The Cold Room Read online

  Pinned. At least, that was the illusion. At first glance, it looked like the knife was all that held her in that position. Taylor shook her head; it had taken strength, or potent hatred, to shove the knife through the girl’s breastbone into the wood behind.

  Taylor ran her Maglite up and down the column, the concentrated beam reflecting off the nearly invisible wires that ran around the girl’s body to hold her suspended in midair. Clever. Some sort of fishing line held the body rigid against the wooden post. It cut into her flesh; the victim had been up on the post long enough that the grooves were deepening as the body’s early decomposition began.

  The girl’s shoulders were obviously dislocated. Her skin was ashen and flaky, her lips cracked. She was stripped of dignity, yet the pose felt almost…loving. Sorrow on her face, her mouth open in a scream, her eyes closed. Small mercies. Taylor hated when they stared.

  She’d read the scene right. It was going to be a very long night.

  Paula came to her side, fiddling with a small reporter’s notebook. “Sorry I had to miss dinner. And sorry to ruin your night, too, but I knew you needed to see this. There’s no ID. I can’t find a purse or anything. This place is clean. The neighbors say the owner is out of town.”

  “This isn’t her home?” Taylor asked, gesturing to the body.

  “No. One of the neighbors, Carol Parker, is house-sitting, feeding the cat, taking in the paper. Owner’s supposed to be gone all week. Parker came in, bustled around getting the cat fed and watered, then turned to leave and saw the body. She ran, of course. Called us. Swears up and down that she’s never seen the girl around. There’s a circle of glass cut out of the back door, the lock was turned. It’s been dusted, there were no usable prints. The blinds were closed, that’s why the neighbor didn’t see anything amiss. The alarm was disengaged too; the neighbor can’t remember if she turned it on yesterday or not. That cute M.E., Dr. Fox? He was here earlier and declared her. He said to bring her in; either he or Sam will post her first thing.”

  “Okay. I’d like to talk to the neighbor. Do you have her stashed close by?”

  “She’s at her place next door with a new patrol. God, they get younger every day. This one can’t be more than eighteen. We took the cat over there so it wouldn’t interrupt the scene. Last I saw the patrol was talking to it like it was a baby. Not far enough removed from his own childhood coddling, it seems.”

  Taylor smiled absently at Paula, then stepped back a few feet, taking in the full tableau. It was impressive, she’d give the killer that. Spiking the girl to the column like she was a butterfly trapped on a piece of cork was flashy, meant to shock. Meant to humiliate the victim.

  Taylor longed for the good old days, when getting called out to a homicide was straightforward—some kid had deuced another on a crack buy and gotten knifed, or a pimp had beaten one of his girls upside the head and cracked her skull. As pointless as those deaths seemed, they were driven by the basics, things she readily understood—greed, lust, drugs. Ever since Dr. John Baldwin, FBI profiler extraordinaire, entered her life, the kills had gotten more gruesome, more meaningful. More serial. Like the loonies had followed him to Nashville. And that thought scared her to death. She already had one killer who’d gotten away, a man calling himself the Pretender, who killed in her name. What was happening to her city?

  She pulled her phone from her pocket. There was no signal, so she stepped out onto the porch. Three bars, enough to make a call. She started to dial, felt McKenzie beside her. She hoped he wasn’t going to lurk at her elbow at every crime scene. Maybe he just needed some instruction. She closed the phone and turned to him.

  “Hey, man, do me a favor. Get them—”

  McKenzie shook his head, lips compressed, eyes darting over her shoulder and back to hers with a kind of wild frenzy. She read the signs. Someone was behind her.

  She turned and bumped into a small man with brown hair parted smartly on the right. It was thick and almost bushy, stood out from his head at the base of his neck and around his ears. Her first thought was toupee. He was older, easily in his sixties. She didn’t recognize him, which wasn’t too much of a surprise. Since the housecleaning brought about by Captain Norris and the chief, there were plenty of new and unfamiliar faces at crime scenes, in the hallways, the cafeteria. The crime-scene techs were all the same, but there’d been some serious shaking up done among the detective ranks.

