The Cold Room

by J. T. Ellison

  He looked at her then, right into her eyes, and kept eye contact as he slammed both his hands down onto the burning flat of the skillet. He screamed, bloodcurdling, but never looked away. She could tell he was going to faint, there was no way anyone could withstand that kind of pain. His face red and sweating, his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed. The skillet still smoked with burning flesh; when he landed he was very close to it and his shirt caught on fire.

  “Aqua, aqua,” Folarni was yelling, but Memphis had already grabbed an open bottle of wine and dumped it on the man’s shirt. It splashed out the fire, spread across the white fabric like a bloodstain, growing until it dribbled off the edges.

  “What in the hell are they doing?” Memphis asked.

  Baldwin holstered his weapon, leaned back against the cracked plaster wall.

  “Christ. They were burning off their fingerprints so we won’t be able to tell them apart.”

  Forlarni was cursing, rummaging through the bundle of rags that held the dead girl. He opened the wrapping, whispered a prayer over her body and crossed himself.

  The brothers had collapsed against the far wall, unconscious, though one of them was beginning to stir. Taylor resisted the urge to kick him in the groin. The smell in the room was terrible, the sour reek of fear coupled with urine and burnt meat, the underlying note of decomposition. The girl had been dead for some time, one of Folarni’s men estimated that she was at least a few days gone. They were doing their best to find out who she was.

  The brother who was stirring opened his eyes. It was the one who was already burned and unconscious when they arrived. He took in the scene, looking at them under hooded eyes.

  His hands were mangled. Skin dangled from the edges like leaves falling from a winter dead tree. He was white-faced, obviously in great pain. He looked at Taylor, swiveled his head to the right and saw his brother passed out next to him, his shirt red from the wine.

  He turned back to Taylor and stared at her.

  Then he started to laugh.

  The scene was starting to wrap up, the Italians efficient and capable. They’d transported the brothers, dealt with the dead body, and were conducting a thorough forensics search throughout the house and the surrounding grounds. Tommaso’s car had been located; a veritable treasure trove of evidence. Taylor watched the carabinieri officers, wishing there was more that she could do to help, then contented herself with making some notes for her report. She couldn’t help but smile to herself; they’d just scored a massive coup. Two serial killers, two continents, four jurisdictions, countless lives affected. If this didn’t put her back into the good graces of her administration, she didn’t know what would.

  Memphis and Baldwin were off in a corner, talking about something. Memphis glanced over at her. His blue eyes were dark and dangerous, and she felt that crazy pull in her gut. She wondered what they were talking about, but dismissed it. There were more important things to worry about, like getting this investigation closed. Capturing their suspects was going to be just the beginning.

  Baldwin and Memphis finished their discussion. Baldwin shot a glance her way then went outside. Memphis casually walked over to her. She nodded at him, not wanting to encourage him too much. For once, Memphis had something else on his mind.

  “Good job, Miss Jackson,” he said softly. “We wouldn’t have caught them without your insights.”

  She accepted the compliment gracefully. “It was a team effort. We all played a part.”

  “Well said. Unfortunately, it looks like our time here is drawing to a close. I’ve been called back to London. I’m supposed to leave late tonight, but I’m stalling for more time.”

  “Oh. Well, we can handle the rest of this, no problem. The investigation is just starting, really. There’s so much to do, especially with the extradition. We’re going to be up to our ears for a while.”

  “I am well aware of that,” he said, eyes flashing in anger.

  “Hey, don’t get pissed at me. It’s not my fault.”

  “I’m not pissed at you. I have several open cases that need attention. The powers that be want briefings.” He touched her arm briefly, made her meet his eyes. “And I think it might be a good idea to go home.”

  She understood exactly what he was talking about.

  “Yes. I think so, too.” She cleared her throat. “We can funnel information to you as it comes. Don’t worry.”

  “Thank you. I believe I’m in need of some fresh air,” Memphis said. He left the cottage; the void was palpable and left her wondering what she really felt toward him.

  She needed to get Memphis out of her head. She needed to focus on this case, on getting back home, getting her career back on track, on getting married. And the best way she knew to do that, was work.

  Tuesday

  Forty-Five

  It seemed unreal that they’d been in Italy for just two days. Taylor felt like she’d been here for at least a month.

  At least she had one worry out of her hair. With Memphis being called back to New Scotland Yard, the tension level would dip dramatically. The Macellaio case complete for the time being, his superiors weren’t willing to continue footing the bill, not when he had other cases to wrap up. She didn’t mind taking on the extra work. Distance from Highsmythe would be a blessed thing.

  The brothers had been transported to the hospital of Santa Maria Nouva, were being treated for second-degree burns on their fingers and palms. It was a crude attempt to erase their identities, but not enough for a permanent solution. The burns were severe, but they would heal without grafts. A third-degree burn might have worked, but the only real way to completely abrade their fingertips would be concentrated acid or plastic surgery. And even then, the result would leave them with a unique impression that could be identified from here on out.

