Richard Montanari

by The Echo Man

  Jessica felt the ground shift beneath her. She wanted to speak, but her breath had not yet caught up to her words. 'It's not possible.'

  'It's the only piece of mail the location ever forwarded from this box, under this registration. It was sent about a month ago.'

  Another long pause. Drummond continued. 'Half the department is looking for him, Jessica. If I take this warrant request to the chief they're going to use it to locate Kevin and bring him in.'

  'Okay, Michael. I understand,' Jessica said. 'But I have a favor to ask.'

  'What is it?'

  'I need a head start. There's an explanation for all of this. I just need to get to Kevin first.'

  Silence for a moment. 'I can't break the law, Jess. You know and I know that there is now a record of us having this conversation.'

  'I'm not asking you to break the law. I just need some time. Besides, who's to say what we talked about? Maybe we talked about the Phillies.'

  'How about that Chase Utley, eh?'

  Jessica took a moment, her mind spinning. 'All I'm asking for is a little window. Kevin is innocent. Let me bring him in.'

  The next few seconds were excruciating. Finally: 'If the office brings me into this I'm going to have to drop the hammer. You know that, right?'

  'I know.'

  'But maybe it doesn't have to be immediately. Maybe I can't get a cellphone signal. Maybe my phone was off.'

  Jessica felt a cool wave of relief. 'Thanks, Michael.'

  'Good luck, detective.'

  Jessica clicked off. She filled in Josh Bontrager on the parts of the conversation that he had not heard. She began to pace. The rain began to fall a little harder. She barely noticed.

  'Okay,' Jessica said. 'The killer was working toward this night for a reason.'

  'Danse Macabre,' Bontrager said. 'Midnight on Halloween.'

  'Right. The killer is doing this for Christa-Marie. Why?'

  Bontrager thought for a moment. 'If he is true to form he's going to kill one more person to fill in the last note.'

  'If this is all coming down to Christa-Marie, there must be a connection.'

  'She can't be a target, though. She was convicted of murder. She didn't get away with anything, not like the other victims.'

  'Unless there's something we don't know about,' Jessica said.

  'I'm scared that I made a mistake,' Byrne had said.

  Jessica took out her phone again. She called a man named Gary Peters, a friend of hers who worked the city desk at the Inquirer. They got their pleasantries quickly out of the way.

  'What do you need?'

  'I need you to check something for me.'

  'Shoot.'

  'I need you to look up an obituary,' Jessica said. 'It would be in November 1990.'

  'What's the name?'

  'Gabriel Thorne.'

  'Okay,' Peters said. 'What am I looking for?'

  'I just need the notice.'

  'Got it,' he said. 'Do you want me to fax it to you?'

  'Can you email it to me?'

  'Not a problem.'

  Jessica gave him her email address. 'ASAP, okay?'

  'On the case, detective.'

  Two minutes later Jessica's phone dinged with the arrival of the email. She tapped it, opened it. It was a .pdf file from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

  Prominent Psychiatrist Dead at 58.

  Jessica quickly skimmed the obituary, soon finding what she was looking for.

  '"Services will be held at St. Stanislaus, followed by interment at the Briarcliff Cemetery,'" she read out.

  'Does it have an address?' Bontrager asked.

  Jessica had to enlarge the image. Her eyes scanned the file. 'Here it is. It's at 122 Sawmill Road.'

  They looked at each other. 'Any ideas where that is?' Bontrager asked.

  'No,' Jessica said. 'Hang on.'

  She tapped over to her Google Maps app, put in the address. Soon a map appeared with a big red push pin at the center.

  'Oh hello.'

  'Where is it?' Bontrager asked.

  Briarcliff Cemetery was a small suburban graveyard that abutted a number of large estates. One of them belonged to Christa-Marie Schönburg.

  They turned onto Sawmill Road. The darkness was complete. A fine mist coated the ground; the headlights barely cut through the miasma. The road was serpentine, and more than once Jessica had to slow the car to a crawl. According to the GPS the back entrance to Briarwood Cemetery was approximately a mile ahead.

