The Cold Room

Eight

Being a member of the Behavioral Analysis Unit meant being on call 24/7, so when Baldwin was working an actual case, there were few breaks and many sleepless nights. Part of it was the nature of the job, but it was also his fault. He couldn’t turn it off. Couldn’t walk away. And that was dangerous. He thought he’d been successful in pulling away a bit over the past year, setting up a home and life in Nashville, only consulting on the biggest of cases. But lately, he found himself being dragged back in, bit by bit.

The problem was, he loved it. He hated the means that brought him the cases, despised what the men and women he hunted did, was constantly amazed at the depths of human cruelty. But as a student of psychology, finding out why some sociopaths choose to become serial killers had become his vocation. His art.

The call he’d been waiting for came at 9:10 a.m. He received the news, said thank you, and set the phone back in its cradle.

The phone call confirmed it. They had a match. The same man had killed in Florence and London. He paced the house, thinking. His mind was in overdrive. Il Macellaio, the Italian serial killer who’d been operating for ten years, had finally made a huge tactical mistake.

Baldwin was tired. So very tired, and so very jazzed. Now they had the confirmation that II Macellaio had moved his hunting grounds to London three months prior. He’d claimed three victims, all slightly out of his usual victim profile. These were working girls. In Florence, he preyed on students, and he was careful to choose girls who would go unnoticed for a time if they disappeared. Mousy, shy girls who didn’t have a lot of friends.

At the beginning Baldwin assumed he flattered them, seduced them, got them to leave their lives and go home with him. He would hold them for weeks, slowly starving them, until they were so sluggish that fighting him wasn’t an option. Once they died, he had sex with their bodies, then washed them and left them posed, with a print of the painting he was mocking nearby.

Necrosadism wasn’t something he came across every day, though it did happen. The very act of murdering a woman to have sex with her corpse was an extreme variation of necrophilia, which many times was characterized more by fantasies of having sex with dead women than actually going through with it.

But there was something out there for every killer to devolve into, and II Macellaio was a true necrosadist. He’d started by starving the girls, but quickly moved on to strangulation. Even then, in his later cases, the girls were given zero nourishment, no water at all, so they were weakened, couldn’t put up a fight.

Il Macellaio’s desire was playing havoc with his self-control. In his early days, he wasn’t rushed, was able to sate his needs with a kill a year. Now, he’d gotten a taste for dead flesh, and he hastened the deaths of his victims along so he could have more time with their bodies. It was good news, in a way. When a serial killer’s self-control slipped, you had a chance to catch him.

Baldwin turned back to the files on the table in front of him. The new murders in London, with the prostitutes as victims, shook him. Geographically, serial killers tend to stay in certain areas. To jump countries, well, that was a huge step.

If he had actually crossed to America as well, they’d catch him. Baldwin flipped through the pictures from the Nashville crime scene. So very familiar. The posing, the emaciated body. The one huge difference between the London and Florence killings and this possible American murder was the race of the victim.

All the overseas victims were white. This one was black. And that was enough to give Baldwin serious pause. For a sophisticated, organized serial, a well-defined signature can evolve over time, getting more specific, more exact. Killing methods are perfected, the suspect learns from each crime scene. He figures out what works and what doesn’t, what turns him on and what doesn’t, and adapts. Just like any predator.

But killers didn’t usually start with one race then switch to another. If he’d been equal opportunity from the beginning…but II Macellaio hadn’t. He’d exclusively killed white women. At least that they knew of.

Baldwin sighed deeply. He sent an e-mail to the Macellaio task force, asking them to pull any unsolved murders of young black women in Florence or London over the past fifteen years. The carabinieri kept meticulous records; the search shouldn’t take too long. The Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard were fully automated. They could have their answers by end of day tomorrow.

He was afraid of what those answers might be.

His phone rang, the caller ID showing a London exchange. They’d been faster than he expected.

“This is John Baldwin,” he answered.

A British voice, cultured and aristocratic, said, “Dr. Baldwin? Detective Inspector James Highsmythe, Metropolitan Police. Have you seen the results of the tests you ordered?”

“I have. Nice to meet you, Highsmythe. I’ve heard good things.”

“As have I, Dr. Baldwin. We have submitted a formal request for the FBI’s help in this matter. I trust you’ve seen it?”

“I have.”

“Then you will appreciate the nature of the request. My superiors are sending me to Quantico to give you a full briefing.”

“Detective Highsmythe-”

“Do call me Memphis.”

“Memphis. I’m in Nashville now, attending to a murder that looks eerily similar to II Macellaio. Perhaps you’d like to join me here, then we can head to Quantico to meet the rest of the team?”

“Nashville?” The man sounded surprised for a moment. “He’s struck in the United States as well?”

“It seems there is a possibility, yes.”

“I’ll see what I can do about rearranging the travel arrangements. Barring unforeseen complications, I should be there tomorrow.”

“Good. I’ll get you a place to stay, don’t worry about that. Least I can do for dragging you down here. It will be worth your while, I think.”

“I appreciate the offer. Tomorrow, then.”