The Cold Room

by J. T. Ellison

  “It was a bitch and a half getting her off that post. The knife was buried two inches into the wood. We documented the whole thing, video and stills. This will be a good teaching case. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something as bizarre.”

  Taylor nodded. “Good. That’s the kind of stuff A.D.A. Page loves. Helps for when we catch this guy and try his ass. Was the filament holding her up fishing line?”

  “I think so. Trace will tell us exactly what kind. If we’re lucky, maybe he’s some kind of famous bass aficionado and we’ll be able to track the line to his tackle box.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  Sam turned her mike back on and bent over her work. “The body is five foot one inches tall and weighs sixty-nine pounds. Body Mass Index is thirteen point four. The body is cachetic, with temporal wasting, prominent bone protrusions, concave abdomen. Pale oral mucosa, pale conjunctivae with some minor petechial hemorrhage. A vitreous fluid level is taken.”

  Taylor glanced at McKenzie, expecting him to freak, but he stood his ground and watched. Good. He was toughening up.

  Sam took the victim’s hand, pinched a fold of skin between her gloved thumb and forefinger and pulled gently. The skin tented and stayed that way. The silent attendant took a picture. She moved to Allegra’s abdomen and repeated the action. The results were the same.

  “Skin is ashy and has exceptionally poor turgor. No one can say this girl was just plain skinny. I’m seeing severe dehydration, for starters,” Sam said.

  Taylor nodded. “About that. Baldwin mentioned something last night. He’s been dealing with a serial case in Italy.”

  McKenzie brightened. “II Macellaio or II Mostro?”

  “How do you know about them?” Taylor asked.

  “Oh, I follow serial-killer cases. I find them fascinating.”

  Ha. McKenzie didn’t have a clue what it would be like to really follow a serial killer. He wouldn’t be nearly as enthusiastic.

  “II Macellaio. Tell me what you know,” she said.

  “Well,” McKenzie began, suddenly blushing at being the center of attention.

  She needed to train him away from that, and fast. The minute A.D.A. Page, who was cute as a button and fierce as a shark, got him on the stand, started asking him questions and he blushed, the jury would assume he was lying.

  “Relax,” she said. “I’m just curious, okay?”

  He continued to redden, though he nodded his head yes. “II Macellaio likes to have sex with dead girls,” he managed.

  “Ugh,” Sam said, but Taylor nodded her approval.

  “It’s actually a bit more complicated than that, McKenzie, but you’re right. He’s a necrosadist, a killer that murders in order to have sex with the dead victim. Very rare. And he poses his victims like famous paintings after he’s through with their bodies. Which is where I was going. Baldwin said several of the earlier cases’ COD was starvation, but II Macellaio moved on to strangulation. I guess he got tired of waiting for them to die.”

  Sam had moved on to the next phase of her exam, had the victim in stirrups and was between her legs taking samples. “Yo, we’ve got lubricant here. Starvation and necrophilia, huh? Sounds like a nice guy. If that’s the case for Ms. Johnson, and I can’t say one way or the other until I finish the post, he’d probably need some lube to get things in the right place, if you know what I mean.”

  “Why?” McKenzie asked.

  Sam kept working, but spoke over her shoulder to him. “When you’re severely dehydrated, all your fluids dry up. All of them. Your blood thickens, your blood pressure drops dramatically, you’d feel sluggish and unable to move around. With no nourishment at all, it wouldn’t take long to be dry as a chip. That’s why her skin is tenting, there’s no fluid in the body to help the skin return to its normal state. It would be a rough way to go. But here’s our pièce de résistance. Stuart, could you help me roll her? Gently, now.”

  It didn’t take much to get the girl over onto her face. Taylor saw the pattern on the girl’s back and sucked in her breath.

  Sam traced her finger along the girl’s back. “Yeah. Pretty wild, huh?”

  McKenzie cocked his head to the side. “Is this lividity?”

  Sam shook her head. “There’s a little bit of lividity, but this is more like prolonged exposure to whatever caused the pattern.”

