All The Pretty Girls Quotes

“Sam grinned. “Probably an acrotomophiliac. You know, less is more.” Taylor wrinkled her brow. “What the hell does that mean? It doesn’t sound good.” “Means he’s sexually attracted to amputees.”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Happiness wasn’t a luxury she’d thought she could afford.”
― J.T. Ellison, All the Pretty Girls

“Careful to make no noise, Taylor slid from behind the cover of the trees, Baldwin right on her heels. She could already hear sobbing, pleading and the strong voice of the man who’d claimed eight lives. “Quit”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Yes, she cosseted Reese while Whitney shunned him. She tried, as she got older, to make up for some of the things she’d neglected to help him with in his past. That’s why she took him in when their parents died. She could be his mother now, not that he’d be allowed to see that. She made sure he ate well, got to school, paid for his college education as well as medical school. Reese had gotten his own share of the inheritance, but she didn’t want him to be troubled with the financials. He didn’t need her coddling anymore. He was all man now. A”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Taylor went in search of something cool to drink. She came back with a bottle of Evian water she’d found in the cavernous refrigerator. Quinn was looking better but she gave her the water anyway, eyeing her like she was a bomb about to go off. Taylor hated that kind of weakness, the notion of it made her nervous. Quinn”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Hey, you two. When do I get my car back? I need some transportation, you know.” Taylor rounded on him. “You’ll get it back when we’re finished with it, Mr. Buckley. There is a great deal of evidence in that car, and we need to process it. You’ll get a call in a few weeks, I’d assume.” “A few weeks? Jesus, lady, you don’t have the right—” Taylor pointed a finger at him. “I have all the right in the world. I’m conducting an investigation, in case you’ve forgotten. A dead girl was found in your car, Mr. Buckley. How about a little respect for her, huh?” She turned away from him, furious. What a complete asshole, she heard from her shoulder. She stifled a laugh. Baldwin had spoken so only she could hear, but it took all her wherewithal not to giggle. She agreed completely. They”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Evil took many faces, many of them benign. It just wasn’t always apparent. Lincoln”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Whatcha up to?” Baldwin lounged in her doorway, drinking in her beauty. She should look frazzled and tired, it was the middle of the night, they’d been working for so many hours Baldwin had lost count. But she sat serenely at her desk, eyes wide and clear, looking like she’d just gotten up from a refreshing twelve hours in the bed. Except for the black eye. It gave her a rakish air. He briefly imagined her in his bed and smiled. She caught the look and laughed, closing the file in front of her. “Lincoln”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Her voice was sharp, loud, and Buckley flinched away from her, shaking his head, a low keening sound escaping his throat. “No, no, no, no, NO! No, I didn’t do any of those things. I didn’t, I swear it! I may be a jerk, but I’m not a killer. I didn’t kill anyone. Christ, you have to listen to me. Lawyer. I want my lawyer. Right now!” he roared, eyes white with panic. Taylor”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“She knew there was no way Jake Buckley had killed all those girls. Jake may be many things, a poltroon, an adulterer, a bad husband, yes, he was all of those. But he was not a killer, and when she got the phone call from John Baldwin at the FBI she had readily agreed to have him come out and sit with her, to talk about some of the details about Jake Buckley that he had not been able to ascertain. Maybe she was just lonely and needed to have someone sit with her, hold her hand and tell her they understood. She”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“All right then. I love you.” Baldwin waited for the love-you-bye response that Taylor always gave then hung up the phone. He’d have to scramble to come up with something great to make for her. The woman loved food, though her metabolism was filled with jet fuel. She could eat anything and never gain a pound. Baldwin”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Elle stood there a moment longer and realized her ephemeral lover was not going to profess true love and offer to sweep her off her feet and into his BMW-clad wheels. She stomped haughtily from the room and he breathed a sigh of relief. Oh well. She wasn’t the right type anyway. There would be others. In the meantime, he had time to catch a shower, load up the car, have a beer or two in the hotel bar, then make his way back to Nashville. *”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Standard protocol for a rape victim, wrap her up and make sure she didn’t contaminate the evidence, or lose any by changing before they got her to the hospital and took all the samples for the PERK, the physical evidence recovery kit. The”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Taylor crashed back through the woods with Lincoln and Marcus in tow. Her head was throbbing and she was having trouble seeing out of her right eye. She felt wonderful. Returning”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Taylor was lying on a warm, sunny beach, her long legs spread in front of her on a plastic chaise lounge. She shielded her eyes against the sun, watching the waves crest and break, tranquillity permeating her bones. There was no more to worry about. She was on a bona fide vacation with Baldwin at her side. She turned her head to take in his form, and instead was greeted by a sight that made her jump. Identical-twin midgets, both in blue double-breasted blazers and snowy-white ascots, stood at her right hand, leering. One held a silver tray with an old-fashioned rotary telephone. The phone rang, and Taylor shooed them away. “I’m”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“He leaned in close, ready to impart a great secret. Baldwin stayed put. “Buckley hardly knows what to do with a live woman. I can’t imagine he’d know what to do with a dead one.” Sherwood”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Just as she thought of him, Baldwin appeared in her doorway as if she’d conjured him up from the dark recesses of her mind. