The Cold Room (3 page)

She was surprised to see the lawn and porch littered with milling people—a level of disorganization rarely in evidence at a Nashville crime scene. The crime-scene techs were setting up to take photos, video, collect evidence; two patrol officers were standing to one side, conversing in low tones. The command table had been set up on the porch. Uniforms and plainclothes techs were walking around the outside of the house. Neighbors had gathered, silently scrutinizing.

She parked next to a crime-scene van. The side door was open, the contents spilling out as if the tech was in a hurry to get moving on the scene. Paula Simari was twenty feet away. She caught Taylor's eye, angled her head with a jerk. Meet me inside, the look said. Taylor got out of the car, intrigued.

“Detective!”

A young man signaled her to join him on the lawn of the house. It was deep emerald in the false light, freshly mown; the tang of green onion and cut grass felt so familiar, so right. Normal and unthreatening, just another suburban evening.

But it wasn't. She shut the door to her car, trying to assimilate the scene. The man continued waving, gesticulating wildly as if she hadn't seen him already.

Her new partner. Renn McKenzie. Nice enough guy, but she wasn't willing to get to know him. It was too damn soon. She was still in mourning, recovering from the demise of her team, her career. Her future.

He galloped up to her, breathless. She nodded at him, willing some zen calm into him. “McKenzie.”

“Just call me Renn, Taylor.”

“Jackson is fine, McKenzie.”

“I wish you'd just call me Renn.”

Just Renn
. “I'm not on today. I assume you had me called for a reason. Could you fill me in?”

She saw the blush rise on his cheeks. Just Renn had been transferred in from the South sector. He and Marcus Wade, one of her former teammates, had essentially traded places. Captain Delores Norris, head of the Office of Professional Accountability, was the architect of the restructuring.

She would kill to have Marcus by her side right now. Or her former sergeant, Pete Fitzgerald, or Lincoln Ross. But her entire team had been disassembled, and she felt the loss sorely. She was sure Just Renn was a fine detective, but he had his own rhythms, his own demeanor, an eagerness that belied the streaks of gray at his blond temples that was hard to get used to. He was gangly, all sharp edges, no real refinement to his walk or manners. Brown eyes, thin lips, three days of fuzzy golden razor stubble. A decent-looking man, if you liked the enthusiastic type. But he'd only been in plainclothes for about a month, which frightened her. Inexperience could blow an investigation; she was used to working with seasoned pros. Pros she had trained to work her way.

To be truthful, a small part of her liked keeping him off balance. It gave her the sense that maybe this wasn't forever.

“Sure, yeah.
Jackson.
Such a harsh name. I assume you're related?” He looked at her, his face turning blue, then white, then blue.

“Related to…?”

“Andrew Jackson, of course.”

This boy obviously didn't know his Southern history. There were no direct descendants of Old Hickory—though he'd raised eleven children, none were his own.
There was a family connection though, through Jackson's wife Rachel's son…. She bit her lip, resisted the urge to scream. None of this had any bearing on her job.

“McKenzie?”

“Yeah?”

“Who's dead?”

“Yeah. Sorry. We don't know.” He didn't make a move toward the house, just stood there.

“Could we possibly go see the body?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Let's go. She's in the living room, or the great room, or whatever you call that big open space in the middle of the house. You can't see her from the front door, the best view is from the kitchen. Not a lot of walls in the downstairs, it's all open except for a few columns. She's, well, I'll let you see for yourself.”

Now we're talking
.

They reached the front steps. Taylor took them two at a time. Just Renn was right on her tail. It wasn't her imagination; the command center had been set up on the porch of the house.

“McKenzie? Why don't you suggest they move the command back a bit? We usually don't have all this activity so close to the scene. There's a chance of contamination. Crime Scene 101, buddy.”

He looked down at the deck of the porch, chastised. She felt bad for snapping at him, mentally promised herself to be more careful. He was just a kid, learning the ropes. She'd been there once.

“It's okay. We all make mistakes,” she said. It wasn't okay, but the damage was already done. She'd sort it out later.

Even with all the people worrying the scene, the interior of the house felt spacious. Teak floors, exposed beams, whitewashed walls, architectural and designer accoutre
ments. Elegant abstract paintings pranced along their neutral background to an exposed brick-and-stone fireplace.

The mood of the scene bothered her. The lack of concern about the exterior scene, the milling about, the simple fact that she'd been called in all bespoke the worst. Something was happening, something more than a typical murder. She felt a lump form in her throat.

Under the drone of voices, she heard music. Faint strains of a classical composition…what was that? She felt a buzz of recognition, reached into her mind for the name—Dvořák. That was it.
Symphony #9.
In E minor. Years of training, even more as a minor aficionado, and it had still taken her a moment. Funny how the mind worked. Her fingers unconsciously curled in on themselves, moving lightly in time with the notes. She'd played clarinet growing up, thrilled with her budding expertise when she was a child, mortified by the time she was a teenager looking for some fun up on Love Circle.

Looking back, she was sorry she'd given it up. Playing in a symphony had been one of her childhood desires, supplanted by the allure of law enforcement after a brief brush with the law when she was a teenager. Now she could see how that would have been quite satisfying. It was a game she rarely played—if you weren't a cop, what would you be? She'd never been in a position to have to think about
not
being a cop. Now that she felt the jeopardy slipping in like cat's feet on a fog, she'd started wondering again.

Taylor concentrated on the music. The last strains of the
allegro con fuoco
were fading away, then the opening movement started. A loop of the
New World Symphony,
as the piece was more commonly referred to. Bold and aggressive, lyrical and stunning. She'd always liked it.

She looked for the stereo, didn't see one. The music was all around her; it must be on a house-wide speaker system. It was hard to drag her attention away. She caught the eye of one of the techs she knew, Tim Davis. At least he was on the scene—she could count on him to preserve as much evidence as possible.

“Tim, can you cut the music?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It's on a built-in CD player. The controls are in the kitchen. I was waiting for you to hear it. The loop is driving us all mad. You know who it is?”

“Dvořák.
Symphony #9
. Keep that quiet, will you? I want to be sure that detail isn't leaked to the press. They'll seize on it and start giving this guy a name.”

She hadn't even seen the body, and she was already assuming the worst. Not surprising; the whole tenor of the crime scene screamed “unusual.”

“Where are they, anyway?”

Tim glanced out the window. “Channel Five just pulled up. The others can't be far behind.”

She nodded to him and looked for Paula. She was standing in the open living room, looking toward the back door. The great room of the house was separated from the eat-in kitchen by three columns, which mimicked the pyramid-shaped support columns out front. There was a small knot of people surrounding the center column, a surreal grouping of cops and techs waiting on her. Three things hit her: she couldn't see a body, the faces glancing her way were visibly disturbed, and there was a fetid whiff of decomposition in the air.

She stepped lightly toward the group, making sure she didn't tread in anything important. As she passed the column, Paula pointed toward it with her eyebrow raised. Taylor turned and sucked in her breath.

The victim was young, no more than twenty, black,
naked, bones jutting out as if she hadn't eaten in a while, with dull, brittle bobbed hair. She hung on the 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 housecleaning 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.”