The Cold Room

Five

The house looked barren when she pulled into the driveway. She’d neglected to leave the front lights on—of course, she’d expected to be home hours ago. Baldwin had fallen asleep again on the drive; she hated to wake him, but didn’t have any choice. She shook him lightly and he opened his eyes with a yawn.

“Sorry, babe. We’re going to have to go in through the front, I don’t have the garage door opener. I left it in my truck. I hate bringing the unmarked home.”

“Okay. Yeah,” he murmured.

They got themselves inside the house. She’d forgotten to turn the alarm on again, and Baldwin gave her a chastising look after he armed it.

It was past 3:00 a.m. Though Baldwin could sleep in, Taylor would have to be up in a few hours to start a fresh day. Her newly demoted status meant she had much less freedom in setting her own hours, the biggest chafe of all. She was expected to be in the office at 8:00 a.m. and work through to 3:00 p.m., but so far, she’d never had an actual 8:00-3:00 day.

Setting hours for a homicide detective was a moot point. You catch a murder at 2:45 p.m., you’re on until you’ve cleared the scene and the paperwork is done. As a lieutenant, she had the luxury of letting other people do the work and report their findings to her. That part of her career was temporarily on hold.

Baldwin wavered against her shoulder; he was asleep on his feet. She brushed a kiss against his lips and sent him up to bed.

Elm. How in the world had Mortimer managed to make lieutenant? He was going to be a difficult man to deal with, she could see that as plain as day. Cranky, nasty, like an ill-tempered yappy little dog. Insubordination. Yes, she probably should have bit back that last comment, but really, how big an idiot could you be? The officers on the metro police force received endless training. Hell, even the most amateur forensic enthusiast with a working knowledge of crime television and fiction would know not to make such freshman mistakes.

She dropped her weapon and badge on the counter, pulled her ponytail holder out, letting her hair cascade down her back. She opened the wine fridge, took out a bottle of Masciarelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. She poured a glass, put the bottle on the counter, grabbed a handful of grapes from the fruit bowl, nibbled a few and chased them with a healthy gulp of wine. The message light was flashing on the answering machine, four new messages. She hit play, then stood in front of it, left arm draped against the wall, her forehead on her forearm, the wineglass by her side, listening.

A political pollster. Delete.

A reminder that she had a dentist appointment next week. She left that one, just in case she forgot.

Baldwin, his deep voice filling the room. Just letting her know he was in early, that he loved her, and planned to ravish her as soon as they got home. Fat chance of that.

She replayed it twice, a smile on her lips. She took a sip of wine and waited for the next one.

There was silence, then static. A chill moved up her spine, she stood straighter. Then a high-pitched voice, almost childlike. “Not. Me.”

The click that followed made her jump. Her heart began to race.

She set her wine down on the counter. The caller ID showed the last number who’d called as Unknown Name, Unknown Number. She hit star sixty-nine for an automatic redial, but a quick beeping told her that it wasn’t going to work without the correct area code.

Damn. She played it back three times, each time feeling a fresh wave of chills whip through her body. Part of her wanted to blow it off, assume that it was just a wrong number. But her instincts were on fire. She’d never heard the voice before, but she knew exactly who that was, and what the message meant.

He called himself the Pretender. He’d been a disciple of a serial killer in Nashville known as Snow White. Snow White had been dealt with, but the Pretender had slipped through the net. Every once in a while, he reached out to her. As recently as last month he’d made his presence known in Nashville, taking care of a pesky threat to her security. In a decidedly gruesome fashion, at that. He’d left what Baldwin termed a “love note” anchored to the dead man’s chest.

What a chance to take, calling her at home. The Pretender wasn’t careless, that much she knew. There had been a trap on their line for the past couple of months, but it would take more than a three-second call to trace.

The message freaked her out on two levels. One, the simple fact that he was still watching her made her toes curl. He was close enough to know about the murder scene tonight, and that was exceptionally unsettling.

Two, her instincts about this evening’s murder were right on. The ritualistic posing, the secondary crime scene, all pointed to an organized offender who had done this before. And would most likely try to do it again.

