The Cold Room (10 page)

“The philanthropist? I thought he left everything to his dogs.”

Bangor smiled. “Everything but the art collection. He had some beautiful genuine pieces, a Chagall I coveted but couldn't afford, and some wonderful copies, including the Picasso. They auctioned off the collection, and I bought the Picasso. That was fifteen years ago. I adore art, as I'm sure you noticed. I started collecting when I was in my twenties, bought a small line drawing with my very first screenplay paycheck. Granted, it wasn't much,
but my interests grew from there. I have some originals of my own now. But the Picasso is my finest reproduction piece.”

“How much would you pay for an imitation?” Taylor asked.

“I paid $10,000 for my
Desmoiselles.”

“Ten grand for a fake? Wow.”

“It's a lot of money, I know, but considering the quality and the backstory, I felt it was worth more. This is more common than you know. It's not black market, but it comes close. There are a number of pieces that make it all the way to auction, provenance intact, that are fakes. It takes a true master to know the difference. That's why Sotheby's and Christie's are who they are.”

McKenzie was scratching notes in his reporter's notebook. “So where's the original?”

Bangor smiled at him. “The Museum of Modern Art in New York. It toured through here in an exhibit a while back, but it's a part of their permanent collection.”

“Who would know about the Picasso, Mr. Bangor?” Taylor asked.

“That it's a reproduction? Anyone with any knowledge of art would know that, it's a terribly famous painting.”

“I meant that you have it in the first place.”

“Oh, I see. Well, any guest in my home for the past fifteen years, I suppose. It's not exactly a secret. Detective, why the interest in the Picasso, may I ask? I heard that there was some damage done to the house, but I haven't gotten the details. Was the painting desecrated?”

“In a way,” Taylor said, and Bangor sucked in his breath.

McKenzie jumped into the fray. “The painting is fine. The victim was posed like the women in the painting.” McKenzie started to speak again, but Taylor glared at him and he stopped. Jeez, give it all away, why don't you?

“Posed?” Bangor asked.

Taylor waved his question away. “Right now, Mr. Bangor, we'd like to take you back to the house so you can show us if anything is missing or otherwise disturbed. We can go into the details there.”

Bangor sat forward in his chair and stroked his chin. “You know, about a year ago, I was broken into. The thieves were after cash, they trashed the house but didn't give the art a second glance. Pity, really. Our criminals are so uneducated these days.”

“You reported it?”

“I surely did. There's a report on file. I wonder if this might be the same people? Though a year later? Probably not. That was a silly thought.”

“No thoughts are silly, Mr. Bangor. Detective McKenzie will check that out. You never know. If you'd be so kind as to wait for me for a few moments, I have a few things to take care of, then we can run out to the house. Okay?”

“Certainly. Do what you need to do. Could I possibly have a drink while I wait? I'm a bit dehydrated from the plane.”

Shit, the cokes. She'd forgotten them in the hallway. “I'll have something for you in a jiff. Coffee? Water? Coke?”

“A coke would be great. Diet, if you have it.”

Taylor nodded, then stood. “Detective Taylor Jackson, terminating interview number 2009–1397 with Mr. Hugh Bangor,” she said, then used the remote control to turn off the tape. She stepped out of the room, let McKenzie come out and shut the door before she addressed him.

“Be sure you give him the can, and save it. I want to print him, and get a DNA sample. Chances are he's going to cooperate with that, but just in case. When you're done, get moving on the family of the Johnson girl. And Mc
Kenzie? Don't ever offer up details of a crime to a suspect without my okay again, okay?”

“Yes,” he mumbled. “I won't do it again. I'll just go get his coke.”

She watched him walk off, shoulders hunched, and sighed. She didn't think Bangor had anything to do with this, and knew McKenzie had followed her cues when he misspoke. No real harm done.

