Kitabı oku: «The Cold Room», sayfa 5

Seven

Gavin had a new voice mail when he returned to his studio this beautiful sunny morning. He listened to it before he shed the messenger bag slung around his shoulders. It was from the primary on his latest job. Her name was Wilhelmina, and she paid well for his services.

“Gavin, the new photos are in. Would you look at them and see what fits the Frist exhibit catalog requirements? The deadline is Tuesday, and we certainly don’t want to be late. Oh, and thank you.”

The thank-you was an afterthought. Wasn’t that always the way?

He set his breakfast—a whole-grain bagel with organic peanut butter and a ripe banana—on his desk and started his computer. The messenger bag went on the chair next to his desk, the one covered in industrial orange-and-brown tweed. All he could afford at the time he bought it, he was pleasantly surprised to see it was more handsome than it looked online. His desk was made of solid oak, a plank, thick and sturdy, across two sawhorses. His chair—sleek, ergonomic black leather—was his prize. He could drop the arms when he needed to work at the drafting table in the corner, under the plate-glass window that overlooked the brick of the building next door.

The computer took exactly three minutes to boot up. He took the time to nibble on the banana and look at the stains of pigeon shit on the exterior ledge above his window. Amazing how they landed in such interesting shapes. It was the velocity from their flight, he knew, but still. He wondered if Jackson Pollock had been inspired by something so simple, so organic. But even an artist of his caliber couldn’t reproduce that randomness.

A chime let him know his computer was booted and ready. He quickly located the e-mail from the Strozzi Palace museum in Florence. He read the brief message, the English broken but passable.

Enclosed please find pictures requested by you for the exhibit to start 11 June.

Grazie mille.

He clicked Download All and waited, watching his screen fill with shot after shot of gorgeous pictures. The Strozzi was a beautiful building, a former palace, home to the noble Strozzi family—sworn enemies of the Medicis. It was a geographical square block of stone and columns and open courtyard. He dreamed of going there one day. To see Italy, walk among the history, the beauty, gaze for hours upon the priceless artwork …

He couldn’t help himself. He gazed at the Strozzi pictures, strolling through time, reveling in the detail, living through the luscious artistry of the photographer. The short angles, the presentation, the perfect balance of light to show off the art were masterful. The paintings breathed colors into his screen; the sculptures so visceral that it seemed the edge of a bicep or the length of a thigh could be stroked, the flesh alive under the finger.

The photographer on this shoot was truly superb. Gavin couldn’t have done better himself. He played a game with himself. There were only three museum collection photographers he knew who were this talented.

If he were to guess. Gavin went through the photos again slowly, deliberately ignoring the line at the very bottom of the page that would give him the answer. The edging was unique, the angles for the light dramatic. It had to be the work of Tommaso.

That was his only name. Tommaso was reputed to be a difficult man to work with, but one of the most brilliant still photographers in the industry. A rock star in the art world.

Gavin snuck a look. He was right. The pictures were by Tommaso. A bloom of happiness spread throughout his stomach. He knew his stuff, that was for sure.

He shot a message back to Wilhelmina, acknowledging he’d received the photos and would have the catalog press-ready by the deadline. Then he started the laborious process of designing.

Gavin enjoyed his job. He was a freelance graphic designer by trade, and often did work for the printers in downtown Nashville. He did contract work for ad agencies, for sports teams, for all of the cultural corporations of Nashville. But the art photos were his true love.

His studio was off Broadway, way off Broadway, in a small storefront that butted up against the alley for a Thai restaurant. The scent of cumin and rotting cabbage was just bearable. As was the price of the shop. He couldn’t work for someone directly. It was better this way.

His desired vocation was photography, but he’d found it difficult to make a living with his camera. He had skills, but his eye was no match for someone like Tommaso. So he’d started his pre-press business, typesetting catalogs and developing Web sites. His work was sought after, and he quickly rose to prominence. He was known as the quirky designer who wouldn’t talk to clients, only took orders online, didn’t return phone calls but sent plenty of e-mails and never, ever missed a deadline. He didn’t like to talk to people if he could avoid it. There was no point. He just didn’t have that much to say. He couldn’t relate. To be honest, there was very little that couldn’t be expressed in an e-mail.

