All the Pretty Girls

by J. T. Ellison

  She didn’t have a lot of nice things to say about her daughter. Christy had been a surprise in her mother’s life, a surprise that had come along when Charlie was fifteen and madly in love with a boy from uptown Roanoke. When she found herself pregnant, she never heard from him again. It had been her and Christy all along, she told Baldwin. And that girl was never going to amount to anything, the way she ran around, whoring and drinking. Just ’cause it was good enough for her mama didn’t mean it was good enough for her. I always wanted something better for Christy, she told Baldwin, but I never knew how to get it for her.

  As Baldwin gazed down at Christy, he felt a sadness that was as much sorrow for the girl’s death as it was for the raw deal she’d gotten in her short life.

  When they’d gotten the call that a body had been found in Asheville, North Carolina, Baldwin hadn’t even blinked. The killer wasn’t thinking too far ahead. Now that they were hot on his trail, he was grabbing, killing and dumping, and he’d really gotten on a tear. Christy hadn’t even been missing a day, and now Baldwin stood over her battered body, looking at the knife wounds in her chest, the bloody wrists, wondering where her hand would show up. Marni Fischer’s neatly manicured hand was a few feet away. Baldwin calculated. Where were the rest of the girls’ hands?

  His careful, methodical serial killer had escalated into a vicious spree maniac. At first glance, the killer was trying to draw them in, a heavy spider in a silken web of intent. But as each thread unraveled, each victim killed quicker than the last, the web tore. A sophisticated, organized killer could last for years off one kill. This one was decompensating at a rate Baldwin hadn’t seen for a decade.

  The change was fascinating from an empirical standpoint. It was Baldwin’s talent, the ability to separate the victims and their lives from the crimes being committed. Psychologically, it was a simple issue. The killer’s message wasn’t getting through. This was frustrating him, and in turn, he was taking chances, not as worried about possible consequences. His endgame had started.

  Forensics had a field day in the motel room. It was obvious that Christy had been repeatedly stabbed, and that blood added to the cast-off spray from the arterial cuts in her wrists created a gory miasma for the techs to comb through. The room hadn’t been wiped down, so there were many fingerprints, almost too many to take exemplars from, considering the number of people who had been through that room. Baldwin assumed the killer was wearing gloves, they hadn’t gotten a fingerprint from any of the scenes that they could place him at.

  For the first time, they’d found a minute amount of semen mixed in with the blood on the bedsheets. In a regular case, that would have been cause for celebration. Because there had been no evidence collected from the earlier event with the ripped condom, there was nothing to compare with this DNA. Another telltale sign that the killer was on the edge, losing control. He was getting sloppy.

  Baldwin had instructed the techs to file the DNA into the CODIS system, hoping for a match from deep within the bowels of the database, but he wasn’t holding his breath. Something about these kills felt fresh to him. His profile stated that these were the man’s first significant crimes, that his earlier record would be minor, if there was one at all. As he delved further into the case and the pace of the murders increased, the more on target his original assessment seemed. Not finding a match would reinforce at least one element of the profile.

  Baldwin had asked Grimes to send men in to the bar Christy frequented, to find out if anyone remembered seeing her talking to someone or, better yet, leaving with someone. But Grimes had reported that no one saw anything out of the ordinary. One bartender had gone so far as to joke that keeping up with the men Christy was seen talking to would take an entire police force. His humor wasn’t appreciated, and he quickly apologized and let them know that seriously, she could have been with anyone, no one paid attention to a crazy girl flirting her way through a few hours of drinks.

  On a lark, Baldwin had asked Grimes to see if anyone remembered a young, dark-haired man, but that got a laugh. They were in a college bar; at least half the patrons fit that description. No one in particular had stood out to the bartender.

  They just didn’t have a lot to go on. Baldwin signaled that they needed to get Christy’s body out of the brush and onto a gurney so she could be unceremoniously cut open and slid into a refrigerated drawer in the Asheville morgue, while Baldwin twiddled his thumbs and looked stupid, not having any idea how to stop this mercurial killer.

