“That’s great news,” Taylor said. “Is she awake enough to talk?”
“Not yet. Why are you going to Quantico?”
“The Macellaio task force is all there already. They need this piece of the puzzle.” She tapped the laptop. “Baldwin’s working it with our superiors. I’ll fight for you to come, too, you’ve been instrumental in this case from day one.”
“Well, don’t worry if they say no. I’ve got enough here to keep me busy.”
Gracious of him. He walked into the kitchen, singing softly under his breath to the cat. Sheesh. Big man gone soft over a fuzzball. Though she had to admit, Art was kind of cute.
She had bigger problems to worry about than one of her detectives fostering a criminal’s pet.
She caught herself. McKenzie wasn’t one of her detectives, he was her partner. She didn’t have her command back. Yet.
Taylor stopped at home to pack a bag and grab her passport, just in case. By the time she made it to the CJC, the orders had been secured for her trip to Quantico. A commander she’d worked with in the past, Joan Huston, was in the Homicide offices when she arrived.
“Commander,” Taylor said.
Huston patted her sun-streaked brown hair and smiled, then handed her a file folder. “Detective. I’m overseeing Homicide until we get things straightened out with Lieutenant Elm. I’ve got your clearance for Quantico. I appreciate the request to take Detective McKenzie, but we’ve decided that he doesn’t need to travel at this time. He can be your conduit to the investigation in Nashville. You’ve been authorized on a TPSPA both for Quantico and for any overseas travel that may be necessary. A temporary special assignment to the FBI’s behavioral unit was the best we could do on this short notice. It’s on the FBI’s dime, which made it easier for the chief to swallow. You need to hurry, you don’t want to miss your flight. I do hope you’ll keep me informed of your progress.”
Wow. That was easy. Baldwin must have made some interesting phone calls. “I will. Thanks so much for helping.”
“You got it. Do us proud. We’ll have all this-” she waved her hand around in a circle, meaning Homicide “- figured out upon your return.”
She smiled again and shook Taylor’s hand. She’d always gotten along with Huston. It was nice to have someone of rank actually smile at her again. Maybe things were getting ready to turn around.
It was early enough that the drive to the airport wasn’t too bad. She dumped the car at Executive Travel and had them shuttle her over to the terminal. Her flight to D.C. was in forty minutes, and she still needed to get her weapon checked and registered. Flying armed wasn’t an easy proposition, but once she got to the airport, all the provisions she needed had been arranged for. With her weapon surrendered and secured, she was escorted through security, her bag x-rayed, and fifteen minutes later she was on the plane.
That had to be a record run through an airport. She liked working with the FBI. They knew how to make things happen.
The flight was going to take two hours. She did the only rational thing. She put her head against the window, and fell asleep.
Thirty-Four
T aylor woke when the plane began its skidding run down the Potomac. She reset her watch for Eastern time, brushed her hair, and swiped on some ChapStick. Baldwin was meeting her at the gate. Another perk for the FBI.
She deplaned, was met in the jetway by an airline official who handed her both her overnight bag and her gun case. She’d carried on the killer’s laptop, in her own case, so she attached that to her bag and strolled up the jetway. As she exited, she saw Baldwin waiting. He had on a white Brooks Brothers button-down and chinos, looked endearingly preppy and handsome, his green eyes flashing in welcome. And weary. Too many long nights, too many murders. It was starting to take a toll. But his face lit up when he saw her, and he enveloped her in a hug that took her breath away.
God, just being near him made her feel more settled.
Reagan National Airport had changed since she was last here. Of course, that was ages ago, everything in this town but the monuments would have changed, and they’d added a few new ones to the city, too. D.C. could never be accused of being a static entity.
They chatted about nothing until they exited the terminal, the humidity smacking her in the face like a wet washcloth. Funny, she knew Nashville was just as humid, but it felt wetter here.
Dodging a multitude of people going in every direction but theirs, they reached the curb, where a driver sat with a big black sedan that fairly screamed government. Baldwin held the door for her. The air was on full blast and gave her a chill. Baldwin slid in beside her, and the driver wormed his way through the mass of taxis and cars to the exit. Within ten minutes, they were heading south, toward Quantico, on I-95.
“Ready?” Baldwin asked.
“As I’ll ever be. Tell me what you know.”
“We’re heading to Italy in the morning. The carabinieri are looking for Adler. He landed in Rome early this afternoon, made it through customs before the alert went out. Well, I shouldn’t say that. The alert had gone out, but they didn’t pay it enough attention. He was smart, drove to Atlanta, took the first flight out. Georgia Bureau of Investigation has already impounded the Prius. Oh, and we have his passport photo.” He handed her a black-and- white glossy eight-by-ten photograph.
It was a much more recent shot than Adler’s driver’s license. The man who looked back at her didn’t send waves of fear crashing through her system. He was…boring. Nondescript. Not terribly handsome, not ugly. Where so many mixed-race children took on the most glorious aspects of their parents’ blood, nothing elegant leapt out about Gavin Adler. He had curly black hair and a round face, with skin so light that if his full lips didn’t have a slightly ethnic bent to them, she would have assumed he was white. Wide brown eyes. His nose wasn’t big, nor was it small, but a bit thick through the nostrils. He looked…more scared than scary. How had this benign little man killed four women? How had he had sex with their corpses? How did he manage to have an elaborate chamber in his basement solely for the purpose of hastening his victims’ deaths?
Taylor was used to evil, saw it every day. But she had a hard time seeing much of anything in Gavin Adler’s face.
“This is him? This is the man who’s created such havoc?”
“Half of him, anyway. We have the Italians, the Brits and Interpol using facial recognition software to look for another man like this in their passport rolls, people who’ve traveled in and out of the country. But we don’t know what country issued II Macellaio’s passport, or what name he’s traveling under, so that makes it difficult. We don’t know travel dates. We have very little to go on over there. Tommaso isn’t exactly an uncommon name over there. It’s like us pulling all the records of people named Tom.”
Taylor tapped her laptop bag.
“Hopefully, this will change everything. I assume you’ll be able to trace the IP address he was using and narrow a location down pretty damn quick. I doubt Tommaso is his real name.”
“Maybe, maybe not. We have been trying to track it down, and we do have a possible on the Tommaso front. There’s a famous art photographer named Tommaso. It’s a long shot, but it just might be him.”
“An art photographer?”
“Yeah. And catch this. He takes photographs of paintings for the art catalogs for the museums.”
“Well, that fits. How’d you find him?”
“One of my profilers, Charlaine Shultz, is a big art fan. When we said the name she mentioned this guy. We searched on Google for him and he showed up everywhere. We even know where he lives.” He paused for a moment. “Care to guess?”
Taylor raised an eyebrow. “Florence?”
“Exactly. He warranted checking out, under the circumstances. He’s well-known. Sought after. He goes simply by Tommaso, if that tells you anything.”
“That’s as good a start as any I’ve heard. Man, your team has been busy.”
