“Oh, Jesus,” she said. She pulled out her cell phone, called Dispatch. “We need to amend the BOLO on the Prius. Please include the state of Georgia.”
She hung up, then speed-dialed Baldwin. He answered on the first ring.
She could hear the tremor in her voice. “I’m in Gavin Adler’s basement. We were wrong. Oh, my God, we were so wrong. Gavin Adler isn’t II Macellaio.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Baldwin, there’s two of them.”
“What do you mean, there’s two of them?”
“Are you still in Quantico?” Taylor asked.
“Yes, I am. I was going to catch a plane in about an hour.”
“Maybe you should sit tight. I’ll come to you. We can catch a flight to Florence out of D.C. a helluva lot easier than from Nashville.”
“Whoa. You need to back up, and tell me everything.”
The words spilled out in a torrent. “All our leads ended up here, pointing to Gavin Adler. I’m at his house now, out in western Davidson County. We just recovered a victim, a young woman named Kendra Kelley, who was being held in a Plexiglas coffin. This is his house, Baldwin, this is the house of the man who killed Allegra Johnson and Leslie Horne. But it’s not Il Macellaio. We were completely wrong. Il Macellaio is still overseas. He’s in Italy, in Florence. We have to go after them. This guy, Gavin Adler, is Il Macellaio’s brother.”
“His brother? Are you speaking figuratively, or do you mean a flesh-and-blood brother?”
“A real brother. And they’ve been working together. I’ve only gotten a glimpse into their world, and I’m telling you, it’s horrific. By the way, I have a name for you to start working on for Il Macellaio. Tommaso. That’s all I’ve got. I’m waiting for a specialist to come and go through the computer system.”
“Christ. There’s two of them. Okay, okay, give me a second.”
She could hear him rustling papers, could imagine that he was running his hands through his hair, trying to get his mind to work harder.
“Is the computer a desktop?” he asked finally.
“No, it’s a laptop.”
“Okay. Take it. Get to the airport, get up here. I’ll clear it with your bosses. We’ll analyze the system, glean as much information as possible. Did Adler flee to Italy?”
“Yes. It’s all right here. Tommaso tells Gavin to come to him. To drop everything, dispose of the ‘doll,’ as he calls the victim we found here, Kendra Kelley, and come to him. He sent instructions for him to drive to Hartsfield International in Atlanta, I guess to throw us off the trail if we thought he might have tried to flee, to pick up a ticket at Alitalia and fly to Rome. And he calls him brother.”
“So he may not be physically related?”
“Baldwin, think about it. The DNA from Chattanooga matches the DNA from London and from Florence. The DNA matches. ”
“Holy shit,” he murmured. “Of course. I was so blind. There’s only one way the DNA could match two people.”
“Exactly. They aren’t just brothers. They’re identical twins.”
Thirty-Three
T aylor hung up the phone with Baldwin. She closed the laptop, looked for a case. She didn’t find one, but did find a power cord. She bundled that together. Tim was wrapping things up with the coffin; the basement had been combed over. Samples of DNA had been taken, fingerprints, everything they’d need to nail Adler to the wall. If they could catch him.
Keri McGee was watching all this with a trained eye, waited until Julia Page had gone upstairs for some air before approaching Taylor.
“Is this something I need to erase from the tapes?”
Taylor gave the girl a smile. “No. This is an instance of me taking the initiative. If I get busted, so be it. But Quantico is better equipped to handle this than we are. I just have to go downtown and plead my case to whoever I can find who’ll let me go. Baldwin said he’d fix it, but I can’t exactly run up there with evidence without authorization.”
“Okay. I heard what you said. Identical-twin killers, huh?”
“It looks that way.”
Keri brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “You know, I had a Cajun granddaddy, his name was Welton Keif. I remember one time we’d gone out to the bayou to visit him, in this flat-bottomed skiff, water moccasins slipping through the murk, mosquitoes as big as your hand flitting around. We’d been visiting with a cousin of mine who’d had identical twins, and we brought pictures so he could see. We showed him the babies, told him they were identicals. He looked at us funny, said, ‘What the hell is an identical twin?’ We were taken aback, surely everyone knew what that was. But my mom explained anyway, that they were two little boys who were exactly alike who’d been born at the same time. He got this look of recognition on his face. Said, ‘Oh. Them’s born partners, that’s what they are. Born partners.’ Sounds like that’s what you have here, Detective Jackson. Born partners who are driven to kill. I wonder what made them that way?”
“Born partners, huh? Well, they’re certainly partners in murder. I wonder what made them this way, too, Keri. If I can find out more about them, I might be able to answer that. Thanks for the input. Sounds like your granddaddy was a perceptive man.”
“That he was, Detective. Too perceptive. He also said I’d come across another pair, far away from him. Looks like that was rather prophetic, don’t you think?”
The hair rose on Taylor’s arms. “Yes, Keri, that’s a little strange.”
“I’ll just get back to work now, Detective. You travel safe. Good luck catching these guys.”
McKenzie met her at the top of the stairs. He had the gray cat in his arms, and the cat was snuggled into his shoulder, purring loudly. He looked settled in and happy.
“His name is Art,” McKenzie said. “It’s on his tag.”
“Art the cat. Well, that fits. These killers are imitating famous paintings, why not have a cat named Art? Hey, kiddo.” She scratched the gray behind his ears again, and she swore he smiled.
“He’s really friendly. He seemed lonely, so I thought I’d give him a little love. Now I’m afraid to put him down.”
“McKenzie, we’ve got work to do. Have you found any pictures of this guy, anything that might help us identify him? We only have the photograph from his license to go on, and it was issued in 1998. You know how deceiving those pictures can be. He could have changed his look four times since then.”
“No. This place is clean. Except for all those CDs and the basement, this place is sadly devoid of personality, actually. Um, Jackson? I kind of promised Art I’d take care of him.”
Taylor ran her hand across her forehead. “Well, we need to call animal services and let them come take him.”
“No. They’ll, they’ll-” He looked at her frantically, mouthed the words put him down.
“Not necessarily. What do you propose?”
“Can I keep him?”
McKenzie sounded so much like an eight-year-old who’d found a stray that Taylor had to laugh.
“McKenzie, this is going to be our little secret. You may foster the cat until we figure out what needs to happen with him. Is that fair?”
He just nodded, a wide grin plastered across his face.
“Okay then. That’s settled. I need to go back to the CJC and secure permission to go to Quantico. Though I have no idea who I’m going to do that with. Can you stay here, continue running the scene? Tim has oodles of evidence that needs to be logged, and I want your eyes on it. Then I want you to take the license photo of Adler, put it in a six-pack, and see if Hugh Bangor can identify him. What’s the word on Kendra Kelley?”
“She’s being pumped full of Narcan and she’s responded well. Looks like she’ll be okay.”