Baldwin needed to know. After her run-in last month with the assassin the Pretender had so unceremoniously murdered, she didn’t hesitate. She ran up the stairs and flung herself on the bed. He jumped up with a snort.

“I’m not entirely dead to the world, woman. I thought you’d never come to bed. Come here and let me—”

“He called.”

Baldwin stopped, his hand frozen on Taylor’s thigh. “Huh?”

“Our boy. He called the house and let me know tonight’s crime scene wasn’t his.”

She didn’t have to explain further. Baldwin knew that the Pretender was out there, waiting to strike, waiting for the perfect moment to catch them off guard. Every murder they worked, they were forced to stop and think about him. He preyed on their minds.

Baldwin’s rage eliminated all traces of sleepiness, palpable and deadly. The more controlled his voice, the angrier he was. This was as tight as she’d ever heard him. “He called the house.”

She didn’t know which scared her more, the constantly evolving relationship with a mass murderer, or the rigid fury in Baldwin’s voice.

“Yes. At least, I assume it’s him. He left a message. It said, ‘Not me.’”

She heard Baldwin breathe deeply, mastering his emotions. “Son of a bitch. Let me hear it.”

They made their way downstairs. “I wouldn’t worry too much,” she said. “It wasn’t what I’d term threatening. I imagine when he’s ready to strike, he’s going to have a blast setting the stage.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. And you let me judge for myself. You need to stop downplaying this. He’s dangerous.”

He sounded so possessive, so intense, that it felt like he had stopped her on the stairs and slipped his arms around her body. Amazing how even his voice made her feel protected. Not that she needed protecting, of course, but it was nice knowing she had a fallback position.

In the kitchen, Baldwin replayed the message several times, then made a call, to Quantico, she figured, to see what the trap showed. She took the wine and went into the living room, booted up the laptop, retrieved the cord for the camera, and uploaded the pictures from the Love Hill crime scene. Busy work. Something to take her mind off that voice, the crawling terror that pervaded her senses. Despite what Baldwin thought, she did take the Pretender seriously. She dreamt about him. She caught herself looking over her shoulder, wondering if he was watching her. She’d made some changes to her routine to try and throw him off, but if he was mailing her letters and calling her at home, none of that mattered. He knew where she was, all the time. He knew where she slept, where she was most vulnerable. She had the brief urge to suggest that they move, but it wouldn’t matter. The Pretender was far too clever for his own good.

“Damn,” she whispered. She took a drink of the Masciarelli and willed her stomach to stay put. She needed a distraction, and the computer was ready. Baldwin had installed an e-mail program directly into her photo well. She selected the twenty or so pictures she’d taken and sent them to her work e-mail address so they’d be there fresh for the picking in the morning.

When the files finished uploading, she opened the slide show and scrolled through them, slowly, recreating the sense of the scene in her mind. The music. Fishing line. The Picasso book. A very posed corpse.

Not. Me.

She shook it off, forced the voice from her head. The crime-scene pictures were in vivid color, but they didn’t capture the intensity she’d felt at the scene. This murderer was sending them a very clear message. If she could only decipher it before he felt compelled to tell them again.

Baldwin came and sat next to her, rubbing her leg through her jeans, then inserting his hand into the opening and running his warm fingers delicately up the back of her calf. It made her shiver.

“Now that you’re awake … you mentioned the postcards left at the Macellaio crime scenes? I bagged a Picasso monograph that was on the coffee table. I’ll ask the owner if it’s his—it might have been left by the suspect.”

“That’s a great thought.” He grew silent. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?” she asked.

“I can’t keep you safe from him.”

She sighed. “You do that every time you look at me, Baldwin. And don’t you forget it.” She kissed him, and her heart pounded in a much more enticing way. He tugged at the button on her jeans, slipped her arms out of her shirt. She wrapped herself around him. It didn’t take long. It had been a while for them, and they were both anxious to make the connection. There would be plenty of time for candles and music; right now, all she wanted was to feel Baldwin inside her, to remind her that she was alive. His beard made the insides of her thighs feel red and burned, and she got carried away and raked his back with her nails. The depths of her passion for him never ceased to surprise her. She’d never felt so totally and completely in lust and in love at the same time.

