The Doll Maker

by Richard Montanari

  Jessica smiled. ‘Thanks, partner.’

  On the way to the elevators, Jessica had to ask. ‘By the way, where the hell did you find balloons that say “Knock ’em dead,” and “Break a leg”?’

  Byrne touched the elevator button. ‘I’m a detective,’ he said. ‘I’ve got connections.’

  While they waited, Jessica gave Byrne a soft nudge to the side. ‘Did you happen to buy them at that cute little gift shop on Second, by any chance?’

  Byrne had briefly dated a woman who ran a rather touristy gift shop at Second and Race. The relationship began, ostensibly, with Byrne going in there to buy Philadelphia maps. He said this with a straight face at the time, as if the PPD didn’t have enough maps of the city.

  They stepped into the elevator.

  ‘I’m done with relationships,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Here we go.’

  ‘I am. I’m a bay leaf.’

  The door closed. Jessica just stared. She knew Byrne well enough to know that something else was coming, but she had never quite figured out his timetable. When he didn’t continue, she asked.

  ‘Okay. I’m in,’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’

  Byrne looked at the scarred walls of the elevator, read the maximum occupancy sticker, stalled.

  ‘You know how, when you’re cooking, and the recipe calls for a bay leaf, and you—’

  Jessica held up a hand, stopping him. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘You cook?’

  Byrne nodded.

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘I make a few things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I make a nice colcannon.’

  ‘That’s Irish food.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Busted. ‘I’m a huge fan of Irish food,’ Jessica said, trying to dig her way out. ‘Don’t I always get the shepherd’s pie at the Wake?’

  ‘I think that might technically be English, but yeah. You do.’

  ‘Right. See? So, go on.’

  Byrne let her spin for a few seconds, continued. ‘Anyway, in the recipe, at the end, they always say “discard the bay leaf.”’

  ‘Okay,’ Jessica said. ‘I’ve seen that.’

  ‘So that’s me. King of the ninety-day love affair. When women are done with me, they discard me. I’m the human bay leaf.’

  Jessica tried not to laugh, on the slightest chance it would hurt her partner’s feelings.

  She failed.

  5

  The Shawmont train station was a former stop on SEPTA’s Manayunk/Norristown rail line, running north and south along the Schuylkill River, the de facto border between Northwest Philadelphia and West Philadelphia. Considered to be the oldest passenger train station house in the United States, the Shawmont station closed officially in 1996. Although SEPTA trains passed frequently, they no longer stopped at Shawmont.

  The two-story station house perched on the top of a rise that quickly descended to the bank of the Schuylkill River. Until recently, rumor had it that the small building housed a residential tenant – descendants of the original station master – but when Jessica and Byrne arrived, at just after nine a.m., the place looked sealed tight.

  Because it was a popular spot for joggers and cyclists, there was a Look Before Crossing sign attached to the building, even though the rail traffic on the Manayunk/Norristown line was not all that frequent.

  Byrne parked the car; he and Jessica got out, walked up the short path to the station. They crossed the tracks.

  As Jessica got closer, she could see that Dana Westbrook was right. This was a bad one.

  In fact, from a distance of fifty or so feet, it didn’t even look real. It looked like some sort of diorama or display in a store window.

  Jessica could see that the victim was a white female, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old. She wore a dark skirt and a white blouse. There was a ligature of some sort around her neck. Her hands were tied around the wrists, resting in her lap.

  What made this scenario surreal was that the girl was simply sitting on a bench, as if waiting for a train that would never come. The bench was painted a pale yellow.

  Two young patrol officers, fresh-faced kids no more than a year or two out of the academy, stood guard. Their name tags identified them as P/O Sloane and P/O Kasky.

  They both nodded a greeting to Jessica and Byrne.

  ‘You took the call?’ Byrne asked.

  The two young men looked at each other, not knowing who should respond. Something in Sloane’s eyes told Kasky it should be him.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Kasky said.

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Right around seven-twenty.’

  ‘Where were you when you got the call?’

  Kasky pointed to the northeast. ‘We had a call in Roxborough. Over in Green Tree run.’

  Byrne wrote it down. ‘Who made the 911?’

  ‘Mrs Ann Stovicek. She was riding her bike.’

  Jessica looked over to see a woman in her late twenties, standing next to a rather expensive-looking bicycle carrier, the kind with a child seat in the front. In the pod was an adorable girl of about two.

  ‘What did you observe when you got here?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘We pulled up on Shawmont Avenue, parked at Nixon, then walked up the path. When we arrived here we saw the victim, then immediately called dispatch.’

  ‘Who else was here?’

  ‘Just Mrs Stovicek.’

  ‘No other joggers or cyclists?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Did you preserve the scene?’ Byrne asked.

  Kasky cleared his throat. Jessica noticed that he was not looking at the victim.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I thought about pushing on the bench a little, just to see if she was still alive. But I didn’t want to touch the wood. The paint seemed a little …’

  The young officer trailed off. Byrne finished his sentence.

  ‘Fresh,’ Byrne said. ‘I agree. Good work, officer.’

