen feet in size, dimly lit and musty. A table with various lotions, oils, and sex toys nestled in one corner. Against the opposite wall, a massage table was covered in a blood-soaked sheet. Sprawled across the sheet was the mangled body of a barely recognizable young woman, her legs spread-eagled over the sides of the table, her ankles bound to the table legs with thick cord. Her arms were splayed out to the sides, her wrists tied to the front two table legs with the same type of cord. Her lips were pulled back over her teeth, frozen in an encrusted, horrific rictus.
Gilley averted his eyes; he’d seen as much of the victim as he needed. Bransford stepped aside, stopping just short of the thickened pool of nearly black blood. Hinton stepped around him and stared.
“She mutilated sexually?” he asked.
“Irv said severe vaginal and anal tearing.”
Hinton turned. “Irv?”
Bransford, fatigued, shook his head and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Sorry. Irv Stover, the fat guy outside. Forensic investigator from the ME’s office.”
“He got a probable TOD?”
Bransford nodded. “Eighteen hours at least. Maybe longer.”
Hinton turned, squinted. “That means late last night, early this morning. When were the bodies discovered?”
“About five-thirty this afternoon. One of the girls got suspicious when she reported for work and couldn’t get in.
The lights and the heat had been turned off. She called the manager, who drove over, opened the place up, and found the two girls.”
“Hmm, strange,” Hinton offered.
“This part of town is pretty deserted late at night. Any potential customers would see the lights off and just keep on going.”
“You get a statement from the girl and the manager?”
“Yeah,” Gilley answered. “They’re clean. We took their statements, sent ‘em home.”
Hinton turned, gazing at the carnage before them. His thoughts turned briefly to how young the girl was, and how beautiful she must have been. He forced himself back to cop mode, to clear his mind, to observe clinically and record every image.
“Got an ID?”
“One Allison May Matthews, twenty-two years old, student at Middle Tennessee State University. No sheet on her.
Her clothes and purse were in a room down the hall, in a changing room, along with the other girl’s stuff. Money still in her purse. Money still in the strongbox up front as well, so it wasn’t robbery.”
“I could have told you that over the phone,” Hinton said.
He stared a moment longer at the scene in front of him, remembering the first time he’d ever seen a dead body. There was something about a corpse that just wasn’t real, he’d always thought. Maybe it was the strange, skewed angles that lifeless limbs often took; perhaps it was the pallor. Nothing alive ever got that shade of gray. Hinton had depended on that thought to keep him together through some gruesome nights, to disassociate from the horror he’d seen in his life.
“She wasn’t a pro,” he speculated. “Just picking up a few bucks spending money. Paying her way through school, maybe.” Hinton turned and faced Gilley. “Call her family yet?”
“Chaplain’s on his way,” Gilley answered.
Hinton stared at the wall above the girl. A single block letter-M-was inscribed neatly over the table in a crimson so deep it was nearly black.
Hinton turned. “Let’s check out the other one.”
Gilley stepped out of the room and down the hall to make room for the other two. “You guys don’t mind, I’ll take a pass. I’ve seen enough.”
“That bad?” Hinton asked.
“Worse’n the other one,” Bransford said, his voice low.
Hinton padded down the hall, the plastic booties sliding on the scuffed linoleum. Bransford followed a few steps behind, then paused as the Chattanooga man stopped at the doorway to the room.
“Jesus,” Hinton muttered.
“Yeah,” Bransford said. “Looks like the ME’s got a head start on the autopsy.”
The girl had been gutted like a field-dressed deer, a deep Y-incision down the front of her torso to her navel. The skin was peeled back, her internal organs obviously removed, scrambled, then shoved back in the cavity.
“Guy took souvenirs off this one,” Bransford said, staring over Hinton’s shoulder into the killing room. “We’ve searched the whole area, can’t find her nipples anywhere.”
Hinton gritted his teeth and exhaled sharply through his nostrils to control the waves that he felt rising within him.
He forced his eyes to travel up the walls, to where a foot-high letter L had been painted neatly on the wall in blood.
He winced slightly, turned to the heavy man blocking his way down the hall, away from the hellish scene.
“The ME’ll find ‘em,” he whispered.
Bransford looked down at the man, confused.
Hinton raised his upper lip in disgust. “They’re in her stomach.”
The blood seemed to drain from Bransford’s face. “You mean-? I mean, how do you know?”
Hinton ignored the question. “You’re going to have to leave the two of ‘em here,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his down ski jacket and pulling out a cell phone.
“For how long?” Bransford demanded.
Hinton extended the short antenna and punched a speed dial code into the phone, which began a series of high-pitched beeps. He turned back to Bransford with the phone to his ear.
“As long as it takes,” he said.
“As long as what takes?” Bransford asked irritably. “The families are going to want the bodies as soon as the ME
finishes with-”
Hinton made a shushing sound and held the cell phone to his ear. “Hank?” he said as a voice on the other end crackled with static.
“Hank, this is Howard Hinton, Hamilton County, Tennessee, Sheriff’s Department, Homicide Squad. You need to book a flight to Nashville ASAP. We got two more for you.”