Breath ragged, they clung together on the couch. Baldwin fell asleep in her arms, and she smiled into his dark hair. God, it was good to have him home.

She reached out a hand and managed to get her wine. Debated slipping upstairs into the pool room and having a game, think through the night’s work. She’d have to get up in a few hours anyway. Almost reluctantly, she set the wine on the table and closed her eyes, let her breathing deepen and match Baldwin’s. There would be plenty of time to deal with monsters in the morning.

Six

With a whopping three hours of sleep under her belt, Taylor rose at seven so she could get a run in before she had to go to work. Baldwin had bought a treadmill for their bonus room so he could run off his excess stress, and she’d found it helped her, too. She was dreading today. She could only pray that the troll she’d met last night wasn’t really going to be her new lieutenant.

After a quick three miles, she showered, put her wet hair in a ponytail, dressed in a new pair of dark denim jeans and a black cashmere T-shirt, then jammed her feet into her favorite pair of Tony Lama cowboy boots. Elm would probably be one of those sticklers for the dress code, but damn if she was going to wear slacks and pumps to work. She figured as long as her badge and weapon were visible, it was quite apparent that she was dressed for the job.

Downstairs, she grabbed a Diet Coke and shrugged into a black leather car coat. Summer was nearly here, but it was still getting chilly in the mornings. Weird weather. She backed out of the driveway, debating. Should she go to the office to face the music with Elm, or should she go to Gass Street, to Sam, and witness the autopsy of their victim from last night?

Her cell phone rang. Speak of the devil. Punching the talk button, she smiled as she greeted her best friend.

“Howza,” Sam said, and Taylor burst out laughing. It was code from their high school days at Father Ryan. Howza was one of their ways of letting the other know they’d gotten in trouble with the nuns. Neither one could remember where and how it started, but it stuck.

“Who are you in trouble with?” Taylor asked.

“Me, in trouble? I hear it’s you who’s in hot water.”

Taylor groaned. “What did you hear?”

“That you told off the new guy.”

“And where, pray tell, did you hear that?”

“Your new dick is in my lobby.”

“Just Renn?”

This time Sam laughed. “Just so. He’s here to witness the post. He was worried that you were getting reamed by the new guy, and that’s why you’re late.”

“I’m not late.”

“No, you’re not. He’s early. He was waiting for me when I got here, and I was early. You need to give him some saltpeter or something, get him calmed down.”

“Doesn’t that affect his Johnson?”

“Probably wouldn’t hurt that either. I think he’s got the hots for you.”

Taylor rolled her eyes. “Great. Thanks for the warning. I’ll head into the office before I come to you.”

“By the way, you may want to avoid the paper. It seems your new boss gave the reporter a lot of detail from the scene. You may want to talk to him.”

“I tried that last night. He wasn’t listening.”

“Try harder. See you in a bit.”

Sam hung up before Taylor could reply. Damn. It was face-the-music time.

Traffic was unbearably light. Just her luck. She was downtown, pulling into the parking lot of the Criminal Justice Center before the clock turned 8:30 a.m.

The CJC was one of those never-changing entities in her life. In one way, shape or form, she’d been here at least five times a week for the past four years. And for the previous nine, she’d been filtering in and out, bringing suspects in for booking or questioning, meeting with superiors, taking exams…. Thirteen years of her life, this had been her home base. Stocky gray cement with a red-and-brown brick facade, the close smell of the Cumberland River, the back stairs with an industrial ashtray littered with cigarette butts, all served to make her feel a familiar sense of calm.

It was the inside of the building that had undergone the dramatic transformation.

The new chief had systematically decimated everything the Metro Nashville Police Department stood for, accomplished, and created during the thirteen years she’d been a cop.

The changes had begun subtly—a command shift here, a group moved there, and Taylor hadn’t worried about it too much. A new chief would certainly have new plans. And then he started replacing the upper levels of management with his own people.

He followed with a Machiavellian administrative swoop, moving many of the criminal investigative detectives into the six separate city precincts. By splitting up seasoned teams and bringing in new people, the homicide close rate of eighty-six percent dropped to a measly forty-one. Decentralization of the homicide teams had been only one of the huge shifts in the past few years. Buyouts and early retirements cut a swath through the experienced ranks of the detective division—all of the Criminal Investigative Division groups had been affected.