  “Burns, maybe?” Taylor asked.

  “Nope. I think it was something she was on. For a while. It created massive indentations in the skin, and once she died, the lividity settled in. That’s the only reason we can still see it. She’s been dead for a few days, you see the level of decomp. Lividity would have passed by now.”

  Taylor looked at McKenzie. “What time did the neighbor call it in?”

  He consulted his notebook. “5:30 in the evening. Said there was no body when she came over in the morning.”

  The lab tech documented the scene, and Taylor moved closer to get a good look. Postmortem lividity was one of the most significant clues a cop had to determine whether a body had been moved or not. The girl’s entire back, including her arms and legs, was a dusky black, much darker than her skin, with perfectly round, equally spaced cocoa-colored circles every few inches along her body. The circles were only an inch or two in diameter, and were equidistant from one another. It wasn’t readily apparent at the scene, but her left arm had what looked like a seam down the outer edge, as if it were wedged against something sharp. This was past lividity, this was almost scarring.

  Taylor had never seen anything like it. “It’s like she has polka dots. What in the world would cause that?” she asked.

  “That’s something you’ll need to figure out. She was certainly on her back for an extended period of time when she was still alive, lying on something that had these holes.” Sam nodded to the tech and they rolled the girl over onto her back.

  “Why not on the back of her arms?” McKenzie asked.

  “Good question. She was shoved up against something, that’s what caused that line down her arm. Maybe they were crossed on her chest? I don’t know.”

  Taylor took a lap around the table, looking closer. The fishing line had cut into the girl’s flesh and the marks were clearly visible, concentric circles around her body. “So the knife to the chest was just massive overkill? That didn’t cause her death? What about the lack of blood?”

  “The knife acted like an anchor. It helped hold the body up. There wasn’t any blood to spill at that point; it was coagulated and her heart wasn’t pumping.”

  Taylor nodded. “Okay. I’m comfortable with the working theory that Love Circle was the secondary crime scene. There’s no way the neighbor would miss the body if it was already in the house. She seems like the type to open a few cabinets and drawers, if you know what I mean. So Allegra was killed elsewhere, then strung up on the post. But why would you do that in someone else’s house? I need to talk to the home owner. That’s just fishy as hell.”

  Sam moved toward the scalpel on the tray by her right hand. She used the blunt end to part the knife wound, pointing her finger at the meager layer of yellow just below the dermis. “This chick has zero subcutaneous fat. I mean it’s less than an eighth of an inch. Starvation would certainly do that. What else did Baldwin say about this Mach guy?”

  McKenzie perked up again. “II Macellaio. The Butcher. You say it like this—eel matcha lie o, emphasis on the matcha. Though why they call him that is lost on me. He doesn’t cut them up or anything.”

  Taylor gave the kid some points for getting the pronunciation correct.

  Sam was moving along. She opened the torso and McKenzie stared in fascination at the dead girl’s desiccated organs. “Are they supposed to be so gray?” he asked.

  “Honestly, no. And they’ve atrophied, which is why they look so shrunken.” Sam moved through her work, dissecting, observing, taking samples and making notes. She talked to McKenzie the whole time, explaining how starvation worked, that your system breaks down proteins, carbohy
drates and fat in different sequences, that the carbs are burned first, then the fat, then the proteins. When the body starts feeding itself on the protein, or muscle mass, death occurs. In someone so small, like Allegra, death would come quicker than a full-grown, nourished, healthy woman. Without water and sustenance, death could occur in as little as a week.

  Sam moved to the girl’s head and Taylor turned away, purposefully letting her mind wander as the Stryker saw buzzed to life. She went back to the crime scene. Why choose a house that isn’t your own? To send a message. To frame someone. To obscure your true meaning.

  “Brain is unremarkable,” Sam called out.

  “Wouldn’t the brain shrink up like the rest of the organs?” McKenzie asked.

  “You’d think so, but no. Our histology slides should look relatively normal, comparatively.”

