The Cold Room

Twenty-One

Taylor stood in the front yard of a run-down, ramshackle single-story house on the outskirts of Manchester proper. Another mile into town and all of this would have been under the Manchester Police’s purview; since it was outside the city limits, the Coffee County Sheriff had handled the investigation. It was getting late; they needed to wrap this up so she and McKenzie could get back to Nashville. Sam had called to say she’d be doing the post on the Radnor Lake victim last thing this afternoon. Taylor wanted to witness, had asked her to hold off for another hour or so. She’d really like to wrap Manchester in a tidy bow.

Simmons knocked, and LaTara’s mother came to the door. She was tall and elegant, skin like the deepest espresso, eyes liquid and expressionless. She stared at the contingent of cops standing on her front porch, sighed, and stepped back to allow them entry. Taylor noticed that one of her arms was drastically shorter than the other.

The inside of the house was better kept than the outside. Though the furnishings were worn, they were clean, kept with pride. A sewing machine and bolts of fabric stood unobtrusively in a corner of the wide living room. Drapes, Taylor thought. She spied a card on the sideboard that confirmed it; Marie Bender was a seamstress.

The four of them settled in the kitchen, glasses of homemade lemonade in front of them. Taylor listened while the sheriff explained why they were there, saw the pain flit across the woman’s eyes.

“You have a suspect in my girl’s murder?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. Well, possibly. I don’t want to get your hopes up. I’m just trying to flesh out a few details. Is it okay if we talk about that day?”

“Yes. I want the person who did this to LaTara to be brought to justice. There’s not much I can do for her ’cept fight for that. I watched her slip away from me, into drugs, whoring around. I would like to see some closure for her. She was so unhappy. Nothing I ever did could make up for the…incident.”

“Her uncle?” McKenzie asked gently.

Mrs. Bender’s eyes grew hard. “Yes, damn his soul to hell. He stole the light out of my little girl. She couldn’t ever put it behind her. But she was trying so hard to change. She’d started at a clinic, was trying to get off the heroin. It was just so easy for her to use it to forget. I can’t say I blamed her. It’s not right, and she had to pay too big a price. Her daddy was gone, Eddie was the male figure in her life. When he betrayed her, she was lost.”

Taylor turned to the sheriff, who read her mind. “No chance Eddie Bender’s involved, he got himself killed in jail. They don’t take kindly to child rapists, you know.” Taylor nodded, then turned back to Mrs. Bender.

“Ma’am, when you found LaTara, the report says you took her body out of the tub, held her while you waited for the paramedics to come.”

Sadness crowded the woman’s eyes. “I did. She was gone, any fool could see that. I just wanted a few more minutes with my baby. I shouldn’t have touched her, the sheriff here done told me that, but I couldn’t help it.”

“Where, exactly, did you take her?”

“Where? What do you mean?”

“When you had her in your arms, where were you in the room? Were you in the bedroom, or still in the bathroom?”

“I was still in the bathroom.” She started to cry. “I only had her a few feet from the tub, on the tiles. I remember how cold she was, how cold the floor was.”

“You’re sure you didn’t take her into the bedroom?”

She gathered herself, dabbed the tears from her eyes. “Positive.”

“Did you spill water in the bedroom, something that would get the carpet wet?”

“No. No one knew how that water got there.”

Taylor felt the excitement building. “Ma’am, have you had your carpets cleaned lately?”

“Detective, I ain’t got no money for that kind of thing. It’s all I can do to keep the chores done around here and keep my business afloat.” She gestured to her deformed arm. “LaTara used to help with that. It’s just not as easy to keep things up with one arm, though I do my best.”

Taylor smiled. “I completely understand. Ma’am, would you excuse us for a moment?”

Mrs. Bender nodded and stood, leaving them at the table.

Taylor spoke quietly. No sense upsetting the woman more than she had to. “Sheriff, would you mind if our crime-scene tech came down, took a sample of that carpet? It’s probably a long shot, especially after all this time, but if there’s a chance that we can lift some DNA, I’d sure like to take it.”

