All the Pretty Girls

by J. T. Ellison

  He answered on the first ring.

  “I know already,” he barked. “You didn’t see it coming?”

  “Well, maybe I did, but I certainly didn’t think it was going to come down to this.”

  Garrett’s voice softened. “You’re going to have to let it go. I should have requested Grimes be pulled from the case sooner than I did.”

  “Sooner. What do you mean, sooner?”

  “I talked to Grimes a couple of hours ago. Told him to drop everything and get his ass to D.C. They convened a disciplinary hearing in his honor.”

  “A disciplinary hearing?” He thought for a moment. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Nope. I did a little checking. Turns out Grimes has been doing a little off-the-record chatting with a certain news producer for one of the cable networks in New York. The producer was his son. Grimes was the leak. We talked to the kid, he denied talking to his dad at all. Refuses to release the name of his source for the information. But a quick check of Grimes’s phone records refuted his claim. They’ve been talking regularly for the entire duration of the case.”

  “My, you’ve been busy.”

  “Yeah, and for what? A dead agent? Grimes wasn’t going to be part of the FBI anymore regardless. So this one is on me, Baldwin. There’s more than just this, in case you’re wondering. His whole life was falling apart. With Grimes’s death, there are several open issues that don’t have to be addressed. That’s all you need to know about that. Just keep moving forward. Don’t look back.”

  Baldwin filled him in on the Jake Buckley scenario. Garrett concurred that they needed to have a conversation with Mr. Buckley, and fast. As they were hanging up, Garrett stopped him.

  “Keep on it, Baldwin. You’re getting close.”

  Thirty-Eight

  Taylor had just hung up the phone with Quinn Buckley when Lincoln and Marcus appeared in her office door.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  Lincoln came in and sat down heavily. Marcus lounged in the doorway. “We’ve got good news and bad news. Just got out of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation offices. The DNA sample from Lucy Johnson’s rape doesn’t match the earlier exemplars from the Rainman cases. The sample from her doesn’t match any known offender in the system, either.” Lincoln flipped open a file folder and consulted his notes.

  “We talked with the man Lucy has the restraining order against, Edward Hunt? He is a former cop, retired from Metro last year, went to work for a top-dog security firm here in town. Runs their entire operation, makes a ton more than he did on Metro’s payroll. Anyway, he and Lucy used to be an item, but he broke up with her. Seems Miss Lucy is quite the psycho, at least in his opinion.”

  Marcus chimed in. “From what Hunt says, they’d had a pretty rough time of it from the get-go. He wanted to break it off, she was desperate to keep him around. Long story short, she cornered him in a bar off Old Hickory, they had a few drinks, he went home with her and they had a farewell fling. Officially broke up, he actually started seeing someone new. According to Hunt, Lucy started stalking him, wouldn’t leave him alone. He filed a restraining order against her, she responded by filing a TRO of her own. It’s a bunch of crap, basically. Lucy came forward and said she’d been raped, Betsy answered the call. Lucy managed to make it seem like it was the Rainman. There’s been enough info in the news that she was very convincing.”

  Marcus finally came in the office and sat down, looking discouraged. “Who knows whose DNA she had in her system. Hunt gladly volunteered a DNA sample, we’ve taken it and gotten it to the TBI. It’s in the works. We’ve been chasing a phantom.”

  Lincoln tossed the file to Taylor. “I think you should bust her for filing a false report. Hunt seems like a standup guy, just wants Lucy to leave him alone. We’re ready to go talk to her, confront her with Hunt’s statement. If you want us to get a warrant sworn out against her, we will.”

  “Do it,” Taylor said, furious. “She wasted countless man-hours for her own personal vendetta. You guys have been off chasing your tails because of her story, not to mention all the time and effort Betsy’s crew put in. Jesus, and the TBI…yeah, go haul her ass in. We don’t need this kind of crap. Maybe that will take some of the media attention off the ‘mystery’ victim as well. They can make hay out of this Lucy, for all I care.”

  “Will do, LT.” Lincoln gave her a smile. “How’s the Strangler coming along?”