  The little man looked up at her. She saw his mouth start to drop open, then he closed it, the back teeth snapping together.

  “You are?” he demanded.

  “Detective Taylor Jackson, Metro Homicide. And you?”

  “You have a problem with my setup, Detective?”

  My setup? Who was this guy?

  “I must have missed your name,” she said.

  “Lieutenant Mortimer T. Elm. You may call me Lieutenant Elm. I’m with the New Orleans police.”

  “What are the New Orleans police doing at a Nashville crime scene?”

  He looked confused for a moment, then said, “Who said anything about New Orleans? I’m with Metro Nashville.”

  Taylor stared at him for a second, then shrugged. “Lieutenant Elm. It’s nice to meet you. Yes, there’s a standard protocol when dealing with static crime scenes. We usually try to station the command post away from the primary scene in order to avoid contaminating the evidence that might be procured from the immediate vicinity.” She realized she sounded completely textbook and hated herself for a moment. But that’s what the demotion had done to her—forced her back into the realm of “there’s only one way to do things.” Great.

  His wave was dismissive. He had pudgy fingers, the nails bitten to the quick. Her stomach flopped. A man’s hands were the window to his soul. Lieutenant Elm’s looked tortured.

  “This is going to be just fine. The crime obviously took place inside the house, not outside. This makes it more convenient for everyone. There is a threat of rain. If we move quickly, the crime scene can be wrapped in an hour.”

  Taylor almost laughed aloud. Wrapping up a homicide in an hour. This guy was from Mars. Or Lilliput.

  When she didn’t immediately respond, he took a step back. He stared at her, his eyes slightly bulged, his jaw thrust forward. She was reminded of a frog. She spoke quietly.

  “I beg to differ, Lieutenant Elm. The external scene is just as important as the internal. We need to establish a point of entry, need to be looking for footprints, material the suspect may have discarded. It’s anything but okay to be on top of the crime like this.”

  “This is the way I want it!” he said, anger bubbling up in his eyes.

  She heard a hissing in her ear, felt a tug at her elbow.

  “He’s the new homicide lieutenant, Taylor. Our boss.” McKenzie’s whisper was frantic.

  Taylor had to put a hand over her mouth to keep from bursting out laughing. This, this, toad was her new boss? Elm was the new homicide lieutenant? Oh, this was going to be priceless.

  Elm’s tone changed, sharpened. “You’ll find that this setup is perfectly acceptable. I must deal with another matter. I trust you can handle this scene. I will deal with your insubordination in the morning.” Elm was smug, obviously thinking he’d defeated her. Well, she’d been bullied just about enough over the past month.

  “Insubordination? All I did was point out the obvious,” she said. The porch twittered, the officers who’d overheard amused at the expense of the new lieutenant, who was vibrating in his displeasure.

  Elm pointed a finger at her. “Do your job, Detective. I know how to do mine.” He stepped off the porch, walked off toward the gathering media. McKenzie appeared at her elbow again.

  “I tried to warn you.”

  Taylor caught the melodrama in his voice. A rabbit, scared and spooked, that’s what Just Renn was. She smiled at the younger man.

  “That, my friend, is a man who got up on the wrong side of the lily pad. Forget about it. I’ve had worse. Let’s run this puppy.”
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br />   Speaking of which…she flipped her cell back open and speed-dialed Baldwin.

  He answered with a happy, “Hey, gorgeous. My plane just landed. You on your way?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I’m on a call, and I think you’ll want to see this.”

  He groaned. “Where are you?”

  “Tell the driver 1400 Love Circle. You won’t be able to miss it. And hey, stay away from a short man with a bad rug.”

  “Do I even want to know?”

  “No. I’ll see you shortly.”

  She hung up, went back into the house. The victim was calling her, the scene, the case. She’d been drawn in, already fascinated. Dead girl pinned to a post, in someone else’s house. Classical music playing in the background. A message was being sent. By whom, and to whom? Taylor felt the intrigue slip in and grab her. She was going to be too busy to worry about all the changes, and that was a good thing.

