The Cold Room

by J. T. Ellison

  “Ugh. Necrophilia?”

  “Worse, much, much worse. Necrosadism. II Macellaio’s pathology developed to the point where his fantasies about having sex with corpses wasn’t enough. He was driven to actually capture and kill women to act out his fantasies with. Very, very rare. Starvation is a cruel way to die. It’s somewhat passive-aggressive, actually, which is fascinating, considering he’s being driven by his desires to kill. I’m not entirely sure why he does it, though I’ve got some ideas. And looking at this girl, she’s certainly gone without nourishment for a while.”

  “Lovely. I’ll make sure Sam is aware of the background. The COD isn’t apparent but you’re right, she’s ridiculously skinny. Bones sticking out everywhere. Did you notice the knife went all the way through her chest and into the post?”

  “I did. You’ll have to—”

  “Cut it down. I know,” she interrupted, signaling to her crime-scene tech. The young man with solemn eyes Baldwin knew as Tim Davis nodded grimly and went to work with his hacksaw.

  Taylor was pacing in short bursts. Baldwin led her a few feet away so they could talk privately.

  “Baldwin, is it possible that II Macellaio has come here from Italy? And why? Nashville isn’t exactly on the beaten path of most world travelers. New York, Los Angeles, I can see. But us?”

  He scrubbed his hands through his hair to help him think, not caring that it would be standing on end. “Part of what I’ve been dealing with in Quantico is a report from London. The Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard have three murders that bear an eerie resemblance to the Florence cases. If I’m right, and II Macellaio went to London, it’s within the realm of possibility that he could come here.”

  “What would take a serial killer from Florence to London, and then to Nashville?”

  “You ask an excellent question. We had a break in the Florence case last week. Finally got some DNA. We’re waiting for it to clear the Interpol databases, see if they have a match, and it’s running through CODIS. I expect we’ll have the results back sometime tomorrow. You know how things shake out. We might get a name, we might be off on another wild-goose chase. If we get a name, I’ll probably have to head back up there.”

  CODIS. The wundertool. The combined DNA index system could match killings and killers. Baldwin sent a brief prayer of thanks out to Sir Alec Jeffreys for finding the DNA fingerprint that led them to this point. One day, there would be DNA on file for every criminal in every country, and there would be instantaneous matches.

  Taylor was appropriately intrigued. “That’s awesome, babe. How’d you get DNA after all these years?”

  “Long story or short?”

  She waved at the scene in front of them, Tim sawing away at the post, cursing in G-rated, first-class Southern style—dagnabit, almost had you, dadgumit, get back here—and he had to fight back a smile. She met his eyes and he could see the mirth bubbling in their stormy depths. She liked that Tim kid.

  “I’ve got time,” she said. “Tell me about your murders.”

  “That’s got to be one of the most romantic things I’ve heard you say.”

  “I knew there was a reason why you love me,” she whispered.

  “I do love you. Desperately,” he whispered back.

  He felt a hand on his arm. A short man, bristling with indignation, stared up at him.

  “Who is this, Detective?” the man snipped.

  Taylor made eyes at Baldwin for a second, then did the introductions.

  “Lieutenant Elm, this is Supervisory Special Agent John Baldwin, Unit Chief of the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico.”

  “And what, pray tell, is the FBI doing at my crime scene?” Elm’s face was turning red, a pot ready to boil over. Baldwin stuck out his hand to shake.

  “I was in the neighborhood and Detective Jackson suggested I take a look. This isn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill murder.”

  “I don’t remember inviting you, Mr. Baldwin.”

  “It’s Doctor, actually, sir. My apologies for the intrusion. But I must tell you that this looks like the work of an organized killer, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him strike again. I would be more than willing to sit down with you and give a profile.”

  “Profiling,” Elm spat. “Voodoo, mind-reading crap, if you ask me. I think we’ll be just fine without your help, Doctor. That is all.”

  Elm marched away from them. Baldwin glanced at Taylor. Her face was suffused with blood and she was biting her lip. He’d seen that look before; she was torn between laughing and cursing.

  “That’s your new lieutenant?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, this is going to be fun. At least he didn’t try to bodily remove me.”

  “That happens?” she asked.

  “You’d be surprised,” he said lightly. “Where were we?”

  “Florence, where I’d rather be right now.”

  He smiled at her. “Don’t try to distract me. It won’t work. Right. Three bodies ago, back in Florence in 2004, the carabinieri’s very sharp crime-scene technician found a hair with an intact skin tag in a puddle of water in the kitchen where the victim was found. It didn’t match her DNA. They put it in the system and kept it flagged, just in case. Last week, we got the call from the Met. They had a series of murders that they determined were serial, and asked for a consultation. When I looked at the crime-scene photos, I saw the signature of our Italian boy. But the beautiful thing is, the techs at the Met found an intact hair, too, this time curled in the back of their second victim’s throat.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yes. There were enough similarities between the cases that I insisted we test the two hairs’ DNA immediately. Two hairs in five years. We’re crossing our fingers that there’s a match between the two. If he’s committed any other crimes and is in the database, we might get a lead. Who knows? If the DNA matches, then at least I can confirm that he’s on the road. That’s what I’m waiting for.”

