All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [45]
Taking one last look at the birch tree, she shook off the past.
She picked up the phone and speed dialed her sister’s cell phone. The voice mail answered instead, requesting in Quinn’s perfectly cultured southern accent that she leave a message. Whitney hung up without saying a word, instantly relieved. She’d just try again later.
Slamming the empty can into the sink, she walked back to her office. She wheeled her chair back to the desk and pulled out her file on the Southern Strangler. Maybe she could get some more work done on the background story. She was theorizing on many of the killer’s attributes, working off research that she had gathered over the years on serial kidnappers and killers.
She worked quietly, the hour passing quickly. Closing the file, she stretched and decided it would be a good idea to hit Starbucks for another coffee. She always asked for Starbucks cards as presents, she lived off their espresso. She walked to the living room, gathering her purse, when something on the television screen caught her eye.
A News Alert was flashing across the screen. They’d found Marni Fischer.
She sat and turned up the volume. The anchor was intoning that Marni Fischer’s body had been found off Highway 81 in Roanoke, Virginia. Roanoke. Something niggled at the back of Whitney’s mind. She ran back into her office and pulled the file out again, reading the names of the cities involved.
“Huntsville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Nashville, Noble, Roanoke. Huntsville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Nashville, Noble, Roanoke.”
Her heart was starting to beat just a little faster. Hands shaking, she pulled out the notes again, copies of the poems she had printed from her e-mail. She read through them, her breath coming in little gasps. Read them again. And again. Then it hit her. She knew who the Southern Strangler was.
She dropped the files and grabbed her cell phone out of her purse. Journalistic creed be damned. Screw the anchor job in New York. She had to warn her sister.
Eighteen
Taylor sat back in her chair, her hands entwined in her long blond hair. Sunlight glinted through the slats of the Venetian blinds behind her, the window one more small concession to her rising credibility in the world. The words of the doctor slapped through her brain like a pinball. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.
She ran the conversation with Dr. Gregory over and over in her head, as if she could rearrange the words, realign their meaning.
“That’s impossible. I’m not late. I haven’t ever been late. I think I’d know if I was late. And I’m on the Pill. Trust me, it’s not something I forget about. So you have to be wrong.”
“Taylor, these things happen. The tests are very sensitive, they can detect pregnancy hormones almost immediately. What you need to do is relax. I’m going to prescribe a prenatal vitamin for you and I want you taking one milligram of folic acid every day. No drinking, of course. And I don’t suppose I have to tell you no smoking?”
Taylor felt like throwing up. Psychosomatic, she told herself. She couldn’t have morning sickness just because the doctor told her she was pregnant.
“I’m telling you, Doc, this just can’t be. I never—”
“It can, and it is,” he said gently. “Now, I want you to make an appointment with your OB/GYN, and she can go over all of the additional information with you.” His voice had quieted even more. “This is a blessing, Taylor. With the damage done to your body, you should be jumping for joy that it happened so soon. It’s going to be fine, I promise. I have to run now, but I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
He’d hung up as soon as she whispered okay back to him. She stared at the phone receiver, then tossed it across the room like it was a snake that tried to bite her. Damn. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to have a baby. Just not now. At least, not until she knew if Baldwin was into that kind of stuff. They had been too busy doing what it took to make a kid rather than talking about the consequences. Consequences. Hell, she sounded like a thirteen-year-old in an after-school movie. What in the name