  Taylor knew what they were trying to do. It made a sick kind of sense. The police couldn’t tell the twins apart from their DNA, but they would have easily been able to discern who was who from their fingerprints. No fingerprints, no way to tell the two apart, and no way the governments of either country could separate them until they discovered who was who.

  Thankfully, the police were smarter than the twins.

  She and Baldwin were congregated in the hallway outside the brothers’ room. The carabinieri had seen no reason why the brothers shouldn’t be housed together; space was at a premium in this hospital, and they were handcuffed to the railings of their beds. Their doctor, an elegantly coiffed ebony-haired woman with a Sicilian accent, gave her assessment in crisp English.

  “Their fingertips will heal eventually. The burning is severe, but only what we call second degree. There will be extensive scarring, but they have not permanently eradicated their fingerprints. Patient A is the worse of the two. It looks like his hands were held on the skillet for a longer period of time than Patient B. His burns are slightly more severe, and as such we’ve scheduled him for a debridement in the morning to remove the remainder of the dead flesh. Patient B does not require quite this level of treatment.”

  “How long will it be until they are healed enough for us to try?” Baldwin asked.

  “I cannot judge how long, nor how well the healing will be. Their palms were abraded entirely, the burns are more severe in the center of the hands. Dio mio, to place one’s hands on a burning fire, I cannot imagine who could want to tolerate such pain. They are sedated, but conscious, if you need to speak to them. They want to know about a cat.”

  “That must be Gavin,” Taylor said. “Which one asked?”

  “They both did. On an eye signal, they spoke in unison. They both simply said cat.”

  Clever boys.

  They thanked the doctor, who nodded, shook their hands and went on her rounds.

  “You ready to rattle their cages?” Baldwin asked.

  “You bet.”

  Taylor opened the door to the twins’ room. They were lying quietly in their beds, side by side, each facing the other. They were st
aring at each other so intently, the longing so concentrated that Taylor felt like they were communicating telepathically.

  The sameness of their faces was eerie. Taylor had known identical twins in the past—she’d worked a case that centered around identical twin girls just last year—but Tommaso and Gavin were different. More alike. She knew it was a psychological response, the concept of the two being raised apart and still finding themselves on a psychotic path was mind-boggling. Identical twin necrophiliacs. This was one for the medical journals.

  Neither man acknowledged their entrance. She knew Baldwin was itching to interview them, so she stepped aside and let him talk first.

  “My name is Dr. John Baldwin,” he began. Neither twin turned to him, though Taylor could see that the one in the bed they’d labeled A flinched a bit. So they didn’t like doctors. Add to that the current situation; their pain must be tremendous. Interesting.

  Baldwin continued. “I’m with the FBI. This is my colleague, Detective Jackson, from the Metro Nashville Police.”

  She watched for a tell, but neither man gave any indication that they knew, or cared, about Tennessee.

  “You’ve been placed under arrest by the Italian judiciary, who have named you both indagato. Essentially, you’ve been indicted on the charge of murder. You will stand trial, most certainly be convicted. Italy isn’t fond of Il Macellaio. In addition, we will be separating you as soon as we finish this interview. And I’ll let you know, on the record, that while Italy does not have the death penalty, the United States most surely does. One of you will be extradited, and under federal law the United States has the right to seek the death penalty against you.”

  Still nothing. No word, no movement from either bed.

  Baldwin took a small plastic chair and set it between the beds, at their feet. He settled into the chair and smiled pleasantly. “You may think that you’ve tricked us by obscuring your fingerprints. You were wrong. We know who each of you are.”

  He turned to the man in bed A. “Gavin.” He looked to his right, to bed B. “Tommaso.”

  “Ha,” the twin in bed B said. “See, you are already making incorrect assumptions. You have no way of identifying either one of us.”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong. You may have thought you were clever, but we’ve seen much better. Your dental records are being flown here as we speak. The dentists at the 31st Dental Squadron at Aviano have kept detailed records on all of their patients. One call to the archives and they were able to locate the records of Thomas Fielding.”

  Taylor spoke for the first time, addressing the man in bed A. “And Gavin, Dr. Simpson from Manchester was very disappointed to hear that we needed your radiographs. He also kept meticulous records. He already told us to look for very slight lower anterior crowding. Thomas had braces when he was a teenager. Your foster parents wouldn’t spring for it, decided you were just fine as is.”

  At the mention of foster parents, the man in bed A squirmed. They already knew it was Gavin, knew he was the man passed out when they arrived at the cottage. That his brother had held his hands to the face of the skillet for a fraction longer than necessary, like a child maliciously pulling off the wings of a fly to see what would happen.

  Baldwin finished their assessment. “And Thomas, we know about the amalgam fillings. The military was a bit behind the times when it came to dentistry, they weren’t concerned with the aesthetic, cosmetic advances being made in private practice. While all the boys your age, including Gavin here, had their teeth filled with tooth-colored resin composite, you were still receiving the amalgams. Identical twins don’t have identical dentition, and environmental factors further indicate differences. So you burned yourselves, put yourselves through all this pain, for nothing. Gavin, you’ll be returning to the States with us. Thomas, the Italians have a cell with your name on it.”