  “What’s it like to starve to death?” McKenzie looked sad, and Taylor knew they had him. She’d been wondering what kind of detective he was going to be—blustery and sarcastic, deflecting the daily horror with sharp words, or compassionate and caring. A good detective needed to find the balance between reality and compassion. Overly involved and you burn out. Too cynical and you can’t relate to the victims and can’t find their killers. Finding the middle ground was something that couldn’t be taught, but the look on McKenzie’s face said everything. He was going to do just fine.

  Sam began wrapping up. “I need to get all the tox screens back, and look at the electrolytes and the other readings. But if she did starve, it wouldn’t have been pleasant. Hunger pains are one thing, but without water, she’d lose blood volume, and her blood pressure would drop. Headaches, rapid heartbeat, constant fatigue. Toward the end, muscle spasms and delirium. She would have been exceptionally sluggish, and dizzy. She wouldn’t be in much of a position to fight back. T, I’ll run everything, see if I can find any biologicals to test, but the body is pretty clean. Like she’d been washed, clean. Who knows, we might get lucky.”

  Sam nodded at McKenzie and went to wash up. Taylor tapped him on the arm and said, “Let’s get out of here. You did good. I need you to track down her particulars, find out an address, see if there’s anyone to do a notification to. Then call the chaplain, we have to have him with us. Let’s grab something to eat and get our ducks in a row. Meet me at Rippy’s?”

  “Okay. I’ll see you there.” McKenzie left the autopsy suite dutifully, lost in thought. Taylor wondered what he was thinking.

  Sam called out, “Hey, I’ll get the lube tested first thing and call you later.”

  Taylor waved at her. “Thanks. Maybe that will tell us something about who this killer really is.”

  Ten

  “Oh, fack off and die, why don’t you?”

  Detective Inspector James Highsmythe threw the phone down onto his desk. Another person who wasn’t all that thrilled to hear from him, and another dead end. He’d been chasing down the murders of three of London’s finer professional citizens, and was getting exactly nowhere. Calling up the known clientele of a lady of the night didn’t exactly endear him, letting them know he was calling from the Met meant an immediate diatribe of invectives, about him, his mother, his education and his dog, in that order.

  Well, there was nothing to be done for it. The consultation with the chap from Quantico was scheduled for three o’clock tomorrow, which meant his sorry arse needed to be at Heathrow sharpish. He’d been laboring under the illusion that he could solve the case and avoid the transatlantic flight, but that wasn’t meant to be.

  Nashville. He’d been through there once, as a child. His mother was an Elvis fan, and on a summer holiday his parents had taken him to Memphis to see Graceland. They had stopped in Nashville for a night, visited the Bluebird Café to hear John Hiatt sing. When he performed “Riding with the King,” Memphis remembered his dear mamma tearing up. He was too young to understand then, but he had an appreciation for the irony now. And of course, the visit had launched his nickname. He had fond memories of the state of Tennessee.

  He wondered if the Bluebird was still open. Well, maybe he would find time to do a quick bit of sightseeing.

  His door opened a crack, and a winning smile appeared in the darkness, a veritable Cheshire cat grin. Pen, his assigned DC on the case. She was a freshly minted detective constable, and he had high hopes for her. Adorable girl. Brown hair, soft as a wren’s feather, firm body, compact and tight. Pert nose and a wicked tongue. Too bad she batted for the other team.

  “Memphis, you need to leave. Now. Only a half-wit would try to get out of London during rush hour and it’s already past five. There were no direct flights, but we found one that has a single stop. You’ll be in before midnight. I’ve alerted the Nashville Police that you’ll be stepping on their patch.”

  “Wonderful. Be a darling and see if you can rustle me up some wheels, would you?”

  Pen pushed her way into the office, the door swinging open and crashing into the wall behind. They both winced.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get maintenance to sort it out while you’re gone. The car’s been waiting downstairs for the last half an hour. Just promise me you’ll come back? Don’t get seduced by America. I don’t think I have it in me to take on a replacement—not now I’ve got you so nicely house-trained.”

  “Penelope, I promise you. I’ll be back. The deepest darkest corners of the earth couldn’t keep me from your side for long.”

