Lieutenant Taylor Jackson Collection, Volume 2

by J. T. Ellison

  Taylor looked at him. “Are you assuming they were brought up in some sort of environment that made them this way?”

  “I can’t assume anything, not until we find out who they really are. The background on Gavin Adler shows he was adopted. We’re trying to track down by whom. Hopefully, that will give us the name of the other brother. It’s going to be fascinating to see what their young lives were like. I’m telling you, Taylor, no matter what kind of environment a child is brought up in, there is a reasonable expectation that they’ll understand what’s right and what’s wrong, that they will receive the tools to form a positive moral compass. Serial killers aren’t made. They choose to be killers, they choose to take lives. A hidden desire for necrophilia is something that’s probably not learned. Of course, that’s another completely misunderstood pathology. Did you know that necrophilia is really just the desire to have sex with an unresisting partner, and the vast majority of necrophiliacs are stunted in the fantasy stage? Very few actually act on their desires, and when they do, they seek out role-playing partners who are willing to pretend with them. They’re looking for compliant sex, completely submissive. Some of the more disturbed ones will drug their prey—like roofies. Classic necro behavior.”

  “You’re saying that men who give roofies to women and rape them are actually necrophiliacs?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. They want power and control, and they don’t want to be told no. You should see the Web sites out there dedicated to this. They have what they call ‘Sleepy Sex,’ arranged for partners who are willing to be photographed during the role play, then share them.”

  “That’s…disturbing. The thought of an undercurrent of men and women who are into this…well, everyone has their kink. From the instant messages it seems Adler didn’t know Tommaso was his brother until yesterday. Do you think Tommaso and Gavin met through one of these sites?”

  “I don’t know. Here’s the problem, though. Our boys have moved on to something much more sinister. They are actually killing to have sex with the dead bodies. They are a highly evolved version of the classic necrophiliac. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a background that includes working at or near a morgue, or in the funeral business. As it is, they’re well beyond anything I’ve seen before. And the art, the painting? Leaving the postcards at the scenes? Think about it.”

  She did. “Oh…Static women, posed and at the ready.”

  “Exactly.”

  He settled back in the seat, took her hand. “I’ll tell you one thing, Adler is panicked. You know when a suspect goes off his beaten path, does something that isn’t in his normal routine, he messes up. Our boy has messed up, royally. We’re going to catch him now, and we’re going to catch his brother, too. There are a lot of people in Italy who will sleep easier once we have II Macellaio off the streets.”

  “Should we be calling them I Macellai now, instead?” she asked.

  “The Butchers. Plural. Yes, I guess we should.”

  “He left his cat behind.”

  “Adler?”

  “Yes. McKenzie is going to foster it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him no, animal control might have destroyed the poor thing. But guess what the cat’s name is.”

  “What?”

  “Art.”

  Baldwin just shook his head. “That’s just too much. Adler’s an artist of sorts. He’s listed as the designer on the Picasso monograph. We’re looking into anything that’s got a copyright with his name near it. Any idea where he worked?”

  “No. McKenzie is handling that part back in Nashville. But now that I know all of this, I can have McKenzie look deeper. It didn’t seem like he worked out of the house. Granted, once we get into his computer all the way, we can find out all of this.”

  “It’s like Son of Sam.”

  “Huh?”

  “Remember, he got caught because of a parking ticket. Adler got caught because one of your patrol officers was sharp enough to spot that he was acting weird.”

  “He wasn’t wearing his safety belt. Such a stupid little mistake. But we’d have found him anyway. I think that’s what made him run, getting pulled over. I think he would have stuck it out with Kendra Kelley otherwise, and we might have actually gotten our hands on him in the act.”

  “How is the Kelley girl?”

  “She’ll live. She’d been drugged, they had to pump her full of Narcan to stop the overdose. I don’t know what kind of emotional scars she might have. He glued the eyes of his last victim open. Imagine, being locked in a Plexiglas box, able to see your killer, feeling your life draining away inch by inch. You can imagine where he may go next. We saved her from a nasty fate.”

