The Cold Room. J.T. Ellison

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,