  She groaned. “It’s coming. I’m on my way to meet Agent Baldwin right now.”

  Marcus leaned back in his chair. “You know, Taylor, about ‘Agent Baldwin’?” He used his fingers to make quotation marks as he said the name. “You don’t have to do that, you know. No one’s going to care…”

  She shot him a look, and he didn’t finish his sentence, just grinned and got out of the chair, clearing his throat. “C’mon, Lincoln, we need to go get a warrant for Lucy Johnson.”

  Taylor stopped him. “Hey, you guys put together a statement for the press once she’s under arrest so they know we’re moving forward. They’ll be staking out night court anyway, it’d serve her right to get filmed while she’s being booked.”

  They left, Lincoln whistling a ditty, Marcus with his head held high. They’d done a good job ferreting out Lucy Johnson’s bullshit, and they knew it.

  Taylor watched their backs, running a hand through her hair. Agent Baldwin. She was utterly transparent. So much for that. She stood, gathering her papers. Time to get out of here. She left the office and exited the building, stopping on the stairwell to light a cigarette. As she stowed the lighter in her pocket, she saw Fitz ambling up to her.

  “LT, glad I caught you.”

  “What’s up, Fitz? I’m on my way out.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car.” He stepped in beside her. “Just got finished talking with Julia Page. Word on the street is that Terrence Norton is taking over the drug trade for the entire east side, but it’s going to take more than a few conversations with informants to get the whole story. We’re going to need a full-blown investigation, undercovers, the whole works. It’s not something that I can get cleared up overnight, unfortunately.”

  They reached her truck and Taylor leaned against it, smoking the last of her Camel, thinking.

  “Fitz, let’s get this out of our hands. Talk to Julia, tell her we need to turn the whole thing over to the TBI. Homicide can’t be responsible for running a drug sting. Let them take the lead, if we need to task out of Metro I’ll have them talk to Price. Interagency cooperation, and all that bullshit. That sound good to you?”

  “Sounds great to me. We’ll have to deal with Terrence Norton on our own side of the fence soon enough.”

  She patted him on the arm. “I’m going home, work on some more stuff with the Strangler. Oh, by the way, Marcus and Lincoln—”

  “Yeah, I know. No connection to the real Rainman. Wish we could have tied that up in a nice tidy bow for Betsy. We still waiting on her DNA results?”

  “Yes, I haven’t gotten word back whether it’s a match or not.”

  “If I hear something I’ll give you a call. Try and get some rest, we’ll tackle it again tomorrow.” He gave her a pat on the rump, a wink, and moseyed away.

  Thirty-Nine

  Baldwin was moving like a whirling dervish through the house. He had a cell phone to one ear, a portable house phone to the other, the desktop computer was on, his laptop was open and buzzing and the laptop that belonged to Whitney Connolly sat in a place of honor in the middle of the slate coffee table.

  A new message was blinking on the screen, from the same address as the other poetic e-mails.

  He heard Taylor come through the door but barely looked up, just gave her an absent “Hi” and went back to the computer screen. She came over to see what he was reading.

  She read the words aloud.

  “Thou know’st that this cannot be said

  A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;

  Yet this enjoys before
it woo,

  And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;

  And this, alas! is more than we would do.”

  Baldwin sat down hard in the leather chair, flipping the hair back from his forehead. “Just came in. It’s been a bit of a rough afternoon.”

  “Let me get you something to eat, then you can fill me in. I’m starved, so I assume you are, as well.”

  “Yeah, I am. I already put some soup on. You had some of that vegetable beef in the freezer, it should be about ready.”

  She brushed her lips against his forehead then left the room, headed for the kitchen. He heard her rustling around and was struck by the normality of it. He belonged here. With Taylor. It was time to start thinking seriously about getting the hell away from the FBI.

  A bloodcurdling scream coincided with the crash of china. He leaped from the couch and bolted to the kitchen.

  “What, what is it?” he yelled.

