All the Pretty Girls

Thirty-Six

G rimes drove through the gates of the University of North Carolina at Asheville and was struck by the beauty of the campus. It seemed like a very nice place to spend four years of your life. He followed the entrance drive to a large board that had all of the buildings laid out in a map. He looked for the student health center, found it and drove over there.

He got out of the car and went into the quiet building. There was a reception area, and he asked a pretty, blond girl sitting behind the desk if he could speak to the head of the center. She told him to hold on and disappeared. While he waited, he thumbed through a brochure that extolled the virtues of the campus health system.

A few minutes later, a woman came out from a back room, black hair shot with gray, hard lines etched deep in her upper lip. “I’m sorry, sir, but this is a private health center for the students of the university and you have to leave.”

He badged her, making sure she saw the large blue-and-white FBI card first and foremost. She was still mouthy.

“I suppose you have questions about that poor dead lamb that showed up here in town. Well, that wasn’t one of our students and we didn’t have anything to do with it. So I’d appreciate it if you left.”

“Are you done, lady? ’Cause I’ve got a few questions and I’d appreciate it if you’d shut up and answer them.”

The rudeness shocked her into silence, and Grimes took advantage of the quiet.

“I need to know if you ever send lab work or anything else to the Asheville Community Hospital.”

The woman looked at him for a moment. “If there’s something that needs to be done for a student we simply send the student there, to the hospital. They can do things we can’t in a few cases. A very few cases. We do have a full-service health center here,” she boasted.

“Give me an example. When’s the last time you sent a student down to the hospital?”

“Well, we had to send one young lady down yesterday for a chest X-ray. Our machine is down. She’s been ill and the doctor thought it would be a good idea to rule out pneumonia.”

Grimes leaned into the woman’s face. “Who is the girl you sent?”

“Now, I can’t tell you that. That’s private information. I would-”

“Lady, tell me who it was or I’m going to arrest you, so help me God. I don’t have time for this crap from you. Who? ”

The woman became indignant. “Well. You don’t have to yell. Her name is Noelle Pazia. There, satisfied?”

“No. Tell me how I can get in touch with Noelle.”

“Well, I suppose I could call her if you insist.”

He put a hand on her elbow and propelled her toward the door to her tiny office. “Let’s go make that call. I’m trying to make sure one of your students isn’t in trouble.”

The woman gave him a look that made him think of his daughter’s pet rabbit, nose twitching in fear, and picked up the phone. She dialed an extension, asked for Noelle Pazia and held up a finger to indicate she had been put on hold.

“The campus operator is routing the call,” she whispered, though there was no reason for her to keep her voice down. Grimes paced a few feet in either direction until the woman spoke again. “Is Noelle there? This is Nurse Brooks at the student health center. She isn’t. When did you see her last? You know she’s very ill, she needs to be in bed. She didn’t? Oh my. Yes dear, thank you.” She hung up the phone and gave Grimes a look he could not distinguish, whether it was anger or delight he would never know.

“She wasn’t in her room. She didn’t sleep there last night as far as her roommate can tell. I assume that means she went to stay with one of her male friends.” The nurse sniffed self-righteously, obviously not approving of such outrageous behavior. “A lot of the girls here do that.”

“You know that Noelle has a boyfriend?”

“Well, no, I don’t, I just-”

“Call that number again, I need to talk to the roommate. Tell her to meet us, right now. Go on, dial the phone. Then take me to her dorm.”

The woman started to sputter but picked up the phone. She got the roommate and told her to meet them downstairs in her dormitory. The second she hung up, Grimes got a hold of her arms and propelled her toward the door before she had a chance to speak. She was in his car a moment later and pointing him toward the residence halls. His heart was sinking with every moment, he had a bad feeling that Noelle Pazia wasn’t staying in a boyfriend’s room, but was lying on the side of a road in Louisville, Kentucky.

He got out of the car and made his way to the front entrance of the dorm. A very pretty redhead stood in the doorway, a multicolored scarf wrapped around her neck, ends trailing almost to her knees. She looked concerned, and as soon as he was within earshot he heard her ask, “Where’s Noelle?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could help me with that.”

“I spent the night at my boyfriend’s place.” Another, more audible sniff came from the nurse and Grimes turned, pointing a finger at her, a warning not to interrupt.

“Go on,” he prompted. The redhead complied. “He lives here in town, he’s an artist. She wasn’t here when I got in this morning, around eight. Her bed was made, but she always keeps her bed made, and she gets up early, so that didn’t strike me as strange. I assumed she went to breakfast. But she hasn’t been back in the room.”

“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 noticed that there was a bulletin board next to the door, sheltered from the weather by a plastic covering. He walked toward it, searching through the wanted messages and For Sale notices. Tutoring, no he didn’t need that. Didn’t need a new yoga ball and mat, didn’t need…yes, there it was. Under two colored pieces of paper he saw a stark white sheet pinned to the board. He pushed open the plastic, and with a pen he grabbed from his pocket he pushed aside all the surrounding paper. Sure enough. Damn if he hadn’t posted this for all to see, right there on the bulletin board. Son of a bitch.

Grimes read the poem aloud.

“Mark but this Flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.”

Shit. Another one. He looked around wildly, as if the killer would be sitting nearby, enjoying the show. There was no sign of anything amiss.