  It was time to take a room, have a drink and try to sort all of this out. Preferably over the phone with Taylor. He’d realized lately that just talking to her cleared his mind, and his mind needed a lot of clearing now. He needed a strategy session, he needed to lay it all out and see what he was missing. Because he was missing something huge, and that wasn’t going to get this killer stopped any time soon.

  He watched through squinted eyes as Christina Dale was loaded into a bag, placed onto a stretcher, then set gently on a gurney that was slid into the open back doors of the M.E.’s cream-colored van. The trees seemed very green, the haze off the mountains very purple, the summer air surprisingly crisp and clean and only slightly mottled with the smell of death. Everything here seemed larger than life, realer than real, and it made Baldwin’s head ache. Mountains always did that to him.

  Baldwin came out of the shower and flipped on the television set. His hotel room was too hot, so he sat on the edge of the bed in his towel and watched the local news. The lead story was about Christina Dale’s body being found. The reporter went through the details, which were sketchy, as Baldwin had made sure that not a lot of information was getting out. She traced the killer’s moves over the past weeks, and she finished with a warning to all of the young women of Asheville.

  “All women in the Asheville area are warned not to stay alone, and to keep your doors and windows locked. If you go out, please find someone to go with you. Don’t speak with anyone you don’t know, and carry pepper spray. We can’t emphasize enough that you have to be on your guard. Keep your cell phone charged and handy. Don’t get into cars with strangers. Everyone needs to be aware.”

  It was a good warning, nothing that any woman didn’t hear on any given day, but given with such vehemence that it should give one or two women pause. Unfortunately, there was nothing in particular they could tell the women of Asheville to actually keep them safe.

  He flipped the TV off and pulled out his files. He spread them on the bed in chronological order and started to go through them, beginning with Susan Palmer. There were definite similarities to the victims. Each had dark hair and eyes, they were between eighteen and twenty-eight. Body types were comparable; they were all strong and athletic. And they all worked in the medical field to some degree. Was he dealing with a deranged doctor who’d gone over the edge? That was as good a theory as any he’d had so far.

  He was beginning to feel impotent. This killer was moving fast, and though there was a distinct pattern to his motions, there was no way to predict what city he would hit next. All they could do was catch him. And they weren’t getting any closer to that goal, either.

  He’d had cases like this before, that the killer’s actions overrode the police investigation. He was more accustomed to the kind of killer that took his time. Patterns generally were established over weeks and months, not in days. This guy was on a frenzied killing spree, and spree killers were the most dangerous. But they almost always tripped up, and were caught quickly. They certainly didn’t go from state to state taking women and depositing their bodies minus their hands in other states.

  His escalation was actually a good thing. At this pace, he was bound to screw up. No killer was that smart. Leaving his DNA behind was the first of what Baldwin hoped would be many mistakes.

  Baldwin’s cell phone rang as the number to the FBI tip line appeared on the screen. He shut the TV off and glanced at the caller ID. It was Taylor.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” he said gently.

/>   “Baldwin, are you okay? I’ve been following all of this on the news, you must be exhausted.”

  “Yeah, well, crime waits for no man. This situation just goes from bad to worse. Every time we catch up with him, he takes off again. I can’t find a single predictor of where he’s going to go next.”

  “Do you want to run it through with me? Maybe a fresh set of eyes, well, ears will help.”

  “Yeah, that might be a good idea. But first, is everything okay there? How’s your rape case?”

  He heard her get quiet, a moment of time in which he could almost hear the thoughts flowing through her brain over the phone. When she answered, he thought she sounded a bit discouraged.

  “Things are fine. Have you seen the news? National media’s picked up the Rainman story. Just their cup of tea, a real mystery. And who doesn’t love a serial rapist? To top it all off, we have a victim who thinks the rapist is a cop, which isn’t going over well. Oh, did you hear about Whitney Connolly?”

