“I don’t have the whole story, but I got a call right before you showed up. She’s gonna make it, but they had to take her into surgery to clean something up, some kind of blood pooling in her eye cavity. He broke her cheekbone, Taylor. Beat the shit out of her.”

“That’s not his MO.”

“Nope. He usually ties ’em up and does ’em, then takes off. But this one was personal. Tied her up, raped her, then beat the shit out of her. She managed to get an All the Pretty Girls

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arm free after an hour of struggling and called her partner, Brian Post, to come get her and take her to the hospital. It wasn’t until she was there that they called Price. Wanted to keep it as quiet as possible. We don’t need the press crawling all over this one. ‘The Rainman’

strikes lead investigator. They’d have a field day with it.”

“Brave girl, keeping her cool like that.”

“You can say that again. I talked to Post, he told me she was totally calm, cool and collected about the whole thing. Only got upset when they told her that they needed to go in and fix the, whaddaya call it…”

“Occipital orb?” Taylor interjected, making a good guess.

“Yeah, that’s it. She was upset that she’d be out of it for a while and couldn’t help with the investigation. Broken face and she wants back in immediately. Ballsy chick, that one.”

Taylor agreed. She didn’t think she could handle herself nearly as well in the same situation. She knew she hadn’t when she’d been the one in the hospital.

“So what do they want us to do?”

“They want us to go through the house and do the crime scene. They don’t even want the CSIs out here, that’s how deep this is getting buried. So far, only you, Price, the chief, her partner and me know. They’d like to keep it that way.”

“Do you have a crime scene kit with you? And a camera?”

He gestured to his feet, where a large case that looked like a tackle box sat. “Picked it up on my way over.”

“Thank you for thinking ahead. Here’s my question. 62

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Don’t you think the Rainman will get pissed if he doesn’t see his handiwork on the news?”

“I think Betsy wants to deal with that later.”

“Okay, I’m cool with that. But we need to get a statement from her regardless.”

“Post already did that. When we’re done here, we can head over to Baptist and pick it up, talk to her if she’s out of surgery.”

Taylor contemplated the back door, the lock obviously jimmied. They had a job to do, so they may as well get on with it.

“Let’s do it.”

They snapped on latex gloves, slipped soft booties over their own boots and started working the scene. Taylor started with the broken lock, dusting for fingerprints and thanking the awning above the door for keeping the handle dry. She lifted a decent print from the doorjamb, took pictures of everything and then they slowly worked their way inside.

The inside of Betsy’s home looked like a small tornado had come through. The kitchen table was overturned, the glass top shattered. Blood sparkled on the shards, and a trail of blood left the kitchen. Taylor followed it, taking pictures, to the living room. Blood soaked a corner of the couch, a lamp was overturned, but the rest of the room didn’t look too bad. Taylor could see rope lying on the floor in front of the couch.

“Let me run this by you. He comes in the back door, surprises her in the kitchen. Awful lot of blood. Did he break her nose, too?”

Fitz was nodding. “Yeah, got her good right in the face before she had a chance to do anything.”

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“Okay, so he smacks her in the kitchen, drags her into the living room and assaults her on the couch. When did he tie her up?”

“Just from what Post told me on the phone, he disabled her in the kitchen, and she woke up on the couch, trussed like a Christmas pig. When he finished raping her, he tied her legs.”

“Looks like he looped the rope around the back of the couch.” Taylor was working her way around the room, taking pictures. “See the trailing ends here? That must be where she got herself loose. Okay, let’s finish up here.”

They set about their work, processing the scene, collecting some of the meager evidence the rapist had left behind. They bagged the rope—he always brought his own, plain store-bought nylon rope sold in every hardware store in the country, so it was virtually untraceable. There was no other physical evidence they could find. They had the print from the door, but that too was part of his MO. They set the place to rights as they went. They worked quickly but thoroughly, and when they finished they shared a look. Poor Betsy. As brave a face as she may want to put on, she had been through hell.

Her suspected rapist, dubbed with the moniker “The Rainman,” had been terrorizing the women of Nashville for five years. He’d earned his name because he only struck when it was raining. He’d attacked seven women, eight now, by forcing his way in their back doors, tying them up and raping them. Simple, straightforward crimes. He never spoke, wore a ski mask, always used a condom. His victims had been known to say that it 64

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seemed he was almost disinterested in what he was doing. Just tied them up, slipped on a condom, forced his way into their bodies and left through the back door. That was it, nothing more. He’d never hit a single one, just threatened them into compliance with a gun to the head or a knife to the side. He had a unique but relatively innocuous MO, one some experts classified as a gentleman rapist. Until today, none of his victims had been physically injured.

Taylor and Fitz finished up and made their way to the backyard. They smoked companionably in silence for a time, until Taylor felt the need to point out the obvious.

“Think it was a copycat?”

“I think we have to look at the possibility, given this new MO. We’ll know soon enough. If that print on the back door was his, they’ll be able to match it to the other rapes. What a kook. Leave the rope and your print behind. They’ve never gotten a hit off the print, he’s obviously never been in trouble with the law. So how a does a law-abiding citizen suddenly turn into a rapist?”

“Fitz, if I knew the answer to that, I could probably hawk it to the daytime shows and make a million dollars. Let’s get over to the hospital and see if Betsy’s out of surgery yet.”

Nine

Baldwin sat as far back in the cramped seat as his legs would allow and fastened his seat belt for the quick trip to Atlanta. As soon as the plane cleared ten thousand feet and the pilot finished greeting the passengers, he pulled out his laptop and opened his e-mail. The file for the missing girl appeared before him. Shauna Lyn Davidson.

The call had come from Jerry Grimes, the field agent that had been running the cases from Alabama and Louisiana. He’d been instructed to keep Baldwin up to speed on the cases, and he’d complied, albeit reluctantly at first. Handing off his case to the FBI’s most celebrated profiler rubbed him the wrong way. But now, the note of panic in his voice was near the surface.

“Baldwin, they’ve definitively identified Shauna Davidson in Georgia. Her body is in a field off a rural exit, near Adairsville off I-75. Looks the same, body dumped in a field, strangled and she’s missing her hands. What the hell is this guy up to?”

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“Grimes, you’ve told them what to look for, right?

They need to find it.”

“Awww, shit, I know, I know. They’re looking for the hand now. I’m on my way there, are you coming?”

The accusatory note was not lost on Baldwin, but he chose to ignore it.

“I’m on my way, man. Hang in there.”