He was good at his job, and people recognized his talents. In a few short years, he had developed a wonderful niche that made him money and allowed him to revel in art. He typeset museum catalogs. He had started small and worked his way in through a side job designing museum Web sites. Once he was established, he did exhibition catalogs and permanent collection catalogs from all over the country. A couple of years ago, he’d gotten big enough to branch into catalogue raisonnés, the monographs detailing the life’s work of a particular artist. He’d done a lovely job with a Picasso monograph last year, and was bidding to do several more.

That reminded him, he needed to look at the status for the Millais. He scanned his e-mail, but there was nothing from the Tate Britain Gallery in London. Damn. John Everett Millais was one of his favorites, he wanted to win that job.

Nothing to worry about. His current job for Wilhelmina was a dream come true. At the moment, the Frist Center had arranged for a once-in-a-lifetime exhibit. A number of paintings from one of the art capitals of the world, Florence, Italy, were going to come to Nashville, and Gavin had been hired to do the catalogs. Which meant oodles of stunningly beautiful pictures from three of the most famous art galleries in the world, the Uffizi Gallery, the Pitti Palace and the Strozzi.

He forced his attention back to the Strozzi pictures, and started in. It didn’t take long to see that one of the photographs hadn’t downloaded properly. Gavin felt it was divine intervention. He could send an e-mail to Wilhelmina, ask her to contact the photographer and ask for him to resend the shot. Or … Gavin felt his heart beat just a bit harder. Why not? He’d always been an admirer of Tommaso, there was no reason why he couldn’t contact him directly. Was there? Granted, the man was exceedingly private—to the point where he refused any interview that wanted a photograph of him. Gavin wondered if he were disfigured in some way. He could understand the desire to let your work speak for you.

Never one to make a move without thinking it through thoroughly first, Gavin sat back in his chair. If he contacted Tommaso, there would be the slightest chance of mentioning his own work. It might open a few more doors; God knew the Italian worked everywhere. Tommaso’s reputation was well-known all over the world. It might give Gavin a chance to explore past Nashville. They could become friends.

He came back down to earth with a sigh. Like that would ever happen. His friends were all dungeon masters.

But before he lost his nerve, he filled out the contact information on the e-mail and sent a quick note to Tommaso’s address.

Dear Tommaso,

I’m a great admirer of your work.

The catalog photographs from the Strozzi collection are utterly superb. Unfortunately, JPEG 10334 did not come through properly. Would you please resend the original shot?

Thank you so much.

G. Adler

Gavin hit send and sat back, breathing deeply. Should he have said Ciao? Or would that have been stupid? What had come over him? Was it too late? Could he undo the e-mail? What was he thinking?

He ran his hands across his scalp, vaguely noting that his hair was growing back. He’d have to shave again soon. No, there was nothing to be done about the e-mail now. As his mother always said, “Don’t do something you might regret, Gavin.” He didn’t really regret it. Chances were someone as big as Tommaso had an assistant who looked at the e-mail, and the message hadn’t come from him directly, anyway.

He forced the action from his mind, vowing to think about it no more. The rest of the photos were fine, he could work around the missing image for now.

He worked quietly, humming under his breath on occasion, placing photos here and there, getting the most pleasing backgrounds, choosing a variety of accent colors and washes, until he felt comfortable that his settings would showcase the photographs perfectly. This was another nice thing about working for yourself—you could spend an afternoon in contemplation of what shades really did show off the Strozzi paintings, keeping in mind the art that might be coming in from the Pitti and the Uffizi. It was a delicate balance. He was always struck by the fragility of the ancient art pieces. Combined with the robust options the computer provided—Old World Masters and cutting-edge technologies made beautiful bedfellows.

All the information for each painting had to correspond and fit onto the pages of the catalogs: its history, dates and provenance, the artist’s background, the artist’s influences, who donated the cash to allow the loan to take place, every conceivable trivia tidbit was sandwiched into the pages. Small public relations kits needed to be made, and special upgraded catalogs designed for the “Friends of the Frist” to take home from the private opening. And then the catalogs would be reproduced for the Web sites and the gallery showings.

There was plenty of work to be done. Plenty to keep his mind occupied, away from the joy that awaited him at home. That was Gavin’s greatest talent. He could focus. Put away one facet of his being to explore another. He’d been compartmentalizing for years.

