Field of Graves(60)

“Yeah?...Hey, Fitz...Okay, route it through.” She turned to Sam. “Call came in for me. Some guy wants to talk to me and me alone. Won’t give his name. Oh, hello.” She listened to the other end of the phone, her eyes growing wide. “Can you... Damn, he hung up.”

“What the hell was that?”

“An anonymous call from someone who claims to have done a pregnancy test on Jill Gates. Six months ago.”

“Wait a minute. Jill Gates is pregnant?” Sam’s astonishment was catching.

Taylor nodded. “According to this guy, she was six months ago. He wouldn’t tell me anything else.”

“Taylor, if it’s true, and she didn’t abort or miscarry, Gates could be at least seven months pregnant, maybe more. With all the emphasis on babies with this freak, I think you may have a bigger problem.”

“What’s that, Sam? Spit it out?”

“At thirty-four weeks, that baby can live on its own. Sometimes earlier, if they’re lucky. Assuming all’s gone well, she’s twenty-eight weeks at a minimum, and could be as much as thirty-two, depending on how far along she was when she had the pregnancy test.”

Realization of what Sam was trying to tell her finally sank in. Taylor flipped open her phone and called back to Price’s office. No one picked up the phone. She hung up and dialed Baldwin’s cell. The voice mail came on almost immediately, and she left him a message that felt as desperate as it sounded.

“This body isn’t Jill Gates. She might still be alive, Baldwin. I think our killer is after her baby.”





49



Baldwin had been sitting in Price’s office for half an hour. He knew exactly what this conversation was going to be about and just wanted to get it over with. Yes, he was fine. Yes, he was interested in the case. No, he didn’t have any answers yet, only overblown theories.

His mind was chewing the tidbit of information Taylor had just passed along. The fact that the killer wasn’t the father of the child was of great importance to him. Though he didn’t know the motive behind Shelby’s killing, it was entirely possible that Jordan had been killed because of the pregnancy. It had been known to happen: a man being inordinately jealous of a woman who had cheated. The theory played into several aspects of her murder as well; Sam had told him that some of the stab wounds were postmortem. Baldwin could see the scenario easily. He gets mad, stabs her in the chest, kills her, then in a fit of rage goes out of control and thrusts the knife into her flesh viciously, punishing her over and over again. But why the aconite? And the herbs? Why such a huge difference between the murders of Jordan and Shelby? And, most important, where was Jill Gates, and who was the woman at the morgue?

“You’re losing your touch, man.” He looked around sheepishly to make sure no one had heard him, but the offices were deserted.

It was time for him to start making some leaps, maybe try to get a little faith in himself back. He pulled out his notebook and started trying to tie things together. He muttered aloud as he wrote.

“Gotta assume this is the same killer. There’s no way all of them are coincidences. Okay. So we have the same guy. He kills Jordan because she got pregnant with someone else’s child. It was definitely an intentional murder. But Shelby, maybe she was an accident. If he was having an affair with both of them, maybe Shelby found out about Jordan and confronted him, told him Jordan’s baby wasn’t his. Is he having an affair with Jill, too? Is this a close-knit group, and jealousy has crept in, or is this guy just a serial rapist who was close to being caught and had to shut the girls up?

“There’s a thought. Rapists do escalate; he could have graduated to murder. Shelby’s positioning could explain that. Maybe she was the first one he murdered and he felt so bad about it that he tried to treat her with respect. But no, it looked as if Jordan was killed first, and there was no respect there. Why poison Jordan if he was going to stab her? Did she fight back? Was he trying to give her the easy—yeah, ha, easy—death that Shelby was given, and she fought him? That could be...

“Step away from that for now. The victims at the church. What in the hell was that about? He kills a priest and another woman, using fire. The priest is easy to explain away, he could have just gotten in the way. But why take her to a church to kill her? We’ve got the church, the river, and the Parthenon. Church, river, Parthenon. God, this just doesn’t make any sense.

“What’s the most logical place to find this guy? All the girls are students at Vandy. Assuming the fire victim is as well, we’re up to four students, and a possible priest of opportunity. Gotta be someone connected to Vandy. And what is he trying to tell us? River, Parthenon, church. Catholic Church. Poison, stabbing, fire. Trial by fire? Cleansing by fire? Damn it, this is crazy.”

Baldwin slapped the notebook down on Price’s desk. An idea sparked, one so off the wall he almost immediately discarded it. No, there was something he was missing, something he wasn’t getting. The locations could be the key; granted, the murders were incredibly diverse, but if the guy was trying to send a message, he certainly had picked the right places to garner as much attention as possible. And there was something about Jordan’s pregnancy that was nagging at him. He stood up and stretched. He knew from experience that brainstorming, word association, throwing a jumble of thoughts together often forced an answer later on. Ideas were starting to form, but he needed to talk them out, run through them aloud with another person. Preferably Taylor. He sensed she was moving along the same lines as he was. He liked seeing how her mind worked.