  Taylor was backed into the corner between the refrigerator and the wall, her right hand on her gun, the left holding the holster in place so she could unsheathe the weapon smoothly. He looked around wildly, trying to find the intruder. Taylor was white faced, eyes wide. As he took a couple of breaths, he realized that no one was in the kitchen.

  “Someone outside?” he whispered, his own hand reaching for his weapon.

  “Huge. Spider. Sink.” Taylor hissed the words, teeth clenched.

  Baldwin’s eyebrows rose a full inch, and he burst out laughing. “What were you planning to do, shoot it?”

  “Just. Kill. It.” Taylor’s hands had dropped to her sides, her eyes shooting daggers at him for laughing.

  “What would you do if I wasn’t here?” He went to the back door, where a week’s worth of newspapers were stacked neatly in a large basket, ready for recycling. He picked up a section, folded it in half and made his way back to the kitchen.

  “I’d evacuate.”

  Biting his lip so he wouldn’t laugh again, he looked at Taylor. “Evacuate?”

  “Yeah. Go get Sam or someone. I don’t like spiders.”

  “I’ve noticed. It’s in the sink?”

  She nodded. “Dropped right down out of the damn sky, landed on the plate I was taking out of the cabinet. I threw the plate at the sink. Christ, would you quit dilly-dallying and kill the damn thing?”

  He held up his hands, the newspaper crackling in his left. “Okay, okay. In the sink, you say?”

  “You’re going to need something bigger than that flimsy piece of newspaper. I’m not kidding, it’s a freakin’ monster.”

  Baldwin sidled to the sink and looked in. “Damn!”

  “Told you!”

  Among the broken shards of a white dinner plate was the largest spider Baldwin had seen outside the Caribbean. They had banana spiders there the size of your hand, but this thing was running a close second. The body of the spider was the size of a small plum, the legs thick and hairy.

  “I think you stunned it. It’s not moving. You realize this is some entomologist’s wet dream, right here. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Just mush the stupid thing. Then clean out the sink, I don’t want to see any trace of it. Jesus, I hate spiders.”

  Deciding his love wasn’t wrong about the newspaper, he went to the back door and picked up a size eleven tennis shoe. “This oughta do it.” He smashed the shoe into the sink, crushing the beast, and the remainder of the plate. “Eugh, that’s gross. Okay, it’s definitely dead.”

  He turned back to Taylor, who was still frozen in the corner. He was overwhelmed. Seeing her scared, vulnerable was just too much for him. He spoke before he could stop to think. “Baby, I want to be around to kill all your spiders. Forever. Starting right now. Will you—”

  The phone rang, startling them both. Taylor was staring at Baldwin, but the words dried up in his throat. The moment was gone.

  Finally breaking their gaze, he smiled and went to the other room, still carrying the remains of the very dead spider on his shoe.

  Taylor only half heard Baldwin talking as she left the kitchen, working her way toward the back of the house. She pulled her 9mm out of its holster and ran it along the palm of her hand, as if she could pick up her gun and solve the ills of the world. There, that was better. She was still tough. Still ready to take on the world. Amazing that in the course of a few days she’d felt so out of control, enough that a spider rattled her to the point of no return. She imagined that must be what Baldwin felt, chasing after a phantom. What was he saying, there in the kitchen? From a man to a woman, the words Will you can only go a few ways, especially following the word forever. Interesting.

  She stepped into the office, secured her weapon in the gun safe, which she always left unlocked; there was no one to keep the guns from, other than her and Baldwin. She heard phones simultaneously hang up and stuck her head out into the living room.

  “What’s going on?”

  Baldwin collapsed in a ball on the sofa. “Are you fully recovered from your trauma?” he teased.

  “Yes. I’ll have the exterminator out here first thing. They must have forgotten a spot last time.” Baldwin was avoiding her eyes, trying not to smile. “Yeah, yeah, so I have them come spray once a month. I don’t like bugs. And we’ll have to order something in for dinner, ’cause I’m not going back in there until that mess is cleaned up. Now, what’s going on?”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “To start with, Grimes committed suicide.”

  “Are you joking?”

