All the Pretty Girls

Twenty-Three

Baldwin stood in the glaring sunlight, shielding his eyes and watching the panoply of activity around the body. Each person at a crime scene had a specific task, yet it looked like ants at a picnic, chaotic and busy. The similarity to the previous crime scenes was disconcerting, and he tucked the thought away to be brought back out later. He ducked under the yellow tape and worked his way to the periphery of the activity. Marni Fischer was certainly getting the best attention a body could get.

He made his way to her, slipping on his Ray-Bans so he wouldn’t have to squint. Mesmerized by what had been a beautiful young woman, he squatted for a closer look, swatting flies away from his face. Marni Fischer was naked, lying on her back, arms spread out to either side. Her arms ended at the wrist, her hands no longer in their proper place. That’s where the similarities ended. He’d been right on the money. The killer was escalating, the violence increasing.

His eyes traveled to what had been her face; knife slashes had rent channels over an inch deep in a crisscross pattern from her forehead to her chin. The deep cuts were borne of rage. Baldwin wondered what she’d done to piss him off.

He made a mental note to check the sexual activity-seduction had been the previous MO, that might be different here, too.

Her legs were demurely crossed at the knee, a gold chain nestled incongruously around the fragile bones of her right ankle. It struck Baldwin that it looked more like a shackle than purposeful decoration.

Another, smaller zone had been created a few yards from Marni’s body. A pale hand, palm up in supplication, was nestled in the long grass. They were getting more adept at finding the hand of the last victim, at least. The local cops knew what to look for; they found it rather quickly. Why had the killer started leaving the hands away from the body? Just another item to add to his ever-growing list of quirks, the elements that made up the psyche of a murderer.

A breeze kicked up, and Baldwin was surprised to see a bank of black clouds approaching from the west, crawling furiously over the mountains. He wondered how long he’d been standing, staring. Better get a move on before it started to rain. The beauty of a southeastern summer afternoon, a thunderstorm was bound to crop up.

He turned and looked back at Grimes. The man wasn’t going to make it. He’d been going downhill steadily since they’d gotten the call that Marni had been found. Right now he was trying to avoid the klieg light of a news truck instead of accompanying Baldwin to peruse the corpse. He was going to have to find a way for Grimes to get some rest, but while this killer was on the loose, that wasn’t likely to happen any time soon.

Giving Marni Fischer one last lingering look, he started to walk to Grimes, but a voice rang out behind him.

“Can we move her now, Agent?” The voice was tinged with sarcasm. Baldwin looked toward the source, a beefy young sergeant with red hair, freckles and large hands that were balled into fists. Locals upset that their turf was being trampled on by the FBI. He could understand their frustration. FBI swoops in, literally, to steal their case right from under them. Just like he’d done to Taylor. He turned and signaled to Grimes, an implied question in the wave, and Grimes shook his head. Baldwin felt a tap on his shoulder. It was actually more of a punch, and he turned to see the redheaded sergeant standing belligerently next to him, his hands now restored to their proper place, holding the man’s hips to his legs.

He moved a few feet away and rubbed his hand vigorously through his thick hair, making it stick out in all directions. He felt the frustration rise in him. A local sergeant copping attitude was going to give him a headache. He could hear the whapping drone of news helicopters above, looking for purchase with their long-lens cameras, bleating moment-to-moment information back to their anchors.

“I asked you if we could move her.” It wasn’t a statement but a challenge.

“Tell me something, Sergeant,” Baldwin said quietly. The man glared at him as if Baldwin had murdered the girl at their feet.

“Was she posed, or was she dropped here?”

The man scratched his head. “Weel, it’s pretty obvious that she was posed. Don’t they teach you that kind of stuff where you come from, Mr. F BEE EYE agent?”

Baldwin gave the man a rueful smile. “Have you ever seen a body tossed out of a car, Sergeant?”

