Free ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS BOOK 1 by J.T. Ellison Page A

though each one was as implausible as the next. Satan worship seemed to be Grimes’s favorite. He finally stopped talking and the car went silent, each man lost in his own thoughts.
    They arrived within an hour. Miraculously, the traffic had been relatively light through downtown Atlanta, and they branched off onto I-75, finding the exit for Adairsville easily. Grimes shot the car off the exit, and as they drove west toward the center of town, he pointed out the crime scene. Not that Baldwin could have missed it. Media vans lined the right side of the divided highway, a makeshift tent lean-to the focus of all their cameras. Baldwin shook his head at the media trucks. They may have been able to contain the stories in Alabama and Louisiana, but it didn’t look like they were going to be able to do that anymore. He started mapping out a strategy to use the media for their own purposes. Grimes dropped Baldwin in front of a small, anonymous office building, promising to return as soon as he’d arranged a place for them to stay. Baldwin understood, not many people wanted to attend an autopsy. A young man who looked to be barely out of his teens met him in the lobby of the building. Introducing himself as Arie, he showed Baldwin to the autopsy suite. Arie handed him a gown and gloves, then took a seat on a stool next to the table, a notebook in hand. Baldwin took the last few steps into the room and saw the dead girl. Shauna Lyn Davidson had not gone gently into that good night.
    Her body was stretched out on a stainless-steel slab, her head cradled in a hard plastic U. She had bruises on her face, on her body. A large chunk of hair was missing from the right side of her head. Her nose was misshapen, a lip split. All the signs pointed to a struggle. Shauna had been badly beaten, a departure from the previous murders. He had a brief second of wonder—a different MO could mean a different killer. Normally, Baldwin would look to the hands to see what kind of shape they were in. In this case, all he saw were bloodied stumps. Definitely the same suspect. The coroner was a jovial man, at least ten years past retirement age. His face was red from exertion, his hair white and straggly, his pants two sizes too small for his waist. He didn’t look like he missed too many meals. He stripped off a glove and stuck out his hand. Baldwin took it, surprised at the strength of his handshake.
    “I’m Doc Allen. Sorry you had to come all this way. We’re ready to do the examination if you are. Already started, actually, just waiting on you to cut. All set?
    Good. Arie, you’ll transcribe?”
    The spotty boy nodded in response. It was time to do homage to the dead.
    Autopsies were Baldwin’s least favorite activity. But he stuck it out, listening with half an ear to Doc Allen prattle on. Only every third or fourth sentence had something to do with the body he was working on.
    “So, I hear you’re from up Tennessee way. Like it up there? I had a visit once, saw the Grand Ole Opry, oh, lookie there, hyoid’s fractured. Strong hands to do that. Anyway, went to the Opry, saw that Marty Stuart guy. Didn’t have any idea how little bitty he was, doesn’t surprise me though. Lots of these folks are shorter in person. Definite saw marks on the ulna and radius, I’m thinking a straight-edged blade, maybe even a scalpel. Disarticulated right above the radiocarpal joint. So we went to this place called the Loveless Café…”
    Baldwin tuned him out. He needed the background information on Shauna. Try to piece together a reason that she’d become the Strangler’s fourth victim. Doc Allen was finishing up now. Shauna’s brain had been removed, ready to be fixed in formalin. The cause of death was apparent. The beating she’d taken was pretty bad, but she had been strangled so severely that her hyoid bone had snapped in two. That took a great deal of pressure to do. Baldwin imagined the killer, angry, excited, pressing harder and harder while