“You’ll get me all the pics yesterday, right? And do the post right now. I mean—” she attempted a more conciliatory tone “—will you do the post right now?”
“I’ll bump her to the top of the guest list. There’s something else... Do you smell anything?”
“Just your perfume. Is it new?”
“See, that’s the weird thing. I’m not wearing any. I think the smell is coming from the body. And I’ll tell you, Taylor, this would be my first sweet-smelling corpse, you know?”
Taylor had noticed the scent. She inhaled sharply through her nose. Yes, there were all the usual stinks that came with a dead body: the unmistakable smell of decay, the stink of fear, the tang of stale urine and excrement. But overlaying all these olfactory wonders was a tangy sweetness. She thought hard for a moment, searching for the memory the smell triggered. The scent was somehow familiar, almost like— That was it!
“Sam, you know what this smells like? The spa across the way, Essential Therapy. Remember, I gave you a gift certificate for a massage there for your birthday? They have all those lotions and soaps and essential oil candles...”
“Wait a minute. You’re right. She smells like incense.” She stared at the body. “What if... Okay, give me a second here.” Sam reached into her kit and extracted a small pair of tweezers. She bent over and started picking through the dirt on the body.
“What are you doing?” Taylor watched Sam put a few pieces of leaves and sticks into a small white paper bag. Somewhat disgusted, she watched Sam shove her nose into the bag and breathe in deeply. “Ugh, Sam.”
“No, here.” Sam’s eyes lit up, and Taylor was tempted to back away. But Sam grabbed her hand and shoved the bag toward Taylor’s face. “Really, smell.”
Taylor wrinkled her nose, swallowing hard. It was one thing seeing the body and smelling it from a few feet away, but sticking her nose into the detritus that came from the body itself was totally gross. Grimacing, she took the bag and inhaled. The scent was smoky and floral, not at all unpleasant.
Sam’s eyes were shining in excitement. “This isn’t dirt, Taylor. These are herbs. She has herbs scattered all over her body. Now what the hell is that all about?”
Taylor shook her head slowly, trying to absorb the new discovery. “I don’t know. Can you isolate which herb it is?”
“Yeah, I can let a buddy of mine at UT in Knoxville take a look. He’s head of the university’s botany department and totally into all this stuff. I don’t think it’s just one herb, though. The leaves are all different sizes and shapes. Oh man, this is too cool.”
“Sam, you’re awful.” Taylor couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “You like this job too much.”
“That’s why I’m good at it. Tim’s our lead ’gator today. I’m going to get him set up here to bag all this stuff, and I’ll have a runner take it up to UT ASAP. You know, it would be a lot simpler if that idiot mayor would help us get our own lab capable of handling this kind of stuff. Hell, it’d be nice if we could even do tox screens in-house.”
Sam continued grumbling under her breath and stood up, signaling the end of the conversation. She waved to her team, calling them over. The body was ready to be moved.
“Wait, Sam. Did Crime Scene pick up anything else? Clothes, jewelry?”
“Not yet, but you’re in their way. She’s got enough of this crap on her that it’s gonna take them a while to collect it all. Why don’t you go back and try to find out who this girl is for me, okay? Y’all need to catch this guy, ’cause once the press gets ahold of this, they’re gonna freak the whole city. It’s not every day I have to come to the middle of Centennial Park to collect a body, much less for a staged crime scene. Look at the vultures hovering already.”
She swept her hand toward the media trucks. Their level of activity had picked up, excitement palpable in the air. Techs were setting up lights and running around on the street by the duck pond, with cameras and portable microphones in tow. The news vans were lined up around the corner. Taylor watched Fitz and the patrol officers struggle to keep the reporters from rushing the tape to gather their precious scoops. Nothing like murder in the morning to start a feeding frenzy.
“Seriously, Taylor, you know how they are. They’ll find some way to spin this into a grand conspiracy and warn all the parents to keep their girls at home until you catch whoever did this.” She started grumbling. “It should be frickin’ illegal for the chief to have given them their own radios. Now every newsie in Nashville hovers over my shoulder while I scope a body.”
Taylor lowered her eyelids for a second and gave her best friend a half smile. “Well, honey, if it makes you feel any better, all the talking heads and their cameramen are squishing through goose poo trying to get their stories. Guess Lake Watauga has its purposes after all. Call me as soon as you have anything.”
Sam laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Split. You’re making me nervous.”
3