Fortunately for Rowan, her overhead costs were minimal, allowing her to ride out the storm. Gardner’s apparently wasn’t so lucky.

  “Anyone we know?” she asked.

  Winchester was a small town. Most everyone knew everyone else. The small-town atmosphere was part of the reason Rowan had been determined to move on to a larger city when she left for college. But she’d learned the hard way that she couldn’t hide who she was simply by expanding the number of faces surrounding her. Strangely, she had decided she liked the idea of knowing the folks around her. Less likely to be so blatantly betrayed.

  Then again, there was Herman. Knowing him inordinately well hadn’t prevented her blindness to his betrayal.

  No, Rowan decided. What she liked about being back in Winchester was that she had grown up here. She had been labeled and pigeonholed at a very young age as the undertaker’s daughter. Though she was the undertaker now, folks still saw her as the undertaker’s daughter and she understood exactly what was expected of her and where she stood in the community. Whatever she did or didn’t do, little would change in terms of how folks viewed her. Strangely, there was something comforting about the status quo.

  “Never heard of him,” Billy said in answer to her question about the new intake. “One Carlos Sanchez, seventy-one. A neighbor discovered him, deceased, in his apartment over in Bell View.”

  Bell View? Rowan didn’t know Carlos Sanchez but she did know Bell View. Run-down, roach-infested apartments and run-down houses, operated by the closest thing to a slumlord that resided in Winchester.

  “Cause of death?” Couldn’t be murder, or the coroner wouldn’t be releasing the body so quickly. He would, instead, be sending the man to Nashville for an autopsy.

  “Heart attack.”

  “Any family?”

  “Nope. His friend showed Burt and my officer a letter of instruction Sanchez had told him about. The letter expressly instructed that his body was to be taken care of by DuPont Funeral Home and stated that the insurance policy to cover the costs had been taken out with an insurance company downtown. The policy number is in the letter.”

  “I guess the man knew what he wanted.”

  Lots of people made advance arrangements. They just didn’t generally live in Bell View.

  Rowan had learned from experience that the one thing you could count on was that life never failed to toss out the occasional surprise.

  She wondered what other surprises she would discover about Mr. Carlos Sanchez.

  Two

  DuPont Funeral Home

  Carlos Sanchez lay on his back on the mortuary table, his head resting on the head block. The overhead lights cast a harsh glow over his nude—save for the covering over his genitals—form. The man had lived a hard life. His body told the story. There was no hiding anything at this point. The craggy lines on his face and discoloration of his weathered skin spoke of decades of smoking and alcoholism, perhaps the abuse of other drugs. The numerous scars and the missing plug of cartilage in the helix portion of the right outer ear indicated he’d participated in more than his fair share of physical altercations.

  Despite his advanced age, his body was lean and wiry. Muscle tone appeared firmer than average. None of the usual sagging along the arms and legs or in the abdomen area. Rowan would wager that he’d worked out regularly until very recently. Among the vast array of inked numbers and symbols on his body was a tattoo of a heart on the left side of his chest. A rose vine covered with thorns curled around the once deep red tattoo and extended up and across his shoulder, around his throat and disappeared. Interesting.

  As a member of the Special Crimes Unit in Metro Nashville’s homicide division for several years, she had seen a bit of everything when it came to tattoos and piercings. For some, certain symbols were considered a style statement or a testament of loyalty or faith. It never ceased to amaze her what some folks would do to their bodies toward that end. When it came to criminals, the markings and piercings were often related to their motivations. Other times it was entirely environmental.

  She doubted she would ever know what had motivated the man lying before her. Unless someone came forward to claim him, he would be buried with little or no pomp and circumstance in a local cemetery.

  After preparing the disinfectant and germicidal solutions, Rowan pulled on her gloves, then slipped on an apron. She generally wore jeans and T-shirts to work for comfort and because they were easily laundered. The first step was to cleanse the body and massage the extremities. Massaging the arms and legs was essential for helping to relieve the rigor mortis to some degree. This step not only helped her make the body more presentable for viewing, but it also facilitated the flow of fluids during the embalming process. She had checked his vitals already. No matter that the coroner had pronounced him dead, it was standard protocol that Rowan confirm that conclusion. The presence of rigor mortis and lividity were obvious signs of death, yet she still checked for clouded corneas and then for a pulse in the carotid artery. The former was present, the latter was not.

  No question, Mr. Sanchez was assuredly deceased.

  As she rolled the body to its right side, her gaze automatically tracked the vine tattoo drifting from his neck to a spot in the center of his back where a wreath of thorns encircled a name.

  Norah.

  Rowan’s heart skipped as she reread the name. Norah was her mother’s name. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end but she shook off the eerie sensation. Lots of women were named Norah. She cleansed the back of his body, then lowered him onto the table once more. As quickly as possible she completed the remainder of the cleaning-and-massaging process. Touching his body suddenly unnerved her. The sensation rarely occurred during this process since she had learned as a child to distance herself emotionally from the work. As inhumane as it sounded, during this particular step it was important not to see the body as a person any longer. Removing bodily fluids and replacing those with chemicals was an admittedly gruesome, no-turning-back step. It was important to remain objective and to focus on the task.

