All the Pretty Girls

Forty-Six

Baldwin set up shop in the conference room across the hall from Jake Buckley’s interrogation room. The files from Quinn and Whitney’s kidnapping were spread before him. He buzzed through them, absorbing all the information. The story was all too familiar.

Whitney and Quinn were bright, bubbly twelve-year-olds when they went missing. They’d been playing that day, innocent and pure, two sisters enjoying an afternoon of free time after school, no responsibilities other than make-believe and fun. They were both towheaded, blue-eyed and happy. All this Baldwin gleaned from the photos of the girls that accompanied the files. Photos from before the kidnapping.

The after shots, pictures taken when the girls were recovered and taken to police headquarters while their parents were notified, told a different story. Their eyes were troubled, no smiles, just blank stares. Both girls had been beaten, eyes blackened, and Quinn had a split lip. The only way he could tell them apart was the small white label affixed to the bottom of each photo designating each girl. There was a shot of Whitney staring into the camera as if she hadn’t realized her picture was being taken. There was no innocence in the gaze, she had the eyes of a woman twice her age that had seen a lifetime of abuse. What three days could do to a child was overwhelming.

They’d been riding their bikes that day. They’d ridden down a garden path they’d discovered that led from the back edge of their parents’ estate. The path traversed a wooded area and opened onto a grassy clearing, which bordered the west edge of Belle Meade Boulevard. It was hidden from the road by a long line of crepe myrtle trees. Whitney’s bicycle had gotten a flat. Instead of making their way back through the woods, they’d decided to go the long way, to push their bikes along the boulevard, back to their house.

He flipped the page and stared at the photo of their kidnapper. The file identified him as Nathan Chase, a thirty-seven-year-old construction worker, more often out of a job than in one. He had approached the girls, offering them some ice cream, a treat to cool them down on a hot summer day, and a ride back to their house so they didn’t have to push their bikes.

In the time of innocence, before Amber Alerts and children being schooled day in and day out about the horrors lurking behind every stranger’s shadow, the girls had accepted. They were on the Boulevard after all. They wheeled their bikes to his truck. After Quinn’s bike was safely in the back and she was climbing into the cab, he’d grabbed Whitney, shoved her in behind Quinn and taken off, leaving Whitney’s flat-wheeled bicycle behind. And then they were gone. Disappeared. Vanished.

But their story had a happy ending. Three days later, the girls appeared on Charlotte Avenue, disheveled, dirty, bloody, but alive. A Good Samaritan had seen them stumbling toward home and called the police.

It was Whitney who had explained how Chase had gotten drunk, had passed out, that the girls had seen an opportunity and had made a successful break for freedom.

It was Whitney who had identified Chase and his truck. She gave detailed descriptions of his home, a tiny, dirty two-bedroom bungalow off of Charlotte Avenue. The girls had only been five miles from home for the duration of their captivity. Quinn never volunteered any information, had only nodded in confirmation as Whitney told their story. PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, was Quinn’s biggest problem. She’d suffered such a shock that she’d been mute for weeks after the kidnapping, the file said. Whitney, having told the story, given all the information she could remember, had sat quietly waiting for her parents to take her home. The stronger of the twins.

The police had followed the directions Whitney gave them and found Nathan Chase alone in his living room, sucking on a Budweiser, watching a movie on television. He’d just smiled as they’d cuffed him, refused to confirm or deny the charges against him.

He’d been tried and convicted on the strength of Whitney’s testimony, Quinn refused to come to court, wouldn’t take the stand, but the jury decided in only two hours that Nathan Chase was guilty as hell. He’d been sentenced to thirty years, a decent amount of time and punishment for a kidnapper in the early 1980s, and was serving out the remainder of his time at Riverbend, a maximum-security prison that had opened in 1989. He spent his days watching television, reading, working in the library and being a model prisoner.

Baldwin sat back in his chair, rubbing his eyes. Nathan Chase. What kind of man kidnaps two little girls, beats them, but lets them get away? Then sits in his house, drinking a beer and waiting for the cops to come a-calling?

Baldwin leafed through the pages again. There was no sign of the sheets that mentioned the sexual assault. The girls’ reports were of multiple beatings and sleepless nights. They said he’d talked to them, told them stories, tried to entertain them. The odds that they weren’t assaulted were so slim that Baldwin finally sought Taylor out. She was in her office, sipping a Diet Coke and reading a case file.

