The Cold Room. J.T. Ellison

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 point out the obvious,” she said. The porch twittered, the officers who’d overheard amused at the expense of the new lieutenant, who was vibrating in his displeasure.

      Elm pointed a finger at her. “Do your job, Detective. I know how to do mine.” He stepped off the porch, walked off toward the gathering media. McKenzie appeared at her elbow again.

      “I tried to warn you.”

      Taylor caught the melodrama in his voice. A rabbit, scared and spooked, that’s what Just Renn was. She smiled at the younger man.

      “That, my friend, is a man who got up on the wrong side of the lily pad. Forget about it. I’ve had worse. Let’s run this puppy.”

      Speaking of which … she flipped her cell back open and speed-dialed Baldwin.

      He answered with a happy, “Hey, gorgeous. My plane just landed. You on your way?”

      “Unfortunately, no. I’m on a call, and I think you’ll want to see this.”

      He groaned. “Where are you?”

      “Tell the driver 1400 Love Circle. You won’t be able to miss it. And hey, stay away from a short man with a bad rug.”

      “Do I even want to know?”

      “No. I’ll see you shortly.”

      She hung up, went back into the house. The victim was calling her, the scene, the case. She’d been drawn in, already fascinated. Dead girl pinned to a post, in someone else’s house. Classical music playing in the background. A message was being sent. By whom, and to whom? Taylor felt the intrigue slip in and grab her. She was going to be too busy to worry about all the changes, and that was a good thing.

      Back in the living room, she circled the body again, looked closer at the filament that held the girl’s arms, legs, torso and head in position. It was tied in little knots on the backside of the column. The killer had taken the time to staple the translucent fishing line into the wood to give it extra holding power. This was well thought out, planned in advance. It had taken time to get the girl up on the post. Which meant whoever committed this murder knew that the house was going to be empty, that he’d have a fertile, undisturbed playground. Either that, or they had another body to find, one belonging to the owner.

      Taylor СКАЧАТЬ