  Baldwin stood. Taylor was impressed; she knew what restraint it took not to try to wrestle every ounce of information out of them at once.

  The twin they knew was Gavin started to cry.

  Taylor spent the next hour on the phone with Julia Page, going through every permutation for extraditing Gavin back to Nashville.

  The judiciary in Italy wasn’t keen on the death penalty, and as such wouldn’t extradite either of the brothers to a country that would charge them with death. And they had themselves a lovely little conundrum, one they hadn’t told the brothers about. There was a massive limitation to using the dental records. The radiographs could prove only one thing—the identity of each of the twins.

  But there was no way to definitively tie Gavin to the Tennessee murders and Tommaso to the Italian and British murders without a bite-mark match. Neither man had bitten his victims, and as such, it was inside the realm of possibility that the twin they knew as Tommaso had actually been in Tennessee, and the twin they knew as Gavin could have been in Italy. At least enough to force reasonable doubt into the jury’s minds.

  Without knowing who was who, they couldn’t charge either brother with the separate murders. They knew Tommaso was responsible for the Italian murders and the murders in London, and Gavin was responsible for all the stateside murders. But knowing and proving in a court of law were two entirely different beasts. A good defense lawyer would blow the case to pieces with this simple fact. It was going to take hours of investigation to link every piece of circumstantial evidence to each individual’s crimes.

  Once Taylor wrapped things up with Julia, she chewed on the end of a pencil and thought about the situation. She wondered just how much the twins knew about the various ways their identities could be revealed. The plan to eradicate their fingerprints was simple, but ingenious. Taylor wondered which one had thought it up. Probably Tommaso, he of the more sophisticated and pronounced killing methods.

  There was going to be a delay while all the details were sorted out. Which meant they had some time to themselves while the Italians, the U.S. and British Embassies, the Met, the FBI and Metro Nashville sorted through the mess. This situation was above all of their pay grades.

  She needed sustenance. She found Baldwin, who was on the phone to Pietra Dunmore, making sure she listed all the forensics they had so the cases could start moving forward. He hung up the phone, ran his hands through his hair.

  “I’m whipped. Let’s go grab a drink and head back to the hotel.”

  “Sounds good.” He retrieved his jacket from the chair back, shrugged into it. She ran her hand up the smooth linen. Too bad they couldn’t stay here, run away from all their troubles.

  The walk back took five minutes—the beauty of Florence was its intimate size, and they quickly passed through the Strozzi Palace courtyard to Colle Berreto.

  Memphis sat at a table, an untouched glass of wine to hand.

  Taylor had that instance of annoyance coupled with attraction. She tamped it down, looked at Baldwin. “Should we join him?”

  “Of course. He must be killing time before he leaves for the airport.”

  They crossed the piazza and greeted Memphis.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  They did, ordered espressos and tiramisu.

  Memphis had been on his very best behavior for the past several hours. Taylor kept waiting for that to end. She knew they had unfinished business, that she needed to talk to him about the kiss. But he was supposed to be going back to London, and she didn’t see that she was going to have the opportunity. The crime scene in the Tuscan hills just hadn’t felt like the right place. Too much obsession already in evidence there.

  Baldwin’s phone rang and he looked at the caller ID. He excused himself and answered. “Garrett, hey. How are things back in D.C.?”

  Taylor watched him listen for a moment, brows furrowing briefly. He excused himself, and walked across the piazza.

  “What’s that about?” Memphis asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh. I bet I know.”

  She turned to him. “What?”

  “Well, things have chang
ed a bit. I’m not going back to London right away.”

  She felt the first edges of skepticism start to build. She should have known it was too good to be true, that she’d been granted a reprieve from Memphis’s searing glances.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It had been in the works for some time, though I was planning on declining. I’ve been offered a position. At Quantico.”

  It took her a moment for that to register. “What?” she asked.

  “I’ve been offered a position—”

  “I heard you. What position?”

  “The BAU terrorism team. Special Liaison to the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard. I’ve taken quite a shine to the place, you see. Thought it might be fun, so I agreed to come on board. That’s probably why your chap is pacing around over there. He doesn’t like me much.”

  “Neither do I,” she said.

  He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Yes, you do. And this will mean I’m that much closer to you.”

  “Oh, don’t even think about it. I have been exceptionally clear with you. I. Am. Not. Interested.”

  “Then why did you kiss me?”

  “I didn’t, you asshole. You kissed me.”

  “You kissed me back.” He caught her eye. “And you enjoyed it.”

  Jesus, talking to him was like fighting with a five-year-old. I know you are, but what am I? I know you are, but what am I? Infinity.

  “No, I didn’t. And I would really appreciate you just letting the whole incident go. I’m willing to forget that it ever happened. Okay?”

  “Absolutely, darling. For now.” He reached across the table and touched her hand, gently. She jerked it away.

  “Get home safe, Memphis. Please, do us both a favor and don’t be in touch.”

  She ignored him when he said, “Taylor,” and left him at the table. Let him get the damn bill this time. She didn’t look back as she joined Baldwin, who was turning off his phone.