Too many things to do. Before she went any further, she needed to load a search into the ViCAP system. It was moments like this that she missed Lincoln Ross. He would have already taken the initiative, plugged in the information, added in parameters that Taylor herself wouldn't think of, and have the results to her
before
she'd gone to autopsy.

McKenzie was green, and while she was technically his superior, he was just another detective, like her. It wasn't like she could give him orders and leave him behind to work on things. He was her partner, needed to be coached and coddled, brought along on everything. Elm's orders. Damn it.

She stepped into the conference room and retrieved her now-cold barbecue sandwich. She tossed the beans—they'd be gross unheated and she didn't want to waste time getting to the microwave in their tiny, utilitarian office kitchen—but the pulled pork would be fine.

She took it with her and ate it in the hallway, leaning against the glass case that held the departmental bulletins. When she finished, she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and stared at a Missing poster of a thirteen-year-old girl and her baby. The poster had a NOTES section at the bottom stating the girl's arms were scarred from repetitive cutting. No kidding. Thirteen, with a two-month-old baby? Yeah, there was a good chance that child was
completely screwed up, would do anything to get some positive attention. At least her family had filed an MP report; so many families didn't. Which led her back to Allegra Johnson. Who was missing her?

She jotted down the thought in her notebook's to-do list: Look through the missing-persons reports for the past two months.

The computer room was housed three doors down from interrogation room one. She unlocked the door, turned on the light, and took the computer out of sleep mode. They all had their personal computers on the desk, but fingerprint searches in iAFIS and requests to the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program had to run through a separate system that was tied to the state and federal databases. Antiquated systems out here in the field, but at least Lincoln had set these computers to go as quickly as was humanly allowed.

Within twenty minutes, she hit Send. The questionnaire was forty pages long, but she didn't have a lot to go on, would update the file as more information came in. She filled out the forms as completely as she could, using her notes when necessary. She included the photos she'd forwarded to her work address. Having the crime-scene pictures would help with the analysis.

She asked for three separate searches. One, for art thefts in the metro Nashville area. Two, for any murders that might have an artistic component to them, with music or paintings or sculpture. And third, for murders in which the victims were starved to death. They'd process while she and McKenzie took Bangor back to his house.

That was the trick with ViCAP. You needed to give it parameters to search within, but keep them focused enough that it wouldn't be a wild-goose chase. She wished it would spit back answers, but instead it looked at trends, which she'd need to interpret.

But just in case something fantastically close to their murder popped out…She left a note for Rowena Wright, the department administrator, that she was expecting the results back on a ViCAP search. Rowena was a jovial black woman who'd been a cop before Taylor was born, blazing a trail that Taylor was honored to follow. Rowena had started in admin, then became a patrol officer, a training officer, passed the sergeant's exam and nearly made detective before a mild heart attack forced her to step out of the field. There weren't a lot of people that Taylor trusted around headquarters these days, but Rowena was one of them.

When she made it back to the interrogation room, McKenzie was passing Hugh Bangor a hand wipe. He turned to greet Taylor with a big smile.

“Mr. Bangor was happy to give us his fingerprints and a DNA swab for comparison.”

“That's good. Excuse us for a moment?”

Bangor smiled. He knew the score. She stepped out in the hall with McKenzie. “What did you find on Allegra Johnson?”

“Nothing much. There's an address listed on one of her arrests, down in one of the projects. I cross-checked it, and it's also listed as the address for three other people with arrest records. Either she was in with a bad crowd, or they're using the address as a fake.”

“Okay. We'll do this thing with Bangor, then head down there. Father Victor is available to go, just in case?”

“Yes. He said to call him whenever you were ready, he'd meet us there. He seems like a nice guy.”

“He is. You haven't met him yet?”

“No. Never had cause.”

“You've never done a notification?” she asked, incredulous.

“No. Everyone always sends me off to do something while they handle the family. So if she has any, this will be my first.”

“How old are you, exactly, McKenzie?”

“I'll be twenty-seven here in another month.”

Twenty-six, and already a detective. She'd thought he was older. They'd moved him along quickly. She wondered why.