  Those three words were what the young patrolman needed. A bit of color returned to his face. Jessica remembered such moments from her early days.

  ‘Has a train come by since you’ve been here?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ P/O Kasky said. ‘Just one.’

  Jessica made the note to check on the SEPTA schedule for this line. If the ME was able to pin down a small enough window for the time of death, they could check with passengers who might have been on the train as it passed by the station.

  The good news was that there was a possibility of an eyewitness. The bad news was that a passing train all but compromised the integrity of any scientific data – blood, fingerprints, hair, fiber – that might be gleaned from the site.

  Jessica stepped away, walked a little closer to the building, which was literally just a few yards from the railroad tracks. The first story of the structure was a muted blue. On the side facing the tracks there were three windows, all boarded, as well as a single door. The door was padlocked.

  The second floor exterior had been scraped and sanded at some point in the last few years, but the project had been abandoned. There were four windows on the second story, all with shades drawn.

  Then there was the dead girl, sitting on a wooden bench, as if she belonged here.

  Carefully skirting the path the killer may have taken, staying as close as possible to the wall, Jessica knelt down and looked beneath the bench. There she saw that the bench had not been painted underneath.

  She also saw something else. Something that made her heart skip a beat.

  Taped to the underneath side of the bench was an envelope of some sort.

  As desperately as she wanted to take the envelope and rip it open, she had to wait. They needed the investigator for the Medical Examiner’s office to clear the victim, allowing the Crime Scene officers to begin their own investigations, which would include photographing and videotaping the victim and the scene. Then, and only then, could Homicide begin their inquiry.

/>   A few minutes later the ME’s investigator arrived. Jessica stepped away, walked eastward on the path leading away from the station. When she reached the crest of the slight incline she turned to look at the scene.

  Why here? she wondered. Did this place mean something to the killer? Did it mean something to the victim?

  Did the killer stand in this spot, seeing the same thing Jessica saw? Had he envisioned this young girl on a bench, and how it would look to someone approaching the station?

  The soft glow of the victim’s pale skin against the rough surface of the stationhouse wall made it look like a painting, or an illustration in a children’s book.

  Annie Stovicek was toned and pretty, probably closer to thirty. She wore a cranberry colored jogging outfit, black nylon gloves.

  Jessica approached, then knelt next to the carrier at the rear of the bike, and the little girl seated there. ‘Who’s this?’ she asked.

  The woman tried to muster a smile. ‘That’s Miranda.’

  ‘She’s adorable.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Byrne filled Jessica in.

  ‘Mrs Stovicek was riding her bike down Shawmont Avenue at around seven-fifteen this morning, and was heading to the path when she discovered the victim.’

  The path ran along the Schuylkill River. Since the nearby Shawmont pumping station had been razed, the trail along the river had become a popular spot for runners and cyclists.

  ‘Do I have the time frame right?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often do you come here?’

  ‘Maybe twice a day, weather permitting. Once in the morning, once at night with my dog. I was going to make today the last time of the year, actually. It’s getting a bit cold for Miranda.’ She gestured to the little girl in the carrier. ‘After this, I’m pretty sure today is the last time ever.’

  ‘I understand,’ Byrne said. ‘The bench at the front of the station. Do you know if it’s always there? Have you seen it before?’

  Jessica knew they could probably get this information from SEPTA, or any number of rail preservation societies in the city, but it was always better to get a witness’s perspective.

  The woman thought for a few moments. ‘To be quite honest, I just don’t know.’

  ‘Did you get a good look at the victim?’

  ‘Yes. I came around the bend, my mind thinking about a thousand things. When I saw her I stopped. It looked so … unreal.’

  ‘How long after that did you call 911?’

  A pause. ‘Maybe a minute later?’

  It was a question, not a statement.

  ‘May I ask why you waited a full minute?’ Byrne asked.

  The woman looked at the ground, the emotion of all this finally hitting her. She looked back up. ‘I guess at first I thought she wasn’t real, you know? I know Halloween was a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it was one those things you see in the store, what do you call them …’

  ‘A mannequin.’

  ‘Yes, of course. A mannequin. I can’t seem to think straight.’

  Byrne just nodded.

  The woman continued. ‘Then I looked a little closer and I saw it was a person. I guess I was waiting for her to wake up or move. I may have even said something to her.’

  At this the woman began to tear up. She dabbed her eyes with the back of her glove.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ Byrne said. He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You take your time.’

  A few moments later the woman composed herself. Byrne moved on.

  ‘Have you ever seen this young woman before?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Jessica glanced over at the little girl. Although it was around fifty degrees, she was bundled in enough down to withstand a day in the Yukon. All that was visible was a little pink face.

  Jessica heard people approaching. She turned and saw that the medical examiner and his photographer were wrapping up their processing of the scene. Although the medical examiner himself would make the final ruling on whether or not this was a homicide, a suicide, or an accidental death, they were bound by procedure and protocol to wait at least until the investigator pronounced the victim dead.

  Depending on the circumstances, the next investigators to approach the victim, and the immediate crime scene, would be the homicide investigators or the crime scene technicians.

  There were no tire treads, no footwear impressions, no shell casings, or blood near the body. A CSU officer took her own photographs, moved away.