  Back in the living room, she circled the body again, looked closer at the filament that held the girl’s arms, legs, torso and head in position. It was tied in little knots on the backside of the column. The killer had taken the time to staple the translucent fishing line into the wood to give it extra holding power. This was well thought out, planned in advance. It had taken time to get the girl up on the post. Which meant whoever committed this murder knew that the house was going to be empty, that he’d have a fertile, undisturbed playground. Either that, or they had another body to find, one belonging to the owner.

  Taylor stepped three feet back from the post, taking in the rest of the setting. The columns bisected the two rooms; there were crime-scene techs moving around, disturbing her view.

  “Hey, can everyone hold up for a minute? I’d like to get some shots here.”

  Long accustomed to Taylor being in charge, people moved out of her way.

  She fished her digital camera out of her jacket pocket, took a couple of pictures. Something felt strange, and she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe later, once she’d had time for her mind to process the scene, she’d be able to see what was out of place. Or Baldwin would.

  She turned the camera off. McKenzie appeared at her side, appropriately silenced by the gruesome visage in front of them. Paula took her flanking position and the three of them stood in a moment of peace, watching, reverent. The victim’s nudity was embarrassing McKenzie. Taylor could see him shifting his feet like a little boy out of the corner of her eye.

  She ignored him, stared again at the knife pinning the girl to the column. Tim Davis joined them.

  “We’re going to have a pissed-off home owner. I’m going to have to cut the post down, I think,” he said.

  “Why?” McKenzie asked, puzzled.

  “Because there’s no way to get that knife out of her without disturbing the wound tract.” Tim stepped closer to the body, put his thumb on the flat end of the knife handle, exerting pressure experimentally. It didn’t budge, didn’t shift slightly. “See, this thing is jammed all the way into the wood. We’ve gotta cut her down, take a whole section of column with us to the M.E.’s office. No other way to do it.”

  “Oh. Yeah, absolutely. Gotta cut it.” McKenzie was nodding like he’d thought of that himself.

  Taylor cracked her knuckles and circled the column again. “This thing must be ten feet tall. Think it’s load-bearing?” she asked Tim.

  He shook his head. “No. See the line at the top? It’s just decorative, glued then nailed into place. If it were one of the other two,” he gestured to each side of the body, “we’d be in trouble. This one is detached, for the most part. Won’t be too bad to replace.”

  “Okay, Tim, do what you need to do. Try to delay a few minutes for me, though. Baldwin is on his way. I’d like him to see this intact.”

  He nodded at her. “I’ll go get the saw.”

  Taylor stepped back and considered the victim again. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d seen this before. In addition to that, one very obvious incongruity screamed out at her.

  She turned to the patrol officer on her left. “I have a question for you, Paula.”

  “Shoot,” Paula said.

  Taylor pointed at the dead girl. “Where’s the blood?”

  Three

  John Baldwin decamped from the taxi ten minutes later. Perfect timing.

  Taylor glanced around but didn’t see Elm anywhere. She’d have to introduce him to Baldwin, and based on their brief exchange, she had no idea how he would feel about the FBI being at their scene. When she was the lieutenant, it was her call, and she was always willing to have a fresh set of eyes. Elm struck her as the type of cop who would get territorial. Well, she’d cross that bridge when she got to it.

  Taylor watched Baldwin walk up the drive, vivid green eyes taking in everything until they settled on hers. She wondered what he saw there, sometimes. He was a veteran of crime scenes, had been the lead profiler on hundreds of cases. He knew the score. Knew what kind of monsters lurked in her head. They lurked in his, too.

  Her mind was drawn away from the crime. She forgot how big he was when he was away. As tall as she was, she still had to look up at him. She loved that. In the dark, his black hair looked like midnight, his angled cheekbones highlighting his mouth with shadows. As he got closer, she could see he hadn’t shaved, the soft stubble growing back at an alarming rate. Hmm.