Eight

Being a member of the Behavioral Analysis Unit meant being on call 24/7, so when Baldwin was working an actual case, there were few breaks and many sleepless nights. Part of it was the nature of the job, but it was also his fault. He couldn’t turn it off. Couldn’t walk away. And that was dangerous. He thought he’d been successful in pulling away a bit over the past year, setting up a home and life in Nashville, only consulting on the biggest of cases. But lately, he found himself being dragged back in, bit by bit.

The problem was, he loved it. He hated the means that brought him the cases, despised what the men and women he hunted did, was constantly amazed at the depths of human cruelty. But as a student of psychology, finding out why some sociopaths choose to become serial killers had become his vocation. His art.

The call he’d been waiting for came at 9:10 a.m. He received the news, said thank you, and set the phone back in its cradle.

The phone call confirmed it. They had a match. The same man had killed in Florence and London. He paced the house, thinking. His mind was in overdrive. Il Macellaio, the Italian serial killer who’d been operating for ten years, had finally made a huge tactical mistake.

Baldwin was tired. So very tired, and so very jazzed. Now they had the confirmation that Il Macellaio had moved his hunting grounds to London three months prior. He’d claimed three victims, all slightly out of his usual victim profile. These were working girls. In Florence, he preyed on students, and he was careful to choose girls who would go unnoticed for a time if they disappeared. Mousy, shy girls who didn’t have a lot of friends.

At the beginning Baldwin assumed he flattered them, seduced them, got them to leave their lives and go home with him. He would hold them for weeks, slowly starving them, until they were so sluggish that fighting him wasn’t an option. Once they died, he had sex with their bodies, then washed them and left them posed, with a print of the painting he was mocking nearby.

Necrosadism wasn’t something he came across every day, though it did happen. The very act of murdering a woman to have sex with her corpse was an extreme variation of necrophilia, which many times was characterized more by fantasies of having sex with dead women than actually going through with it.

But there was something out there for every killer to devolve into, and Il Macellaio was a true necrosadist. He’d started by starving the girls, but quickly moved on to strangulation. Even then, in his later cases, the girls were given zero nourishment, no water at all, so they were weakened, couldn’t put up a fight.

Il Macellaio’s desire was playing havoc with his self-control. In his early days, he wasn’t rushed, was able to sate his needs with a kill a year. Now, he’d gotten a taste for dead flesh, and he hastened the deaths of his victims along so he could have more time with their bodies. It was good news, in a way. When a serial killer’s self-control slipped, you had a chance to catch him.

Baldwin turned back to the files on the table in front of him. The new murders in London, with the prostitutes as victims, shook him. Geographically, serial killers tend to stay in certain areas. To jump countries, well, that was a huge step.

If he had actually crossed to America as well, they’d catch him. Baldwin flipped through the pictures from the Nashville crime scene. So very familiar. The posing, the emaciated body. The one huge difference between the London and Florence killings and this possible American murder was the race of the victim.

All the overseas victims were white. This one was black. And that was enough to give Baldwin serious pause. For a sophisticated, organized serial, a well-defined signature can evolve over time, getting more specific, more exact. Killing methods are perfected, the suspect learns from each crime scene. He figures out what works and what doesn’t, what turns him on and what doesn’t, and adapts. Just like any predator.

But killers didn’t usually start with one race then switch to another. If he’d been equal opportunity from the beginning … but Il Macellaio hadn’t. He’d exclusively killed white women. At least that they knew of.

Baldwin sighed deeply. He sent an e-mail to the Macellaio task force, asking them to pull any unsolved murders of young black women in Florence or London over the past fifteen years. The carabinieri kept meticulous records; the search shouldn’t take too long. The Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard were fully automated. They could have their answers by end of day tomorrow.

He was afraid of what those answers might be.

His phone rang, the caller ID showing a London exchange. They’d been faster than he expected.

“This is John Baldwin,” he answered.

A British voice, cultured and aristocratic, said, “Dr. Baldwin? Detective Inspector James Highsmythe, Metropolitan Police. Have you seen the results of the tests you ordered?”

“I have. Nice to meet you, Highsmythe. I’ve heard good things.”

“As have I, Dr. Baldwin. We have submitted a formal request for the FBI’s help in this matter. I trust you’ve seen it?”

“I have.”

“Then you will appreciate the nature of the request. My superiors are sending me to Quantico to give you a full briefing.”

“Detective Highsmythe—”

“Do call me Memphis.”

“Memphis. I’m in Nashville now, attending to a murder that looks eerily similar to Il Macellaio. Perhaps you’d like to join me here, then we can head to Quantico to meet the rest of the team?”