“We’ve got a pretty sophisticated forensic setup. Why don’t you let us handle the evidence collection? We can get it done before your man drives down here, get you on your way sooner.”

“That would be fine with me, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind if Miss Marie doesn’t. I’ll go talk to her.”

He came back with Mrs. Bender. She had distrust smeared across her face.

“You gonna replace it?” she asked.

Bangor had said exactly the same thing about his post.

Taylor nodded. “We’ll do our best to get things back to normal for you as quickly as possible. You have my word.”

“Well, then, if it will help catch who did this to LaTara, do what you need to do.”

Simmons flipped open his cell phone. “I’ll go call my crime-scene techs, see who’s free. Give us ten minutes or so, we’ll get things moving.”

Mrs. Bender sat back down at the table. Taylor took a drink of her lemonade. It was exceptional. She told Mrs. Bender that, which brought a warm and rueful smile to the woman’s face.

“LaTara used to go on and on about my lemonade. Damn that girl, I miss her so much.” She took a moment to gather herself. “Why now, Detective? Why, after all this time, are you looking into my girl’s death?”

Taylor decided to tell the woman the truth. She looked like she could handle it. “Well, ma’am, I hope that I’m wrong, but I think she might be connected to a series of murders in Nashville this week. Do you remember the music that was playing in LaTara’s bedroom the day she died?”

“Of course. I don’t have anything like that. It’s just not the kind of music I like. And LaTara, well, she was into all that rap. I know that wasn’t one of our CDs.”

“Did LaTara have any girlfriends, people she might have confided in?”

“When she was younger, yes. But as she got older, got deeper in the drugs, I’m afraid I don’t know who she was hanging around with. She stopped coming to services, stopped listening to me. I hate to say it, but I kicked her out. It wasn’t very Christian of me, and I regret it now. But I don’t truck with drugs, can’t abide that kind of behavior under my roof. When she got her head back on straight, tried to clean up, I welcomed her back with open arms. She was trying so hard.”

“So no boyfriends?”

“Not that I know of. None that I saw sniffing around. She was a pretty girl, my LaTara. Boys always noticed her. But once she got deep into the drugs, she din’t look too good. She was getting back to herself when she passed.”

The sheriff walked back into the kitchen, followed by a young woman with a brunette pixie haircut and ridiculously high cheekbones. A no-nonsense kind of girl. Though she looked young, she oozed smarts. He introduced her as Deputy Ann Clift. The woman nodded and shook Taylor’s and McKenzie’s hands.

“Let’s get started,” she said. “Show me the bedroom.”

The five of them trooped dutifully down the hall. Taylor signaled to McKenzie to hang back. The sheriff and Deputy Clift walked into the room, Marie Bender followed reluctantly. Taylor couldn’t imagine how hard this must be for her.

Though three years had passed, the room was still decorated as LaTara left it, in the style of a little girl, pink and floral and lace. Posters adorned the walls, a single bed with a flowered eyelet coverlet stood against the wall. Taylor was struck by the similarities and glaring differences between LaTara’s room-warm, inviting and safe-and the room that belonged to Allegra Johnson-dank and dark, with no frills or unnecessary items. These were two girls who were alike, but miles and miles apart. It wasn’t just their physical non-proximity that made them different. It was rather amazing that they’d ended up the same, into drugs and prostitution, dead much too young, possibly at the hands of the same killer. Was there something about Allegra Johnson that reminded the killer of LaTara Bender?

The sheriff didn’t waste any time, had a diagram from the original crime scene out and was measuring the area to the right of the bathroom door. After a few minutes of consultation, Deputy Clift drew a wide rectangle with an orange marker, then got on her knees and carefully swabbed the entire area, working in quadrants. She sealed each individual swab, labeled it, and moved on to the next section. After she’d collected over fifty samples, she cut the area of the rug out. It measured about four feet by three feet, and rolled easily into a conveniently placed paper bag. It was labeled and sealed, and they were done.

They bid Mrs. Bender farewell; Taylor gave her a card and asked her to call if anything else came to mind. They left her standing in the doorway to the bedroom, lost in the nightmares and sorrow she had been living with since her only child’s death.