ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS BOOK 1 (25 page)

She held the cell phone up to her own portable phone and replayed the memo. Whitney’s voice rang out like a shot. Taylor couldn’t help but get goose bumps, she didn’t usually commune with the dead. That was Sam’s job. She lifted the receiver back to her ear and heard Quinn crying softly.

“Oh damn, Quinn, I’m sorry, I should have warned you it was going to be her voice.”

“No, that’s okay,” Quinn sniffled through the phone.

“I just wasn’t prepared to hear her voice again, like that. Was there nothing else?”

Taylor shook her head though no one was there to see it. “No, Quinn, there wasn’t anything else. Do you know what notes she’s talking about?”

“Who knows with Whitney? I was getting us both some note cards, maybe that’s what she meant. She must have changed her mind about the style, or something. I had so hoped there would be something more.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, but I’ll keep working on it. I’m sorry.”

“No, Taylor, you’re doing your best. I appreciate your help. They’re going to release Whitney’s body today. I think we’ll be having the memorial next week, as soon as I can get in touch with my husband and little brother and make arrangements for the service. They’re both out of town. I would appreciate it if you would come.”

“Of course. Just leave me a message as to time and place, and I’ll be there.”

They hung up and Taylor felt terrible. Here the woman’s sister was dead, her husband was perpetually out of town on business and she couldn’t even contact her younger brother to help make the funeral arrangements. For a privileged life, it seemed very lonely. Taylor decided the best thing she could do was get into the office. She brushed her still-wet hair into a ponytail, grabbed a Diet Coke and her keys. The phone rang just as she was getting ready to walk out the door. She set her things down and answered it. Baldwin’s voice boomed through the line as if he were in the next room, and she felt an overwhelming loneliness. Silly, she chided herself, he would be home soon.

“Hi, honey. Everything okay up there in North Carolina?”

“Well, no one’s gone missing this morning, so I guess we’re making improvements. I can’t predict this one, Taylor, and it’s driving me crazy.”

“Then sit down and write me a love poem,” she teased. “That should get your mind off things and back to where it belongs.”

The comment was greeted with silence. Taylor wasn’t hurt exactly, but she felt stung, usually Baldwin would coo right back at her. But before she could say anything, he spoke.

“What made you say that?”

“Well, I’m sorry, hon, I was just joking around. They’ve been on my mind since I saw them at Whitney Connolly’s house. She had a boyfriend or admirer that was sending her love poems in her e-mails, and I read a couple while I was going through her stuff. It’s no big deal.”

But Taylor could feel the intensity coming off Baldwin through the phone. “Taylor, do you remember what the poems were? Anything in particular about them?”

“No, I didn’t pay that close attention. Why, Baldwin, what’s going on?”

“We haven’t released this to the press, okay, so I need you to keep it very quiet. The killer is leaving the victims poems. Love poems, classics by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Yeats. You have to get me the poems off Whitney Connolly’s computer.”

“At the crime scenes? I don’t recall anything like that at Shauna Davidson’s apartment.”

“One of Grimes’s men found it in her desk drawer. They are completely innocuous, unless you know what to look for, the notes are easily missed.”

“Jesus, Baldwin, if you’d told me I could have given you all of this yesterday. It didn’t even register, I only glanced at a couple of them. Crap.”

Taylor’s head felt like it was going to spin off into space. She loved it, that rush of adrenaline that came when you got the big break. Things were making a little sense now. The notes.

“Baldwin, Whitney was trying desperately to reach her sister yesterday, remember? Her memo on her cell phone that you suggested I check? There was a message there that she needed to talk to Quinn about the notes. We thought it was something benign, like note cards. Maybe we were wrong. What do you think?”

“I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. But I want you to get a hold of those poems and read them to me, let me see if they’re a match to what we’re getting at the scenes. The killer may be a fan of Whitney Connolly’s, who knows. Can you get to that computer?”

“Yeah, let me call Quinn Buckley and get permission to go into Whitney’s house again. I’ll call you as soon as I have them in front of me.”

