Page 10 of The Wolves Come at Night
Five
Outside, the western sky was purpling, and a breeze had kicked up. Taylor checked the radar on her phone again. “Yuck. Nasty storms. Looks like we’re gonna get wet.” She dangled the keys. “You want to drive?”
“Naw. Riding shotgun will be like old times.”
They piled into her new service vehicle, a black Tahoe with Metro Nashville Police stenciled on the side, headed toward downtown and the impending storm.
Marcus caught her up on the rest of the case, all the steps he’d taken to this point, the evidence procured, all the finer details, finishing with “Whoever did this shot Georgia in the face. Knocked off half her head. That smacks of someone who’s pretty pissed off, if you ask me.”
“I agree. That’s never good. Does it feel weird to you that he’d march her up a hill to shoot her? I mean, she could have made a break for it, or he could have stumbled and sprained an ankle. If you want to murder someone, this is an odd setting for it. Plenty of other deep woods spots that don’t take a fitness buff to pull off easily.”
“Maybe he was just trying to get her someplace that he could buy some time before her body was found? This spot is isolated. It’s off the main path and straight up a hill. Honestly, it feels like a total fluke that there were witnesses. Bad luck for the killer, but good luck for us. It could have been weeks before we found her.”
“Which is what’s bugging me. What are the odds? After we do this possible ID, I want to speak to the kid who designed the GPS program. I’d like to know how he picked this particular spot.”
Rain began splattering on the windshield, and she turned on the wipers.
“Linc seems happy,” she ventured.
“Bossing us all around? Hell yeah. But he’s good at this, you know? Not just the investigative side, you know how great his instincts are. But with all his computer geek background, he’s going to streamline the entire system for how we manage our paperwork. He just put in for all of us to have tablets on scene so we can upload the photos and make our notes on-site into a program he’s written that automatically feeds into CODIS and iAFIS, all the other databases. We can take fingerprints on it, too. It’s an all-in-one solution, and it works fast. Pretty slick.”
“I know. I approved the requisition,” she said, smiling. “Anything to cut down on our paperwork is a bonus for me. You’re right, he’s a genius. Violent Crimes will run much smoother with him at the helm.”
“Maybe. We miss you, though. Miss having your brain on a case. Hell, we even miss Baldwin sticking his nose in all the time.”
She smiled, ridiculously pleased to hear this. Her team had welcomed the FBI’s brilliant profiler into their lives with open arms, and into their cases, with deep respect. It made her proud, of both the team and her man.
They got to the record label’s offices just as the rain started to come down heavily. The front was pushing through early and fast, which was good. She hoped there wouldn’t be enough storm fuel to make tornadoes. Nashville didn’t need any more natural disasters.
Georgia’s record label was housed in a renovated Craftsman with navy blue siding and black-framed windows, the tapered columns a fresh cheery white. The foyer was bright and airy, opening into a sitting area with a white-painted brick fireplace. There was a black metal staircase to the second floor, and Taylor could smell freshly-baked cookies. Her stomach growled in response.
There was a rustling from the hallway, and a woman with unnaturally red hair and a sleeve of intricate multicolored tattoos stepped into view. Her face was blotchy, and she held a tissue in her right hand. She beckoned to them from the foyer into a conference room, calling into the room in a thick voice, “Cops are here.”
Georgia Wray’s manager sat at a smoky glass rectangular table, a wall of signed guitars over his shoulder. He was wearing gold sunglasses, and there was a single red file folder and an iPhone in front of him. A plate of cookies sat on the sideboard.
He stood at their approach. “Travis Bloom,” he said, gesturing to the chairs. “Have a seat. We’re all just devastated about Georgia.” He didn’t remove the glasses, and the tattooed assistant backed out of the room, closing the glass French doors behind her. Lightning flashed, and Taylor caught herself counting off one Mississippi, two Mississippi, and thought briefly of Samantha Owens, her best friend—and the former mid-state medical examiner—who had bad OCD and tended to count while washing her hands, before dragging herself back to the present just as the thunder crashed. They all jumped.
“Whoa. That was close,” Bloom said. “Of course, I’m a bit jumpy today anyway. What can I do for you? How can I help? What do you know, and what do you need to know?”
“First, thank you for helping us, sir,” Marcus said. “We’re very sorry for your loss.”
A small sniff. Not being able to see his eyes, Taylor was going off his body language. He seemed upset but contained.
“There’s quite a bit we don’t know. Georgia was killed in an isolated location, and there was a witness who heard her arguing with the killer before she was shot.” Marcus slid his tablet with the sketch pulled up across the table. “Any idea who this is?”
Bloom was tense, Taylor could see that despite his eyes being hidden. When he looked at the screen, he sighed heavily, and the head bobbed.
“Aw, shoot. Yeah. That’s Justin Osborne. Her boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Man, I knew that wasn’t gonna end well.” He took off the sunglasses and rubbed his forehead. His eyes were red; he’d been crying. So: genuinely upset. She filed that away.
“How so?” Taylor asked.
“They just had a pretty bad breakup. You know the drill, I’m sure. They came to Nashville together. He played guitar, she sang. They booked a bunch of gigs around town, started to get a following. She got better than him, fast. One of our scouts saw them open at Mercy Lounge, pitched a record deal at her. We wanted her as a solo act, so Georgia wrote Justin out of the picture pretty quick. He went away without too much fuss, but clearly, he’s back. He’s always been upset that she wasn’t dependent on him, that she bailed when the label asked her to. I mean, what’s a kid gonna do, right? He made some threats, then disappeared, only to show back up like the leech he was.”
“What kind of threats?”
“You know. Toothless. At least, I thought they were. ‘You’ll never make it without me, watch your back,’ that sort of stuff. We thought it was bluster.”
Bingo. Taylor excused herself and stepped out of the room, dialing her phone as she went.