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw him. Taylor got out from behind the desk and gestured for him to come in and close the door. He did, and she put her arms around him, drawing him into a hug. Baldwin”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Mark but this Flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. Taylor recognized that one. John Donne, a poem known as “The Flea.” Easy enough, it had been a hit in high school. The whole sucking business had every guy in her English class beet red when their teacher, a comely young woman, had read the poem aloud. Well, Baldwin said the poems are some of the classics. Now they just needed to figure out what they meant to Whitney and the man who was sending them to her. Taylor pulled her cell phone out of its holster and dialed Baldwin’s number. She got his voice mail and left a message for him to call her as soon as he got the call. That was the best she could do for now. She carried the laptop out to her truck, then went back in to make sure she hadn’t left anything. Satisfied that she wouldn’t need to make another return trip, she left, locking the door behind her and placing the key under the mat, just as it had been that first day when she and Quinn had come over. “I”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“He dialed the number that Health Partners had listed in their contact information. A pleasant southern voice answered, but Baldwin quickly realized it was voice mail. Damn, he was hoping to get a secretary. The voice gave him the option of hitting zero to speak to a live person, and he did just that. Muzak drifted out from his earpiece and he rolled his eyes. There was just something so wrong about hearing synthesized Aerosmith. “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)” just didn’t work in the dulcet tones of elevator music. After”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Forensics had a field day in the motel room. It was obvious that Christy had been repeatedly stabbed, and that blood added to the cast-off spray from the arterial cuts in her wrists created a gory miasma for the techs to comb through. The room hadn’t been wiped down, so there were many fingerprints, almost too many to take exemplars from, considering the number of people who had been through that room. Baldwin assumed the killer was wearing gloves, they hadn’t gotten a fingerprint from any of the scenes that they could place him at. For”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“She was autodidactic, and when she mentioned that, most of the college kids didn’t even know what it meant.”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“I guess I have to cancel her subscription. I guess I’m going to have to do a lot of things around here.” Quinn gave her a small smile that didn’t make it all the way to her cool blue eyes. Taylor”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Have you been in the room?” “Ain’t but the one key. I tolds ya she didn’t bring it back this mornin’. What’s all this? Did Christina do somethin’ stupid, get herself in trouble with the law?” The leathery bald head and absence of teeth gave the man a shrunken look, as if a headhunter had stolen in during the night and worked his magic on the man’s head, shrinking it down to portable size. Baldwin was almost staring but stopped himself. “And”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“The man stared at him, belligerence creeping up in his eyes, then dampening down like he’d stepped into a cold mental shower. “Yuaa,”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Quinn gave her a warm smile that belied the master/servant nature of their relationship. “Gabrielle, possiamo avere due Coca Lights, per favore? Grazie.” Gabrielle”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“The drive for Quinn Buckley’s mansion appeared. She turned into the entranceway and came to a black wrought-iron gate with a small box standing at window level to her left. She opened the window and stuck her head out. “Taylor Jackson to see Mrs. Buckley, please.” There was no verbal acknowledgment, but after a few moments the massive gate creaked open. As Taylor maneuvered her car through the gates onto a narrow path, a deciduous forest swallowed her, beckoning and forbidding. The drive meandered through the woods for a few hundred feet. As she rounded a curve, the estate sprang into view. Even by Belle Meade standards, the property was massive. The plantation-style house was a white two-story washed-brick colonial with substantial columns forming a protected area that had been made into an elegant front porch. Four stone chimneys danced toward the sky. East and west wings abutted the main residence, and Taylor could see a separate five-car garage with a transom covered in ivy that led into the east wing. The west meandered into the woods, the architect finding natural beauty within his design. Black shutters blinked mournfully and the air seemed heavier as Taylor drove closer, as if the house itself was grieving. She”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“The Starbucks date she’d shared with Sam seemed like days ago, not just this morning. She’d managed to put aside all the emotions from her two-day roller-coaster ride during the afternoon, but seeing the Starbucks brought the news, or non-news, back in a flash. Talk about dodging a bullet. She”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“With implicit instructions to step up the pace of the investigation, Lincoln Ross and Marcus Wade were chasing down leads and rumors as fast as they came. The most important was interviewing the previous Rainman victim, the one who had intimated to Betsy that she knew who her attacker was. Lincoln”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“He strangle her before or after he cut her up?” “There was some clotting in the knife slashes on her face, so I’d have to say it was perimortem.”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls

“Do you have anything from the geographic profile yet?” “No, it hasn’t finished running. I was looking at the map myself, I think you’re onto something. Problem with this software is it takes at least eight points to be accurate. So whatever it coughs out is going to be incomplete at best. I’d plan on working without it.” “Right.”
― J.T. Ellison, All The Pretty Girls