  They took a slow bend to the right.

  'Stop!' Bontrager yelled.

  Jessica hit the brakes. 'What is it?'

  'Back up.'

  Jessica put the car in reverse. She backed up slowly for fifty feet or so. As she did, she saw what had caught Josh's eye. On the right side of the road were tire tracks cutting through the high grass, leading into the woods. A pair of small trees had been recently knocked over and splintered. Jessica angled the car so the headlights shone into the forest. There, about twenty feet in, was a vehicle, its motor still running. The lights were off but they could see warm exhaust spilling into the cold night air.

  Jessica looked over at Bontrager. They drew their weapons, exited the car, walked down the culvert, up the other side. As they stepped closer to the vehicle Jessica saw more of it. It was a van.

  A familiar van.

  Chapter 87

  Lucy Doucette remembered a time when she was about four or five. Her mother had worked for a few months at a Dollar General and the money had flowed in. They were rich. That Thanksgiving they had a Jennie-O turkey breast, gravy, Hungry Jack mashed potatoes. All her favorites.

  The thought of it made her stomach clench. She could not remember the last time she had eaten.

  She had made slow progress on the plastic band around her wrists. She wasn't anywhere close to being able to slip her hands out. Not yet.

  Ever since the van had stopped, a few minutes ago, she had lain motionless. She didn't know where they were or what was happening. It was better to be still for the moment.

  At first she thought it was her imagination, but she heard footsteps. Footsteps approaching.

  Lucy held her breath.

  Chapter 88

  They approached the van, weapons drawn. Jessica took the driver's side, Josh Bontrager flanked right, a few paces behind. The immediate danger was the threat from the back doors.

  At the rear bumper Jessica stopped, raised her left hand, made it into a fist. Bontrager stopped. Jessica put her ear to the back doors, listened. Silence from within.

  Jessica held up five fingers. Bontrager nodded.

  Jessica crept up to the driver door, counted down silently from five. There were no lights in the van, so the side mirror did not reflect the inside. She held her weapon in her left hand, trained on the door, slid her right hand along the panel.

  On four she opened the door, stepped to the left in attack stance, weapon leveled. The driver's seat was empty, as was the seat on the passenger side. Keys in the ignition.

  Bontrager opened the passenger door on five, pointed his flashlight inside the van. Behind the driver's seat were a pair of side racks. Strapped into them were David Albrecht's equipment - tripods, equipment cases, lights, microphone stands, a short ladder.

  Jessica flipped on the van's interior light.

  There was no one inside.

  Near the back doors they could see the video camera on its side.

  The camera was on, the blue rectangle of the flip-out LCD screen glowed. Jessica took a single latex glove out of her pocket, snapped it on. She crossed to the back of the van, opened a door. Reaching in, she tilted the camera back onto its side. There had to be two dozen buttons.

  'Do you know how to operate one of these?'

  'Sort of,' Bontrager said. 'I took the video of my cousin's wedding last year.'

  'There's video at an Amish wedding?'

  'My cousin left the church. She married English.'

  Bontrager put on a glove, lo
oked closely at the camera for a few moments. He hit a button. They heard a whirring sound, then a click. The side of the camera opened.

  'There's no tape,' Bontrager said.

  Jessica scanned the back of the van, looking for a tape. Then she went back to the front of the vehicle, searched through the console and the glove compartment. Empty.

  'Sometimes there's a memory card,' Bontrager said. He clicked a few more buttons. Different menus flicked by on the LCD screen. 'Yeah, the card's still in there.'

  Bontrager thumbed a few more buttons, the screens ticked by. He hit a button. A video copied to the memory card began to play.

  There were only twenty seconds or so of video and audio, but it was chilling. The video showed someone walking up to the camera along a dark lane. The camera was shaky, showed the figure from the shoulders down.

  'It's you,' a voice whispered. Was it Albrecht speaking? Impossible to tell.

