The Cold Room. J.T. Ellison
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center column.
To be more precise, she’d been tacked to the column with a large hunting knife. A big blade, with a polished wood-and-pearl handle that was buried to the hilt square in her chest. She was thin enough that the blade, which looked to be at least eight inches, had passed through her body into the wood. Her arms were pulled up tight over her head, the hands together as if in prayer, but inside out. Her feet were crossed at the ankle, demure, innocent.
Pinned. At least, that was the illusion. At first glance, it looked like the knife was all that held her in that position. Taylor shook her head; it had taken strength, or potent hatred, to shove the knife through the girl’s breastbone into the wood behind.
Taylor ran her Maglite up and down the column, the concentrated beam reflecting off the nearly invisible wires that ran around the girl’s body to hold her suspended in midair. Clever. Some sort of fishing line held the body rigid against the wooden post. It cut into her flesh; the victim had been up on the post long enough that the grooves were deepening as the body’s early decomposition began.
The girl’s shoulders were obviously dislocated. Her skin was ashen and flaky, her lips cracked. She was stripped of dignity, yet the pose felt almost … loving. Sorrow on her face, her mouth open in a scream, her eyes closed. Small mercies. Taylor hated when they stared.
She’d read the scene right. It was going to be a very long night.
Paula came to her side, fiddling with a small reporter’s notebook. “Sorry I had to miss dinner. And sorry to ruin your night, too, but I knew you needed to see this. There’s no ID. I can’t find a purse or anything. This place is clean. The neighbors say the owner is out of town.”
“This isn’t her home?” Taylor asked, gesturing to the body.
“No. One of the neighbors, Carol Parker, is house-sitting, feeding the cat, taking in the paper. Owner’s supposed to be gone all week. Parker came in, bustled around getting the cat fed and watered, then turned to leave and saw the body. She ran, of course. Called us. Swears up and down that she’s never seen the girl around. There’s a circle of glass cut out of the back door, the lock was turned. It’s been dusted, there were no usable prints. The blinds were closed, that’s why the neighbor didn’t see anything amiss. The alarm was disengaged too; the neighbor can’t remember if she turned it on yesterday or not. That cute M.E., Dr. Fox? He was here earlier and declared her. He said to bring her in; either he or Sam will post her first thing.”
“Okay. I’d like to talk to the neighbor. Do you have her stashed close by?”
“She’s at her place next door with a new patrol. God, they get younger every day. This one can’t be more than eighteen. We took the cat over there so it wouldn’t interrupt the scene. Last I saw the patrol was talking to it like it was a baby. Not far enough removed from his own childhood coddling, it seems.”
Taylor smiled absently at Paula, then stepped back a few feet, taking in the full tableau. It was impressive, she’d give the killer that. Spiking the girl to the column like she was a butterfly trapped on a piece of cork was flashy, meant to shock. Meant to humiliate the victim.
Taylor longed for the good old days, when getting called out to a homicide was straightforward—some kid had deuced another on a crack buy and gotten knifed, or a pimp had beaten one of his girls upside the head and cracked her skull. As pointless as those deaths seemed, they were driven by the basics, things she readily understood—greed, lust, drugs. Ever since Dr. John Baldwin, FBI profiler extraordinaire, entered her life, the kills had gotten more gruesome, more meaningful. More serial. Like the loonies had followed him to Nashville. And that thought scared her to death. She already had one killer who’d gotten away, a man calling himself the Pretender, who killed in her name. What was happening to her city?
She pulled her phone from her pocket. There was no signal, so she stepped out onto the porch. Three bars, enough to make a call. She started to dial, felt McKenzie beside her. She hoped he wasn’t going to lurk at her elbow at every crime scene. Maybe he just needed some instruction. She closed the phone and turned to him.
“Hey, man, do me a favor. Get them—”
McKenzie shook his head, lips compressed, eyes darting over her shoulder and back to hers with a kind of wild frenzy. She read the signs. Someone was behind her.
She turned and bumped into a small man with brown hair parted smartly on the right. It was thick and almost bushy, stood out from his head at the base of his neck and around his ears. Her first thought was toupee. He was older, easily in his sixties. She didn’t recognize him, which wasn’t too much of a surprise. Since the house-cleaning brought about by Captain Norris and the chief, there were plenty of new and unfamiliar faces at crime scenes, in the hallways, the cafeteria. The crime-scene techs were all the same, but there’d been some serious shaking up done among the detective ranks.
The little man looked up at her. She saw his mouth start to drop open, then he closed it, the back teeth snapping together.
“You are?” he demanded.
“Detective Taylor Jackson, Metro Homicide. And you?”
“You have a problem with my setup, Detective?”
My setup? Who was this guy?
“I must have missed your name,” she said.
“Lieutenant Mortimer T. Elm. You may call me Lieutenant Elm. I’m with the New Orleans police.”
“What are the New Orleans police doing at a Nashville crime scene?”
He looked confused for a moment, then said, “Who said anything about New Orleans? I’m with Metro Nashville.”
Taylor stared at him for a second, then shrugged. “Lieutenant Elm. It’s nice to meet you. Yes, there’s a standard protocol when dealing with static crime scenes. We usually try to station the command post away from the primary scene in order to avoid contaminating the evidence that might be procured from the immediate vicinity.” She realized she sounded completely textbook and hated herself for a moment. But that’s what the demotion had done to her—forced her back into the realm of “there’s only one way to do things.” Great.
His wave was dismissive. He had pudgy fingers, the nails bitten to the quick. Her stomach flopped. A man’s hands were the window to his soul. Lieutenant Elm’s looked tortured.
“This is going to be just fine. The crime obviously took place inside the house, not outside. This makes it more convenient for everyone. There is a threat of rain. If we move quickly, the crime scene can be wrapped in an hour.”
Taylor almost laughed aloud. Wrapping up a homicide in an hour. This guy was from Mars. Or Lilliput.
When she didn’t immediately respond, he took a step back. He stared at her, his eyes slightly bulged, his jaw thrust forward. She was reminded of a frog. She spoke quietly.
“I beg to differ, Lieutenant Elm. The external scene is just as important as the internal. We need to establish a point of entry, need to be looking for footprints, material the suspect may have discarded. It’s anything but okay to be on top of the crime like this.”
“This is the way I want it!” he said, anger bubbling up in his eyes.
She heard a hissing in her ear, felt a tug at her elbow.
“He’s the new homicide lieutenant, Taylor. Our boss.” McKenzie’s whisper was frantic.
Taylor had to put a hand over her mouth to keep from bursting out laughing. This, this, toad was her new boss? Elm was the new homicide lieutenant? Oh, this was going to be priceless.
Elm’s tone changed, sharpened. “You’ll find that this setup is perfectly acceptable. I must deal with another matter. I trust you can handle this scene. I will deal with your insubordination in the morning.” Elm was smug, obviously thinking he’d defeated her. Well, she’d been bullied just about enough over the past month.
“Insubordination? All I did was