“Nashville?” The man sounded surprised for a moment. “He’s struck in the United States as well?”

“It seems there is a possibility, yes.”

“I’ll see what I can do about rearranging the travel arrangements. Barring unforeseen complications, I should be there tomorrow.”

“Good. I’ll get you a place to stay, don’t worry about that. Least I can do for dragging you down here. It will be worth your while, I think.”

“I appreciate the offer. Tomorrow, then.”

Nine

Before she left the house, Taylor had downloaded the Dvořák piece to her iPod. Baldwin had been converting all of her CDs over to the computer, and had installed a plug in her truck’s radio so she could stick the nano in the slot and hear all of her music. It was a wide-ranging and eclectic mix, gathered over two decades. It reflected her alternative tastes, but there was a great deal of classical as well, leftover vestiges of her early days in the orchestra. She didn’t play anymore, but she still loved the music.

She climbed into an unmarked pool car, wishing for her truck’s speakers. She put in the earbuds, hit play and left downtown for the fifteen-minute drive to Forensic Medical. The flow of the Dvořák was calming. She liked the scherzo, forwarded to that spot. The opening was the brand music for something, she couldn’t remember what. Some financial institution, something that had quick television spots that needed the grabbiness as their theme.

She forwarded again to the Allegro. The score for Jaws must have been based on this piece. The two-note heartbeat, the quickening pace—John Williams was obviously a Dvořák fan. It was grand, in-your-face music. She wondered what the killer was thinking when he chose it, then admonished herself. She didn’t know for sure that he had chosen it. She pulled her to-do list out of her pocket and added a note, driving with one hand, writing on her knee. Check with owner about CD.

She arrived at Sam’s office well before the piece ended. She sat in the car for a few minutes, letting it play out. Assuming it was the killer’s music, why had he chosen the New World Symphony? Perhaps that was a message, too. If this was the same man who had committed the murders in Italy and England, why was he here in Tennessee? Did he think of it as the new world? It was such a leap, a serial killer crossing the Atlantic to start killing in her backyard with a slightly different M.O. That seemed so highly unlikely, yet Baldwin was struck by the pictures of the scene. The similarities were unmistakable. She groaned aloud when the next thought crossed her mind. Was it a copycat?

Like she needed another one of those.

ViCAP, ViCAP, ViCAP. That was the first thing she’d do when she left the postmortem. She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to come. Damn Julia Page and her prescient comments.

Abandoning the nano and her thoughts, Taylor entered the building on Gass Street. She couldn’t help but sigh. The scents were so familiar she sometimes didn’t smell them, but today she felt like she’d walked into her high school biology lab. The pervasive, artificial smell of formalin, the reek of death. It was too much to bear. She wondered how Sam did it sometimes, how she could cross the threshold of this place, day after day, and work. She left the twins at home with a nanny and became another person for ten hours a day.

Taylor wished she could do that as well. Just morph, become someone else, someone who didn’t have to think about death all the time. She knew that would never happen. She wouldn’t trade the idea of working with the police for anything. It was important to her to actually be who she said she was, to be the person she’d set out to be in the beginning. Four deaths on her conscience, cold-blooded murders, yet all justified. She was a cop. It was her job. These were the things that she had to do to survive, and to make the people around her, the strangers she loved, safe.

The desk was manned by Kris, a smiley girl with butter-yellow hair and too-big implants. She’d gotten them recently and they hadn’t dropped yet; they stood out on her chest like overfull water balloons. She waved at Taylor and the breasts bobbled joyfully. Taylor waved back and moved to the door that led to the biovestibule that separated the administrative offices from the gut work. She swiped her card and the lock disengaged.

The locker room was empty. She covered her clothes with surgical scrubs, slipped on blue plastic clogs, then went through the smaller air lock into the autopsy suite. Renn McKenzie was sitting on a stool, gazing anywhere but at the action. Sunlight from the skylights shone down on his hair, making the blond strands at his temples glint silver.

Sam was washing the body of a teenager. She was reverent and slow; Taylor could feel her intensity, aching with the need to make it right for this young man. It was heartbreaking, watching her brush the hair back from his forehead, a thick shock of brunette shot through with lighter streaks of caramel, like he’d been in the sun for days on end. Closer inspection showed Taylor that his head was lying flat against the plastic tray. No, that wasn’t right. It was just his face, straight on the table. There was nothing to the back of his head, he was practically two-dimensional.

