ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS BOOK 1 (8 page)

Her body was stretched out on a stainless-steel slab, her head cradled in a hard plastic U. She had bruises on her face, on her body. A large chunk of hair was missing from the right side of her head. Her nose was misshapen, a lip split. All the signs pointed to a struggle. Shauna had been badly beaten, a departure from the previous murders. He had a brief second of wonder—a different MO could mean a different killer. Normally, Baldwin would look to the hands to see what kind of shape they were in. In this case, all he saw were bloodied stumps. Definitely the same suspect. The coroner was a jovial man, at least ten years past retirement age. His face was red from exertion, his hair white and straggly, his pants two sizes too small for his waist. He didn’t look like he missed too many meals. He stripped off a glove and stuck out his hand. Baldwin took it, surprised at the strength of his handshake.

“I’m Doc Allen. Sorry you had to come all this way. We’re ready to do the examination if you are. Already started, actually, just waiting on you to cut. All set?

Good. Arie, you’ll transcribe?”

The spotty boy nodded in response. It was time to do homage to the dead.

Autopsies were Baldwin’s least favorite activity. But he stuck it out, listening with half an ear to Doc Allen prattle on. Only every third or fourth sentence had something to do with the body he was working on.

“So, I hear you’re from up Tennessee way. Like it up there? I had a visit once, saw the Grand Ole Opry, oh, lookie there, hyoid’s fractured. Strong hands to do that. Anyway, went to the Opry, saw that Marty Stuart guy. Didn’t have any idea how little bitty he was, doesn’t surprise me though. Lots of these folks are shorter in person. Definite saw marks on the ulna and radius, I’m thinking a straight-edged blade, maybe even a scalpel. Disarticulated right above the radiocarpal joint. So we went to this place called the Loveless Café…”

Baldwin tuned him out. He needed the background information on Shauna. Try to piece together a reason that she’d become the Strangler’s fourth victim. Doc Allen was finishing up now. Shauna’s brain had been removed, ready to be fixed in formalin. The cause of death was apparent. The beating she’d taken was pretty bad, but she had been strangled so severely that her hyoid bone had snapped in two. That took a great deal of pressure to do. Baldwin imagined the killer, angry, excited, pressing harder and harder while Shauna struggled beneath him. Watching the life slowly drain from her eyes, enjoying the show. Baldwin was getting pissed off at this guy. Good.

Doc Allen seemed to want to keep talking, but Baldwin pointed to the other table, where a small item was covered by what he could swear was a simple storebought handkerchief. Lord save me from small-time operations, he thought. The doctor bustled to the table and whipped the fabric back with a flourish, like a waiter removing the cover from a dinner dish. 

“Here’s your hand. Well, it’s not yours, of course. Word on the street is you’ve got a wackjob moving body parts. I assume it belongs to your vic up in Nashville? Or was it Mississippi? I can’t keep up with all your killers these days, much less the poor victims. Did I tell you about the time—”

“Dr. Allen, I hate to interrupt, but I’d appreciate it if you could get this hand printed and DNA samples drawn. We won’t know if this hand belongs to the previous victim or not until we have the comparisons run. I don’t mean to rush you, but I need to get out to the scene where Shauna’s body was found, and I’d like to do it before it gets dark. Thanks so much.”

He turned away, ignoring the good doctor’s grumbling, and ran a hand through his hair. He’d give anything to be out of here as quickly as possible. There was nothing more to be learned.

Grimes and Baldwin made their way back to the site where Shauna’s body had been found. The sun was setting, the media had moved off and they had the field to themselves. Baldwin stalked around, looking for anything that might give him a sense of the man who’d been here before, carelessly dropping Shauna’s lifeless body in this anonymous grave. There was nothing. That wasn’t the right way to think of it. This killer wasn’t careless, he was exceptionally deliberate. So far, every move was so precise it felt almost scripted to Baldwin, choreographed. But it was done to seem careless, like the bodies were just thrown away like so much trash.

He made his way back under the crime scene tape. 

Two handless dead girls in quick succession was enough to upset his normal equilibrium. It had been a while since he’d worked a gruesome case. He was getting soft. Scratch that. He’d allowed himself to get soft.

