Calls were made, and Bethany Quinn – a very pregnant Bethany Quinn – talked to her husband, who told her he had no problem with Peter and Jessica stopping by.
‘Did you know my grandfather?’ Bethany asked Peter as they descended into the cellar. She flipped on the overhead fluorescent lights. Jessica saw that the room was neat and organized, with metal bookshelves on the walls to the left and right, each bearing clearly labeled white boxes.
‘I met him on a few occasions,’ Peter said. ‘He was …’
‘Really weird?’
Peter Giovanni reddened. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘He was an interesting guy.’
Bethany laughed. ‘I’m just kidding,’ she said. She was about twenty-eight or so, with strawberry blond hair and a light dusting of freckles. ‘Not about the weird part. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him with all my heart, but when he was down in his basement workshop working, it was like he was in another dimension.’
When Bethany flipped on the track lighting, and the half-dozen dioramas on a table at the far end of the basement room were illuminated, Jessica saw what the young woman meant.
The miniature world of Carl Krause was another dimension.
There were seven different dioramas, each a scale replica of a different room. There was a kitchen, a parlor, a garage. There was what looked to be a sewing room, as well as a trio of commercial establishments – a candy store, a pet store, and a tailor shop.
Each diorama was fitted down to the smallest detail. There were tiny light switches, wall sconces, throw rugs, curtains. The sewing room had a miniature ironing board with a small steam iron on it. The candy store had shelves and counter displays with dozens of miniature jars full of brightly colored confections.
The pet store – the crime scene about which her father had told her – had a dozen small cages, each containing a furry, life-like looking animal. There were small plastic water bowls on the floor.
Nothing was left to chance. There were even small-scale blood spatter patterns. The diminutive victim in the pet store – a balding figurine of a man who looked to be in his sixties – had a small knife sticking out of his back. The more Jessica tried to pull herself away from each display, the more she was riveted.
‘Do you remember me talking about the Candy Town case?’ Peter asked Jessica, pointing to another display, the one of the candy store.
Jessica did. She was only eight or nine at the time, but because the victims were two young girls, it caught the attention of the news and, subsequently, the kids in her school.
When Jessica looked closely at the display, and saw the two small figures of the girls – both wearing private school uniforms – it brought her mind back to the Nicole Solomon crime scene.
‘Do you know where your grandfather got these miniature dolls?’ Jessica asked.
Bethany thought for a moment. ‘I know he used to make them himself when he was just starting out. After a while, he bought them. I just don’t know where.’
‘Do you think it was here in Philly?’
‘Not sure. I know that he would go to New York a few times a year. He consulted a little with the NYPD. Maybe he got them there.’
Jessica made a note.
‘There are a few boxes of his stuff in the attic,’ Bethany added. ‘If I can get up the ladder, I’ll see if there’s anything in there.’
Jessica recalled when she was eight months pregnant with Sophie. Climbing a ladder was out of the question. ‘We don’t want you doing anything like that,’ she said. She gave the woman a card. ‘If and when you find anything you think might help us, please give me a call.’
The woman took the card. ‘Sure thing.’
Jessica took out her iPhone. ‘Would it be okay if I took a few photographs?’
‘Of course,’ Bethany said. ‘Just flip off the lights when you’re done.’
As Jessica took her pictures, Peter Giovanni offered Bethany an arm, and the two of them made their way slowly up the steps.
27
The basement of Valerie Beckert’s house was warren-like, low-ceilinged, with a number of small rooms, all connected by venous passageways.
The electrical wiring was of the old knob and tube variety, single-insulated copper conductors running through the ceiling cavities, passing through the joists via porcelain insulating tubes, supported along their length on nailed-down porcelain knob insulators.
Byrne moved, ghostlike, through the rest of the shadowed house, opening cabinets and doors, running his hands along the wainscoting, tapping the loose windowpanes, wondering what the real reason was that led him here a second time, what dark and unyielding force compelled him.
He stood on the landing on the third floor. Where he thought there might be a small bedroom or sewing room was in fact only a walk-in closet. Inside was more shredded paper, more mouse droppings.
The other end of the hall gave way to a dormer, graced by a bench seat with storage beneath. Just over the stairway landing was an access hole with what Byrne was certain was a pull-down attic ladder.
He had thought that he might brave the attic, but fatigue was getting the best of him. The discovery of the Gillen boys had thrown the Nicole Solomon investigation into chaos, and he knew that he had to be on his game early the next morning.
Besides, whatever feelings and intuitions had drawn him back to Valerie Beckert’s house was strongest here, at the third-floor landing, a place where he felt something close in on him, something that seemed to shroud his heart with icy hands.
As a storm lashed rain against the dormers, he once more invited the feeling in.
