“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 282

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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 All the Pretty Girls

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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 284

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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. All the Pretty Girls

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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 286

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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—”