  “But how long does it take to starve a woman to death? It seems like the time frame is too short for this to be a part of the series.”

  “If you subscribe to the rules of three…three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. That’s not a perfect formula, but close enough. Deprived of water and food, a small woman could easily die within two weeks. Maybe less. The last London murder scene was over a month ago. He could have made it to the States, taken your victim, starved her, then posed her. It’s feasible. Any postcards around?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  Taylor was quiet. He could feel her thinking. After a moment, she spoke again.

  “See, there’s something else odd about this scene. I need to go do a ViCAP search. It wasn’t my case, wasn’t even in Nashville. It was south of us, in Manchester. But I remember reading something in the Law Enforcement Bulletin about an unsolved murder three years or so ago where classical music was playing when they arrived at the scene. Tonight, the CD player in the kitchen had that Dvořák piece playing on a continuous loop. Do you have any of that in your cases?”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “The owner of the house might have left it on accidentally. We pulled a palm print off of the casing, so we’ll see. I’m relatively certain that the body was transported from another scene. The lack of blood on the girl’s body and on the floor…she was killed elsewhere.”

  “Probably. There wouldn’t be a lot of blood in a starvation case anyway.”

  “There could have been two people involved, one to hold the body against the post and one to tie the fishing line around her body. It might be hard to control alone, but a strong man, starting at the victim’s feet, could have managed easily. The girl’s toes were two feet off the floor. He could have had her in a fireman’s carry, slumped over his shoulder, while he tied the line around her ankles.”

  “Or he might have looped the line around the bottom and tied it loosely, then inserted the dead girl’s legs into the loop. Tighten it down
, and voilà, there’s a base to start with. He could have slowly worked his way up the body.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “That’s how I would do it if it were just me.”

  Elm was in the kitchen now, imperiously bossing around the videographer, Keri McGee. Taylor cringed at the sound of his voice. Baldwin knew how hard this was for her—the past few weeks had taken their toll on both of them. Maybe a big, juicy case would be a welcome diversion, even if they were being overseen by Napoleon.

  He tried to draw her attention back to the victim. “Slamming the knife through the victim’s body with enough force to embed it that deeply into the wood was overkill. She’d been dead long before she had been placed on the post. There’s rigor leaving her jaw and some decent lividity on the edges of her legs.”

  Taylor’s focus returned immediately. “So she lay on her back at some point soon after death,” she said.

  “Did you notice the fishing line eating into her skin?”

  “Of course. There was also some petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes, but not so much that I’d automatically assume she’d been strangled. Hopefully Sam will have her in the morning for the autopsy. She’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  Baldwin took the hint gracefully. There was more work to be done, things that he wasn’t needed for. “Why don’t I go make some calls? Is there someplace…?”

  She handed him the keys to her pool car. “It’s the one right by Tim’s van. I’ll be with you as quickly as I can. Thank you for coming out.”

  He longed to kiss her, but simply nodded and left. The post was coming down as he walked past, the girl riding the wood, still solidly attached by the fishing line and the knife sunk deep into her chest. It looked like half a crucifixion. Nothing he’d forget for a long while.

  Taylor rubbed her eyes, forcing the itch of sleep away. It was two in the morning; the crime scene was winding down. Elm’s prediction that it would only take an hour was six hours off.

  Tim had successfully removed the body of the victim, still attached to a nearly seven-foot-long column of wood by the fishing line and the knife. It was a wild scene. Getting the dead girl in an appropriate horizontal plane so she could go into the body bag had been tricky, and they couldn’t close the bag all the way. Despite the victim’s low weight, the column was heavy. People on both ends of the post heaved and strained not to drop her, to preserve the evidence.

  After that, the rest of the evening had gone smoothly.

  Elm had vacated the house about an hour earlier, which was fine by her. She’d seen him talking to one of The Tennessean reporters who’d made an appearance, prayed he’d shown a modicum of discretion. Dan Franklin, the department’s spokesperson, had shown up and handled the media after that. Some of the news folks were still hanging around; nothing else had captured their attention. A quiet crime night in Nashville, which guaranteed this murder would make the morning news.

  Taylor had been avoiding the media all night, refusing to give a statement, leaving that to Franklin. She hadn’t forgiven them for their role in her demotion, for running with the allusions and innuendoes planted by a man out for revenge against her. For showing videos of her having sex with her old partner; tapes that were made without her knowledge or permission. Every time she thought about the humiliation she’d endured, having to watch herself on television…

  Stop it, Taylor. What’s done is done. They are the media. You were newsworthy. Leave it at that. It wasn’t personal. You’d investigate each and every one of them six ways to Sunday if you thought they’d done something illegal. Why should they be any different? Everyone needs to feed the family. Focus.

  She went back to her mental wrap-up of the crime scene. Footprints had been found in the woods behind the house, and cigarette butts, but they were far enough removed from the actual scene that Taylor was skeptical that they’d come from the killer. Every bit had been processed, of course, the techs putting together the molds, spraying the ground with Dust & Dirt Hardener, making impression casts of at least four different shoe prints. If they found a suspect, they could look for a match to test against the shoe impressions.

