eye.
A News Alert was flashing across the screen. They’d found Marni Fischer.
She sat and turned up the volume. The anchor was intoning that Marni Fischer’s body had been found off Highway 81 in Roanoke, Virginia. Roanoke. Something niggled at the back of Whitney’s mind. She ran back into her office and pulled the file out again, reading the names of the cities involved.
“Huntsville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Nashville, Noble, Roanoke. Huntsville, Baton Rouge, Jackson, Nashville, Noble, Roanoke.”
Her heart was starting to beat just a little faster. Hands shaking, she pulled out the notes again, copies of the poems she had printed from her e-mail. She read through them, her breath coming in little gasps. Read them again. And again. Then it hit her. She knew who the Southern Strangler was.
She dropped the files and grabbed her cell phone out of her purse. Journalistic creed be damned. Screw the anchor job in New York. She had to warn her sister.
Eighteen
Taylor sat back in her chair, her hands entwined in her long blond hair. Sunlight glinted through the slats of the Venetian blinds behind her, the window one more small concession to her rising credibility in the world. The words of the doctor slapped through her brain like a pinball. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.
She ran the conversation with Dr. Gregory over and over in her head, as if she could rearrange the words, realign their meaning.
“That’s impossible. I’m not late. I haven’t ever been late. I think I’d know if I was late. And I’m on the Pill. Trust me, it’s not something I forget about. So you have to be wrong.”
“Taylor, these things happen. The tests are very sensitive, they can detect pregnancy hormones almost immediately. What you need to do is relax. I’m going to prescribe a prenatal vitamin for you and I want you taking one milligram of folic acid every day. No drinking, of course. And I don’t suppose I have to tell you no smoking?”
Taylor felt like throwing up. Psychosomatic, she told herself. She couldn’t have morning sickness just because the doctor told her she was pregnant.
“I’m telling you, Doc, this just can’t be. I never-”
“It can, and it is,” he said gently. “Now, I want you to make an appointment with your OB/GYN, and she can go over all of the additional information with you.” His voice had quieted even more. “This is a blessing, Taylor. With the damage done to your body, you should be jumping for joy that it happened so soon. It’s going to be fine, I promise. I have to run now, but I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
He’d hung up as soon as she whispered okay back to him. She stared at the phone receiver, then tossed it across the room like it was a snake that tried to bite her. Damn. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to have a baby. Just not now. At least, not until she knew if Baldwin was into that kind of stuff. They had been too busy doing what it took to make a kid rather than talking about the consequences. Consequences. Hell, she sounded like a thirteen- year-old in an after-school movie. What in the name of God was she going to do?
She picked up her cell phone and dialed Baldwin’s number. As soon as she hit Send, she hit End and put the phone down on the desk in front of her.
The tears started to come, and she felt even worse. As a woman in her mid-thirties, she should be thrilled at the mere thought of a healthy child. Nearly everyone she knew had at least one child in the stable. The ones who didn’t were desperately trying-innocuous prescription bottles of Clomid suddenly appearing on the bathroom vanity, the fervent prayers that the little stick would turn pink and the bleeding wouldn’t begin. Then that heart-stopping moment when it did. The shots of Ovidrel, once daily, the woman bent in half in front of the mirror making sure her man is sticking her right. The prayers again that the maturation of the follicle would kick out that magic egg. The basal thermometers, the ovulation kits, tired husbands jacking off into plastic cups, their despair and embarrassment nearly as bad as their wives’ desire for offspring. The in vitro fertilization, the bank accounts dwindling, all in that desperate search for something permanent of themselves to be left on this earth. Most of these women had spent years trying not to get pregnant; suddenly finding themselves unable to fulfill that one promise of womanhood was more than they could take.
The level of guilt Taylor felt rose appreciably. She wasn’t trying to get pregnant. She didn’t want to be pregnant. Hell, she and Baldwin were just finding each other. How would that fragile union support another life? They had never spoken of children. Their lives didn’t seem to have room for that kind of future right now.
A knock on her door startled her. She quickly wiped away the tears, cleared her throat, mussed her hair and said, “Come in.”
The door opened and ADA Julia Page stepped into the room. Glancing over her shoulder, she shut the door behind her, then leaned back against it. She looked Taylor up and down.
“Bad time?”
“No, not at all. I was just…” Taylor shrugged as her voice trailed off. No need to explain herself. Julia wouldn’t be interested in the details.
Julia Page was one of the assistant district attorneys representing Davidson County. Smart as a whip and about as tall as a dandelion, she looked more like a Pomeranian fluffed out for Westminster than the cutthroat attorney that she was. Her light brown curls framed her face, making her seem innocent and pure, a tactic that had snowed many a criminal. They got on the stand and saw her sweet blue eyes and cupid-bow lips and just knew that this sweet young thing was no threat. How wrong they were.
“Good, because we need to talk.” Page stayed standing, keeping her eye level with Taylor’s sitting form. “I think we have a problem.”
Taylor groaned. If ADA Page was visiting with a “problem,” it must be a doozy. A headache began to take hold behind her right eye. She reached into her top drawer and drew out a bottle of Excedrin, popped the top, then shook three out into her hand. She put them in her mouth and chased them with a swig of tepid Diet Coke. A thought hit her hard as she swallowed-caffeine. She probably shouldn’t be having either the pills or the soda. She shook the thought off.
“What’s wrong then, Page?”
Page took a deep breath and practically spit out the words. “Terrence Norton.”
“What did the little turd do now?”
“He just walked out of Judge Hamilton’s court a free man.”
That caught Taylor’s attention. “What do you mean, a free man? We have him dead to rights on murder one.”
“Had,” Page corrected. “Had him dead to rights. Jury acquitted him in forty-five fucking minutes. Forty-five fucking minutes, Taylor. All the evidence, the testimony, hell, the witnesses, none of that seemed to matter. We lost this trial, and it’s a huge mess. You heard about the projects shooting a few days ago?”
Taylor nodded. “East Homicide caught it, they had the shooter in custody by the end of the night.”
“Well, the vic was going to be a witness against Terrence in this trial. A few weeks ago, he changed his mind and his testimony, decided that he didn’t see what he thought he saw. Refused to testify. We dropped him from the list, we had other witnesses. It smells like a hit, just in case he changed his mind again. The shooter is from Atlanta. He’s claiming he was in town to see a friend who lived at the apartment next door to the witness. Says he and his ‘friend’ had an argument over the price of a package of heroin, the kid was lingering and was shot accidentally. That’s just too damn convenient for me.”
“I agree. There’s more there. So Terrence is running drugs out of Atlanta now?”
Page snorted. “Right now, Terrence could be walking on the moon. He’s really managed to build a reputation for himself. Did you know he’s moving around town with four bodyguards when he’s not in the lockup? That smacks of drugs to me, no pun intended. We don’t have anything on it though.”
“And the trial fell apart?”
“Yeah. His peers didn’t think we substantiated our facts. That’s a quote from the jury foreman, by the way. He’s out on the courthouse steps, talking to Channel fucking Four about it. And every other station that will listen.”