“What happened to him?”

Sam started, looked at Taylor guiltily. Caught in the act of caring for her subject. When she realized it was just Taylor, she relaxed and went back to stroking the boy’s hair. Only then did Taylor see she was actually using a fine-tooth comb to gather particles.

“Do you remember Alex, from sophomore year? My French tutor?” Sam asked.

Taylor remembered. How could she ever forget? “Yes, I do.”

“Our boy here took a shotgun, put it in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. He did this to himself. The dummy. Just like Alex did.”

Sam’s voice was thick with emotion. Alex had been a bit more than her tutor. Sam had nursed a horrid crush on him for ages. Alex hadn’t ever reciprocated her puppy love. He was a sad boy. Dark black hair and matching eyes, hidden scars inside the irises.

When they were in tenth grade, Alex could stand the torture of life no longer. He wrote a long note, explaining his actions, loaded his father’s shotgun, slipped it between his lips, and shot himself. He had pulled the trigger with his toes.

It was inconceivable to them, at the time. They sat around in friends’ houses, numb, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, pondering. What could have been so bad in a fifteen-year-old’s life? How had Alex’s world been destroyed to the point he felt the need to take his own life? His note explained his rationale, his father’s coldness, the inability to please. Taylor always suspected it was more than that, but never had the proof.

Sadness overwhelmed her. She looked at the young man on the table, wondered what drove him to despair.

“Do you know why?” Taylor asked. “What might have pushed him to this? Was there a note?”

“No, there wasn’t. But there was a lot of anal tearing. It was pretty apparent that he was being abused, for a prolonged period of time. I’m not sure exactly what his story is, but he doesn’t have biological parents in the state. He was a part of the foster system.”

Taylor felt the fury bubble up from within her soul. “So we have foster kids being raped who kill themselves with shotguns now. Jesus, Sam.”

McKenzie spun on his stool and faced them. “I had a friend kill herself. It was awful.” He spun away and Taylor met Sam’s eyes. That sentiment they understood all too well.

Sam signaled to one of her assistants. “Could you finish this for me? I’ll be back to post him next.”

She walked two tables over to the prepped body of the victim from last night, stripped off her gloves and replaced them with a fresh set.

McKenzie followed them reluctantly. “The prints are back. Her name’s Allegra Johnson.”

Taylor looked at the girl, so insubstantial. The steel table dwarfed her, like it would a child. The wound tract from the knife that had been buried in the girl’s chest glared under the lights, an angry slit.

“She was in the system?”

“Yeah. Solicitation. Shocking. Skinny girl like this—drugs and prostitution were my first guess,” he answered.

Sam and Taylor’s eyes met again. Taylor took a deep breath. “McKenzie, kill the sarcasm. You can never assume, or guess, when it comes to a victim. You end up planting ideas in your head about them, and then you try to make the crime fit your preconceived notion of what makes sense to you. There could be other explanations for her physical appearance. She could very well be ill, or homeless, unable to feed herself. This could have been a crime of opportunity. We don’t know yet why she was chosen. We won’t know until we do a thorough victimology, okay?”

McKenzie’s brows furrowed for a moment while he thought it out. What she said must have made sense, because his forehead smoothed and he nodded. “Okay,” he said. Maybe training him wasn’t going to be as hard as she expected.

Sam cleared her throat, and another tech, a quiet man named Stuart Charisse with incongruously lighthearted curly hair, appeared to help her. He started taking pictures while Sam turned on the microphone attached to her face shield, and started the case rundown. Taylor listened with half an ear as Sam gave the details—date, time, who was present, all the minutiae that was necessary to the formal autopsy process. McKenzie stood next to her, bopping his head up and down in an internal rhythm to Sam’s dispassionate recitation.

Allegra’s body was a mass of wretchedness. Every bone was clearly defined; Taylor could count each rib individually. The girl looked like she’d literally wasted away.

Sam started her assessment. “The body is that of a malnourished twenty-one-year-old female African-American who looks younger than her recorded age. The body was received to the medical examiner’s office naked, attached by fine filament to a post measuring six feet, three-quarter inches long by ten inches square. The filament was wrapped around the forehead, wrists, torso, waist, hips, thighs and feet of the victim’s body.” Sam turned off the mike.

“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. “Il Macellaio or Il 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.

“Il 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. “Il 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 Il 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.”