All the Pretty Girls - J. T. Ellison [95]
“When is the last time you saw her?”
“The last I saw of Noelle was yesterday morning. She was going to go to the health center again, get some more medicine and try to take it easy. She’s got a heavy courseload this semester, so she was spending a lot of time studying, in groups and alone. She would have had her study group at the library. All I know to do is talk with them. Here’s a list of their numbers, Noelle had it on the refrigerator door. Please, just tell me she’s okay. Her father’s going to flip if something happened to her. She’s too good of a kid, straight, doesn’t drink, doesn’t even date, for God’s sake. She’s here to get her education.”
Grimes gave the nurse a dirty look. See, it said, she wasn’t with a boyfriend after all. He was ready to be out of her company. “Do me a favor, okay. Please go back to the health center. I’ll contact you if I need anything.”
“Gladly,” the woman snorted and stalked off.
Grimes took the list from Noelle’s roommate. He leaned against the hood of his car and opened his phone. The roommate took the cue and looked at the list, running her finger to the bottom, tapping on the last name. She’d start there.
Grimes got two voice mails before a young man with an Indian accent came on the line.
“This is Harish?” He spoke with an inflection on all of his words that made every statement sound like a question.
“This is Special Agent Grimes with the FBI. Have you seen Noelle Pazia today?”
“Noelle? No, I haven’t? She left our study group last night? I didn’t see her after the break? Is she okay?”
The last sentence was a real question and Grimes could hear the concern in the boy’s voice.
“What time was this break last night?”
“I don’t know, around nine-thirty? Noelle was sick, she looked terrible? We suggested she go home, but she said she would be okay to finish out the group? We took a break, she got a phone call and she left? That’s the last I saw of her?”
“And that was around nine-thirty, you say. She had a call and she did what?”
“Well, Noelle was very polite? She didn’t want to take the call in the library, especially in our study group, and so she took the call outside? She told whomever it was to hold on, and she walked out the side door? She had her backpack with her, when she didn’t come back we just assumed she went on home to bed? It would have been the best thing for her, she was really looking awful?”
Grimes thanked him and hung up. Left out the side door to the library. Damn. He turned to the roommate.
“Do you have a recent picture of Noelle?”
She hung up her own cell phone and nodded. “Yes, in the room. Hold on and I’ll go get it. You think she’s gone, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, but I really need that picture. Thanks.” The girl trotted toward the stairs and Grimes dialed Baldwin’s number. He answered on the first ring. Grimes filled him in on the situation, including the fact that the missing girl had gone to the Asheville Community Hospital for chest X-rays because the school’s machine was down. As he finished, the roommate came back with a picture.
Grimes stared into the soft brown eyes, thanked the roommate and took her cell phone number, promising to call her within the hour with information. He got into his car, prepared to drive out of the campus, but he saw the library on his right and slowed. The poem. Baldwin said there was a poem sent to the reporter in Nashville that indicated another girl had been taken. He decided to check the library. If it was there, they’d have one more set of confirmations that this was their guy. Man, he was getting sloppy. He should have thought about that earlier.
He parked and walked around to what he assumed was the side entrance that young Harish had mentioned Noelle went toward when she got her phone call. He scanned the ground, the doors, and saw nothing out of place. He