  Without another word, the door of Albrecht's van was yanked open. The video spun into a collage of images: trees, night sky, the side of the van.

  The image then became a stationary shot along the ground, showing Sawmill Road stretching out into the darkness. This continued for a few moments before the screen went black.

  Bontrager stepped a few paces away from the van, pointing his flashlight at the ground. 'Jess.'

  Jessica walked over. On the trunk of a fallen tree was a small pool of blood. A few more drops on the grass led deeper into the woods, over trampled branches.

  Weapons in hand, the two detectives stepped into the forest.

  Chapter 89

  Lucy couldn't move. She was lying on a cold stone floor. A draft was coming from somewhere. She had been yanked roughly out of the van, walked down some stairs, and deposited on the floor. Then she heard a door slam and a lock turn.

  Then, nothing.

  The good news was that her captor had not tightened the plastic band around her wrists. She still had a little slack. She rolled over and began to work on the band, flexing and relaxing her wrists. After a few minutes her lower arms began to feel numb. She stopped for a while, started again. After ten minutes or so it felt as if she might be able to begin to work her hand free.

  When she had been dropped on the floor she'd felt a small puddle of water. She rolled over and over until she was on top of it. She angled her body so that her hands got wet. The water was freezing. She had never done well in science classes, but she figured that this might be a good thing, if it helped her hands contract and not the band.

  She took a deep breath, bracing against the pain she knew was coming, and started to twist her wrists out of the plastic band. No dice. She wet her hands a second time. They were growing numb again, but she couldn't stop.

  The third time she tried, she felt the band slip over the base of her thumbs. With great effort she pulled her right hand out of the plastic band.

  Lucy stood up, a little shaky, pulled the tape from her mouth. She gulped the cold air.

  There was virtually no light in the room. With her hands out front, she felt along the wall. It was a small room, a cellar of some sort. Stone walls. There was a bench, a couple of old chairs. Everything had a deep layer of dust on it. She felt her way over to the door, listened for a while. Silence. As gently as possible, she tried to turn the knob.

  Locked.

  Chapter 90

  The trail of blood stopped about twenty yards into the woods, where the forest became thick and tangled before dropping into a steep gorge.

  Jessica and Bontrager shone their flashlights into the ravine, but the beams were instantly swallowed by darkness.

  'Albrecht is hurt pretty bad,' Bontrager said.

  'If this is Albrecht's blood.'

  Bontrager looked at Jessica, then back at the blood trail, which was quickly being washed away in the drizzling rain. 'You're right. We don't know if this is Albrecht's.'

  'We have to call it in, Josh.'

  Bontrager hesitated a second, no longer. He ran back to the road, called PPD dispatch, identified himself and their position. Dispatch would contact the closest emergency services agency and police K-9 units.

  Jessica returned to the road. They stood on the shoulder.

  'I'll stay here,' Bontrager said. 'I'll wait for the search team.'

  'It's over, Josh. Even if Mike Drummond keeps his word, they're going to put all this together.'

  Bontrager took a few steps away, thinking, turned back.

  'Okay. Here's what happened. I was following a lead. I saw the vehicle, pulled over, discovered the blood. I called it in. Before I could get back to my car I was ambushed. This is why I'm a little unclear on the details after that.'

  'No one is going to buy that.'

  'Maybe yes, maybe no. We'll worry about that later.'

  Jessica considered the scenario. 'Are you sure?'

  'Yeah,' Bontrager said, planting his feet apart. 'Make it look good.'

  Jessica took a step back. 'Josh . ..'

  'I know you box, so try not to kill me.'

  Jessica put on one of her wool gloves, hesitated. This was getting deeper and deeper. 'Are you sure sure?'

  'You're talking me out of it.'

  Jessica reared back and threw the punch, pulling it a little. It caught Bontrager on the right side of his jaw. Bontrager reeled back, nearly toppling over.

  'Wow.'

  She had bloodied his lip.

  'Jesus Christ. Are you okay?'