  He didn’t kiss her, though she wanted him to. It wasn’t professional—she knew that—but she hadn’t seen him in two weeks and she missed the feeling of him next to her. He did caress her arm, just above her wrist, and it burned as she walked him to the sign-in sheet, then into the house.

  “Make it quick,” she said quietly. “We need to get her body down so the techs can finish up in here. And the new lieutenant is around somewhere. He might kick up a fuss that you’ve come.”

  Baldwin nodded. He still hadn’t spoken, was simply processing. That’s what she liked about him. There was no extraneous bullshit, no posturing. Just an incessant curiosity about what made people do bad things. That was something they shared, a core desire to figure out the why behind the crimes.

  She escorted him over to the body, then stepped away and let him assess the scene.

  His lips were set in a tight, thin line, and she could see the dark circles under his eyes. He was exhausted. Working a case always did that to him. His job as the head of the Behavioral Analysis Unit, BAU Two, was to guide the various profilers who worked for him, and to give the various law enforcement entities requesting help a thorough rundown of what they were dealing with. Taylor knew that it went deeper for him. He wanted to do more than look at crime-scene photos and pump out a report. He liked to get in the field, to smell the scene, see the crime in situ. Well, she was giving him his heart’s desire with this one.

  Baldwin broke his verbal fast. “Where’s the blood?” he asked.

  Taylor smiled. “I said the same thing. There’s something else totally bizarre. There was a classical piece from Dvořák playing on the house’s intercom system.”

  “Really? Hmm.”

  “The owner of the house is allegedly out of town. There was a piece of glass cut out of the back door so our suspect could turn the lock. The next-door neighbor is caring for the cat—she came over and found the body. She couldn’t say if the music was on or off when she arrived—she wasn’t paying attention. We included the CD in the evidence gathering. The lack of blood, the music, the position of the body—I can’t help but think this is a ritual. That’s why I wanted you to see it.”

  He ignored her for a moment, moving back and forth between the wall and the column. He spoke absently. “The suspect could have been playing the music to cover any noise he might have been making. Taylor, step over here with me a second. Look at the wide view.”

  She went as far back as the house allowed, to the bay window on the west side of the kitchen. He went with her, standing quietly while she looked. She had taken a picture earlier from this angle, a wide shot of the room face-on to the bo
dy.

  “Okay. What am I missing?”

  “Look at the painting on the wall by the door, in the left upper quadrant, line-of-sight to the column.”

  That was it. The strange sense that something wasn’t right, the feeling that she was missing something. It was there in front of her the whole time.

  “Son of a bitch. She’s posed just like the painting. Who is that, Picasso?”

  “Yes. Demoiselles d’Avignon. The victim’s arms are up over her head, a perfect imitation of the center of the painting. And this was Picasso’s most famous piece from his African Period. Your victim is black. He’s accurately mirrored the painting. There’s no blood. But the race…”

  He drifted off.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Taylor, you don’t want to hear what I have to say. I’m having a hard time believing it myself.”

  “It’s too early to surmise that we might have a serial on our hands.”

  “It’s not that. Actually, it’s much worse.”

  “What then?”

  “I think you may have my serial on your hands.”

  Four

  Baldwin waited for Taylor’s mind to register what he’d told her. Hell, he needed it to register in his mind.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  He spoke quietly. “How much do you remember about a killer named II Macellaio?”

  “I don’t. Not that much. Only what you’ve told me. He’s a serial killer in Florence, Italy, has been working for a number of years. Doesn’t the name translate to ‘the Butcher’?”

  “Yes. II Macellaio has been around since 2000 or so. He’s ruthless, and he’s very, very good at what he does. He poses his victims to emulate famous paintings, leaves a postcard of the painting behind so we know exactly who he’s imitating. Of course, that’s after he tortures them. He keeps them alive as playthings for a while before he kills them. His earliest victims’ cause of death was actually starvation, though his latest were starved and strangled, like he got tired of waiting. He has sex with the bodies, a final farewell, before he stages the scenes. Until now, we’ve not had a lot of physical evidence to go by. Did you get a cause of death on your victim?”