  “Jesus, Memphis. Do you have to call me that?” She helped him into his coat, settling it on his shoulders. “My mum was bad enough.”

  “I beg your forgiveness. I just like to see you all wound up.” He raised his eyebrows into what most women would interpret as an erotic leer, shed their clothes and present themselves to him. Pen simply shrugged.

  “Oh, get off with you, then. Safe travels. Don’t get pissed on the plane.”

  “And me the Queen’s representative? You must be joking, darling.” He grabbed his bag from the top of Pen’s desk. “Cheerio.”

  The ride to Heathrow was blessed quiet. The driver was his favorite kind, silent, nodding his head in time to some invisible beat. He debated shuffling through his papers, decided against it. He knew the files back and forth already. Going through them again, looking at the crime-scene photos, the posing, the bones jutting out from the girl’s bodies, the blackened bruises across their necks, well, those images lived in his brain already.

  Security was its usual pain in the arse, the government paperwork in his bag only lessening the grief slightly. No honor among thieves anymore, what with the terror situation so wholly out of control. He made it through unscathed and settled in with a Glenfiddich at the first-class lounge. When his flight was called, he went to the gate and boarded with the first-class passengers. His seat was luxurious and the attendant handed him a glass of champagne with an inviting smile.

  “Anything else I can do for you, sir?” she asked.

  He met her eyes and saw the blatant invitation in them. He wondered for a moment exactly what she could do for him, then simply smiled and said, “No. Thanks.”

  She winked at him, then went back to the other seated passengers.

  A mustachioed man in a black-and-white sailor shirt who looked suspiciously like an overweight gondolier shoved him a bit as he walked past down the aisle, and said, “Oi!” as if Memphis was at fault. Tamping down his annoyance, he distracted himself with the flight attendant, who was shooting smoldering glances over her shoulder at him. The mile-high club with a stranger, eh? The idea of it was probably much more exciting than the reality. Not like he’d really do that. Not now. Not after…well, that was no matter.

  His mind was no longer there. It was lost in time, remembering a sweet smile, blond hair tickling his chest, and the fragrant scent of citrus. Damn, he missed her.

  Eleven

  Back in the Caprice, Taylor accessed her voice mail. The department secretary had left her a message—Hugh Bangor, the owner of the house on Love Circle, was on his way back to Nash
ville on a red-eye from Los Angeles. He would be met at the plane and waiting back at the CJC within an hour. The message was left forty-five minutes earlier, which meant Bangor was already there, or close to it.

  Damn. She was hungry. It was past noon. She speed-dialed McKenzie and told him to grab the sandwiches and bring them back to the homicide offices.

  Flexibility. One of the most important components to being a cop. You needed to be willing to strike when the iron was hot. Self-deprivation was second nature.

  She made it downtown in ten minutes flat. The supercharged engine had obligingly launched itself down the street; the drive left her feeling a little frisky. Despite the fact that Elm might be in the office, she felt good. It was always helpful to have information, to know what you were dealing with. She’d drawn a psycho, someone who’d most likely starved a woman to death, someone who may have a number of murders under his belt, but at least they had something to go on.

  Allegra Johnson’s presentation fascinated her. What could she have been lying on that made her back and legs look like a spotted cow? Taylor ran through some of the possibilities then discarded them immediately. Who knew? They’d have to find the primary crime scene, then they’d have a chance at figuring out that piece of the puzzle.

  She made her way to the homicide offices and stopped at her desk. A Post-it was stuck to her phone—Bangor, Inter. 1. She grabbed the note and balled it up. Her desk phone rang, but she ignored it. Her mind was already getting into the interview with Bangor.

  She stopped at the whiteboard, erased her earlier status and marked that she was in the conference room. This level of accountability was going to drive her mad.

  The walk to the interrogation room was short. She stopped at the soda machine and grabbed two Diet Cokes. Her cell rang, and she juggled the cans trying to get it out of her pocket. She didn’t recognize the caller ID, but answered anyway.