All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [21]
“Baldwin, they’ve definitively identified Shauna Davidson in Georgia. Her body is in a field off a rural exit, near Adairsville off I-75. Looks the same, body dumped in a field, strangled and she’s missing her hands. What the hell is this guy up to?”
“Grimes, you’ve told them what to look for, right? They need to find it.”
“Awww, shit, I know, I know. They’re looking for the hand now. I’m on my way there, are you coming?”
The accusatory note was not lost on Baldwin, but he chose to ignore it.
“I’m on my way, man. Hang in there.”
Baldwin glanced at his watch and saw it was too early to order a drink. This was supposed to be a beautiful, quiet day, spent in bed with the woman he loved. Not a day to go traipsing through death. Yet here he was, on a plane to Atlanta to hunt for the Strangler.
Being a profiler meant long hours in strange locales, but the longer he worked for the FBI, the more he was struck by the commonality of every situation. Madman kills innocent, then does it again. An MO is established, the FBI is consulted and Baldwin would be thrown on a plane. He’d chosen this life, this world. He had the rare ability to disengage, to be unaffected by the horrifying details of the cases. But it was starting to wear thin. He didn’t know exactly what he should do—stay with the FBI or strike out on his own. He’d love to steal Taylor away from Metro, but he knew in his heart of hearts that wouldn’t happen anytime soon.
He pushed those thoughts away. He needed to stay focused, and thinking about Taylor Jackson would derail even the strongest of men.
Local law enforcement in Alabama and Louisiana had done all the right things in processing their cases. The Alabama authorities worked closely with the Baton Rouge cops. They ran all the right tests, did the right investigation and still had no clue who had strangled eighteen-year-old Susan Palmer, cut off her hands and dumped her body in a field in Baton Rouge. The crimes seemed connected, there were definite similarities—manual strangulation and missing hands. But it was Jeanette Lernier’s case that had drawn the FBI’s attention. When she was examined in the field, the medical examiner had rolled her and found a hand underneath the lifeless body. Everyone assumed it was Jeanette’s. When DNA showed the hand belonged to Susan Palmer, from Alabama, people had gotten interested. Grimes and his partner, Thomas Petty, had been called to give interagency cooperation and support to the local authorities. When nothing happened for a month, the hunt was scaled back, Grimes and Petty went back to other cases, and the murders went into the annals of cold crimes that permeate small-town law enforcement. Grimes still kept a finger in the case, doing interviews with friends and family, but Petty caught the disappearance of a nine-year-old boy and was pulled off to work that crime. Time marches on. New crimes are committed. The cases weren’t forgotten, just relegated to the back burner.
The details of the two cases were kept quiet in the hopes that somewhere down the road an answer would surface. Two families buried only parts of their cherished daughters. Now two more families would be getting their daughters’ incomplete bodies back for burial. He prayed it would end here.
Baldwin had been made aware of the crimes but hadn’t been actively involved in the situation. The call this morning, the call to arms tasking him to the case, was going to change all that. The FBI would be able to claim complete jurisdiction if necessary because the kidnappings and murders crossed state lines, but so far the local police had cooperated and appeared to be a major help in their investigation, not a hindrance.
The original FBI team, Jerry Grimes and Thomas Petty, were