  Despite her training, she found doing so difficult this afternoon. Because of the name tattooed on the man’s back, she supposed. Any little reminder of her mother often unsettled her.

  “Finding your mother hanging from the second-story stair railing when you’re twelve years old can do that,” she muttered.

  Norah DuPont had committed suicide only a few months after Rowan’s twin sister, Raven, drowned in the lake. Rowan was left feeling as if her mother had preferred to follow Raven into death than to try to get on with life with her surviving daughter. Not exactly an enduring memory. Rowan had never been particularly close to her mother, anyway. Raven had held that cherished spot.

  As a psychiatrist, Rowan had learned that it was typical for one child to be closer to a particular parent than the other. Rowan had been closer to her father. At least she’d always thought so. After his death, she’d began to wonder if she knew either of her parents as well as she had once thought.

  That was the thing about secrets. Secrets never stayed secret forever. Someone eventually discovered them and then it was often too late for the bearer of that secret to set the record straight. There were so many things Rowan wished she could ask her father.

  Pushing aside the troubling thoughts, Rowan sealed Mr. Sanchez’s eyes and mouth, ensuring his jaw was locked into position with wire. She set his face in a neutral-looking expression since he didn’t strike her as the sort of man who smiled often. She studied those thin lips for a moment, then inspected his rugged face. He looked more like the kind of man who growled orders or snapped harsh words. Since there was no family to ask, it was safe to conclude that no one was going to complain about the expression he wore in death.

  With the superficial steps out of the way, Rowan hesitated before moving on to the next part of her work. For about two seconds she argued with herself, but the daughter—the woman—in her won. She slipped off her gloves and rounded up her cell phone. One by one she snapped photos of the tattoos. Satisfied she had documented what could potentially turn out to be evidence if this man somehow knew her mother, she pulled on her gloves once more. She made the necessary incisions and inserted the tubes, then turned on the pump that would drain the blood vessels and usher preserving chemicals into those same veins and arteries. In the past it had been necessary to use more topical cosmetics for adding color to the complexion, but nowadays dyes and additives were combined with the embalming fluid to help restore the body’s natural coloration. In fact, accessory chemicals could now be customized for each body. A person could look as healthy and attractive in death as the family desired. Of course, the topical enhancements were still needed for most clients, depending on the body’s condition and the wishes of the family. Like everything else, all it took was a well-trained mortician and money.

  The process of embalming required upward of forty-five minutes. While the pump did its job, Rowan noted the chemicals and amounts she had used for Sanchez on the whiteboard. When services were completed, she would ensure that all the notes were added to his file. Charlotte Kinsley, Rowan’s personal and mortuary assistant, had contacted the insurance company to initiate the payment process. At this time there were no known surviving family members. Still, Rowan had asked Charlotte to select moderately priced items with which to fulfill Mr. Sanchez’s services. Eventually next of kin might be located. Rowan felt confident he or she would appreciate any remaining moneys.

  With the embalming complete, Rowan removed the tubes and closed the incisions she had made. She prepared Mr. Sanchez for storage in the refrigeration unit and moved him there. Another hour of cleanup in the mortuary room followed. By a few minutes past five, she retreated to the second-floor living quarters. She had no visitations tonight, which was rare. There was generally at least one every day of the week. As much as she appreciated a reasonably steady stream of business, she was grateful for tonight’s reprieve.

  Upstairs, Freud, her German shepherd, wagged his tail. “Hey, boy, you need to go out?”

  His ears perked up and he headed for the stairs. Rowan sighed and tromped back down the stairs she’d only just climbed. The house was a well-maintained historic home that had served as a funeral home its entire existence. The mortuary services were handled in the basement. The funeral services and delivery access were on the first floor. The second and third floors served as the family living quarters. More often than not Rowan used the back staircase—the one located by the delivery entrance at the rear of the house. Part of the reason, she imagined, was because her mother had used the grand second-story landing that overlooked the lobby and front entrance to hang herself.

  What kind of mother hung herself in the open only minutes before her daughter would arrive home from school?

  Rowan had stopped dwelling on that question years ago. She’d spent far too many years obsessing about her inability to be enough for her mother. With a couple of clicks on the keypad, she disarmed the security system and sent Freud racing across the backyard. The security system had been installed back in May, when Julian Addington decided to invade her life here in Winchester.

  The bastard.

  How could she have known him all those years—as his patient and then, later, as his friend and colleague—and not recognized what he was? A monster. One of the most prolific serial killers to date. He’d turned her life upside down. How could she possibly have considered continuing her work with the Nashville police department’s Special Crimes Unit when she hadn’t been able to spot the killer right under her nose?

  The answer was she couldn’t. Subsequently, she had resigned. Resigned and come home with her tail tucked between her legs.