They made their way to a roadside motel, ready to pack it in for the night. Grimes had suggested dinner, but Baldwin was exhausted. He demurred, agreed to breakfast in the morning, and they went their separate ways. Baldwin just wanted a shower, some sleep and a fresh perspective on the day’s events. This killer was moving fast, and he had no idea how to get ahead of him.

He made several pages of notes, detailing some of his initial thoughts on the killer. There was forethought, though he was moving quickly, he wasn’t in spree mode just yet. Baldwin wished there was a definitive way he could decide what would happen next, and contented himself with a second, thorough read of all the files. A picture was forming in his head—a view into the killings, into the psyche of the man responsible. He finally packed it in, hoping for a few solid hours of sleep. Baldwin dreamed of wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing, and woke intrigued. What an odd dream to have. He showered, shaved, placed a quick call to Taylor and made his way from the room. As he shut the door behind himself, he saw Grimes hustling toward him, beckoning with one hand. Baldwin went to him, eyebrows raised. “What’s up?”

“Missing persons report. From a neighboring town. Noble.”

Wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing, indeed. 

Grimes was talking a mile a minute. “We’re headed to where Marni Fischer was last seen. Let me give you her particulars. She doesn’t match in with the earlier girls, but there are some commonalities.

“Marni’s twenty-eight years old, five-ten, a hundred thirty pounds, with medium-length dark blond hair and brown eyes. She’s originally from Orlando. This kid has a real story, one of those success things they profile all the time on TV. Her parents died in a car accident when she was only three years old. Her aunt raised her, but the aunt died when Marni was sixteen. She entered the University of Central Florida when she was seventeen on a full scholarship. Graduated at twenty-one with dual degrees in microbiology and chemistry. Immediately started at the Medical College of Georgia, she graduated there when she was twenty-five and started her residency. She’s a third-year resident in the OB/GYN program.”

Baldwin was eyeing Grimes. The background certainly fit the profile of the other girls. Grimes saw the look. 

“Yep, she’s a doctor. Another medical link. You think this guy is a psycho doctor out for revenge?”

Baldwin was shaking his head. “I don’t know, Grimes. I’m not getting a sense of who this guy is. It’s too early to summarize his motives based solely on the victimologies. Tell me the rest of it.”

“Okay. She goes for her off-campus rotation at Noble Community Hospital in Noble. One of the doctors that she knows from the medical college suggested it would be a good place for her to get some experience with the poorer women who can’t afford regular health and prenatal care.”

He stopped for a moment. “By the way, she’s engaged to be married. Guy named Greg Talbot. Fourth-year resident in the OB/GYN program. Their plan is to move to a small town somewhere in the rural South and provide prenatal care, as well as delivering babies for poorer women who don’t have access to great health care.”

Grimes had delivered this latest tidbit with a sly smile. Baldwin knew what Grimes was thinking. The fiancé

was a perfect place to start. But he didn’t comment, he wasn’t going to leap to any conclusions, not this early. Grimes took the hint and continued with the story.

“Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, so Marni was supposed to go to her friend Sharon Baker’s house in Augusta when she got off work at the community hospital. Her rotation was finished for the month, and they were going to celebrate. She was due in Augusta by seven o’clock. It’s about a two-hour drive from Noble to Augusta. When Marni didn’t show up at Sharon’s house, she tried to call her on the cell phone, which said it was out of range. Sharon started worrying; it wasn’t like Marni to not check in if she was going to be late. She finally called Greg the fiancé, who was supposed to be in Atlanta for the weekend with some friends. He got in the car the second he got her call, drove up to Augusta, and on Sunday morning, they started looking for Marni. Traced the route she would have taken back to Noble, checking all the rest stops and gas stations along the way. No sign of anything amiss at her house. When they made it back to Noble, they went to the hospital and found her car in the parking lot. Her keys were under the car, her purse and cell phone on the front seat. They called the Noble police, who had the foresight to call us, and here we are.”

Baldwin looked out the window, watching the massive mounds of kudzu as they drifted past. His mind was churning, trying to put it all together. The pattern was clear. Take a girl, then dump her in another city. Take another from that town. In which new town would they find Marni Fischer?

