“Grimes.” He listened, then motioned for a pen and pad to write on. He scribbled furiously, nodding and uh-huhing for a few minutes, then hung up and looked at Baldwin.
“I really fucked up, didn’t I?”
Grimes’s admission of the mistake was surprising. An undercurrent of animosity had plagued their relationship from the beginning, yet here he was, ready to confess all his sins, to be absolved by the one man he didn’t want in the investigation. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Baldwin couldn’t justify the blunder, but he could understand it.
“Grimes, you’ve been dealing with three separate law enforcement agencies in three states. Countless people, high-stress situations. Anyone could have missed it.”
“But you didn’t,” he said miserably. “See, I haven’t really been on my ‘A’ game with this. I’ve been having some trouble at home, been thinking about retiring. Turn in the badge, get a real life.” The melancholy in his tone was alarming. “I should take myself off the case. I could have blown the whole thing. I might have been able to save one of those girls.”
Baldwin clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Hey, I didn’t find the note in Nashville attached to Shauna Davidson’s murder.” He waited until Grimes met his eyes. “Listen, I need you to keep your head in the game. Yeah, it was a miss. A big miss. But we need to move forward now, okay? I want you on this case. Read me what they found.”
Grimes nodded, swallowing hard.
Jesus, Baldwin thought. Just what I need.
Grimes shook his head, cleared his throat, tried to gain an element of dignity and control. “All right. Let’s see how you do with these.”
“More poetry?” Baldwin felt his heart beating just a little harder. His instinct was right.
“Yep. The notes have been there all along. Each girl had one in their personal effects. According to Petty, Lernier’s and Palmer’s were in their gym bags, Jessica Porter’s was in her date book. We just didn’t see it. God, how could we have missed this? They’ve been collected, they’ve already been printed, but nothing showed. Jesus, I’ve blown the whole case.” Grimes was back off on his “woe is me” tangent, and Baldwin was getting impatient.
“Grimes. The poems?”
“Yeah, yeah, let me read them off to you. Ready?”
“Okay, shoot.”
“This was in Susan Palmer’s car.” He read the verses aloud.
“A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of an angelic light.”
Baldwin scribbled and nodded, murmuring to himself. “Wordsworth. Okay, who’s next?”
“Jeanette Lernier. Here we go.
“A creature not too bright or good For human nature’s daily food For transient sorrows, simple wiles Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.”
Baldwin smiled. “Another stanza from the same poem. What was found in Jessica’s dayrunner?”
Grimes flipped the page of his notebook. “Jessica, Jessica…Here.
“A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.”
“Same poem?” Grimes asked.
“No, that’s one’s Yeats. Excellent poet, Yeats.” He reached for Grimes’s notebook. “Let me see that.” Grimes handed it over and Baldwin read the lines again.
“Jessica’s, Shauna’s and Marni’s poems are from ‘Leda and the Swan,’ William Butler Yeats. Jeanette’s and Susan’s are from a William Wordsworth poem, ‘She Was a Phantom of Delight.’ Our killer knows some of the classics.”
Grimes scratched his head. “Apparently you do, too. But what does it mean?”
“See, that’s the problem. It means something different to different people. What I’m concerned about is this stanza of Marni’s poem. Being so caught up, so mastered by the brute blood of the air…indifferent beak… When he started, with Susan and Jeanette and Jessica, he worked hard. He stalked them, took his time, seduced them. Now he’s picking up speed, moving too fast to get involved emotionally with his victims. These girls are a means to an end now, not an object worthy of worship and desire.
“And if he’s become indifferent to their plight, then we’re going to see an escalation in violence. ‘Leda and the Swan’ is classically recognized as a rape poem, a violent poem. Marni has drawn the mention of blood, I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t have some sort of brutality done to her that’s more severe than was done to any of the other girls. But I’m just guessing, Jerry.”
Grimes had his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his head bowed. “I wouldn’t have known all that. Wasn’t much good with that stuff in school.”
Baldwin drew in a breath. “I think we’d better go regroup. Give you some time to get yourself back together. And give me some time to think about this.”
Fifteen
He looked at his watch. It was time. He’d been sitting in silence in the rest stop, waiting for the right moment. The highways had quieted, the light of dawn still two hours away. He’d been driving all night, and had reached his destination right on time. Just enough time to sit back and reflect for a few moments. It was perfect. It was all perfect.
He looked over his shoulder into the back seat of the car. Luminous brown eyes glared back at him. She wasn’t cowed, not this one. She was a fighter. Well, we’ll see how she feels when she’s under me, when she feels the breath leave her. He felt himself harden and licked his lips.
Half an hour later, the defiant eyes no longer burning a hole through his brain, he put the car into drive and slid, silent as a shark, toward the on-ramp.
Sixteen
Taylor walked across the steaming parking lot at the Criminal Justice Center in Nashville, mentally planning her day. She shielded her eyes against the sun, gazing at the office building she called home. The CJC was a squat, nondescript building that housed the main units of the Criminal Investigations Division, as well as the administrative headquarters for the Metro Nashville Police Department. In the reorganization, a number of offices moved out of the headquarters building and into various sector offices. The chief had killed the five sector divisions and cut them into three: South, West and North. Detectives that were originally slated to work in departments like Homicide and Robbery were now housed in the sector offices as general detectives. Taylor’s team of homicide detectives had gotten to stay in the old headquarters and worked on homicides that had an element of ambiguity to them. If there wasn’t a suspect, there was no evidence or the job just looked too tough, Taylor’s team got the case. It meant a lot less busywork for them. The rest of the detectives scattered across the mid-state region pulled up the slack, covering basic plainclothes duties.
The Strangler case was spinning out of control, the media was screaming for answers. Cable news had seized upon the story and was creating a panic, updating every half hour, pointing out the failures on the part of law enforcement in all five states. Jessica Porter was lying in the morgue in Nashville, and Shauna Davidson’s parents