Despite the vociferous complaints by the rank and file, the realignments went on. The new chief publicly claimed that the crime rates were dropping dramatically, when in actuality there was simply some creative accounting going on. One of the new guidelines that upset Taylor was the new definitions for rape. An assault could no longer be called a rape unless there was penile penetration. Taylor knew a few women who’d gotten away by the skin of their teeth, had been forced to fellate an attacker, had been beaten and terrorized, but it was only categorized as a sexual assault.

It burned her to no end, these little petty political plays. Her force was being dismantled, slowly, but surely.

Her own world had suffered the most dramatically of all. Taylor’s team was known as the murder squad. They worked out of the old offices, handled high-profile cases. To be on the murder squad, you had to be the cream of the crop. As the homicide lieutenant, Taylor had run it for three years. The loyalties of her men and women were unassailable, and they’d managed to get past the decentralization and keep on solving crimes, which was the only purpose they had.

But Captain Delores Norris was the new head of the Office of Professional Accountability, and hated Taylor with a passion. They’d gone head-to-head, and for now, Taylor had lost, and big. Her team had been split apart, reassigned to other sectors and her boss, Mitchell Price, fired. Price was fighting tooth and nail to get his job back, and the Fraternal Order of Police was backing him to the hilt. They just needed time to make the case and take Metro to court.

By breaking her away from Lincoln Ross and Marcus Wade, trying to force her sergeant, Pete Fitzgerald, into early retirement, Delores Norris guaranteed herself a spot on Taylor’s shit list. But getting Taylor demoted two spots, back to detective … Well, Taylor was fighting that with her union rep strong at her side. Totalitarianism had no place in this police force, and it would, eventually, be eradicated. All it would take would be a massive mistake on the chief’s part, or a mayor with the balls and foresight to concede his city was being torn apart.

But for the meantime, if Taylor wanted to keep her job, she had to show up in her old office and play nice. And that’s exactly what she planned to do.

She was about to swipe her pass card when the door swung open. A group of young Academy cadets clattered out and down the stairs, happy and joking. One solemnly stopped and held the door for her. Once the path was cleared, she smiled at the young man and entered the CJC.

She followed the blue arrows embedded in the linoleum floor to the Homicide offices. The halls were relatively quiet and she was inside the small room within moments.

Lieutenant Elm stood in the door to her—no, his—office. His arms were crossed, his bushy brown hair smoothed into place. He greeted her with a smile, which completely caught her off guard. She almost saw his third molars as the smile widened, a pink tongue nestled deep inside.

“Good morning, Detective,” he said. Pleasant, non-threatening, disarming. Taylor wasn’t falling for it. Her senses went on immediate alert.

“Good morning,” she said, stopping in front of him, arms behind her back, spine straight. She waited for the dressing-down, but it didn’t come.

“Come into my office, if you will. I’d like to cover some ground with you.” He pivoted, and entered the tiny little space that used to be her office. She followed him, sat in the chair next to the door. There was just enough room for her to stretch her legs out; the tip of her right boot touched the corner of the door. Elm sat behind the desk. The scarred wood was free of paper, the normal detritus that built up—pens, pencils, Post-it notes, referral sheets, call sheets—was all neatly stowed away.

Something drew her eyes to the ceiling. For as long as she could remember, by the window, there had been a ceiling panel with a large brown water stain on the corner. She’d asked the facilities manager to have it replaced countless times, and the requests had fallen on deaf ears. But this morning, the stain was gone, the panel replaced. She didn’t know if that was a coincidence or whether Elm had actually managed in one brief morning to do what she’d struggled to accomplish for years. Coincidence, she decided. No other decent explanation.

“So, Detective. We didn’t get off on the right foot yesterday. And that’s a shame, because I see that you have an exemplary record and certainly are capable of taking orders from a superior.” He paused, looked around the room like he was speaking to an audience. His gaze finally settled back on her. “Such a shame that you’ve had so much trouble lately. I assume there aren’t any more, ahem, surprises, in your closet?”