All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [100]
Baldwin sat in silence for a moment. Accident. Blood. Gun. Head. None of the words added up, and he shook his head, trying to sort them out.
“Wait a minute. Are you saying Grimes shot himself, or was shot by someone else?” Baldwin was up off the couch. This was bad. Very, very bad.
“No, sir, he shot himself. We’re in the bar of the hotel that Mr. Grimes was staying in. It’s absolute pandemonium here. Apparently he’d been in the bar drinking for a couple of hours and just lost it. Started yelling and throwing his arms around, the gun went off right next to his right temple. I’m willing to bet that our M.E. will find a way to call it an accident, but I’ll tell you for true, he shot himself. Now, are you coming up here to claim the body, or what?”
“Whoa, man, slow down. I need something from you first, then I’ll decide what to do. Did Grimes have anything with him? Files, his briefcase? Anything?”
He could hear the man asking the question to the room. He came back on the line.
“Yeah, there’s a file that was sitting on the bar next to him, a manila folder with what looks like crime scene photos. And there was a picture on the bar, a real pretty little thing. Oh…” He got silent for a few moments. “The picture of the girl on the bar is definitely the same girl from the crime scene photos. There’s also a plastic bag in the file, looks like it’s got a note and a pushpin in it.”
“Read me the note, please.”
Baldwin listened as the man recited the first few lines of “The Flea.” Dammit, Grimes.
“Tell me, does the picture have an identification with it? Is there a name or anything?”
“Yeah, there’s a picture here, looks like an official school photo, you know, with the border along the bottom? Ah…damn, man, she’s a student here in town. Goes to UNC–Asheville. There’s a hand-written name on the back of the photo. Noelle Pazia, 2004. Damn, guess I have a dead body on my hands. Where do you think he left her?”
Baldwin realized the officer thought Grimes had committed the murder, then killed himself. “Whoa, no, Grimes didn’t kill her. I believe that’s the identity of a body found in Louisville, Kentucky. You’re looking at the crime scene photos that were sent to Grimes from the Louisville police. We’re operating under the assumption that the murder was perpetrated by the Southern Strangler. Which means I need to get the Louisville team up to speed on this. I need you to fax that information you’ve got in front of you to me immediately. Send it to this number—615-555-9897. And where are they taking Grimes?”
“He was declared here at the scene. Been transported to our M.E. Is there a family that we need to notify?”
“I’m going to call my boss. His name is Garrett Woods. He’ll call you and get everything worked out. Damn. Grimes was a good man. You take care of him, okay?”
“Will do, sir.”
They hung up and Baldwin sank into the sofa. Shit. What the hell had happened? He knew Grimes was tense and not holding up great. This was his fault, if he had stayed there maybe he would have been able to stop his suicide. He heard the phone ring and the fax tones kick in. He went into the office and watched as the photo of Noelle Pazia scrolled out of the fax machine. He looked in her eyes and for a moment thought he understood what Grimes had done. He’d been there himself once, too. But this girl, she was so full of innocence and hope and it spilled out of her eyes like a waterfall of goodness. And he was just looking at a fax, he couldn’t imagine what the real thing looked like.
Not strangled, her hands weren’t cut off. If it were the Strangler, he’d taken some kind of pity on this girl and hadn’t ravaged her like the others. Baldwin didn’t totally understand, but he could see that she was just so innocent that she might have just turned the killer off. Maybe that was it. He’d already taken her, but when he saw her he couldn’t go through with it. Hell, he’d never know. These killers did what they wanted no matter what. Profiling them was