237

that was as much sorrow for the girl’s death as it was for the raw deal she’d gotten in her short life. When they’d gotten the call that a body had been found in Asheville, North Carolina, Baldwin hadn’t even blinked. The killer wasn’t thinking too far ahead. Now that they were hot on his trail, he was grabbing, killing and dumping, and he’d really gotten on a tear. Christy hadn’t even been missing a day, and now Baldwin stood over her battered body, looking at the knife wounds in her chest, the bloody wrists, wondering where her hand would show up. Marni Fischer’s neatly manicured hand was a few feet away. Baldwin calculated. Where were the rest of the girls’ hands?

His careful, methodical serial killer had escalated into a vicious spree maniac. At first glance, the killer was trying to draw them in, a heavy spider in a silken web of intent. But as each thread unraveled, each victim killed quicker than the last, the web tore. A sophisticated, organized killer could last for years off one kill. This one was decompensating at a rate Baldwin hadn’t seen for a decade.

The change was fascinating from an empirical standpoint. It was Baldwin’s talent, the ability to separate the victims and their lives from the crimes being committed. Psychologically, it was a simple issue. The killer’s message wasn’t getting through. This was frustrating him, and in turn, he was taking chances, not as worried about possible consequences. His endgame had started. Forensics had a field day in the motel room. It was obvious that Christy had been repeatedly stabbed, and that blood added to the cast-off spray from the arterial cuts in her wrists created a gory miasma for the techs 238

J.T. Ellison

to comb through. The room hadn’t been wiped down, so there were many fingerprints, almost too many to take exemplars from, considering the number of people who had been through that room. Baldwin assumed the killer was wearing gloves, they hadn’t gotten a fingerprint from any of the scenes that they could place him at.

For the first time, they’d found a minute amount of semen mixed in with the blood on the bedsheets. In a regular case, that would have been cause for celebration. Because there had been no evidence collected from the earlier event with the ripped condom, there was nothing to compare with this DNA. Another telltale sign that the killer was on the edge, losing control. He was getting sloppy.

Baldwin had instructed the techs to file the DNA into the CODIS system, hoping for a match from deep within the bowels of the database, but he wasn’t holding his breath. Something about these kills felt fresh to him. His profile stated that these were the man’s first significant crimes, that his earlier record would be minor, if there was one at all. As he delved further into the case and the pace of the murders increased, the more on target his original assessment seemed. Not finding a match would reinforce at least one element of the profile.

Baldwin had asked Grimes to send men in to the bar Christy frequented, to find out if anyone remembered seeing her talking to someone or, better yet, leaving with someone. But Grimes had reported that no one saw anything out of the ordinary. One bartender had gone so far as to joke that keeping up with the men Christy All the Pretty Girls

239

was seen talking to would take an entire police force. His humor wasn’t appreciated, and he quickly apologized and let them know that seriously, she could have been with anyone, no one paid attention to a crazy girl flirting her way through a few hours of drinks. On a lark, Baldwin had asked Grimes to see if anyone remembered a young, dark-haired man, but that got a laugh. They were in a college bar; at least half the patrons fit that description. No one in particular had stood out to the bartender.

They just didn’t have a lot to go on. Baldwin signaled that they needed to get Christy’s body out of the brush and onto a gurney so she could be unceremoniously cut open and slid into a refrigerated drawer in the Asheville morgue, while Baldwin twiddled his thumbs and looked stupid, not having any idea how to stop this mercurial killer.

It was time to take a room, have a drink and try to sort all of this out. Preferably over the phone with Taylor. He’d realized lately that just talking to her cleared his mind, and his mind needed a lot of clearing now. He needed a strategy session, he needed to lay it all out and see what he was missing. Because he was missing something huge, and that wasn’t going to get this killer stopped any time soon.

He watched through squinted eyes as Christina Dale was loaded into a bag, placed onto a stretcher, then set gently on a gurney that was slid into the open back doors of the M.E.’s cream-colored van. The trees seemed very green, the haze off the mountains very purple, the summer air surprisingly crisp and clean and only slightly mottled with the smell of death. Everything 240

J.T. Ellison

here seemed larger than life, realer than real, and it made Baldwin’s head ache. Mountains always did that to him.

Baldwin came out of the shower and flipped on the television set. His hotel room was too hot, so he sat on the edge of the bed in his towel and watched the local news. The lead story was about Christina Dale’s body being found. The reporter went through the details, which were sketchy, as Baldwin had made sure that not a lot of information was getting out. She traced the killer’s moves over the past weeks, and she finished with a warning to all of the young women of Asheville.

“All women in the Asheville area are warned not to stay alone, and to keep your doors and windows locked. If you go out, please find someone to go with you. Don’t speak with anyone you don’t know, and carry pepper spray. We can’t emphasize enough that you have to be on your guard. Keep your cell phone charged and handy. Don’t get into cars with strangers. Everyone needs to be aware.”

It was a good warning, nothing that any woman didn’t hear on any given day, but given with such vehemence that it should give one or two women pause. Unfortunately, there was nothing in particular they could tell the women of Asheville to actually keep them safe.

He flipped the TV off and pulled out his files. He spread them on the bed in chronological order and started to go through them, beginning with Susan Palmer. There were definite similarities to the victims. Each had dark hair and eyes, they were between All the Pretty Girls

241

eighteen and twenty-eight. Body types were comparable; they were all strong and athletic. And they all worked in the medical field to some degree. Was he dealing with a deranged doctor who’d gone over the edge? That was as good a theory as any he’d had so far. He was beginning to feel impotent. This killer was moving fast, and though there was a distinct pattern to his motions, there was no way to predict what city he would hit next. All they could do was catch him. And they weren’t getting any closer to that goal, either. He’d had cases like this before, that the killer’s actions overrode the police investigation. He was more accustomed to the kind of killer that took his time. Patterns generally were established over weeks and months, not in days. This guy was on a frenzied killing spree, and spree killers were the most dangerous. But they almost always tripped up, and were caught quickly. They certainly didn’t go from state to state taking women and depositing their bodies minus their hands in other states.

His escalation was actually a good thing. At this pace, he was bound to screw up. No killer was that smart. Leaving his DNA behind was the first of what Baldwin hoped would be many mistakes.

Baldwin’s cell phone rang as the number to the FBI tip line appeared on the screen. He shut the TV off and glanced at the caller ID. It was Taylor.