Baldwin flipped on the news, trying to gauge public opinion on their handling of the case. The murders were the lead story, the sensational nature of the slayings, the fact that all the victims had a medical tie-in, the speed at which the killer was progressing. Everyone was baffled, desperate for answers. Gun sales were on the rise, and locksmiths were doing a brisk business all along the southeast corridor. Great, nothing worked better for an investigation than instilling fear in the public. And where were they getting all that information? Only a select few knew about the medical tie-in, the leak was high up on the food chain. He would have to deal with that sooner rather than later. Baldwin sat incredulous on the bed for a few moments. Then a thought hit him. He opened up his computer and went to the Health Partners Web portal. He had glossed over a lot of the information last night, but something was tickling his conscience. He navigated the site until he found a section that was entitled Contact Us. He clicked it open, and there it was. The home office of Health Partners was in Nashville. He started scrolling through but couldn’t find any more information. The company must have a listing of officers and executives, he just wasn’t finding it online. No matter, that was something a quick phone call could provide. He dialed the number that Health Partners had listed in their contact information. A pleasant southern voice answered, but Baldwin quickly realized it was voice mail. Damn, he was hoping to get a secretary. The voice gave him the option of hitting zero to speak to a live person, and he did just that. Muzak drifted out from his earpiece and he rolled his eyes. There was just something so wrong about hearing synthesized Aerosmith. “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” just didn’t work in the dulcet tones of elevator music.

After a few minutes, the music stopped and a real voice came on the line.

“Health Partners. Can I help you?”

He cleared his throat and gave a brisk no-nonsense answer. “Yes, you can. This is Special Agent John Baldwin with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I need to get an organizational chart of your company.”

“Sir, is there a problem?”

Great, he managed to get someone that wasn’t impressed by the credentials and cop voice. “No, ma’am, not a problem, but I would like to find out more about your employees. Could you give me some information?”

“Yes, I can, but why does the FBI want to know about us? Are we under investigation for something? I think I’d better let you talk to Louis Sherwood. He’s the CEO, so you should be able to get everything you need from him. Please hold.” 

The Muzak started up again, this time with The Scorpions’ “Rock You Like A Hurricane.” Baldwin gave out a little laugh. Whoever decided hard rock made melodious calming music was crazy.

It seemed as though he had been on hold for an hour, but it was probably more like five minutes when a voice came back on the line. “I’m Louis Sherwood. Is there something I can help you with, Agent Baldwin?”

“Yes, sir. I’d like to get some information about your traveling executives. I’m in the middle of an investigation and your company’s name has come up in relation to the case. Would you be willing to give me some information?”

Sherwood didn’t hesitate. “This is about the Southern Strangler, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, that’s the case I’m working on. You are familiar with it?” Silly question, he knew, anyone who owned a TV, lived next door to someone who owned a TV, drove a car with a radio, walked, slept or ate knew about the cases. The virtues of modern media.

“I am familiar with it, and I’m glad you’ve contacted me. I understand that three of the victims worked for our company in one capacity or another. I think that merits a sit-down discussion, don’t you?”

Baldwin was pleased, anything that would shed light on any aspect of the case was important. “Absolutely, sir. When would you be available?”

“I’m free anytime for you. Are you here in town?”

“No, sir, I’m in North Carolina, but I was planning on coming back to Nashville today, if nothing keeps me here.” Yeah, like another girl getting snatched. 

“Back to Nashville? Do you have some interests here in town already?”

“Oh, sorry, I actually live in Nashville. I work out of the field office, handle national cases as needs be. I can be back in Nashville by late afternoon. Will you be available then?”

“I will be waiting for you. Do you need directions?”