  Jessica put on a pair of latex gloves and stepped in.

  Standing this close to the victim, Jessica could see that the girl was younger than she originally thought. She was perhaps thirteen or fourteen. Her eyes were open, and even with the naked eye Jessica could see the hemorrhaging. She was certain that the ME would rule that the cause of death was strangulation.

  The girl’s white blouse, dark skirt, and dark knee socks were an indication that she attended a private school. But there was no sweater or blazer bearing a school logo. Her dark hair was parted on the left side and blunt cut at her shoulders. On the right side was a rose-colored barrette in the shape of a swan.

  She wore what appeared to be good quality black loafers. Even in this most undignified state her skirt was pulled modestly to the tops of her knees.

  Being careful where she stepped, Jessica put one foot into the doorway behind the victim and shone her Maglite on the back of the girl’s neck. She could now see that the ligature was a nylon stocking of some sort. It was the same, or similar, to the stockings that tied the girl’s hands. Between her fingers was a filtered cigarette, stubbed out to a length of no more than a half-inch.

  With a gloved hand Jessica gently lifted up part of the girl’s skirt. She saw that the yellow paint had come off on the woolen material. The paint was indeed fresh.

  Jessica motioned to one of the crime scene technicians, a female officer in her twenties. She requested more photographs of the immediate area beneath the bench, as well as photographs underneath the bench, of the envelope taped there.

  ‘When you’re done with the photographs, let’s get that envelope off. Let’s do our best to preserve that tape and that cigarette butt as well.’

  At this, Jessica walked back to the path. Somehow the sun had come out from behind the clouds. At this dark moment, in this terrible place, the sun still shone. Long shadows draped the path.

  ‘Any other witnesses?’ Jessica asked.

  Byrne shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Josh and Maria are working the nearby houses.’

  They took a few moments, each to their own thoughts. They were both the parents of girls and, no matter how many times they did this, a teenaged female victim always slammed home hard.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Jessica eventually asked.

  Byrne turned to look at her, a slight smile on his face. ‘That’s probably a trick question, but I have a pretty good idea,’ he said. ‘You’re thinking about Tessa Wells.’

  It was true. Her partner knew her better than anyone. Tessa Ann Wells was the victim of a murderer who became known in Philadelphia as The Rosary Killer. The Wells case was Jessica’s first homicide investigation. And while the signature of that killer was different, the situation was the same. A young teenage girl was murdered, and posed in a public place.

  For many reasons, not the least of which that the Wells case was the first time Jessica had been tasked as a lead investigator to step into the mind of the psychopath, she had never, nor would she ever, forget Tessa Wells.

  A few moments later the crime scene technician approached them. In her hand were two evidence bags: one that contained the envelope taped to the bottom of the bench, one that held the short filtered cigarette butt.

  ‘Were you able to preserve the tape?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the officer said. ‘If there’s a latent on it, we’ll have it.’


  Because Jessica had touched a number of other surfaces, she took off her latex gloves, slipped on another pair. Byrne followed suit.

  Jessica opened the evidence bag and, holding it by its corner, pulled out the envelope.

  The envelope was of a medium size, perhaps five inches wide, four and a half inches deep. It was buff in color, and appeared to have a linen or vellum finish. It was the size and type used for thank you notes and invitations.

  Jessica noted that the flap – a deeply pointed flap – was tucked into the envelope, not sealed. This was good news and bad news as far as the evidentiary possibilities were concerned.

  The good news was that Jessica and Byrne could immediately examine the contents of the envelope. Had it been sealed it would have been put into the chain of evidence, returned to the criminalistics lab, and while there opened by some magic process known only to the denizens of the lab.

  The bad news was that, had the envelope been sealed, the possibility of a transference of DNA to be found in the saliva might have eventually given them a direction, and a suspect.

  Jessica had learned long ago that in this life she’d chosen, you take what you can get when you can get it.

  There was no writing on the face of the envelope, nor on the back. There was nothing embossed, etched, or engraved. Still holding the envelope by its edge Jessica gently worked the flap out from the inside. She held the envelope up to the sun. She could see what appeared to be a single card inside. She reached in, pulled out a card. Byrne moved to the side so that they might see it together.

  One side was blank. Jessica flipped it over.

  On the other side, calligraphed in black ink, was an invitation. It read:

  You are invited!

  November 23

  See you at our thé dansant!

  ‘November twenty-third,’ Byrne said. ‘That’s a week from today.’ He pointed at the last line. ‘Any idea what this means?’

  ‘Not a clue.’

  Byrne looked down the path, at the handful of crime scene investigators. ‘Anyone here speak French?’

  The officers all looked up, at Byrne. The expressions on their faces looked as if Byrne asked if any of them could fly. There were many intelligent, crafty, highly skilled people in the PPD. When Jessica’s father became a police officer, very few of his fellow officers had four-year degrees, or even two-year associates degrees. At that time many, if not most, applicants to the academy applied after serving in the military, the continuation of the paramilitary command structure a comfortable fit. Nowadays, it was not that unusual to run across cops with Masters Degrees.