The Cold Room. J.T. Ellison
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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