Baldwin took down the information and thanked Sherwood. It felt good to do a little old-fashioned detective work rather than stand over dead girls. Now he needed to get the information about the poems from Taylor, and it was time to head back home. He figured he might as well rent a car and drive back instead of flying. Grimes was going to be here in Asheville for the time being anyway, finishing up with Christina Dale’s autopsy and the other aspects of the investigation. Baldwin needed some time to think, and the four-hour drive to Nashville was the perfect opportunity. He called Grimes and told him what he was planning on doing, and told him about the meeting with Louis Sherwood. Grimes thought that sounded great and asked for Baldwin to keep him filled in. Baldwin didn’t mention the poems on Whitney Connolly’s e-mail. He figured it would be better to have some kind of confirmation on them before he threw that little wrinkle into the mix. They hung up and Baldwin called down to the front desk of the hotel and asked for them to secure a rental car for him. They told him it would be quicker for him to get it himself, the rental-car agency was on the same block, just on the opposite side of the building. He agreed and checked out of the room. Within ten minutes he had a car and was on his way home.

Thirty-Three

Taylor was sitting in front of Whitney’s laptop computer, looking through the e-mail that had been piling up in the two days since Whitney’s accident. She was distracted, worrying. Baldwin’s case was completely out of control, but hopefully, these notes would be the key. She had to search through at least two hundred e-mails, some boring, some interesting, most completely irrelevant. She continued to scan and soon found the original six messages with the love poems. She sent the messages to the printer so Baldwin would have a hard copy.

She reached to close the laptop and saw that there was another e-mail from the same address that had been sending the poems. She’d missed one in her distracted state. This one was marked “Unread,” which meant it had come in after Taylor and Quinn had left Whitney’s house. She opened the e-mail and saw another poem. She sent it to the printer. Knowing now that these were possibly copies of notes that had been left at the scene of the murders was very disconcerting. And Baldwin had not given her enough information about them for her to deduce anything. She decided it would be best to send the e-mails to Baldwin’s e-mail address and let him look at them firsthand.

She started forwarding the messages and decided to send them to her home computer, as well. Ah hell, why not just take the whole computer with her? She could get out of there now, being in Whitney’s house made her uncomfortable. It made more sense to do that anyway. God forbid, if Whitney continued to get these messages, they wouldn’t have to come over to her house every time they wanted to check something out.

She looked for and found the case for the slim laptop, and unplugged the components and packed them into the carrying case. She rummaged through the desk and found a manila file folder. She slipped the printed copies into the folder, pausing briefly to read the latest installment, the one that had been sent after Whitney had died.

Mark but this Flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Taylor recognized that one. John Donne, a poem known as “The Flea.” Easy enough, it had been a hit in high school. The whole sucking business had every guy in her English class beet red when their teacher, a comely young woman, had read the poem aloud. Well, Baldwin said the poems are some of the classics. Now they just needed to figure out what they meant to Whitney and the man who was sending them to her. Taylor pulled her cell phone out of its holster and dialed Baldwin’s number. She got his voice mail and left a message for him to call her as soon as he got the call. That was the best she could do for now. She carried the laptop out to her truck, then went back in to make sure she hadn’t left anything. Satisfied that she wouldn’t need to make another return trip, she left, locking the door behind her and placing the key under the mat, just as it had been that first day when she and Quinn had come over.

“I need to let Quinn know I’m taking the laptop,” she thought out loud. A neighbor walking her fluffy white lapdog gave her a funny look. Taylor just smiled and waved, then climbed into the truck, started it up and put it into gear. She’d call Quinn later, after she and Baldwin had gotten a chance to go over what was on the e-mails.

Baldwin was wending his way through East Tennessee, enjoying the view and drive as much as he could, considering the situation he found himself in. Six girls dead and he didn’t have a suspect. Hopefully all that would change once he got to Nashville and talked to the CEO of Health Partners. Maybe when he heard from Taylor with the poems from Whitney Connolly’s computer. His sixth sense was telling him that the two were related, he just needed to sit down and find out what that relationship was. He’d left Asheville early, and had made good time. He was passing through Crossville on Interstate 40 when his cell phone rang. He was only an hour out of Nashville but he’d lost service a few times from the mountains to here, so he pulled over to the side of the road, happy to have a cell. When he looked at the display, he saw that it was Taylor calling.