The Cold Room

Thirty-One

Baldwin listened to Highsmythe’s summary of his three murder cases with half an ear. Unlike Baldwin, he didn’t seem the least bit hungover. Considering he’d outpaced Baldwin to the bottom of the bottle, that was telling.

Memphis was a good speaker, his thoroughness with the cases showing. His investigation had been done right, by the book, methodical and patient, truly a virtue in police work.

Baldwin tuned back in. He’d already heard all of this yesterday. The London murders had started three months earlier. Three prostitutes, three strangulations. All three were staged, all three left with a postcard of a painting: the first was Flaming June by Frederic Lord Leighton, the second, Venus, Satryr and Cupid by Correggio, the third was The Tepidarium by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. All the paintings were of women reclining. The Leighton was the only one who depicted a woman clothed, and that particular crime scene matched-the victim wasn’t naked but dressed in a long, flowing nightgown.

Memphis had prepared a slide show, was going through each scene in detail. He’d show the actual crime scene, then the postcard, then the two superimposed together, then side by side. The resemblance of the dead victims to the paintings was uncanny.

All three women were strangled, all three were small and exceptionally skinny. It hadn’t been determined whether they were starved like the Italian victims, or were skinny as more of an occupational hazard. All three women had been repeatedly sexually assaulted postmortem. DNA found on victim number three was the key to the match between Italy and London.

Il Macellaio was evolving into a more efficient, opportunistic killer, and something had changed in his life. Something that made him alter his preferred method of killing. Anything could tip a psychotic over the edge. There were common denominators that Baldwin could draw on to explain this sudden shift. A death, for example, or a significant job loss. A momentous stressor.

Adding in the total shift in the States to women of African descent, they had another confounding piece of the puzzle. The carabinieri had faxed a report-none of the few murders with black female victims matched Il Macellaio’s M.O.

Baldwin relayed this to Memphis, who just nodded and turned the floor over to Baldwin’s team so they could formulate their plan of attack.

Baldwin listened to Pietra discussing the forensics with Memphis, writing himself notes on what type of man he thought this killer was. When he was done, his notepad looked like chicken scratch, but he was beginning to feel closer to the truth.

He looked around the table. Files, photographs, paper for all the cases were stacked neatly along the center. His team listening hard, heads cocked at angles, notes being taken. A whiteboard to his right was full of conjecture, the one to his left held facts. The left was meager in comparison. That would change after this.

Memphis tapped his finger on the edge of one of the Radnor Lake photos. “He’s obviously escalating.”

Baldwin nodded. “Well, two bodies in two days, yes, I’d agree.”

“I mean escalating as an artist. His Nashville crime scenes were fully realized. The London scenes that I’ve worked weren’t nearly as elegant. Even his Italian murders weren’t this elaborate. This chap thinks he is an artist. The two crime scenes from Nashville are realizations of the paintings he’s recreating, not just posed. It took time, and planning and effort. My London cases were slaughters, nothing more. The postcards almost felt like an afterthought. Either he’s getting very, very good at this, or he’s getting sloppy.”

Baldwin nodded in agreement, then started his portion of the program. The profile was as complete as he could make it, and made for a chilling narrative. He was pleased with the results.

There were five sections to the profile. Charlaine had typed them up into proper presentation format, with a front page full of information and disclaimers. The first few pages of the profile were the summary, a breakdown of all fourteen cases on record, details of what was found at the individual crime scenes and evidentiary material relevant to the cases. Namely, the two matching DNA samples from the recovered hairs.

The next section dealt with the victimology. They had looked carefully at the apparent patterns-all of the European victims were white females, all were fine-boned and small in stature, between eighteen and twenty-six years of age. Their hair color ranged from dark blond to medium brown, their eye colors varied. He wasn’t killing the same woman over and over, but he definitely had a type. All thirteen victims had been posed as a painting, all had a postcard of the painting they’d been used to recreate left at the scene.

Memphis’s point was something that particularly fascinated Baldwin-II Macellaio had fully realized the fantasy of the painting in the Love Hill crime scene, placing the victim not only in a staged environment, but with the painting itself nearby. He was evolving, setting the most elaborate of tableaux. It was more than just the kill, more than having sex with the bodies. He was staging differently, opening the door to more mistakes.

He turned it over to Charlaine, let her explain the differences, the exceptions that stood out starkly. In Italy, the early victims had starved, while the later victims had been strangled. All of the London victims had been strangled. The time frame in Italy was practically leisurely compared to London: ten women over ten years versus three women in three months. The victim type had changed as well. The Italian women were students-shy, mousy girls who didn’t have a lot of friends and wouldn’t be quickly missed. In London, as in Nashville, the victims were prostitutes, an inherently high-risk profession where they, too, might not be reported missing immediately.

The dump sites for the London victims were especially notable-all were found in public, rather than the Italian victims, who’d been left in the hills surrounding Florence à la II Mostro, Florence’s most infamous serial killer. The London women had been found much quicker than the Italians. The Nashville victims had been left in places they would be found that would increase the shock factor, yet another discrepancy.

Honestly, if they didn’t have a DNA match, he’d think this was a copycat.

That started him down a whole different path. Yes, the Pretender had called, had let them know right from the beginning that he had nothing to do with the crime on Love Circle. But what if he was lying? He had to keep that in the back of his mind.

The Pretender could have planted the DNA in London. And if all the DNA in Tennessee matched, too…well, they knew he’d been there.

Though this didn’t feel like the Pretender. All the murders he’d copied so far had one thing in common. Blood. He liked blood. None of these murders had any. No, this just didn’t feel like him.

He forced himself back to the profile, back to what Charlaine was saying about the London murders. The profile stated Il Macellaio wasn’t living in his own place in London-he had taken a temporary apartment or was staying in a hotel. Visiting. Which meant the profile must be disseminated to other countries so they could look at unsolved murders that may match. It wasn’t so strange for a serial killer to be transient, but it was uncommon for him to be moving from country to country. If their killer was a traveler, he’d be in the system, somewhere.

They still needed to ascertain what took Il Macellaio from Italy to England and to the United States. Contract work fit that scenario.

The second set of criteria, the Abduction Environment, showed that all the London victims had been taken off the street, while the Italians were kidnapped from environments where they’d feel safe, namely their homes. The London victims’ profession again stood out-being prostitutes, they’d be more likely to get in the car with a strange man.

The third part of the profile determined whether the killer was organized or disorganized, an easy one for Baldwin’s team. Il Macellaio was clearly an organized offender who brought his preferred weapon to the crime, planned every detail, hunted outside his immediate neighborhood, and was most likely a friendly, affable, pleasant man who had friends. The boy next door. Someone people would be shocked to find out was a killer. He could move among the masses easily.

The assessment was the meat of the profile. It covered more victim evaluations, whether the women were targeted or were representative victims. Baldwin felt that Il Macellaio was combining the two elements: targeting women who helped him live out a detailed fantasy, specifically, having sex with their dead bodies. He was certain Il Macellaio had been exposed to death during his youth.

The last section covered specific suggestions, who to look for, what type of behavior, the level of sophistication to expect, what the motivations were, everything that a law enforcement agency would need to capture, interrogate and try this particular killer.

In the end, they had an exceptionally clear picture of their killer. Evidence, instinct, and years of investigative experience told them what kind of man they were looking for.

They were ready to hunt the hunter.