  There was still the issue of transport. The killer had gotten the body to the house somehow, but so far the canvas of the neighborhood had turned up nothing of use. No one had seen a car or van around the area that didn’t belong. Of course, considering how many people tooled around Love Circle for fun, she suspected the residents were inured to the sight of strange cars.

  There were tons of kids that roamed this area at night. They were usually harmless, looking for a quiet place to smoke some dope and drink, neck, and ponder the questions of the world. Not surprisingly, the regulars scattered when the police had driven up the hill, melting away into the night. They’d be back. Taylor would wait them out, talk to them another night. Maybe a stranger had noticed something.

  The odds that one of them was her suspect…well, she never assumed. She would wait for the results of the investigation, let the evidence be her guide.

  She’d talked to the neighbor, Carol Parker, had gone at her hard to make sure nothing was missed. The woman sat on her couch, hefty thighs encased in brown knit firmly pressed together, feet flat on the floor, her round face white. She held the Siamese cat from next door, stroking the fur obsessively as she relayed her actions during the past few days house-sitting. No, she hadn’t noticed any cars today, she’d been at work. No, she didn’t realize anything was amiss until after she’d fed the cat and turned to leave. No, she couldn’t remember if she’d heard music, but the owner usually left some sort of noise playing, a television or a radio, for the cat, so she wouldn’t have thought it strange. She thought she’d turned the alarm on when she left the previous day, but might have forgotten. No, she didn’t remember touching anything but the front door and the cat’s dish; she’d seen the body and run.

  Taylor went through her every move, then gave up after twenty minutes. The woman didn’t have anything that would be of use to them tonight. Maybe in the morning, when the shock of the evening wore off, she’d be able to recall anything that seemed out of place. She had given Taylor the name and cell phone number of the house’s owner. His name was Hugh Bangor, and Taylor left him a voice mail asking him to call her as soon as he received the message. Parker said he was in Los Angeles, but didn’t know where. If that were the case, it would certainly be tomorrow before he’d be able to come home.

  He was in for quite a reception—Taylor planned to interrogate him extensively. Though the neighbor was adamant that Bangor was a great, stand-up guy, it’s not every day that a dead body was arranged so artfully in your living room while you were conveniently out of town. He was certainly a suspect.

  Taylor wandered through the house one last time, assimilating the scene. A fine black film covered all available surfaces. The house had been dusted for prints and many exemplars had been taken, including the magnificent palm print on the CD player. She’d love to get lucky, to get the prints into the system and get a match tomorrow. The victim had been printed as well, and her exemplars would be inputted into the statewide iAFIS database to look for a match. The integrated automatic fingerprint identification system was strong and quick, and could give them an answer within minutes if a match was located.

  Taylor walked to the glass coffee table. Nothing unusual—coasters, an oversize art book on Spain and a catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s life work. She used the tip of her pen to spin the book around toward her. Baldwin had mentioned that postcards had been left at the Macellaio crime scenes, postcards of the painting the killer was imitating. Well, this monograph of Picasso’s work wasn’t a postcard, but it might be a good substitute. She bagged the book, just in case.

  Despite the confusion when she first arrived, Taylor was comfortable that the scene had been managed, that they hadn’t missed anything. She stopped in front of the now-ruined column, which looked like a freshly sawed mangrove root. She turned in a circle, then went to the door, closed it b
ehind her, and sealed the scene.

  Taylor walked out onto the porch. Simari had just left, Max sleeping peacefully in the back of the cruiser. Just Renn had packed it in, too, as had the rest of the crime-scene techs. All that was left was the occupied car of the patrol officer who would assure the scene wouldn’t be disturbed overnight by kids or vandals, and a Channel Four press van. Taylor was annoyed at their presence. Couldn’t they edit their package back at their little castle on Knob Hill? As if they’d heard her thoughts, the engine revved and the van slid away into the night.

  And Baldwin, of course, sleeping peacefully in the front seat of the unmarked. Poor guy, he was tired enough to crash in her car. She needed to get him home.

  It was a pleasant night. Morning. Whatever you called those dim predawn hours, the deepest part of the night. The woods were alive, crickets and cicadas competing for air time, the blackness of the night almost sultry. A calm had settled over Love Circle. The chaos had been replaced by nature’s serenity.

  Taylor took a deep breath, felt some tranquility slink into her shoulders. It was the evidence they hadn’t found that disturbed her. A knife through the heart should be a bloody mess. Taylor had talked briefly to Sam, who promised to handle the autopsy personally in the morning. Taylor wanted to witness, and wanted McKenzie to accompany her. He’d paled when she told him, but nodded stoically and promised to be there. This would be their first postmortem together, and Taylor wasn’t sure what to expect from him.

  Either way, it was time to go home. She stifled a yawn, waved to the patrol, and got into the car. Baldwin woke, smiled sleepily at her.

  “Sorry it took so long,” she whispered, then leaned over and kissed him. He kissed her back, hungry, and it took all of her control not to throw her arms around him and slide into the backseat. She disengaged herself, laughing. It had been too long.