“Okay. Let's do this.”

They retrieved Bangor from the interrogation room.

As they walked to the car, Bangor tried to make conversation. “Detective McKenzie here was just telling me he used to have a girlfriend who was quite a fine artist.”

“Um, yes, sir. I did.” He looked at Taylor apologetically, as if he'd been caught doing something very bad.

“What kind of artist was she, McKenzie?” Taylor asked, openly forgiving him so he'd relax. No harm done letting the man see a little compassion from her this morning.

“Oils, mostly, and some pastels. She was very good.”

They walked out into the parking lot, and Taylor realized she hadn't signed out.
Tough beans, Elm
.

“
Was
very good?” Bangor asked, gently. Taylor had missed something. McKenzie looked like he might cry.

“Um, she's dead. She killed herself. Today's actually the anniversary.”

Oh. That was the same girl he was talking about this morning at the autopsy, Taylor figured. Poor kid. Never good to lose someone you loved.

Bangor obviously felt the same. He clapped McKenzie on the shoulder in sympathy.

“I lost my partner five years ago.” Bangor hesitated for a moment, then said, “AIDS.”

McKenzie just nodded, didn't say anything. Taylor looked at Bangor again. She hadn't picked up that he was
gay. Polished, certainly, but he had no affectation, no femininity about him. That made life a little less complicated. This crime screamed hetero, man on woman violence. Bangor was most likely not their suspect. Taylor had already gotten that sense, but the biographical details helped solidify her conclusions.

The drive out West End to Love Hill was quick, with Bangor regaling them with stories of famous actors who were in fact gay despite all appearances.

When Taylor made the left onto Love Circle and wound her way up the hill, she was shocked. Last night, in the dark, it still held that romantic feel. In the harsh light of day, she could see how run-down the Hill had actually become. Trash littered the grassy banks of the park, some graffiti on the electric transformer box had been inexpertly painted over. A ragged chain-link fence was sagging in spots, bearing the kick marks of some drunken youth. It wasn't the Hill she remembered, and she remarked on that to Bangor.

“Yes, it's been hard to keep the vagrants out of the park at night. It's so quiet, and there aren't a lot of patrols through here. We force them out, they reappear. The kids who come up here aren't the nicest element. Between them and the break-in, I'm glad for my security system.”

“We didn't get any alarms from your system last night. Is it possible that you left it off when you left town?”

“No. I'm religious about setting the alarm. But it's entirely possible that Miss Carol failed to turn it back on. She was taking care of Sebastian for me, and sometimes she forgets. It's happened before.”

Taylor glanced at McKenzie. That matched the neighbor's statement, at least. Convenient that the alarm was turned off. She wondered if the killer knew there would be a good chance of that, or if he'd come prepared to dis
engage the system. That would speak to an even higher level of intelligence than she'd previously thought. And a more personal connection to Hugh Bangor.

In the daylight, Bangor's home was a sharp contrast to the surrounding grime. The lawn was neat and well-cared for, though trampled a bit by the multitudes of law enforcement who'd been tromping through it all night.

The crime-scene tape fluttered around the porch. Taylor unwound it from the support columns and let Bangor and McKenzie pass. Once inside, Bangor immediately tensed. Taylor watched his reaction with interest, wondered briefly whether they were going to have an issue. But Bangor merely shook his head, and turned to her with his eyebrow raised.

“I'm missing something rather dramatic, aren't I? What happened to my post?”

Taylor looked at McKenzie. “Go ahead,” she said.

“The victim was pinned to the post with a knife. We had to take it with us to preserve the integrity of the wound tract.”

“My God. Who could do such a thing? You'll replace it, won't you?” Bangor asked.

Taylor nodded. “I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out. Destruction of private property isn't in our purview. We didn't have a choice last night.”

“Fair enough.”

They moved to the back door, where Taylor showed him the cutout piece of glass.

Bangor tsked. “This is just so violating.”