“Of course I have. Seen plenty. They tumble out and land on their backs, arms out in a crosslike position, and their legs…Oh.”

“‘Oh’ is right. Take another look.”

The sergeant took his time, walking widdershins around the body, sucking industriously on a toothpick that had magically appeared in the corner of his mouth. He made another pass, then spat, careful to turn away from the girl.

“Weel, I’d say there was a pretty good chance that she may have been tossed out of a car.”

“And have you found any tire tracks to support that theory?” Baldwin gazed at the young man expectantly.

“There weren’t any that we could see when we pulled up, no, sir.”

Baldwin noted the “sir” and decided to stop hassling the kid. “So there’s a good chance that the killer parked on the road, then carried her out here and posed her, rather than dumping her out of the car right at this spot and speeding away?”

The sergeant looked up at him with squinted eyes. “You were just playing with me, weren’t you?”

“No, son, I never play when death is involved. I just wanted you to stop and think about another option. There is never anything obvious at a murder scene.” He saw Grimes wave. It was time to get her to the morgue. “Call in your folks. You can move her now. Besides, it’s going to rain.”

He turned his back and walked away from the dead girl. Maybe he’d taught the young sergeant a lesson. Especially in a situation as dicey as this one was shaping up to be, never make assumptions. He pulled his cell phone out of its waist clip and punched a number on speed dial. A voice on the other end barked “What?” in a semblance of a greeting.

“Garrett, it’s Baldwin. I’m out here in Roanoke.”

“Same guy?”

“Looks that way.”

Baldwin felt rather than heard the great sigh that whistled through the phone. He empathized; when he’d first gazed upon the dead girl, he felt like all the wind had been knocked out of him.

“Do you have anything from the geographic profile yet?”

“No, it hasn’t finished running. I was looking at the map myself, I think you’re onto something. Problem with this software is it takes at least eight points to be accurate. So whatever it coughs out is going to be incomplete at best. I’d plan on working without it.”

“Right. Well, if it spits anything out, let me know. It’s better than nothing, which is what we have right now. He’s definitely escalating, Garrett. Took her hands like the others, but cut her face up pretty good. If this was a generic killer, I’d say he was buying himself some time so we don’t get an ID so quickly, but thanks to the media everyone in the country knows Marni Fischer is missing. He’s not trying to mislead us, not taking their hands so we can’t ID the bodies. He’s collecting them. I don’t know, Garrett, something feels all wrong about this. It’s definitely contrived, he’s posed her like the others, but I’m not getting a handle on the why of this case. Moving too fast, traveling through this many states, I don’t know if we’re going to catch him in the act. He’s building up to something, and he’ll let us know what that is when he’s damn good and ready. How many more will he take before he gets to that point?”

He sighed and ran his hands through his hair again. He’d have a Mohawk going by the end of the afternoon.

“Then Baldwin, I suggest you get five steps ahead of where we are now.”

“I’m doing the best I can. I’m going to go in with her, be there while they do the autopsy. I need to see-”

Garrett cut him off. “I know. Go on.”

Baldwin put the phone in his pocket and leaned against a sheriff’s cruiser. He steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and blew out a sigh. In the midst of all this, he missed Taylor. She had saved him from himself, from the world of death and dying. She’d saved his soul, which was more important to his continued living than a heartbeat would ever be. Just the thought of her made him smile. A moment alone with her would make everything better. It always did. He imagined her puttering around the kitchen in Nashville, tossing out comments over her shoulder while she put together dinner. He saw her smile, her teasing gray eyes, one slightly darker than the other, those full lips, the honey-blond hair cascading down her back. He thought of the night he’d made love to her for the first time, and was embarrassed to feel himself harden. He shifted around so he was facing the cruiser and put his head in his hands. God, just the idea of her excited him, filled him with a longing that was almost painful. It was the inconsequential things that got to him. Her throaty laugh, that husky voice. The body that wouldn’t quit. The silky skin on the back of her neck, leading into the scar that nearly took her life slashing across her throat. He ached for her, for her touch, a kiss, her voice, anything that would draw him away from this desolate field and into her warm embrace. It never ceased to amaze him how closely linked sex and death were. He supposed that was why men killed for love.