28
On the night Josephine Beckert climbed the staircase for the final time, the storm rattled the windows in the old house.
Valerie spent the early evening deploying a half-dozen pots and pans around the third floor to catch the raindrops that seeped in through the missing shingles.
On nights such as these – indeed, most nights – Josephine would retire to the parlor not long after dinner. Once there she would build a fire, even on nights in June and July, claiming her arthritis needed the heat, despite the ambient summertime temperatures that often rose into the nineties.
Josephine would plop her big body into her favorite chair near the hearth, a soiled, taupe velvet wing back whose springs had begun to show underneath, due to Josephine Beckert’s steadily increasing bulk.
Next to the chair would be a table carefully arranged with two boxes of Whitman Samplers, a pack of cigarettes, a crystal ashtray, and Josephine’s ever present bottle of spiced rum, which she would sometimes mix with Diet Rite Cola.
At first, Josephine would struggle from her chair once per hour or so to get ice for her drink. But after a while the effort became too great, and she decided she liked the rum and diet cola warm.
As the evening wore on, and the chocolates and rum were consumed, Josephine would read her romance novels, every so often breaking either into tears or song, mostly songs of the torch variety, perhaps in lament of her lost loves, and rapidly fading beauty. Josephine never saved her romance novels. When finished she would simply toss them on the fire, often accompanied by an epithet.
When the grandfather clock in the foyer chimed eleven, Josephine would push herself from the chair, stoke the remaining embers in the hearth, and tilt the bottle to her lips, consuming any rum she had missed. She would then amble to the stairs, taking them one at a time, slowly, sometime pausing every third or fourth tread.
By the time she reached the final tread, she always had to pause the longest. Valerie knew this as she knew the beating of her own heart. Josephine would steady herself by grabbing the cap on the newel post, then pull herself up onto the landing.
On this rain-swept night, from her sanctuary in the closet, Valerie waited, her eyes closed, counting the seconds.
And then it happened.
First Valerie heard the sound of the loosened newel cap hitting the floor. Then she heard the racket of Josephine Beckert falling
down the stairs, the sound of the woman’s bones snapping on the oak treads echoing throughout the house.
When the crashing stopped, Valerie closed her eyes, waited for more sounds – the cry of pain, the call for help, the soft wheeze of life leaving Josephine’s body.
Valerie did not move for the longest time.
There were no more sounds.
Eventually she opened the closet door, crept down the stairs.
Josephine’s body was sprawled on the final four treads, the railing splintered away at the bottom newel post. Her eyes were wide open.
The smell of the sour rum and bile, combined with the stench of feces – apparently, Josephine’s final indignity was soiling herself on her journey to the bottom of the staircase – made Valerie hold her nose.
In the moments before Valerie called the police, she gathered together her most precious possessions, those being the diary writings and drawings she had made in the basement rooms of her childhood home. She didn’t know what, if anything, these writings and drawings would tell the people who came to the house, but she couldn’t take the chance.
The authorities mustn’t know, of that she was sure.
There were many hiding places in this big house, but none Valerie could yet trust. She sometimes thought of burning her childhood writings in the fireplace, but even then the ashes would scatter and her secrets would be known.
Valerie stole into the sitting room. On one wall was a large dusty painting. She stood on a chair, took the painting down. With a small kitchen knife she began to cut a hole in the plaster. When she felt the hole was large enough, she rolled some of her writings into a tube, and pushed them into the hole, heard them drop. If ever she needed them back, she could cut another hole.
When she felt all was in place, she took a moment to prepare herself.
For a few moments she stopped breathing.
Valerie then picked up the phone. She punched herself in the stomach a half dozen times, taking her wind, surely bringing a frantic quality to her voice.
She dialed the number, out of breath.
‘It’s my aunt,’ she said to the police. ‘She’s fallen down the stairs. You must hurry!’
Three hours later, after all the tears and the anguish and the forms, after the arrangements were begun, Valerie sat on the top step, looking down the grand staircase.
She liked to sit high up, inaccessible to the dirty little hands of children. From this vantage she had a clear horizon.
Within two weeks, with the help of a man named Albert Hustings – a lawyer who had no problems taking his fees in cash – Valerie became the owner of the Wynnefield house. It had taken a year for her to get her aunt to sign all the necessary papers in her rum-fueled confusion, but Valerie’s diligence had paid off.
The next morning Valerie rose early, made herself a modest breakfast. At seven a.m. she parked herself in front of the window in the parlor.
Tomorrow she would follow the girl with the eye patch, a girl named Nancy Brisbane.
She would keep Nancy all to herself, and they would be friends forever.
29
Byrne stood by the front window in the parlor, his mind returning to the murders of Nicole Solomon, and Robert and Edward Gillen. He thought of the will it must take to wantonly take another person’s life.
