Free Jackson 05 - The Immortals by J.T. Ellison

house. What can you tell us about what happened there this afternoon?”
    â€œDon’t know anyone named Carson. I was walking home. Been trick-or-treating.”
    â€œWithout a costume? All the way to Granny White? That’s going to take you a while.”
    â€œI’m too old to play dress-up. And I like to walk. You scared me, I ran. Simple as dat.”
    In a fraction of a second, the boy had gone from scared and hurt to snarly and mature, talking gangster to her. She’d hit a nerve, no question about it.
    One of the paramedics made a twirly motion with his finger. She looked at him and stepped a few feet away. He joined her and whispered, “We need to transport him now. He’s bleeding pretty heavily. Dog might’ve nicked an artery.”
    She glanced back at the kid, who did look to be fading. “Okay. I’ll send Marcus with you guys. The kid’s full ofcrap, and I want to make sure any excited utterances are transcribed exactly. Keep an eye on him, and if he says anything, you write it down, okay?”
    â€œWill do, boss.”
    She motioned to Marcus, repeated the same thing and asked him to call Juri Edvin’s parents. She recited the number, waited while he wrote it in his notebook. He promised to check on Brittany Carson for her. She watched him follow the stretcher to the ambulance, the metal legs wobbly on the uneven ground. They nearly pitched the kid headfirst off the thing once.
    Shaking her head, she called Lincoln and retasked him to the crime-scene videos, then touched base with McKenzie. He was at the party, had the place on lockdown. Good God, this was a logistical nightmare. She had officers and detectives spread over half of Davidson County.
    It took less than five minutes to trek her way out of the woods and back to her car. Sam had left a note on the windshield. Needed to go. Call when you’re done.
    Taylor flipped open her cell phone. Sam answered on the first ring.
    â€œYou catch him?” she asked.
    â€œYeah. Just a kid, but he lied to me about being near the house. I’m going to drag a crime-scene tech up here and have them comb the perimeter. Something was fishy there.”
    â€œI’m at the fifth crime scene. I found some interesting stuff. You should come over here.”
    â€œWhich one?”
    Sam gave her the address, and Taylor hung up. She climbed in her unmarked and drove the few streets over to 5567 Foxhall Close, the home of victim number five, Brandon Scott.
    It was all becoming numbingly familiar: the beautifully appointed home, the incongruity of yellow crime-scene tape and people milling about, roaming in and out of the house in a coordinated plan. It looked like moving day, with forensics and blood-spatter experts.
    She made her way inside. The focus of attention was again on the second floor. She took the stairs two at a time and went to the beehive.
    Sam was standing against the wall, making notes, leaving a clear view of the body. Taylor sucked in her breath, edged closer.
    The body presented like the others, on his back, arms down by his side this time, but the carving in the boy’s chest was much more intense. There was pure fury in the slashes. They penetrated much deeper than the other bodies, so far that bone was visible. The sheets were caked with blood, the odd scent of jasmine and viscera combining in a gorge-rising miasma.
    He was partially dressed, gray sweatpants with a tie at the waist that had been disturbed—one side hung down over his right buttock. The edge of his pants was black with blood.
    Taylor swallowed, hard. “He’s been flayed,” she said. “Our killer really didn’t like Mr. Scott here.”
    Sam kicked off from the wall, stowed her notebook in her pocket, walked over to Taylor.
    â€œThat’s an understatement. Roll him,” she instructed the death investigator who had joined them.
    The boy’s back was covered in strips of bloody channels, long and