  “Honey, I’ve been up to my ears here. Whitney Connolly from Channel Five? What happened?”

  “She was in a car accident yesterday. Killed her and three others. It was pretty bad. I went to the scene with Sam before we knew it was Whitney. It’s been awful, you can’t turn on the news without seeing tributes to her. I’ve been working with her sister, Quinn Buckley, to try and find out if there was anything of a more sensitive nature that she was dealing with. She died on her way over to Quinn’s house to warn her about something. We just haven’t come up with what. I’ve been going through her personal effects all day, first at her house, then the things that they took out of her car after the accident. I’m not coming up with a lot.”

  “Well, she always seemed kind of flighty.”

  “John Baldwin, are you telling me you dated her? What little secrets are you hiding? I thought you said you didn’t know them.” Taylor hadn’t known Baldwin at Father Ryan, either, but he knew her. It was impossible for anyone not to know Taylor Jackson—her ability to befriend students in all walks and her devil-may-care attitude had made her stand out.

  “I didn’t date her. We never even spoke. I’m just saying she seemed a little flighty. And I’ve always wondered what the real deal was with that kidnapping.”

  “Good segue. I mentioned the kidnapper’s name to Quinn, to see if there was a chance Whitney’s fears had to do with him. She mentioned he was still incarcerated and not up for parole for another fifteen years. I wanted to see what the deal was, so I pulled the file. Nathan Chase is in jail for more than just kidnapping. Sexual assault, sexual battery, aggravated rape and sodomy. Those girls went through a little more than just a kidnapping. I don’t know how they kept it all so secret.”

  “I remember it was kept pretty quiet. And they had a lot of influence and power on their side. Peter Connolly, that’s their dad, was a pretty high-powered attorney, if I remember correctly. They had the protection of being juveniles, too. Wasn’t there some innuendo when they transferred to Father Ryan?”

  “Well, sure, but nothing came of it. The staff kept a pretty tight rein on anyone who joked around about the incident, and it just faded away. I think it was easier for them to be in a new environment, no one really paid too much attention. Of course I know now that they must have been going through hell.”

  “So Whitney was trying to get to Quinn when she had the accident? And you haven’t found anything?”

  “No, I haven’t. There was nothing in her car other than her cell phone and purse. No files, no notes, nothing.”

  “Did anyone check the memo function of her phone? I do that sometimes if I’m out driving and don’t want to stop to record my thoughts.”

  Taylor started laughing. “You’re brilliant, you know that? I better go check and see if there’s anything on it, I bet you a million no one thought to check. Let me get to work on that, and I’ll call you back.”

  “You should probably go to bed, sweetie, it’s nearly midnight. I’m sure the phone can wait until tomorrow. You need to keep your strength up. Go to bed.”

  He was amazed when Taylor didn’t argue with him, just told him that sounded like a good idea and she’d talk to him in the morning.

  They said their I love yous, hung up and Baldwin went back to his files. He spread the pictures of each girl out on the bed and stood over them, staring into their accusing eyes. He went over the facts in his head. Their obvious connection was the link to the medical field. Maybe their killer had been molested by a pretty brunette nurse when he was little. He stopped himself from rolling his eyes. It could be as simple as that.

  He decided to reorganize the files. It would be easier to spot similarities and differences if they all resided in one file with subfiles in it. Where they liked to eat, where they liked to work out, where they were employed, all the information was culled and put into new piles. Baldwin went back to the work pile. What if he looked at employer instead of industry?

  Okay, he thought. Susan Palmer had just gotten a job at the Huntsville Community Hospital. Jeanette Lernier was an intern with a marketing company. Jessica Porter worked as a receptionist at the Mississippi Community Hospital in Jackson. Shauna Davidson was working…damn, it didn’t say. Only that she was premed at MTSU. Marni Fischer was a resident, working at Noble Community Hospital. Christy was a receptionist at Roanoke Community Hospital.

