by J. D. Barker
I caught a cab on Brownsville.
Willy wanted to go, but I told him no. I told him I needed to do this alone.
Each turn, every bump of the road, seemed familiar. When I closed my eyes, I was back in that white SUV, following the same route.
The driver had to drop me at the mouth of Milburn Court. There were too many people and emergency vehicles blocking the small cul-de-sac to get any closer.
I gave him cash and stepped out into the crowd.
The acrid scent of fire was heavy on the early morning air, the sky at the edge of the cul-de-sac was thick with it, all eyes of the crowd faced in that singular direction. Some people had brought chairs, one man even had a cooler. Some were silent, others joked and laughed. Two boys circled the large group on skateboards, sticking to the outer edge of the pavement.
I pushed past them all.
I forced my way through, the numbers growing as I neared the front, until I was at the yellow police tape, now reinforced with wooden barricades and about a dozen uniformed officers behind those, eyeing the crowd with solemn faces.
About thirty feet behind them, I spotted the tall wall of stone topped with black metal spikes, familiar from my visit to this place. A gate of matching metal stood open at the foot of the driveway. To the left was the guardhouse Pete Lemire of KRWT had used as a backdrop in his earlier broadcast. There was no sign of him or the news van now.
The driveway twisted and disappeared among the old oaks and elms, the house lost somewhere behind the trees, not visible from here.
“Pretty crazy, right?”
This came from the woman beside me. She was in her early twenties, long blonde hair and green eyes. She didn’t look at me, only faced forward. She wore a long, white coat.
An ambulance siren chirped, and I turned back to the driveway. The police made an opening in the barricade and forced the people back so it could drive out. Its lights were off. It wasn’t in a hurry.
When I turned back, the woman was gone, replaced by a man in his late sixties fumbling with a cigarette and lighter.
I sucked in a deep breath and ducked under the yellow tape, rounded the wooden barricade, and ran toward the driveway, toward the house, toward Stella. When one of the officers shouted behind me, then another, I only ran faster. When I passed the guardhouse, I spotted another officer, this one staring at me, barking orders into the radio attached to his shoulder. I forced my legs to push harder.
I rounded three bends before the house came into view.
Black smoke streamed up from the west side. Where the white SUVs had been, two fire trucks now stood. Coils of hose ran from the tanks up into the house, through a door off to the side. The front door stood open, and people were rushing in and out—paramedics, police, officials in plain clothes. Nobody I recognized.
Standing between me and the house were three more Pittsburgh PD officers. The one in the middle shouted, “Far enough, kid! Stop right there!”
I faked left, then bolted to the right, tried to rush past him, but one of the others tackled me from the side, and the two of us tumbled to the ground. He twisted my arm around to my back, and I felt a handcuff clasp my wrist. He tried to get my other arm out from under me. I rolled, but his bulk held me down.
“Stop squirming, dammit!”
With the help of one of the other officers, he managed to tug my free arm out and pull it back, locking it behind me with the other handcuff.
He took his knee out from the small of my back and stood, tugging at my arms. “Get up.”
“I need to get in there!”
“Get up.”
They lifted me to my feet, and I tried to break free but couldn’t.
“You don’t understand, I—”
“Put him in the back of that one,” the officer on my left said, nodding toward a squad car parked near the fountain.
The first officer began dragging me toward the car.
Another cop opened the car door as we approached.
“Get Detective Brier!” I shouted. “Tell him I’m here! I need to get inside! I need—”
The first officer pushed the top of my head and tried to force me down into the car. “I don’t give a shit what you need, kid.”
“Get Detective Brier!”
A man in plainclothes standing near the front door heard me and looked up. “Who did you say?”
“Detective Brier. Tell him I’m here,” I repeated.
“And who are you?”
“Jack Thatch. He’ll know.”
The man frowned. “Put him in the car.”
And the officer did just that, slamming the door behind me.
I beat on the windows, kicking at the glass and the car doors.
They ignored me. All of them.
I sat there for at least three hours.
The car smelled of bleach, vomit, and piss.
I watched as people came and went from the front door of the house.
I watched as the black smoke began to thin.
I watched the firemen eventually roll up their hoses, store their equipment in the truck, and disappear down the driveway.
The shadows began to slant.
At one point, another uniformed officer, a thin black woman with short hair, rolled down the front windows of the car. She didn’t look at me. Smoke-laden air drifted in from outside through the metal mesh blocking the passenger compartment of the car from the front but did little for the interior smell.
Another hour passed.
The firetrucks and ambulances left, replaced with CSI vans.
