knowing smile, then reached down and turned the laptop so it faced the guest seat. She pushed slightly on his chest and he flopped into the chair, and she pushed the laptop across the desk so he could have easy access to it.
He took a deep breath, steadying himself, then became all business. “This is Whitney Connolly’s e- mail?”
“Yes, it is. I have been through the e-mails and tried to go through her notes file, but she uses some crazy sort of typing shorthand and I can’t make heads or tails out of it. What I do know for sure is that Quinn Buckley’s husband is the vice president of Health Partners, you said three victims worked at hospitals that were owned by Health Partners, and Whitney is receiving e-mails of poems from the crime scenes. Since you said no one knew about the notes, that means the killer has singled her out to make contact with. I haven’t put in a request to have her car checked for sabotage, it seemed like she had a legitimate accident. But I can have them start an investigation into it if you want me to.
“Plus, I think we need to do a little history on Jake Buckley’s traveling schedule, don’t you?”
Baldwin was popping his fingers across the keyboard on the laptop. He bit his lip, thinking.
“So the last e-mail came in after Whitney’s accident, right?”
“Yes, it did. You can look at the time stamp, but it was definitely after she was dead. Why, Baldwin, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that the killer doesn’t know that Whitney is dead. Which means he’s not here in Nashville, because I assume there was a lot of coverage on Whitney’s accident over the past few days.”
“It’s been a lot of feel-good stuff. Her history, her credentials, her journalistic life, that kind of stuff. Nothing about her and Quinn’s kidnapping. Just very sweet, respectful stories. You would think that she was everyone in town’s best friend. But yes, there has been a lot of it.”
“And I bet none of it went national, huh?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure. We can call the network and ask. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter. I talked to Garrett on my way in. The geographical profile has Nashville as one of three central staging points-it’s less than a day’s drive from each crime scene. If the GP is accurate, and the killer is from Nashville and doesn’t know that Whitney’s dead, that would explain why he’s still sending her e-mails. What we need to do is start getting a back-trace on this e-mail address, and I need to get over to Health Partners and talk to Louis Sherwood. Have you talked to Quinn yet?”
“No, I didn’t want to put it all out there, not until we know more.”
“Why don’t you talk to her, see if you can get something. Don’t fill her in, just see if she drops anything good. I’ll meet you back at home after our meetings, okay?”
He leaned across the desk and gave her a kiss, a kiss that was full of promise, and started for the door. His cell rang before he could get out into the hallway. He checked the ID. It was Grimes.
“Baldwin, we’ve got a report of a body in Louisville, Kentucky.”
“But we never had a missing persons report from Asheville, right?”
“No, and we’re hopeful that perhaps this isn’t related. But Louisville is one of the cities on the list that Health Partners is in, so I thought we better check it out.”
“Yeah, but did he grab someone from Asheville and take her to Louisville, or snatch someone in Louisville?”
“I can’t tell you that. You’re going to have to figure that one out for me. Are you going to Louisville? Do you want me to meet you there?”
“Right now, I need to follow this trail here in Nashville. Let me work this out for you, because some of this information I’m guessing at. The geo profile indicates that Nashville may be a staging area. I think the killer may be based here. I believe he’s been in contact with one of the local reporters. I’ve been waiting to go over all of this with you until I could get a positive confirmation. I wanted to make sure the poems that were at the scenes match the poems he was e-mailing the reporter. They do.
“Now, the story gets a little crazy here. The reporter, Whitney Connolly, was afraid for her twin sister, was trying to pass along a message to her. But she was killed in an accident before she divulged the information. We’ve found out that the sister’s husband, Jake Buckley, is a vice president with Health Partners. So there is definitely something to this side of things, and we need to get to the bottom of it.
“The killer e-mailed another poem to Whitney Connolly’s e-mail, one that doesn’t match what we have found so far. There’s a body in Louisville. Most likely, that’s what the poem correlates to, but we won’t know until we get some identification.”
“I don’t know, Baldwin, I just don’t know. This case, it’s gotten away from me. From all of us. Do you even know when he sends the poems? Is it when he takes them? Or when he kills them? Where’s he sending them from? Does he have a laptop?”
“I don’t know the answer to that one, Grimes. Did you check with the community hospital in Asheville to see if they have any employees unaccounted for?”
“I did, and they don’t have anyone that hasn’t shown up for work. There’s not a lot else I can do unless we get a missing persons report.”
“What about the colleges? There are several schools in Asheville. We know that Shauna Davidson didn’t work for a Health Partners hospital but attended a class there. Maybe there are students who come in to do lab work or something.”
“Baldwin…”
“I know, man, I’m grasping at straws. I’m just trying to think…”
“No, Baldwin, wait. I think I’ve got an idea. Student health centers, right? They probably wouldn’t have any ability to do lab work. Maybe they send out.”
“Grimes, that’s a great idea. Start at UNC-Asheville, it’s the school closest to the hospital. Double-check they don’t have anyone missing, make some calls to the other schools, try to track this down. Then you can head out to Louisville. I’ll do what I can here to find out what’s going on.”
Disappointment spilled from Grimes’s mouth. “Oh. Okay. I’m waiting on some more information to come in from Louisville, but I’ll check things out here. In the meantime, you’ll let me know as soon as you hear something?”
“Will do. Go get the college checked out. I’ve got a feeling about that.”
Thirty-Six
G rimes drove through the gates of the University of North Carolina at Asheville and was struck by the beauty of the campus. It seemed like a very nice place to spend four years of your life. He followed the entrance drive to a large board that had all of the buildings laid out in a map. He looked for the student health center, found it and drove over there.
He got out of the car and went into the quiet building. There was a reception area, and he asked a pretty, blond girl sitting behind the desk if he could speak to the head of the center. She told him to hold on and disappeared. While he waited, he thumbed through a brochure that extolled the virtues of the campus health system.
A few minutes later, a woman came out from a back room, black hair shot with gray, hard lines etched deep in her upper lip. “I’m sorry, sir, but this is a private health center for the students of the university and you have to leave.”
He badged her, making sure she saw the large blue-and-white FBI card first and foremost. She was still mouthy.
“I suppose you have questions about that poor dead lamb that showed up here in town. Well, that wasn’t one of our students and we didn’t have anything to do with it. So I’d appreciate it if you left.”
“Are you done, lady? ’Cause I’ve got a few questions and I’d appreciate it if you’d shut up and answer them.”
The rudeness shocked her into silence, and Grimes took advantage of the quiet.
“I need to know if you ever send lab work or anything else to the Asheville Community Hospital.”
The woman looked at him for a moment. “If there’s something that needs to be done for a student we simply