  Baldwin flipped open his phone and called Grimes. The voice mail came on and he left a message. “Grimes, it’s Baldwin. Did you get a work history for Shauna Davidson? It’s not in the file. Call me as soon as you get this, okay?”

  He hung up and paced around the room. Jeanette Lernier didn’t fit the profile, she was in marketing. All the other girls worked at a local hospital. Shauna was premed. Community hospital. Community hospital. Hmm.

  Time to make a leap. He opened his phone again, dialing the 800 information number. When the operator came on he asked for the number for a community hospital in Jackson, Mississippi. There was a pause, and the woman came back to him. She had a listing for a Jackson Community Hospital. He’d been operating under the assumption the community hospital was just a designator, not the name of the place. Well, damn. He thanked her and hung up, fumbling open his laptop and plugging “Jackson Community Hospital” into the Google search engine. Sure enough, it popped up.

  He read through the site and saw a link at the bottom. It was called “About Health Partners”, and as he opened it his cell rang. Grimes had finally gotten back to him.

  “Shauna Davidson had been taking some summer courses, mostly in microbiology and immunology. She had to spend a few weeks doing practical applications. That’s it.”

  “But Grimes, where did she do the practical work?”

  “At the local hospital. Nashville Community Hospital. Why, Baldwin, you got something?”

  “I’ll let you know.” He hung up, gave his attention back to the Web site and clicked on the Health Partners link.

  He entered a sophisticated and accessible Web portal. Someone had spent a lot of time and effort to make it pop. It quickly became apparent that Health Partners was the parent company of the community hospital organizations. He went through all of the information, gleaning names and sites. The company had hospitals in several states, all up and down the eastern seaboard and throughout the Southeast. That was a bust. If the killer was focusing on hospitals this company owned, they would have to put out alerts from Florida to Delaware.

  Baldwin closed the laptop, deflated. That had to be the link, and yet it only served to widen the field, not narrow it.

  He dialed Grimes’s number again, and again got voice mail. Damn, was the man sleeping already? He’d just talked to him and told him he’d call him back. Baldwin looked at the clock. It was 2:00 a.m. He’d been trolling through the Web for a couple of hours. Well, yes, Grimes probably was sleeping. This could wait until morning. The best he could do was have a background check done on all employees of the community hospitals in the cities where the girls were tak
en and hope that some aberration jumped out at him. There had to be something else.

  Baldwin decided he’d better get some sleep. Maybe something would come to him in his dreams.

  Thirty-One

  Noelle Pazia stopped pedaling, rested her foot on the gravel and coughed for what felt like an eternity. She’d been coughing like this for a week, and the student health center, realizing she needed more than they could provide, had finally sent her in for chest X-rays. She suffered from asthma, and used an inhaler, but it wasn’t touching this nasty cough. So she’d pedaled her mountain bike down to the Asheville Community Hospital, sat for two hours, gotten her X-ray and cycled back toward campus. Not that cycling was great for her cold or bronchitis or pneumonia or whatever sickness she had that made her feel so horrible. She could hear her father now, in his heavy Italian accent, “Noelle, you knowa you shouldn’t be riding that crazy bike up and down those hills when you sick. You’re smarter than that, cara.” Yes, she was, but she didn’t have a car, nor did she feel like begging a ride off of one of her friends.

  As she coughed and tried to catch her breath, she wished that she was back home in D.C., sitting at a table in the back of her parents’ restaurant, watching her father, Giovanni, put the finishing touches on a fragrant pot of pasta e faglioli, a traditional pasta-and-bean soup that Noelle always craved when she wasn’t feeling well. When she was growing up, her father would take one look at her pale face and start for the kitchen. No doctors, no drugs, just a big pot of zuppa to make her feel better. The remedy almost always worked. The one time she remembered it didn’t was when she contracted the chicken pox from a Romanian boy who lived down the street and came to play in her backyard. The soup didn’t help then.