The door beside me opened, and a woman sat down. The woman officer who opened the windows closed the door behind her and stood outside, her back to the car.
“Your name is John Edward Thatch. You’re seventeen years old and live at 1822 Brownsville Road, apartment 306. Both your parents are dead, and until recently, you lived with your aunt, Josephine Gargery. When she passed away four months ago, you fell into the care of your neighbor, one”—She pulled a small pad from her jacket pocket, opened to the first page, and scanned the text—“One, Elfrieda Leech. Sixty-nine years old, and by all accounts, a hopeless shut-in. You worked at Krendal’s Diner on Brownsville until it was destroyed during what appears to be a commissioned hit on Henry Crocket three months ago. You are a known associate of Duncan Bellino.” She closed the flap on her notepad. “Did I miss anything?”
I said nothing.
“Do you know who I am?”
I nodded. “You’re Detective Brier’s partner. I recognize you from my aunt’s funeral.”
“I’m Detective Fogel. I work in Homicide. I need you to tell me what you’re doing here, Mr. Thatch.”
“I need to get in the house.”
“Why?”
“Is she in there?”
“Is who in there?”
My eyes went to the floor. “I need to know that Stella is okay.”
At the mention of Stella’s name, Fogel’s expression remained neutral. “Tell me about the man who drives that black Pontiac GTO.”
“I don’t know anyone who drives a GTO.”
“You know we’ve been watching your building. This man has been seen coming and going numerous times. He’s been in your apartment. Does he work for Bellino? Is Bellino responsible for this?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about. Where is Detective Brier? Go get him. I need to speak to him.”
Her fingers began to roll on her knee. Finally, she said, “Detective Brier is dead.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody shot him in the head, practically point blank, about twenty feet from where you’re sitting.” She pointed toward the side of the driveway, then knocked twice on the window.
The officer standing beside the car opened the door.
“Come with me,” Fogel said, stepping back outside.
I slid out and followed her through the maze of cars in the driveway. The female officer followed behind both of us at a distance of only
a few feet. As we rounded one of the CSI vans, I spotted six bodies all covered by black tarps—three in the driveway, two more in the grass, and another off to the side.
Fogel went to the body off to the side and knelt. She peeled back the tarp.
Detective Brier’s glassy gaze stared forward, his mouth slightly open. There was a small hole in his forehead above his right eye, the skin black and puckered. The grass beneath his head was dark with blood, blood filled with small, white specs.
I turned my head and threw up in the grass.
Fogel looked at the officer standing behind me, but neither woman said anything.
“I didn’t do this,” I finally managed.
Fogel replaced the tarp and stood. “I know that. You want to know how I know that? Because I was following you in the cemetery when this happened. Who is the man in the black GTO?”
“I told you, I don’t know. Why were you following me?”
Ignoring my question, she walked over to the other five bodies and began pulling away their tarps, one at a time, anger brewing in her eyes. “Your friend, the man we have documented coming and going from your apartment for years, he killed not only my partner today but each of these people, and you’re going to help me find him. You’re going to tell me everything you know about him.”
As each tarp leapt into the air by her hand, my eyes fell on the bodies—one-by-one—a woman in a white coat, shotgun blast to the stomach. A man in a white coat, shotgun blast to the chest. Another woman, a small gunshot to the head, like Brier—she was also in a white coat. I nearly threw up again. Then I saw the last two, not shot at all.
Burned but not burned.
Like Andy Olin Flack.
Like Raymond Visconti.
Stella.
I ran then.
I pushed past the female officer who had been following us and raced through the front door of the house, nearly tripping on another body in the foyer—uncovered, black and dry like the others. There were more bodies in the hallway, in the library.
When I shouted Stella’s name, three investigators dressed in white jumpsuits looked up from their work but said nothing. An officer positioned at the end of the long hallway ran toward me.
A wooden barricade blocked the hallway leading toward the basement. The walls were black, charred with smoke. Stella’s paintings hung at odd angles, covered in grime. Two had fallen to the floor. Large floodlights had been placed on either end of the hallway, and body bags filled the space between, at least a dozen of them, sealed and silent.
Another body was on the stairs, partially covered, also dry with death.
I raced past the foyer, jumped the body on the stairs, and took the steps two at a time. At the top, there was yet another body, male, this one dead with a shotgun blast to the abdomen.
I had no idea where I was going.
I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me.
All the doors were opened.
The first two bedrooms were empty. When I entered the third bedroom on the left, I froze just inside the open doorway, unable to turn away from what I saw.