  Long pause. 'I'm fine. I may never sing with the opera again, but I'm fine.' He reached down, gathered some dirt from the side of the road, scuffed up his suit coat.

  Jessica looked from the van, back to Josh, then up Sawmill Road. According to the map she was about a mile away.

  She wanted to tell Josh to call or text her, keeping her in the loop, but it was not a good idea. That would put everything on the record. 'You sure you're all right?'

  Bontrager rubbed his jaw, which was already starting to swell. 'Go.' Jessica checked the action on her Glock, snapped it back into her holster, and started down the road.

  Chapter 91

  The smell of just-turned earth fills my senses. Each shovelful brings with it a plaintive voice: a plea of innocence, a shout of unrepentant pride, a wail of sorrow. I hear them all.

  With the swing of his crimson hammer Kenneth Beckman took Antoinette Chan to the other side. His wife Sharon had helped. They too smell the earth now, rich with fur and blood and bone. They are joined by Preston Braswell, Tyvander Alice, Eduardo Robles, Tommy Archer, Dennis Stansfield, so many others. The earth always reclaims.

  Tonight, in this place, white skeletons pass through the gloom. They are all around me.

  There is one more note to play. I hear the player coming, creeping through the night. I push the sounds of murders past from my mind, listen for the footfall as it approaches.

  There. Can you hear it?

  I hear it.

  One more note.

  My instruments are ready.

  Chapter 92

  Jessica walked down the road in a darkness so pure and complete that she could not see her own feet. The drizzle made the going even slower. Her only guide to the road was the white stripe on either side, along with the compass app on her phone, which she was reluctant to use. It seemed to put a spotlight on her. According to the GPS, she would be coming up on the parcel in a few minutes.

  She passed a drive every so often, a gravel lane that snaked back into the woods.

  When she came to the rear entrance to the Briarcliff Cemetery she saw that it was unmarked. Instead there were two fieldstone pillars, connected by a chain with a padlock on it. On one of the pillars was a rusted sign warning that trespassers would be prosecuted. Jessica clicked on her Maglite, aimed it at the ground, and headed into the cemetery.

  The only good thing about walking through the woods was that she was now somewhat sheltered from the rain. Before long she came up to the southern end of the graveyard. She couldn't see far, but she did
see lights in the distance. There appeared to be three large houses, perhaps a quarter-mile apart. She continued down the access road, passing crypts, monuments, row after row of manicured graves and expensive headstones. This was a world apart from the Mount Olive cemetery.

  At eleven-thirty she reached the far end of the cemetery, the area that abutted the rear of Christa-Marie Schönburg's house.

  Just as she was about to cross the field, to the rear of the property, her Maglite found a headstone bearing the legend:

  DR. GABRIEL THORNE

  HEALER AND FRIEND

  The grave had recently been dug up.

  As Jessica got closer she was overwhelmed by the size of the house. It was a three-story Tudor, half-timbered, with cross gables and a steeply pitched roof. Two massive chimneys rose at either end, both topped with chimney pots. A large deck jutted out over the backyard.

  She could hear nothing but the rain.

  Jessica studied the windows in the back of the house. There were faint lights in three of them. She watched for movement, for shadows. She saw none.

  Jessica put her two-way handset on silent, crossed the backyard, and stepped onto the rear deck.

  The sliding glass door was locked. Jessica walked down the steps, rounded the house to the east wing. She tried to lift the windows. All were shut tight.

  She had no choice. She found a fist-sized rock in the garden, stood atop the air-conditioning unit, broke out the window in the first-floor bathroom.

  Once inside, she ran a towel through her hair, wiped her face. She opened the bathroom door. Straight ahead was a long hallway, leading to a large foyer and the front door. She left the bathroom, walked slowly down the hallway. To the left was the entrance to a small pantry, beyond that the kitchen.

  Soft music played somewhere in the house.

  Jessica saw that most of the rooms were lit by candles, dozens of them casting a pallid yellow light in the cavernous spaces.