  “We’re here,” Baldwin said.

  Taylor looked out the window. They were parked in front of a restaurant called the Globe and Laurel. It was nearly 10:00 p.m. Taylor was starving, her mouth watering at the mere thought of sustenance. Baldwin heard her stomach growl, looked sheepishly at her. “Everyone’s already here. Thought we might eat before we worked.”

  “That, my dear, sounds wonderful.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The table ordered a round, and Wills Appleby suggested Memphis try the lager. Memphis had drunk beer at university, one of those things you do to fit in with the boys, but he’d never truly enjoyed it. He didn’t have the heart to mention he’d much rather have a nice glass of cabernet.

  The waitress brought their drinks and he took a sip of the lager. There was a surprise. He had to admit, it wasn’t too bad. His cell rang, and he saw it was Pen calling. He put the phone to his ear, had just greeted her when Taylor Jackson walked into the room. His breath caught in his throat.

  She was smiling, shaking hands, her full lips moving as she moved about the table greeting the team. She shook his in acknowledgment, and then she was gone, being introduced to that infernally tall Kevin Salt, who Memphis liked despite the fact that he had to look up at him. He had to look up to Baldwin, as well. But he and Taylor were exactly eye to eye. He couldn’t help but think what that would mean if they were horizontal.

  “Memphis? Memphis!”

  “Oh, Pen, sorry. Sorry. Got distracted for a moment.”

  “A bit of skirt wandered by, no doubt.”

  “You could say that. So, where were we?”

  Pen had been feverishly tracing down the latest London movements of the man called Tommaso. He listened to her rant with half an ear—so far no one could recall renting to the artist; they were combing the hotels for his name. There were inquiries being made at the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Saatchi, the Tate Modern, the Tate Britain, anywhere the man might have been working. The witness had fallen through. It would take a little bit of time, she was saying. Just a bit more time.

  “Okay then, Pen. Call me when you have something.”

  He hung up, turned back to his lager and his soup. To the woman who took his breath away.

  The females on the team were greeting the Nashville interloper with good grace. The power had shifted in the room—the boss’s woman was there, and she was a force to be reckoned with. Both Charlaine Shultz and Pietra Dunmore were being deferential. Wills Appleby greeted her like an old friend, kisses on both cheeks—of course they’d know one another. Memphis had picked up on the closeness between Baldwin and Wills; they were two peas in a pod. Great minds, drawn together, with a long history. He had chums like that. Too bad they weren’t here, maybe he wouldn’t feel so fucking out of place.

  He scooped a chunk of cheese from his soup. Everyone settled back into their seats, and the conversation became hushed. Now, if he could just turn off his senses, they’d all be better off.

  *

  Taylor ordered a Leatherhead Lager and a well-done filet. Memphis was stealing glances at her, as if determining if he’d stepped over the line in Nashville.

  She shook it off. Stare away, poncy boy. If she didn’t reciprocate, he’d get bored by her soon enough. Though the thought of him flirting with someone
else made a bloom of heat tear through her chest. She took in the restaurant’s decor to distract herself. The floor was covered in a tartan plaid carpet, the rooms stocked to the gills with every imaginable piece of Marine and law enforcement memorabilia. The walls were covered in military items, the ceiling a swath of donated shoulder patches from every conceivable police agency. The restaurant was named the Globe and Laurel instead of the Marine traditional Globe and Anchor to symbolize the inclusion of the entire international brotherhood of Marines. She liked that. She also realized that the only women in the whole restaurant, outside of a waitress, were at her table. Interesting.

  Baldwin pushed his salad plate away. “Taylor, when we’re done here, Kevin’s going to take the laptop, see what he can find.”

  “I’ll take it now, if that’s okay,” Salt said.

  “Of course.” She handed it to him. “Password is DOLLS, all uppercase.”

  He went to work immediately, balancing the laptop on his knees, tapping the keyboard at a frenetic pace.

