“Hi, sweetheart,” he said gently.

“Baldwin, are you okay? I’ve been following all of this on the news, you must be exhausted.”

“Yeah, well, crime waits for no man. This situation just goes from bad to worse. Every time we catch up 242

J.T. Ellison

with him, he takes off again. I can’t find a single predictor of where he’s going to go next.”

“Do you want to run it through with me? Maybe a fresh set of eyes, well, ears will help.”

“Yeah, that might be a good idea. But first, is everything okay there? How’s your rape case?”

He heard her get quiet, a moment of time in which he could almost hear the thoughts flowing through her brain over the phone. When she answered, he thought she sounded a bit discouraged.

“Things are fine. Have you seen the news? National media’s picked up the Rainman story. Just their cup of tea, a real mystery. And who doesn’t love a serial rapist?

To top it all off, we have a victim who thinks the rapist is a cop, which isn’t going over well. Oh, did you hear about Whitney Connolly?”

“Honey, I’ve been up to my ears here. Whitney Connolly from Channel Five? What happened?”

“She was in a car accident yesterday. Killed her and three others. It was pretty bad. I went to the scene with Sam before we knew it was Whitney. It’s been awful, you can’t turn on the news without seeing tributes to her. I’ve been working with her sister, Quinn Buckley, to try and find out if there was anything of a more sensitive nature that she was dealing with. She died on her way over to Quinn’s house to warn her about something. We just haven’t come up with what. I’ve been going through her personal effects all day, first at her house, then the things that they took out of her car after the accident. I’m not coming up with a lot.”

“Well, she always seemed kind of flighty.”

“John Baldwin, are you telling me you dated her?

What little secrets are you hiding? I thought you said All the Pretty Girls

243

you didn’t know them.” Taylor hadn’t known Baldwin at Father Ryan, either, but he knew her. It was impossible for anyone not to know Taylor Jackson—her ability to befriend students in all walks and her devilmay-care attitude had made her stand out.

“I didn’t date her. We never even spoke. I’m just saying she seemed a little flighty. And I’ve always wondered what the real deal was with that kidnapping.”

“Good segue. I mentioned the kidnapper’s name to Quinn, to see if there was a chance Whitney’s fears had to do with him. She mentioned he was still incarcerated and not up for parole for another fifteen years. I wanted to see what the deal was, so I pulled the file. Nathan Chase is in jail for more than just kidnapping. Sexual assault, sexual battery, aggravated rape and sodomy. Those girls went through a little more than just a kidnapping. I don’t know how they kept it all so secret.”

“I remember it was kept pretty quiet. And they had a lot of influence and power on their side. Peter Connolly, that’s their dad, was a pretty high-powered attorney, if I remember correctly. They had the protection of being juveniles, too. Wasn’t there some innuendo when they transferred to Father Ryan?”

“Well, sure, but nothing came of it. The staff kept a pretty tight rein on anyone who joked around about the incident, and it just faded away. I think it was easier for them to be in a new environment, no one really paid too much attention. Of course I know now that they must have been going through hell.”

“So Whitney was trying to get to Quinn when she had the accident? And you haven’t found anything?”

“No, I haven’t. There was nothing in her car other than her cell phone and purse. No files, no notes, nothing.”

244

J.T. Ellison

“Did anyone check the memo function of her phone?

I do that sometimes if I’m out driving and don’t want to stop to record my thoughts.”

Taylor started laughing. “You’re brilliant, you know that? I better go check and see if there’s anything on it, I bet you a million no one thought to check. Let me get to work on that, and I’ll call you back.”

“You should probably go to bed, sweetie, it’s nearly midnight. I’m sure the phone can wait until tomorrow. You need to keep your strength up. Go to bed.”

He was amazed when Taylor didn’t argue with him, just told him that sounded like a good idea and she’d talk to him in the morning.

They said their I love yous, hung up and Baldwin went back to his files. He spread the pictures of each girl out on the bed and stood over them, staring into their accusing eyes. He went over the facts in his head. Their obvious connection was the link to the medical field. Maybe their killer had been molested by a pretty brunette nurse when he was little. He stopped himself from rolling his eyes. It could be as simple as that. He decided to reorganize the files. It would be easier to spot similarities and differences if they all resided in one file with subfiles in it. Where they liked to eat, where they liked to work out, where they were employed, all the information was culled and put into new piles. Baldwin went back to the work pile. What if he looked at employer instead of industry?

Okay, he thought. Susan Palmer had just gotten a job at the Huntsville Community Hospital. Jeanette Lernier was an intern with a marketing company. Jessica Porter worked as a receptionist at the Mississippi Community All the Pretty Girls

245

Hospital in Jackson. Shauna Davidson was working…

damn, it didn’t say. Only that she was premed at MTSU. Marni Fischer was a resident, working at Noble Community Hospital. Christy was a receptionist at Roanoke Community Hospital.

Baldwin flipped open his phone and called Grimes. The voice mail came on and he left a message. “Grimes, it’s Baldwin. Did you get a work history for Shauna Davidson? It’s not in the file. Call me as soon as you get this, okay?”

He hung up and paced around the room. Jeanette Lernier didn’t fit the profile, she was in marketing. All the other girls worked at a local hospital. Shauna was premed. Community hospital. Community hospital. Hmm. Time to make a leap. He opened his phone again, dialing the 800 information number. When the operator came on he asked for the number for a community hospital in Jackson, Mississippi. There was a pause, and the woman came back to him. She had a listing for a Jackson Community Hospital. He’d been operating under the assumption the community hospital was just a designator, not the name of the place. Well, damn. He thanked her and hung up, fumbling open his laptop and plugging “Jackson Community Hospital” into the Google search engine. Sure enough, it popped up. He read through the site and saw a link at the bottom. It was called “About Health Partners”, and as he opened it his cell rang. Grimes had finally gotten back to him.

“Shauna Davidson had been taking some summer courses, mostly in microbiology and immunology. She had to spend a few weeks doing practical applications. That’s it.”

246

J.T. Ellison

“But Grimes, where did she do the practical work?”

“At the local hospital. Nashville Community Hospital. Why, Baldwin, you got something?”

“I’ll let you know.” He hung up, gave his attention back to the Web site and clicked on the Health Partners link. He entered a sophisticated and accessible Web portal. Someone had spent a lot of time and effort to make it pop. It quickly became apparent that Health Partners was the parent company of the community hospital organizations. He went through all of the information, gleaning names and sites. The company had hospitals in several states, all up and down the eastern seaboard and throughout the Southeast. That was a bust. If the killer was focusing on hospitals this company owned, they would have to put out alerts from Florida to Delaware. Baldwin closed the laptop, deflated. That had to be the link, and yet it only served to widen the field, not narrow it.