All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [125]
“Here’s something. Looks like Fitz didn’t grab all the files. Let’s see.” She opened the file and scanned. “Says here that only one of the girls was assaulted. That’s the reason it’s not in the hospital reports, it wasn’t reported the night they found them. It came a few weeks later. Hmm. Now that’s funny. It doesn’t say which girl was raped. Huh.” She handed the file to Baldwin. “That’s a little bizarre, isn’t it? The girls’ personal physician made this report, but he doesn’t identify which girl it happened to. Granted, this was twenty years ago. It’s still strange, don’t you think?”
They went back into Taylor’s office. Baldwin sat in the visitor’s chair and propped his feet up on her desk. “Didn’t you say there were rumors about the girls after they transferred in to Father Ryan?”
“Well sure, there were rumors,” Taylor answered him, rubbing her temple. “But it was all just that, rumors. They came in as freshmen my sophomore year, and I didn’t know too much about them. They were attending Harpeth Hall before, and I think I remember someone saying they’d taken a year off, then came over to Ryan. I know their mom was pregnant while all of this was going on, that I do remember. They had a little brother, what’s his name again? Oh yeah, Reese. Reese Connolly. Quinn said he’s a doctor, doing his residency at Vanderbilt.”
Baldwin raised an eyebrow at her. “The timing’s right, don’t you think? They take a year off, and suddenly they have a little brother?”
Taylor was taken aback. “You think that one of them got pregnant by Nathan Chase? And had Reese, then their parents covered it up? Man, that’s screwed up. They were only twelve. But it begs the question. Which one would it have been?”
“That’s something we may want to find out. In the meantime, I want to see if Nathan Chase has had any visitors lately. I have a feeling what happened to Quinn and Whitney twenty years ago may be linked to what’s happening today. Remember Quinn said she should have told Jake the truth from the beginning? You think she was trying to confess that she’d had a child and he rejected her?”
“Lord, Baldwin, you’re just grasping at straws now. There’s nothing in the evidence that leads that way.”
“Maybe not, but I want to get a list of Nathan Chase’s visitors anyway. We’ll do that in the morning. In the meantime, let’s go home. I’m too tired to think anymore tonight. Anything new on Whitney’s computer?”
Baldwin had dropped the laptop off in Taylor’s office earlier.
“No, nothing since we arrested Jake Buckley.”
“Maybe that’s a sign. Let’s get out of here.”
Taylor nodded, so they gathered up their things, straightened up her desk and left the Homicide office. Five minutes after they left, the light began blinking on Whitney Connolly’s laptop, informing one and all that she had new mail.
Forty-Seven
Baldwin’s phone rang at six in the morning, rousing him from the best sleep he’d had in weeks. He’d gone to bed without the report of another missing girl floating through his brain, without wondering what new horror awaited him when he opened his eyes. He slept dreamlessly, snuggled beside Taylor in the warm bed, knowing that he was close to cracking this case.
Though he’d been a bit circumspect about Jake Buckley’s culpability in the series of murders, the talk he and Taylor had gone through on their way home abated his concerns. Taylor’s theory was a strong one. Quinn Buckley had told the truth to her husband about what happened when she and her twin sister were kidnapped. That they had been raped, had borne a child in secret, that the news was too much for Buckley to take. Already a promiscuous, bullying man, he’d gone over the edge, making his regular travel a cover for murder. A bit thin, but plausible. Today was the day they’d put it all together. The DNA would confirm everything.
The phone call would derail every theory they had.
“Baldwin,” he answered, yawning.
“It’s Garrett. Why