The bedroom was large, a suite, really. Nearly as big as my apartment, with a canopy bed dressed in pink-and-white sheets and draped with sheer cloth from above. A sitting area near a window overlooked the backyard—the pool and gardens. A door to the left led to a private bathroom, the walls and floor covered in white marble. A fireplace of stone occupied the back wall, the hearth filled with the fading glow of neglected embers.
Above the fireplace, above the mantle, hung a painting. A painting of a little girl and boy, both sitting on a black iron bench surrounded by gravestones and trees of fall leaves. The little girl held a book in her lap. The boy’s hand reached for her, hesitant, inches from her, longing for her, even then. The vivid colors and brushstrokes, clearly Stella’s hand. I crossed the room, the voices coming up the stairs lost to me. I reached up and ran my fingers over the paint, felt the ridges and edges, the careful swirl of each stroke, and for the first time in my life, I knew Stella’s touch.
There was nobody else in the room, and I also knew she was gone.
I wanted to hate her for the letter.
Those horrible words.
I wanted to forget everything about her.
But I couldn’t.
I simply couldn’t.
My Stella.
PART 3
“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Log 08/09/1993—
Subject “D” within expected parameters. Carl Rozzell appears agitated.
Personal notes – Warren Beeson.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
David Pickford is a beautiful man.
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?” Matteo said, his voice low. He stared at me for a good long while, then clucked his tongue and snapped both latches on his briefcase.
I was handcuffed to a metal ring welded to the top of an aluminum table in an interview room at Pittsburgh PD.
They had pulled me from the house.
It took four of them.
When I wouldn’t leave Stella’s room, they tried to drag me out the door. When that didn’t work, two of them lifted my feet from the ground and carried me. My legs pumped, I kicked and twisted and screamed. At one point, my right foot caught one of the officers square in the gut and he dropped me, the air rushing out his puckered mouth, the fat man staggering back. I kept kicking and screaming even as they shouted out things like assault and resisting and trespassing and interfering—I didn’t really hear much of any of it. The image of the painting filled my vision, the image of the empty room, the conflicting words of her letter.
They threw me into the back of another police car and brought me here. Then I waited again.
I expected Fogel to appear at some point, but she didn’t.
Only Matteo.
Willy called him.
Apparently my run past the barricades got caught by one of the television cameras, and although you couldn’t see my face, Willy knew it was me.
“If you weren’t a minor, they’d be grilling you right now, you know that, right? You’d be looking at some serious time just for the crap you pulled at the house. If they found a way to tie you to what happened in that place…” his voice trailed off as he shuffled through some papers, retrieved a yellow-lined notepad and pen, a manila folder, and closed the case. “Luckily, you are still a minor, and I’ve been told one of the detectives questioned you at the scene without a parent, legal guardian, or attorney present. That’s a big no-no on their end, and they know it. If I have to, I’ll use that. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. They want to talk to you, though. Boy, do they ever.”
He wrote my name and today’s date at the top of the page and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about this guy in the black GTO.”
“I don’t know who he is.”
�
��They seem to think you do. In fact, that Detective Fogel seems sure of it. She gave me these—”
He removed a stack of eight by ten photographs from the manila folder and slid them across the table to me.
The man in the pictures seemed tall, thin build, with blond hair. He was maybe in his late forties. In the first two pictures, he was coming out of my apartment building. The third photo was grainy, probably taken with some kind of long-range lens from somewhere across the street from my building. The image centered around my apartment’s window, the one facing Brownsville. The man was standing in my living room, next to Auntie Jo’s chair, his profile visible but blurry. The final two pictures were of the same man—one standing at the driver’s door of a black Pontiac, the other with him behind the driver’s seat. Although the windshield glare partially obstructed the view, his face was visible. I had never seen him before, but I had a pretty good idea of who he might be.
“He’s been in and out of your building, your apartment, numerous times.”
I thumbed at the edge of window photo. “I think he’s the money guy.”
“The money guy?”
“Somebody has been leaving money for me, five hundred dollars a month, since I was a kid.” I told him about the first envelope and the others that followed. “Dunk was the only person to ever get a look at him,” I said. And I told him about that, too.
“You have no idea who he is or why he would give you cash?”
I shook my head.
Matteo brushed at his upper lip. “Well, we sure can’t tell the police about the money.”
“You’re not gonna tell them?”
He snorted. “Hell no. We don’t want them to have anything tying you to this guy.” He thought for a second. “They think he works for Bellino. We want to keep it that way.”
“I don’t see how he could. The money started when we were kids, long before Dunk got mixed up with Crocket and those guys.”
Matteo shrugged. “They’re detectives. Let them detect. They can figure all that out on their own. My only concern is keeping you out of trouble.”