“Whatcha up to?” Baldwin lounged in her doorway, drinking in her beauty. She should look frazzled and tired, it was the middle of the night, they’d been working for so many hours Baldwin had lost count. But she sat serenely at her desk, eyes wide and clear, looking like she’d just gotten up from a refreshing twelve hours in the bed. Except for the black eye. It gave her a rakish air. He briefly imagined her in his bed and smiled. She caught the look and laughed, closing the file in front of her.

“Lincoln just brought me up to speed on our Rainman suspect. Norville Turner. He works at the precinct filling station, doing mechanical work on the squad cars. Apparently, there’s no great psychosis behind his pattern. He’s a cop buff, couldn’t get on the force. He failed his entrance exams at the Academy four times, so he’s spent all this time trying to get back at us. Thought that setting up his crimes in a bizarre pattern would make him look mysterious. He’s just an everyday rapist. The good news is, he admitted to the rapes, which is an excellent first step. Now we have to do all the fun stuff, matching the DNA and all, but it looks like we got our man.”

“That’s great news, hon.”

“Yeah, I’m just happy it’s over. What are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out why Quinn and Whitney’s file doesn’t mention anything about the sexual assault.”

“It doesn’t? That’s strange. There’s no documentation on it?”

“Not a thing. Their hospital records don’t have a record of a rape kit being performed on either of the girls.”

“Well, that can’t be right. Chase went to jail after he was found guilty of kidnapping and sexual assault. I’ve seen those pages myself. There must be a part of the file that’s missing.” She started rooting around her desk, didn’t find anything of use, then went out into the Homicide office. She looked through the papers on Fitz’s desk and found a slim file labeled Connolly.

“Here’s something. Looks like Fitz didn’t grab all the files. Let’s see.” She opened the file and scanned. “Says here that only one of the girls was assaulted. That’s the reason it’s not in the hospital reports, it wasn’t reported the night they found them. It came a few weeks later. Hmm. Now that’s funny. It doesn’t say which girl was raped. Huh.” She handed the file to Baldwin. “That’s a little bizarre, isn’t it? The girls’ personal physician made this report, but he doesn’t identify which girl it happened to. Granted, this was twenty years ago. It’s still strange, don’t you think?”

They went back into Taylor’s office. Baldwin sat in the visitor’s chair and propped his feet up on her desk. “Didn’t you say there were rumors about the girls after they transferred in to Father Ryan?”

“Well sure, there were rumors,” Taylor answered him, rubbing her temple. “But it was all just that, rumors. They came in as freshmen my sophomore year, and I didn’t know too much about them. They were attending Harpeth Hall before, and I think I remember someone saying they’d taken a year off, then came over to Ryan. I know their mom was pregnant while all of this was going on, that I do remember. They had a little brother, what’s his name again? Oh yeah, Reese. Reese Connolly. Quinn said he’s a doctor, doing his residency at Vanderbilt.”

Baldwin raised an eyebrow at her. “The timing’s right, don’t you think? They take a year off, and suddenly they have a little brother?”

Taylor was taken aback. “You think that one of them got pregnant by Nathan Chase? And had Reese, then their parents covered it up? Man, that’s screwed up. They were only twelve. But it begs the question. Which one would it have been?”

“That’s something we may want to find out. In the meantime, I want to see if Nathan Chase has had any visitors lately. I have a feeling what happened to Quinn and Whitney twenty years ago may be linked to what’s happening today. Remember Quinn said she should have told Jake the truth from the beginning? You think she was trying to confess that she’d had a child and he rejected her?”

“Lord, Baldwin, you’re just grasping at straws now. There’s nothing in the evidence that leads that way.”

“Maybe not, but I want to get a list of Nathan Chase’s visitors anyway. We’ll do that in the morning. In the meantime, let’s go home. I’m too tired to think anymore tonight. Anything new on Whitney’s computer?”

Baldwin had dropped the laptop off in Taylor’s office earlier.

“No, nothing since we arrested Jake Buckley.”

“Maybe that’s a sign. Let’s get out of here.”

Taylor nodded, so they gathered up their things, straightened up her desk and left the Homicide office. Five minutes after they left, the light began blinking on Whitney Connolly’s laptop, informing one and all that she had new mail.