The Cold Room. J.T. Ellison
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nodded.
“Well, this is going to be fun. At least he didn’t try to bodily remove me.”
“That happens?” she asked.
“You’d be surprised,” he said lightly. “Where were we?”
“Florence, where I’d rather be right now.”
He smiled at her. “Don’t try to distract me. It won’t work. Right. Three bodies ago, back in Florence in 2004, the carabinieri’s very sharp crime-scene technician found a hair with an intact skin tag in a puddle of water in the kitchen where the victim was found. It didn’t match her DNA. They put it in the system and kept it flagged, just in case. Last week, we got the call from the Met. They had a series of murders that they determined were serial, and asked for a consultation. When I looked at the crime-scene photos, I saw the signature of our Italian boy. But the beautiful thing is, the techs at the Met found an intact hair, too, this time curled in the back of their second victim’s throat.”
“Ugh.”
“Yes. There were enough similarities between the cases that I insisted we test the two hairs’ DNA immediately. Two hairs in five years. We’re crossing our fingers that there’s a match between the two. If he’s committed any other crimes and is in the database, we might get a lead. Who knows? If the DNA matches, then at least I can confirm that he’s on the road. That’s what I’m waiting for.”
“But how long does it take to starve a woman to death? It seems like the time frame is too short for this to be a part of the series.”
“If you subscribe to the rules of three … three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. That’s not a perfect formula, but close enough. Deprived of water and food, a small woman could easily die within two weeks. Maybe less. The last London murder scene was over a month ago. He could have made it to the States, taken your victim, starved her, then posed her. It’s feasible. Any postcards around?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
Taylor was quiet. He could feel her thinking. After a moment, she spoke again.
“See, there’s something else odd about this scene. I need to go do a ViCAP search. It wasn’t my case, wasn’t even in Nashville. It was south of us, in Manchester. But I remember reading something in the Law Enforcement Bulletin about an unsolved murder three years or so ago where classical music was playing when they arrived at the scene. Tonight, the CD player in the kitchen had that Dvořák piece playing on a continuous loop. Do you have any of that in your cases?”
“No, we don’t.”
“The owner of the house might have left it on accidentally. We pulled a palm print off of the casing, so we’ll see. I’m relatively certain that the body was transported from another scene. The lack of blood on the girl’s body and on the floor … she was killed elsewhere.”
“Probably. There wouldn’t be a lot of blood in a starvation case anyway.”
“There could have been two people involved, one to hold the body against the post and one to tie the fishing line around her body. It might be hard to control alone, but a strong man, starting at the victim’s feet, could have managed easily. The girl’s toes were two feet off the floor. He could have had her in a fireman’s carry, slumped over his shoulder, while he tied the line around her ankles.”
“Or he might have looped the line around the bottom and tied it loosely, then inserted the dead girl’s legs into the loop. Tighten it down, and voilà, there’s a base to start with. He could have slowly worked his way up the body.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “That’s how I would do it if it were just me.”
Elm was in the kitchen now, imperiously bossing around the videographer, Keri McGee. Taylor cringed at the sound of his voice. Baldwin knew how hard this was for her—the past few weeks had taken their toll on both of them. Maybe a big, juicy case would be a welcome diversion, even if they were being overseen by Napoleon.
He tried to draw her attention back to the victim. “Slamming the knife through the victim’s body with enough force to embed it that deeply into the wood was overkill. She’d been dead long before she had been placed on the post. There’s rigor leaving her jaw and some decent lividity on the edges of her legs.”
Taylor’s focus returned immediately. “So she lay on her back at some point soon after death,” she said.
“Did you notice the fishing line eating into her skin?”
“Of course. There was also some petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes, but not so much that I’d automatically assume she’d been strangled. Hopefully Sam will have her in the morning for the autopsy. She’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Baldwin took the hint gracefully. There was more work to be done, things that he wasn’t needed for. “Why don’t I go make some calls? Is there someplace …?”
She handed him the keys to her pool car. “It’s the one right by Tim’s van. I’ll be with you as quickly as I can. Thank you for coming out.”
He longed to kiss her, but simply nodded and left. The post was coming down as he walked past, the girl riding the wood, still solidly attached by the fishing line and the knife sunk deep into her chest. It looked like half a crucifixion. Nothing he’d forget for a long while.
Taylor rubbed her eyes, forcing the itch of sleep away. It was two in the morning; the crime scene was winding down. Elm’s prediction that it would only take an hour was six hours off.
Tim had successfully removed the body of the victim, still attached to a nearly seven-foot-long column of wood by the fishing line and the knife. It was a wild scene. Getting the dead girl in an appropriate horizontal plane so she could go into the body bag had been tricky, and they couldn’t close the bag all the way. Despite the victim’s low weight, the column was heavy. People on both ends of the post heaved and strained not to drop her, to preserve the evidence.
After that, the rest of the evening had gone smoothly.
Elm had vacated the house about an hour earlier, which was fine by her. She’d seen him talking to one of The Tennessean reporters who’d made an appearance, prayed he’d shown a modicum of discretion. Dan Franklin, the department’s spokesperson, had shown up and handled the media after that. Some of the news folks were still hanging around; nothing else had captured their attention. A quiet crime night in Nashville, which guaranteed this murder would make the morning news.
Taylor had been avoiding the media all night, refusing to give a statement, leaving that to Franklin. She hadn’t forgiven them for their role in her demotion, for running with the allusions and innuendoes planted by a man out for revenge against her. For showing videos of her having sex with her old partner; tapes that were made without her knowledge or permission. Every time she thought about the humiliation she’d endured, having to watch herself on television.
Stop it, Taylor. What’s done is done. They are the media. You were newsworthy. Leave it at that. It wasn’t personal. You’d investigate each and every one of them six ways to Sunday if you thought they’d done something illegal. Why should they be any different? Everyone needs to feed the family. Focus.
She went back to her mental wrap-up of the crime scene. Footprints had been found in the woods behind the house, and cigarette butts, but they were far enough removed from the actual scene that Taylor was skeptical that they’d come from the killer. Every bit had been processed, of course, the techs putting together the molds, spraying the ground with Dust & Dirt Hardener, making impression casts of at least four different shoe prints. If they found a suspect, they could look for a match to test against the shoe impressions.
There was still the issue of transport. The killer had gotten the body to the house somehow, but so far the canvas of the neighborhood had turned up nothing of use. No one had seen a car or van around the area that didn’t belong. Of course, considering how many people tooled around Love Circle