  Rowan wrapped her arms around herself. She should have pulled on a sweater. The October weather had turned a little chillier than usual. Or maybe it was the memories. From the moment Julian had murdered her father, all sorts of secrets had started to surface. Her mother, Norah, had apparently had an affair with Julian. Julian’s seventeen-year-old daughter had come to Winchester more than a quarter century ago looking for the woman who had stolen her father’s attention. The theory was that the daughter, Alisha, had murdered Raven and then, according to Julian, Rowan’s father had killed Alisha in a fit of rage and revenge.

  Rowan wasn’t prepared to believe her father had done such a thing. But every time she dug a little deeper into her mother’s journals, she found something else that suggested her father was capable of all manner of hurtful deeds.

  Still, she had found no proof he was a murderer.

  A frown tugged across Rowan’s brow. Her mother had called herself a writer. She’d worked on project after project and taken frequent research trips, but nothing ever came of the work that somehow consumed her existence. Oddly, none of the projects was ever finished. Most appeared to revolve around mysteries and murder.

  The memory of Mr. Sanchez’s damaged ear flashed in her mind. The image was somehow familiar. The scar on his left hip whizzed into focus in her mind’s eye next.

  “Freud, come!”

  When she had persuaded Freud to follow her back inside, Rowan locked up, set the alarm and then climbed the stairs, two at a time. Rather than start dinner or go up to her room on the third floor for a shower, she went straight to her parents’ bedroom. She sat down at her mother’s desk, turned on the lamp and started thumbing through the journals. Her mother had described all sorts of murderers. The details were always lush and well-defined. Norah had been a talented writer in that she captured the essence of time and place extraordinarily well. Her characters were clearly drawn. It was in the execution and follow-through of the plot where she collapsed.

  A victim had clamped down on his ear once, tearing loose a small plug, serving as a constant reminder that he could never be careless again. Leaving any sort of evidence was far too risky.

  Rowan reread the passage. She skimmed a few paragraphs before and after to see if there was any mention of which ear. There was not. It was a foolish notion, but the idea wouldn’t let go. She went back to the beginning of this particular project and started to skim the pages. She pulled one knee up to her chest, got comfortable and read.

  His Latino heritage was evident in every square inch of his hard body. His dark hair was long and shaggy, his equally dark eyes piercing.

  The fact that the man in refrigeration downstairs was Latino was not lost on Rowan. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ro.”

  She was not a child, and this was no episode of some creepy horror show. This was life, coincidence. Rowan continued skimming.

  Dragging her fingers across the scar on his left hip, where he’d taken a dagger, made her tremble.

  “Now, that is creepy.” Sanchez had a scar on his left hip, in the area of the iliac crest. Coupled with the name Norah tattooed on his back...

  Rowan shook her head. “Impossible.”

  Still, she kept reading.

  My name on his skin would forever proclaim that I belonged to him. He was a killer and yet I did not fear him... I craved him.

  Rowan sat back. Reminded herself to breathe. This could not possibly be what it appeared to be.

  She laughed, couldn’t help herself. She’d spent the past five months learning that nothing in her life was what it appeared to be. Why would this be any different?

  She had to be certain.

  There was one person she could trust without fail.

  Billy.

  Rowan went in search of her cell phone. She found it in the kitchen, where she’d cut up an apple earlier. She put through the call to Billy’s cell. She knew what needed to be done, but she was no longer in law enforcement, though Billy had asked her to assist him with cases. This step, however, required more than an advisor.

  Billy answered with his usual greeting. She couldn’t help smiling. He made her feel like she belonged. He’d always had that effect on her. “Hey, there’s something I need to talk to you about. Would you be available to come over, now or later—whatever works for you? I could call in some takeout.”

  The two of them shared enough meals to be an old married couple. But neither of them had time for marriage. They were too focused on work.

  “Actually, I just pulled into your driveway.”

  Rowan walked to the front window and looked out. Billy’s truck sat in front of the main entrance to the funeral home. As she watched, the driver’s-side door opened and he climbed out.

  “Come on in. Use your key—you know the code.”

  “Will do.”

  Billy was the one person in the world she trusted completely.

  When she’d tucked her cell into the pocket of her jeans, Freud jumped to his feet and barked. “Take it easy, boy, it’s just Billy.”

  Freud glanced at her, then curled back into his bed. Rowan opened the door and watched as Billy strode along the hall between the second-story landing and the living quarters.

  “Hey.” He smiled and reached up to remove his hat as he crossed the threshold.

  Billy Brannigan was a cowboy through and through, from the boots to the hat, but, more important, he was a true gentleman. And he was charming and polite, exactly like the heroes in the romance novels women swooned over. It really was a miracle that he’d made it all the way to forty without getting married. There wasn’t a single woman in Franklin County who wouldn’t love to land the handsome chief of police.

  But the man swore that he just hadn’t met the right woman yet.

  Not that Rowan had any room to talk. She was swiftly approaching forty and she hadn’t been married, either.

  All work and no play. They were certainly a pair.

  “Hey yourself. I know why I was calling you, but why were you coming to see me?”

  “You first,” he urged, hat in hand, face way too serious.