  “Taylor, why don’t you run through what you found for the rest of the team?” Baldwin was smiling at her. Encouraging.

  “Of course.” She wasn’t prepared, didn’t have any kind of presentation to give. She just laid out her actions, covering everything from the initial murder at Hugh Bangor’s house to the victims from Radnor Lake, Manchester and Chattanooga, then went on to Gavin Adler’s home in Nashville. How they put together clue after clue to find their killer. They listened, rapt, until she finished.

  “Word is Kendra Kelley will live. That’s the last that I know.”

  Charlaine shook her head. “Wow. That’s a hell of an investigation in such a short period of time. Kudos, Detective.”

  Taylor nodded her thanks. “We don’t have them yet.”

  “I’ve got something, though,” Kevin interjected. “The message board was accessed through a number of different servers. It’s going to take me some more time to back trace exactly where—this guy isn’t stupid. He’s covering his tracks, sending packets through multiple servers. But they all originated in central Italy. There’s also another member of the private message board, call sign Necro. I’ve tracked him to someplace in the Caribbean. He doesn’t talk to IlMorte69, who is Tommaso, only to Gavin Adler. His screen name is hot4cold, by the way. Classy guy. Any idea who Necro might be?”

  Taylor met Baldwin’s eyes. “It couldn’t be.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  Memphis sat forward in his chair. “Do you mind sharing with the rest of the class?”

  Baldwin nodded imperceptibly. Taylor said, “Last month, we had a run-in with a copycat killer in Nashville. He calls himself the Pretender, and he got away. One of my detectives, Peter Fitzgerald, phoned me from Barbados, said he thought he’d seen him down there. If he’s been communicating with Gavin Adler, it’s entirely possible that he’s Necro.”

  “Which means we have more murders to look for, if he’s really copycatting Adler,” Baldwin added.

  “Do you have any idea where they might have met?” Memphis asked.

  She shook her head. “Seriously, I’ve had this information for a few hours at best. We don’t know if it’s him. It’s all speculation at this point.”

  Pietra chimed in. “Detective, the DNA samples you sent up all match. I assume there will be more coming from today’s scene, and I’m still waiting for the sequencing to finish on the samples from Leslie Horne. But it all looks good so far.”

  Salt unfolded himself, holding the laptop to his chest as if it was gold. “Okay. I’ll keep working on it. See if I can’t track the IP address closer to its origins. Will you excuse me? Charlaine, I need your help, too. We’ll grab our meals to go.” He loped away from the table. Charlaine excused herself and followed.

  The rest of the meal arrived, the steak perfectly done, and they ate with gusto. But there was a sense of urgency not caused by hunger—they were all ready to get back to work.

  “Okay,” Baldwin said. “Wills, now that we know Tommaso and Gavin are working together, what do you think our next moves should be?”

  Memphis jumped in. “We need to find out why the Adler boy was adopted, see what his real name is. Look for the parents. If we can find that, we might have a shot at the real name of our Tommaso.”

  “That’s a good plan,” Wills said.

  “But adoption records…that will take weeks to sort through.” Taylor was getting jumpy. “I think we need to get ourselves over there and track them down on foot.”

  Baldwin nodded. “I don’t disagree. The carabinieri’s on that, right now. But Memphis is right, our first step needs to be finding the adoption records. We need real names.”

  Memphis finished his steak and went to work on his beer, watching Taylor openly. He set down his empty pint glass and flicked a lazy hand through his hair. “Then let’s go back to your offices. I think I know just the place to start.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Thomas Fielding, also known as Tommaso, also known as IlMorte69, licked his lips.

  This moment had been in the works for years. As he bustled around his flat, dusting his paintings, picking up items he’d collected over time, examining them, putting them down, his heart was racing. His brother. His baby brother. Granted, only by two minutes. But his baby brother was going to be here at any moment. Tommaso couldn’t wait.