He looked around, taking in the leaves turning up in anticipation of the rain, the pollen that attached itself to every inanimate object in sight. The sun was getting dusky, the storm was moving in, clouds darkening the sky, and he was surrounded by flashing lights and the smell of death. Voices shouted around him, impatient, testy. Yet crickets chirped, unfazed by the threat of rain, making the scene feel like a big camping trip. He asked himself for the hundredth time what he was doing. Out chasing another killer when he could be home, warm in Taylor’s embrace, protected from the reality of his life. He should quit for good, he knew it. Taylor had healed his heart, but killers still roamed his mind. He just wanted to go home, but he hauled himself off the cruiser. He needed to get to the morgue and witness the autopsy. No more time for love in his heart. He hardened it, turned off his inner psyche and approached Grimes.

“Hey, you ready to go to the M.E.’s office? They said they’d do the autopsy pronto for us.”

“Baldwin, you go on ahead. I’m going to stay out here with the crime scene people, see if we can find anything, something useful before the rain washes away any evidence.”

Baldwin nodded and looked for the red-haired sergeant. Within an hour, he found himself gloved and smocked.

He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off by the medical examiner, a kind young doctor named Rusty Sampson.

“Aha.”

“Aha what, Doc?”

“She fought him, hard. See the bruises on her forearms? Defensive wounds, no doubt. She’s got a knot on her head, too-may find a subdural hematoma when we get to the brain. She got knocked pretty good, that might have put her out. And there’s a hyoid fracture. Could see the bruising around her neck pretty well out in that field, but here it is.”

“He strangle her before or after he cut her up?”

“There was some clotting in the knife slashes on her face, so I’d have to say it was perimortem. But her hands were definitely cut off after she was dead. Not that that helps, he really tore the poor thing up.”

“Was she raped?”

“I don’t know if I can say ‘rape’ definitively, but look what I found in her.” He held up a petrie dish with a small clear fragment of what looked like translucent skin in the center.

“Part of a rubber. It’s torn off the rolled edge. Got lost inside her. Doesn’t look to have semen on it, though of course we’ll get it sent for testing. She had some lateral bruising, too. I’m not much for speculation, but it could be he lost it and had to go searching, you know? They aren’t as strong as they look, a fingernail could rip it easily.”

“I wonder…” Baldwin stepped away, his eyes unfocusing. Could the killer have realized the condom had slipped off, and that’s why he punished Marni’s body so severely? It was a possibility. He could have been desperate to retrieve the condom quickly and unable to find it. A simple issue for a normal couple. For a killer trying to hide his identity, a whole different matter. A failure of any kind would be enough to set him off. Another rung up the escalation ladder.

“Care to give me an estimate on time of death?”

“Well, the buffet line had been open for a day at least.”

Baldwin shook his head. “Haven’t heard that one before. Buffet line? Where do you guys come up with this stuff?”

“Think I heard that one on Law and Order. But in all seriousness, she’d been dead at least eighteen to twenty-four hours when you found her. Maggots in the wrist area, plenty in her other orifices, some hatchlings from the blowflies. It was hot out there and they got moving quickly. Add the sun and you’ve got yourself a virtual party.”

“She’d only been missing for two days.” Baldwin didn’t add the rest of his thought. He hadn’t wasted a lot of time before he killed her. This one he’d grabbed, killed, taken for a drive and dumped. He’s got another jump on us. “Anything else?”

“Naw. I’ll get more after tox comes back.”

“Okay. Thanks, Doc. Let me know if there’s anything else good.”

Another one down, he thought as he left. Better go find Grimes, get him filled in.