  “No. He’s been riding the edge on this case. Missing the poems really made him topple. Garrett was looking into the leak for me. Turns out Grimes’s oldest son is a news producer in New York. That’s how the media’s been so on top of the game all along. Grimes was giving everything to his son. I should have seen this coming. I did see it coming. I left him behind in North Carolina because he was becoming a liability to the case, and it must have caught up with him. I feel terrible about it.”

  “I bet you do. But you know you can’t blame yourself, Baldwin. This is a big case. He should have pulled himself from it.”

  “He tried. I told him it was okay, to ride it out. My fault. But there’s nothing I can do about it now. I’ll talk to his family, try to help, but…” His voice trailed off. There were so many other avenues he could have taken with Grimes. This one would stay with him for a while.

  “Anyway, before he did it he ID’d the girl they found in Louisville as Noelle Pazia, from Asheville. The preliminary autopsy showed she died of an acute asthma attack. I’m betting he took her and she died along the way, before he had a chance to kill her. If that tracks, he would be furious that he couldn’t kill her himself and would search for a suitable replacement immediately. I think he found one, we have a new girl missing. Ivy Clark from Louisville. The SAIC in Louisville just called me to let me know they’ve found a poem in Ivy Clark’s car. So it’s been a bit of an afternoon.”

  “Any word on Jake Buckley?”

  “I interviewed his boss. Complete dickhead. Claims there’s no way Buckley could have possibly been involved. He was totally uncooperative. But the secretary or receptionist or whatever she was, snuck his itinerary to me.”

  “Let me guess. Mr. Buckley has been through Huntsville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Nashville, Noble, Roanoke and Asheville during his travels.”

  He looked at her, amazed. She smiled.

  “I talked to Quinn Buckley for a moment. Told her we wanted Jake’s opinion on the case since the victims had a connection to Health Partners. There’s more. He is supposed to be in Louisville, and expected to make his way back to Nashville today or tomorrow. Quinn told me he doesn’t keep to the schedule sometimes. I don’t know, Baldwin, you need to go have a sit-down with this guy, and do it quick. I think Quinn’s probably going to kill him. She’s been trying to get in touch with him to let him know about Whitney, and she hasn’t been able to nail him down. That sounds about right, doesn’t it? He doesn’t know that Whitney’s
dead. I think this may be your guy.”

  “By any chance did Quinn give you his vehicle?”

  “Of course. Big shock, he’s driving a BMW 740iL, silver, with Vanderbilt plates. Here’s the number.” She handed a slip of paper to Baldwin. “Shall I have a Be on the Lookout put out for our friend?”

  “Do it, Taylor. And mark the BOLO armed and dangerous. He may have Ivy Clark in the car with him. You saw the new e-mail on Whitney’s laptop? It’s the rest of the stanza from ‘The Flea.’” He recited from memory:

  “Thou know’st that this cannot be said

  A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;

  Yet this enjoys before it woo,

  And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;

  And this, alas! is more than we would do.

  “I don’t know what the symbolism means to him. That’s the biggest problem, poetry, especially this type of romantic eighteenth-century work, is totally subjective. I can think ‘The Flea’ is about making love while another man may think it’s about smashing an insect. You know how that is. So I don’t even want to try to get into his psyche based on his poems of choice. But I promise you this, he wants Whitney to have these messages. I just wonder if the story was meant to be Whitney.”

  Taylor ran her hand along the back of Baldwin’s neck. “Let me call in the BOLO. You need to try and relax for a few minutes.”

  “Maybe you could help me with that?”

  “Maybe I can.”

  Forty

  Taylor was lying on a warm, sunny beach, her long legs spread in front of her on a plastic chaise lounge. She shielded her eyes against the sun, watching the waves crest and break, tranquillity permeating her bones. There was no more to worry about. She was on a bona fide vacation with Baldwin at her side. She turned her head to take in his form, and instead was greeted by a sight that made her jump. Identical-twin midgets, both in blue double-breasted blazers and snowy-white ascots, stood at her right hand, leering. One held a silver tray with an old-fashioned rotary telephone. The phone rang, and Taylor shooed them away.