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.”
“Grimes, I want to hear everything, even if you duplicate information you think you’ve given me before, okay?”
Grimes was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were turning white. “Yeah, I know. Sorry. Where was I?”
“At her hair.”
“Right. So her friend Amanda tells me that Jessica has this long curly brown hair that everybody would kill to have, but she hates it, so she straightens it. She also told me that they’ve done a little experimenting, with alcohol and such. But Jessica never really liked it, so she’s not a big party girl. She smokes on the sly, her parents do
n’t know about that. She’s just this smiley, sweet, soft-spoken girl with a head full of smarts. Seemed pretty grounded to me. Her buddy told me that she thought Jessica was a little naive, especially when it came to the boys. She’s definitely a virgin. Or was, until this asshole got a hold of her.”
“Okay, that’s good. Tell me about how she disappeared.”
“She was walking home from work, wearing green scrubs like all the staff. It’s a pretty small hospital, they cater more to the indigents and poorer folk who don’t have stellar health care. So anyway, her usual routine was to walk home, change clothes and go to the gym. Amanda indicated Jessica was pretty insecure about her body, that she spent a lot of time working out. Of course, Amanda thought Jessica was perfect, but you know how young girls are. Never believe in themselves the way their friends do. At least that’s what I get from my daughter. You don’t have any kids, do you?”
“No, I don’t. Please, go on.”
“Okay, okay, don’t get so touchy. She left the hospital at five-fifteen and never made it home. Parents reported her missing around nine that night, and they put out the alert and started the search. Didn’t make a difference. She had to have been long gone by then.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because when you found her in Nashville, she’d been dead for a while. Three days from snatch to find. The M.E. said she’d been dead at least twenty-four hours.”
“Any idea where he held her? I’m assuming he didn’t stay in the apartment with her the whole time?”
“Nope. Roommate came home, found the blood but no Jessica. We checked as many motels as we could along the route from Jackson to Nashville, showed her picture around. Hell, man, there’s tons of motels, hotels, bed-and-breakfasts along the route. Too many to cover in this short a time frame. Plus, he may be local. Have his own place to keep them.”
Baldwin thought for a moment. “I’d be inclined to disagree with that theory. This guy has a plan. I can’t imagine that he’s picking a random motel to do his business. He certainly has a familiarity with each area, but he can’t be local to them all.” He grew silent, wondering. The killer had already covered five states. He’d have to have the geographical forensics team do a workup, see if there was an equidistant point that the killer might be working from. He made a note in his book.
“Let me make a call, I want to hear all the information the Nashville police have gathered about Shauna Davidson.”
He dialed Taylor’s cell phone, happy when she answered on the first ring. “It’s Agent Baldwin,” he said, trying to sound officious.
“Hi, Special Agent.” Her tone was teasing, playful, and he realized she must be alone. He wished he were there with her.
“I’m going to put you on speakerphone. I’m in a car with Special Agent Jerry Grimes, he’s been working the Alabama and Louisiana cases. He’ll need to hear this information, too. You’ve got the background on Shauna Davidson?”
Taylor’s voice rang true on the speaker, crisp and professional.
“We do have her background. Here you go. Twenty-one, five-six, hundred forty pounds, brown on brown. Attended Middle Tennessee State University, studying premed. Parents are Carol and Roger Davidson, both of them are accountants. Pretty well off, which explains the apartment being so nice. She was an only child, a bit spoiled according to her friends. She ran with a group of girls—they call themselves the Posse. Names are Megan, Kimber and Tiffany. They do everything together. They were all out together the night Shauna disappeared.
“They were barhopping, got a little drunk and went on the make. They went into a bar called Jungle Jim’s for their last stop. Megan and Kimber were talking to a couple of guys and trying to get them to buy some drinks. Tiffany had separated from the group when they got there. Her boyfriend showed up and was all kinds of put out, saw her dancing with another guy. She was drunk, he was pissed. She sat with him and got engrossed in their conversation. Shauna was with Kimber and Megan while they were talking to the boys. Apparently she didn’t think things were going anywhere, and when one of the boys made a pass at her, she blew him off. According to Megan, Shauna made the loser sign at him, you know, put her hand up to her forehead in an L, which made Kimber and Megan laugh. Kimber pointed out that Shauna wasn’t an angel, but she was pretty picky about who she’d fool around with. And that’s the last they remember seeing her.
