Survival Clause
door shutting, steps on the floor of the porch downstairs, and the doorbell ringing through the house. Rafe, who had made it out of the shower by then, stuck his head through the doorway to Carrie’s nursery. “I’ll get it.”I nodded. “I’ll be down in a few minutes. She’s almost asleep already.”
He disappeared from the doorway, and I called after him, “Put your shirt on before you answer the door.”
He didn’t respond, but I heard a chuckle float back on the air.
He padded down the stairs on bare feet, and across to the front door. And I recognized Grimaldi’s voice, the timbre and inflection, even if I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
By the time Carrie was tucked up in her crib, and I had rearranged my clothing, they had migrated to the kitchen, where Rafe had put on a pot of coffee—coffee?—and lined two mugs up on the island.
“Where’s mine?” I wanted to know.
He gave me a look. “You need your sleep, darlin’.”
“I guess you two aren’t going to get any?”
I headed for the fridge, where I pulled a carton of milk out. If I wasn’t going to get coffee, I might as well make myself a cup of hot chocolate. Dairy’s good for the baby.
“We’ll get some,” Grimaldi said, “just not in the next couple hours.”
“Did Rafe tell you what happened with Tucker?” I poured the milk into a mug and stuck it in the microwave to heat.
Grimaldi nodded. “And I saw the live stream.”
Live stream? “Really?”
They both nodded. Neither of them said anything else. I looked from one to the other of them as my milk rotated in the microwave. “So what’s going on? Are you going to talk to Tucker now?”
“Tucker can wait till tomorrow,” Rafe said, pulling the coffee pot off the coffee maker and tilting it over the two cups.
“What, then?”
“That murder scene I came from,” Grimaldi said, and my heart sank to the bottom of my stomach.
“Oh, God. Who do we know who’s dead?” My mother? One of my sisters? My brother? A friend?
“Nobody,” Grimaldi said. “It’s not who, it’s what.”
“What do you mean, what?”
“Dead woman,” Rafe told me. “Found a couple hours ago at the truck stop down by the interstate. No identification on the body. No idea who she is. Or was. But not anybody we know.”
Good to know. Although how would he know that, unless— “Have you seen a picture?”
He nodded.
“Can I see, too?” Just to make sure it wasn’t someone I knew, that he didn’t.
He glanced at Grimaldi, who shrugged. “She’s been dead just a few hours,” she told me, while she opened the camera program on her phone. “Best as we can figure.”
“OK.” Nothing to worry about, then. No maggots or anything. I took the phone she handed me and looked at the picture. Dark-haired woman in her thirties, and no, no one I’d ever seen before. Or if I had, I didn’t remember.
I handed the phone back to Grimaldi. “What does she have to do with us?”
And I didn’t mean to sound cold, but Grimaldi was a homicide detective with the Nashville PD before she took over the Columbia police department. And Rafe has certainly seen his share of dead bodies. So have I, tagging along behind him. It’s always sad, but if she was no one we knew, it didn’t seem to warrant this kind of reaction.
“Murdered woman,” Grimaldi repeated, as if this should mean something to me, “left at the truck stop off Interstate 65.”
She waited. It took me a second. I admit it. And then, finally, I got what she was—or rather, wasn’t—saying. “You mean…”
“Yes. The I-65 serial killer is back.”
The I-65 serial killer who had murdered Grimaldi’s mother when Grimaldi was just a kid. The serial killer Grimaldi had been wanting to pit wits with for going on two decades now.
“And this time,” she added, her voice grimly satisfied, “he left the body in a place where I get to investigate it.”
Two
“If it’s over by the interstate,” I said, “won’t it be Bob Satterfield’s body to investigate?”
Grimaldi looked at me, and I clarified. “You’re police chief of Columbia. The interstate is outside the city limits. Therefore, it isn’t your investigation. Or your body.”
“The sheriff called me,” Grimaldi said.
“He’s giving you his murder investigation?”
“Not exactly.”
Rafe had put the coffee pot back and was watching her with both hands wrapped around his mug, one brow elevated. “Lemme guess. He called you because he wanted me, and you decided to invite yourself along.”
“Something like that,” Grimaldi admitted.
Rafe’s lips curved. “How’d he like that?”
“He seemed fine with it. But I had to promise I’d bring you back with me.”
Of course. “He wants Rafe as a representative for the TBI,” I said, and they both nodded.
“The woman ain’t gonna be local,” Rafe said. “The killer picked her up somewhere along the way. Mighta been Nashville, mighta been farther north.”
“Or south,” Grimaldi added, “if he was trying to throw us off.”
And had dumped her on the opposite side of the interstate than the direction he was traveling. He’d been going south, obviously. Or at least he had dumped the body on the west side of the highway.
Rafe nodded. “Mighta been inside the state, or in Kentucky. Or Indiana or Alabama. Either way, it’s outside county jurisdiction.”
And into the TBI’s. “So you’ll be taking over?”
“It depends,” Rafe said. “First McLaughlin has to agree to it.”
“But he will. Won’t he? I mean, you’re here. Surely it makes more sense to let you deal with it than send someone else down when you’re here already.”
“I imagine he will,” Rafe said. “And if it turns out that the victim was picked up inside the state, then I’m all we need. If she came from outside Tennessee, I’ll have to coordinate with folks from there. Or the FBI, if some bright soul has the idea to call’em in.”
Grimaldi grimaced.
“I guess you’re hoping she’ll turn out to be local,” I said, looking from one to the other of them. “From inside Tennessee.”
“It’d make