The fact that he’d been left behind was not lost on him. Baldwin, the FBI’s glory boy, off chasing his solid lead while Grimes the grunt stayed behind, trying to play catch-up yet again. At least he had found the newest poem.

A girl in a stocking cap walked by, grinning at the crazy man mumbling to himself. He flipped his hand in front of his face, hoping to dismiss her gaze. He took a bag out of his pocket, angled the pushpin out of the note and the corked bulletin board, and managed to get it into the bag without touching it. He held the note by the edges and put it in the bag after the pin. Maybe they’d get prints off this one, who knew. But it wouldn’t stand to do anything less than try everything they could.

Grimes went back to the car and drove out of the campus and toward his hotel. He had laid the photo of Noelle Pazia on the front seat facing him. Noelle’s eyes stared up at him, accusing, sad, lonely, and he feared for her. He’d know soon enough.

He opened his cell phone and punched in a number he knew by heart. A man answered the phone.

“It’s me,” Grimes said.

“Hey, Dad, what’s up? Have something new for me?”

“I do. Just found out there’s a girl missing from Asheville, name’s Noelle Pazia. There’s also been a body found in Louisville, Kentucky. I’m assuming it’s her, you’ll have to do the rest on your own.”

“Thanks, Dad, I appreciate it. Gotta run. I can get this on the wire right away.” The phone went dead.

That’s just how my life is, Grimes thought. Screwed up the case by not getting the poems, wife gone for going on four months now, a spoiled daughter who never spoke to him unless she needed money, a son that used him because he could give insider information and bolster the boy’s fledgling career as a news producer in New York. Baldwin would kill him if he knew where the leak was coming from. Well, fuck Mr. Perfect Profiler.

He pulled into the lot of the hotel and parked. Taking the picture of Noelle with him, he went to the front desk. The information should be in from the Louisville office. Maybe Perfect Boy Baldwin had sent some of his profiling guidance too.

“Do you have a fax for me? Grimes, FBI?”

The man behind the desk gave him a nasty look. “I do, sir, and I have to ask that you refrain from having this kind of material sent over our fax lines. It’s just outrageous. I won’t stand for it, and neither will my manager-”

“Shut up and give me the fax.” Grimes was so far out of patience that he wanted to punch the mouthy brat. Maybe he could arrange for the nurse at the school and this man to have a date.

The man flounced around the side of the desk and disappeared into the back room. He came out a moment later with a manila folder in his hand. “There,” he huffed dramatically. Grimes just gave him a smile and slid the folder under his arm. He walked over to the bar and ordered a scotch. It was drawn and poured, and he took a sip, trying to calm his heart. He didn’t want to know if Noelle Pazia was dead. He didn’t want to imagine those bottomless brown eyes dull and gray. But he didn’t have a choice. He could hardly ask the bartender to compare the photos.

So he swallowed the liquid courage in a single gulp, pulled out the picture Noelle’s roommate had given him and set it on the bar. He poised the folder above the picture and opened it. The sight made him want to vomit.

There was no question. Noelle Pazia was dead.

He looked away from the file and caught the bartender’s eye, signaling for another shot. The man slid the bottle to him, it was as if he decided it wasn’t worth the time it would take to refill the glass again and again. Grimes nodded his thanks and poured himself a glass to the brim. His hands were shaking as he brought the liquor to his lips. He needed to call Baldwin, give him the confirmation. Before he had a chance, his phone rang.

The call didn’t take long. As he hung up, staring in disbelief at the cell, all thoughts of calling Baldwin left him. He set the phone down on the oak-planked bar. He pulled out his credentials case, eyes lingering on his FBI shield. All the things it meant to him. Fidelity, loyalty, bravery. Ah, this fucking case.

All he wanted to do was suck down a few more drinks and float away.

Fuck the Southern Strangler.

Fuck Baldwin and the FBI while you’re at it.

Fuck it all that seven girls had died at the hands of this maniac. The hand burglar. For fucking what?

Noelle stared up at him with those baby-brown eyes, and he heard her voice in his head. “You’re drunk, Grimes. It’s okay, you don’t have to get so upset. These things happen. You know that. These things happen and there’s nothing you can do about it, you just have to try and catch the man who did this to me. To all of us. Do you understand what I’m saying? You need to catch him and stop him, he’s going to do this again.”

The big brown eyes started to cry and Grimes slammed the folder closed. Jesus, he couldn’t take this anymore.

What was this freak hoping to accomplish? And here he was sending the poems to a reporter. Did he want to get the story out on the news? Or did he just have the hots for this chick? Did he just want to impress her? Well, it was going to be pretty hard to impress her now, buddy. She’s dead, and you don’t even know it. You can come and fuck her and get off on all the wonderful things you did for her, you stupid son of a bitch. She’s dead and cold, and all of these girls are dead and cold, and you can’t have any of them anymore, you bastard.

Grimes was shouting, hysterical, flinging his arms around and becoming more incoherent by the minute. He’d chugged his way through more than half the bottle of scotch and was looking like he needed a good place to sleep it off. That’s what the bartender saw, he had come over to try and slow him down. Grimes was crying and blubbering, spilling liquid from his glass on the bar and the seat next to him. His hand was on his gun, and when the bartender tried to get him to stop he swung out his arm. Crying, he told the man to tell Baldwin he was sorry. He put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.