“They’re all feeling horribly guilty about it. They were really drunk, and no one was paying a lot of attention. Megan and Kimber saw Tiffany leave with her boyfriend, and when they were ready to go, they didn’t see Shauna and assumed she’d gotten a ride with Tiffany.”
“Did anyone see her leave the bar?”
“Well, a bouncer thinks he remembers seeing her leave alone. Says he saw her walking north on Front Street, which would be the way she would go if she was walking home. But that’s it. Until she showed up in Georgia, that is. Same guy?”
“Same guy. We found a hand that we think belongs to Jessica Porter at the scene. It’s being processed. But we have a problem.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Another girl’s gone missing. A doctor from Noble, Georgia. We’re headed that way to get some more information. Keep close to the phone, okay? We should have some more information for you soon.”
“Okay, thanks for letting me know. Talk to you later.”
Baldwin clicked the phone off. “Let’s talk some more about the crime scenes. What kind of evidence did you find at the scenes where the bodies were recovered?”
“Nada. Nothing. Zip. They were lying on their backs with their arms kinda stretched out, legs crossed at the ankle. But there’s nothing to indicate they hadn’t been just dumped there. We don’t even have tire prints. Just some loose trash that the techs collected from the scenes. Cans, bottles, papers, that kind of thing. Did you get any of that from your Nashville site?”
Baldwin took a deep breath. “No, nothing evidentiary at all. Just Jessica’s body and what’s presumably Jeanette Lernier’s hand. We’ll have to wait for DNA to match it absolutely…”
“Just like here in Georgia. Man, this is totally fucked up.”
“He’s not giving us much to go on, is he? And now we have Marni Fischer missing. She’s been gone how long?”
“Since yesterday after her shift ended, around five.”
“If he’s holding them for three days, that gives us until tomorrow night, right?”
“Yeah. And this guy uses the interstates. So he could be anywhere by now.”
Baldwin looked at the file in his lap. Marni Marie Fischer, age twenty-eight. A beautiful face stared at him with laughing eyes. He perused her features, noting the differences between this new missing girl and the ones before. She was older, he saw that immediately. The first three girls had been in their late teens. And Marni had dark blond hair. All of the previous victims were brunette. He found himself saying a quick prayer that maybe Marni Fischer was simply missing, not the latest victim of the Southern Strangler.
Grimes’s phone rang, and he picked it up, listening intently to the person on the other line. He hung up and shook his head as if trying to clear the cobwebs, then dragged his eyes back to Baldwin. “Okay then, let me fill you in on what they’ve got. A whole bunch of nothing, to be succinct. Sheriff wants us to meet him over at the hospital now. They want to tow Marni’s car to the impound lot, but they kindly agreed to wait for us. I know you like to look at your scenes in situ.”
Baldwin nodded at him. “Great, that will be a big help.”
“He’s also bringing photos of the scene so you can see exactly how they found it.”
“Then let’s hope there’s something that will give us an idea of where he’s taken her.” Baldwin slid lower in the seat, chewing his bottom lip. He had a bad feeling that they weren’t going to find anything that would let them save Marn
i Fischer.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Taylor and Fitz pulled up to Baptist Hospital’s emergency entrance and parked. Making their way through the emergency-room throng was an adventure. Taylor counted six patients that had blood streaming from various places along their bodies. The fluorescent lights made the blood look orange. She swallowed back a moment of distaste. The last time she had come through these doors was on a stretcher, her own blood threatening to spill onto the linoleum floor.
Her last major case popped into her mind—it was always there, just below the surface.
She and Baldwin had met on that case four months prior. He’d been in town on a sabbatical, Metro had needed the help of a profiler. A mutually beneficial relationship ensued, one that pushed Taylor and Baldwin into long hours and tense situations. Being thrown together, two strong personalities in conflict, there had been an inevitable attraction. They had been on the trail of an armed suspect. In the end, cornered, the desperate suspect had gotten into a face-off with Taylor, and lost.
But it wasn’t without a price.
Even all these months later she could see the knife swinging at her, feel it bite into her flesh. She’d killed the man, but not before he left her a permanent souvenir, a wicked slash across her jugular.
Her hand went to her throat. She wouldn’t have it any other way—she and Baldwin made a good team. When she nearly died, he’d been right at her side, and hadn’t left. Still, being back in this emergency room gave her the chills. She tossed the thoughts away.
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