  He’d lived in Italy nearly all his life. His parents, his adoptive parents, were both in the military. His dad was an airplane mechanic, his mother a medic. They were wonderful parents. When his father had been transferred to Aviano Air Base in western Italy, above Venice, his mother had been very excited. They brought Thomas to Italy, enrolled him in a local school so he could learn the language, and embraced the Italian version of his name, Tommaso. Dad was a brilliant part of the 31st Fighter Wing, keeping the planes in repair, and Mom spent her days in the hospital. Which meant that after school, Tommaso would be dropped off at the E.R. entrance and would wend his way through the hospital corridors to find his mother.

  He didn’t see his first dead body in the hospital morgue. It was his second. His first dead body was his biological mother.

  But he didn’t want to think about that now.

  He and his brother’s paths were destined to cross. This was sooner than he anticipated, but that was fine. Va bene.

  Gavin was going to be here any minute. Gavino. His little brother. In Italian, he was the White Hawk. Tommaso couldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait to see him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The four of them rode back to Quantico in silence. After about ten minutes, the driver stopped at a guard station. The car was checked, their credentials verified, then they were cleared. The parade grounds looked vaguely familiar, though Taylor knew she was probably ascribing a mental picture from a variety of movies and pictures and Baldwin’s many descriptions.

  The car stopped in front of a low office building, about four stories high.

  “I thought you labored underground,” she said.

  “You watch too much TV. We haven’t been underground for several years. They’ve uncaged us.”

  Wills and Memphis walked ahead, giving Baldwin a moment to squeeze her hand. He leaned in close. “We’re gonna get them. I am so impressed with all you’ve done. We wouldn’t be half as close to catching them without all your work,” he whispered.

  “Thank you. I’m just ready to catch them.”

  Within five minutes they were settled back in the conference room. Taylor didn’t have time to assimilate much, but that didn’t matter. Baldwin could give her the tour once they had the case solved.

  “So, Memphis. Where do we start?” Baldwin asked.

  The Brit slid back in his chair, crossed his arms across his chest. “I studied anthropology at Oxford. We did all sorts of analysis about identical twins. I’ll wager that if one was adopted, the other was as well. And I recall an article in one of my courses about an adoption agency that was being shut d
own for unscrupulous practices. One here in America, in New York. They were separating identical twins. Highly unethical.”

  Baldwin felt a jolt of recognition. He remembered that; he’d had a case study in law school about the ethics of the situation.

  “I know what you’re talking about. I just can’t remember—”

  “Oh, I can. Louise Wise. My mother’s name is Louisa, so it rather stuck with me.”

  “Louise Wise Services. That’s exactly it. Nicely done.”

  Baldwin looked at the man in appreciation. That was the best suggestion he’d heard all day.

  Wills said, “We have a birthday for one of them, Gavin Adler. September 14, 1980. If that’s accurate, it could be the date to start looking at the New York adoption records. But this is such a long shot. Who knows if they were even born in New York? Who knows if that date is even right?”

  “It’s a shot, though,” Memphis said.

  Baldwin stared the younger man in the eye. “Okay,” Baldwin said finally. “Let’s go find them.”

  *

  They were set up, assembly line, she and Baldwin and Memphis and Wills. She was searching the live births, handing them off to Memphis, who cross-referenced the adoption records with the hospital records. Baldwin was making calls to every name he could find in association with the now-defunct Louise Wise Services, and handing off possibles to Wills.

  She’d been combing through online records for an hour, searching for births in New York between 1979 and 1981 with more than one living child. It was laborious, painstaking work. She had to do a new query for every set of male twins she came across. Every time she hit a multiple birth, she noted the record and gave it to Memphis.

  Having to use the computer was a blessing and a curse. They could cross-reference more quickly, but Taylor’s wrist was getting sore. Kevin Salt had set them up with access into the New York files. She didn’t want to ask how.

  It was hard to know if they were missing anything, either. Reading on the screen wasn’t her forte. Give her hard copies any day.