All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [92]
Just as she thought of him, Baldwin appeared in her doorway as if she’d conjured him up from the dark recesses of her mind. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw him. Taylor got out from behind the desk and gestured for him to come in and close the door. He did, and she put her arms around him, drawing him into a hug.
Baldwin gave Taylor a deep kiss, one that she returned almost gratefully. He could sense that something was off, something had been off for a few days now, but he thought he knew her well enough to know that she’d talk to him about it when she was ready. In the meantime, he needed to find out if there was another victim out there.
Taylor broke off the kiss and gave him a smile, running her hand along the back of his neck in a way that made him want to forget all about the case and take her right there on the table. But she stopped, smiled a knowing smile, then reached down and turned the laptop so it faced the guest seat. She pushed slightly on his chest and he flopped into the chair, and she pushed the laptop across the desk so he could have easy access to it.
He took a deep breath, steadying himself, then became all business. “This is Whitney Connolly’s e-mail?”
“Yes, it is. I have been through the e-mails and tried to go through her notes file, but she uses some crazy sort of typing shorthand and I can’t make heads or tails out of it. What I do know for sure is that Quinn Buckley’s husband is the vice president of Health Partners, you said three victims worked at hospitals that were owned by Health Partners, and Whitney is receiving e-mails of poems from the crime scenes. Since you said no one knew about the notes, that means the killer has singled her out to make contact with. I haven’t put in a request to have her car checked for sabotage, it seemed like she had a legitimate accident. But I can have them start an investigation into it if you want me to.
“Plus, I think we need to do a little history on Jake Buckley’s traveling schedule, don’t you?”
Baldwin was popping his fingers across the keyboard on the laptop. He bit his lip, thinking.
“So the last e-mail came in after Whitney’s accident, right?”
“Yes, it did. You can look at the time stamp, but it was definitely after she was dead. Why, Baldwin, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that the killer doesn’t know that Whitney is dead. Which means he’s not here in Nashville, because I assume there was a lot of coverage on Whitney’s accident over the past few days.”
“It’s been a lot of feel-good stuff. Her history, her credentials, her journalistic life, that kind of stuff. Nothing about her and Quinn’s kidnapping. Just very sweet, respectful stories. You would think that she was everyone in town’s best friend. But yes, there has been a lot of it.”
“And I bet none of it went national, huh?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure. We can call the network and ask. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. I talked to Garrett on my way in. The geographical profile has Nashville as one of three central staging points—it’s less than a day’s drive from each crime scene. If the GP is accurate, and the killer is from Nashville and doesn’t know that Whitney’s dead, that would explain why he’s still sending her e-mails. What we need to do is start getting a back-trace on this e-mail address, and I need to get over to Health Partners and talk to Louis Sherwood. Have you talked to Quinn yet?”
“No, I didn’t want to put it all out there, not until we know more.”
“Why don’t you talk to her, see if you can get something. Don’t fill her in, just see if she drops anything good. I’ll meet you back at home after our meetings, okay?”
He leaned across the desk and gave her a kiss, a kiss that was full of promise, and started for the door. His cell rang before he could get out into the hallway. He checked the ID. It was Grimes.
“Baldwin, we’ve got a report of a body in Louisville, Kentucky.”
“But we never had a missing persons report from Asheville, right?”
“No, and we’re hopeful that perhaps this isn’t related. But