All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [101]
Okay, man, pull yourself together. He needed to focus, there was a lot that needed to get done. He started making a list as he dialed the number for the field office in Louisville. A woman answered the phone and he asked to speak to the SAIC.
“That’s me, Special Agent in Charge Eleanor Walker. How can I help you?”
Baldwin identified himself. “I’ve got an ID for you on your brunette. Her name’s Noelle Pazia and she’s a student at UNC–Asheville. He took her and no one missed her right away. The killing is being attributed to the Southern Strangler, though the information I’m getting doesn’t match up with his MO. Am I correct in that information?”
“That’s the information we have. The fact that the girl is from Asheville would tell me that it’s the Strangler, but the absence of violence disturbed me, too. We’ve got an initial cause of death from the medical examiner up here—looks like she suffocated. High levels of histamine in her system, petechial hemorrhaging—he’s calling it SAA, sudden asphyxic asthma. She had a fatal, massive asthma attack. We’ll get as much evidence as we can gather, get it to Quantico ASAP.”
An asthma attack. Now, that was interesting. Maybe she died before he could kill her. That would explain why her body wasn’t interfered with.
“I appreciate that, Agent Walker. Right now, all I know is what you know. I’m working a lead here in Nashville and I’ve just been informed that we’ve lost an agent. I’m kind of up to my ears right now.”
“Please tell me it wasn’t Jerry Grimes?”
“You know him?”
“I do. There’s been some rumors flying this afternoon. I talked with him earlier, sent him the crime scene photos of our Jane Doe, now ID’d as Noelle Pazia. He sounded drunk. Did he have an accident?”
Baldwin wasn’t about to divulge the nature of Grimes’s “accident.” “You could say that. Things are a bit uncertain right now.”
“Damn shame. Hate to lose one of the good guys.”
Baldwin deflated. Grimes’s death was going to haunt him.
“You’re right. He was one of the good guys.”
“In the meantime, I wish there was more information that you could give me, Agent Baldwin. We’ve got our own missing girl, and this one has been missed. Ivy Tanner Clark. Her father is Tanner Clark, the horse magnate. And he’s making a fuss so loud I’m surprised you haven’t heard it down there in Nashville.”
Baldwin sat down hard. Shit. “Okay, there’s something you need to do. We’ve just realized that the killer is leaving poems when he kidnaps a girl. You need to look in Ivy Clark’s car, go through her personal effects. See if he’s left a note.”
“I haven’t seen that information in the files.” She sounded pissed, and Baldwin decided to head her off at the pass.
“We haven’t been holding back, we’ve only known about the poems for a couple of days. Do me a favor and get on it, see if there is one, okay? Get back to me as soon as you know.” He rattled off his cell phone number and clicked off his phone.
He ran his hands through his hair and made the call he’d been dreading. He dialed his boss’s number, heart in his throat. Garrett was not going to be happy with this call.
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