Alabama to Louisiana. Louisiana to Mississippi. Mississippi to Tennessee. Tennessee to Georgia. And Georgia to… “Hey, Grimes, do you have a map here in the car?”

“Yeah, should be one under your seat. I bought a Southeast map when I drove out from Virginia.” Baldwin reached under the seat and pulled out the map. He flipped through until he found the page showing all the southeastern states. Let’s see. Huntsville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Nashville, Noble. Would he go back one state west to Alabama, in some kind of convoluted circle? Or move two states over to North Carolina? Baldwin shook his head, that wasn’t the right way to look at it. He folded the map and placed it under the seat. No, he was going to have to examine the commonalities of the victims if they hoped to get ahead of this twisted mind.

“Grimes, talk me through the girls’ profiles. Pretend I haven’t heard anything about them. Start from scratch.” Baldwin dug in his briefcase and brought out a notepad. Opening to a fresh sheet, he waited.

“Okay, anything you want. I’ll start with Susan Palmer. Quiet girl, according to her family. She’d just graduated from nursing school, gotten a job at the Huntsville Community Hospital. She was a bit mousy, not a beauty like Jessica Porter. She lived in an apartment above their garage, mother has some sort of debilitating illness and Susan liked to be close by. They had a full-time nurse, but it was a woman and she was cleared immediately. No father, he died when Susan was young. It was just her and her mother. She was found by a canal in an old section of Baton Rouge, not a great part of town. No reason for her to be there, that’s why we assumed he transported her, rather than her going to Baton Rouge, then getting killed. The M.E.’s report showed hesitation marks in the cut on her right arm. Said it looked like he was trying to get up the nerve to get the hand off. The left didn’t have anything but the saw marks.” Grimes cleared his throat, looking out the window as if he’d conjured the autopsy scene right there in the kudzu-choked hillside.

“It was weird. No one can remember her leaving after work, she didn’t have a lot of friends at the hospital. Came in, did her thing and went home. We haven’t figured out how she came across our boy’s radar. She kept her nose clean and didn’t make any waves.”

“Invisible,” Baldwin murmured.

“What’s that? Invisible? Yeah, I guess you could say that. A safe choice then. But Jeanette Lernier, now, she wasn’t invisible. Brash, daring, vivacious, all those words were used to describe her. She had a paid internship with some marketing company in Baton Rouge, trying to get some experience between college and graduate school. She had boyfriends, girlfriends, too, if you know what I mean, and was a regular on Baton Rouge’s social circuit. There was word that she’d just had an affair with some big muckety-muck at the company she worked for, was very upset that things hadn’t worked out. Came from a good family, had two brothers and a sister who are still in complete shock. It was like she was the life of the family and when she was gone, they died right along with her.

“Really sad case, if you think about it. She had everything going for her, but she ends up dead on the side of the road. Honestly, if we hadn’t found Susan Palmer’s hand at the scene, there’s a good chance we wouldn’t have connected the crimes. Even though the MO was the same, they just seemed so different. At least to me.”

“I can understand that. But it definitely is the same killer.”

“So tell me this. Why did he take a month off? Seems like he was on a roll, then quit.”

“That’s an excellent question. I’m getting a better sense of our suspect, but I’d like to know the exact why behind these killings, too. There must be some motivation… Anyway, keep going. Jessica Porter.”

“Jessica Ann Porter, eighteen years old, five-four, hundred twenty pounds. Born in Jackson, shared an apartment with a friend. She was really trying to be independent. Her parents were dead set against the idea, but she charmed them into it. Tina and Steve Porter. Dad’s a mechanic, Mom’s a teacher. Down-home American family. She’s got two brothers, Joseph, sixteen, and James, thirteen. They’re pretty broken up—they worshiped her.

“She was attending the University of Mississippi, studying for premed or nursing, she hadn’t decided which. She was working as a receptionist in the Mississippi Community Hospital so she could get a taste of being around medical personnel. I told you she was volunteering at the local homeless shelter and delivering meals, what’s it called…?”

“Meals at Home?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Meals at Home. She did that two nights a week. In the meantime, she lives with this sweet kid named Amanda Potter. They’ve been neighbors and best friends their whole lives. She was the one that told me about the hair.”