Byrne had taken more than one life in the course of duty, but he drew a broad and distinct line between what he did – in the course of serving justice – and the actions of the person or persons who did what was done to Nicole Solomon and the Gillen boys. And while he had sympathy for the families of the criminal, he felt no responsibility toward them.
He walked across the kitchen, out the back door. The sun was setting, and the dusk brought with it a deep chill. He looked at some of the other houses on the street, wondered what dramas were unfolding in them. Did they contain happy families, families in crisis, families disintegrating under the weight of some human frailty?
Was there a boy like Thaddeus Woodman inside one of them, frightened and alone?
It was with these dark thoughts in mind that Kevin Byrne descended the back steps, turned the corner, and came face to face with a beautiful woman.
30
Jessica walked across the lobby of the Roundhouse, her thoughts splintered in a dozen different directions. She was still in a state of shock over the discovery of the Gillen boys, and the presence of the doll made in the likeness of Nicole Solomon.
You are invited!
The fact that Nicole Solomon’s killer took the time to create a doll in her image, and place it at the scene of a double murder, drew this case to a place of even more profound darkness. Nicole’s murder, as well as the murder of Robert and Edward Gillen, were not crimes of passion. These were homicides in aid of a larger, far more evil puzzle.
She thought about the miniature dioramas, the small dolls representing murder victims, and how the diligent work of an unheralded man in a basement workshop had helped bring murderers to justice.
Jessica’s phone rang, mercifully breaking her dark trance. It was her husband.
‘Hey.’
‘I heard about the double. You okay, babe?’ Vincent asked.
Jessica didn’t want to lie to her husband. He always saw right through most of them anyway. Besides being the love of her life, he was a great cop, and was used to being lied to all day every day. It was the job.
She lied anyway.
‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘I forgot to pick up something for dinner.’
‘It’s okay,’ Vincent replied. ‘I’ll call Santucci’s.’
For the first time in a long time Jessica had no interest in food. She really wasn’t hungry. All she wanted was a five-hour bubble bath, and a twelve-hour nap. A dreamless twelve-hour nap.
‘That sounds good,’ she said.
Jessica pushed open the rear door to the Roundhouse, walked down the ramp. She nodded to a pair of young officers, one of whom was cadging a covert cigarette before his tour began. You weren’t supposed to smoke within fifty yards of the building, but nobody paid much attention to that.
If you had a problem with it, what were you supposed to do, call a cop?
‘I’m leaving now,’ Jessica said.
‘What do you want on the pizza?’ Vincent asked.
Ambien, Jessica thought. ‘Anything’s good.’
‘So, pineapple or agave, right?’
Her husband was trying, bless his heart. He really was trying. ‘See you in a bit.’
Jessica ended the call, put her iPhone in her pocket. She closed her eyes for a few moments, letting the chilled night air revive her.
In her mind’s eye she saw Nicole Solomon’s solitary form on the bench in Shawmont. She tried to imagine the timeline from the moment Nicole was last seen on the street – talking to her friend Naomi Burris – to the moment her killer tightened that stocking around her throat.
What had those moments been like? What had she seen through the kaleidoscope of hallucinations brought on by the magic mushrooms?
What was the connection, the wire that ran from Nicole Solomon to her father to the Gillen boys?
When Jessica opened her eyes she found that she had far more questions than answers. As she retrieved her car keys from her pocket she saw the shadow come up on her right. Fast. It took only a second to approach, but it was a second too long.
Before Jessica could turn around she felt the blow. It connected with a flat thud on the right side of her face.
‘… knew!’ was all she heard.
Jessica saw bolts of lightning behind her eyelids, felt the pain come on in a red roar. Because she had once trained as a boxer – had even fought a handful of professional fights, still worked out at Joe Hand’s gym when she could – she anticipated a second blow. It was pure instinct. She didn’t know where it would come from, but she got her hands up just in time to block it.
‘You fucking knew!’ her attacker screamed.
The second blow glanced of
f Jessica’s wrists. Jessica pivoted, put her back to her car, just as she heard yelling in the near distance.
‘Whoa!’ someone yelled. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ It was a man’s voice. Jessica then heard footsteps approaching.
In that next second Jessica was able to focus. She saw her attacker standing in front of her. It was a woman, a few inches shorter than she. The woman tried to launch another punch, but Jessica was able to sidestep it.
A moment later the woman was on the ground.
Jessica looked up to see the two young officers who had been standing at the back of the building. One of them had taken the woman down.
Jessica glanced down at the woman and it all began to make sense. It was Mary Gillen. The woman tried to scramble to her feet, but one of the officers grabbed her and held her in a bear hug.
‘You knew!’ Mary screamed again. She tried to kick Jessica but she was too far away. ‘You fucking bitch! You knew and you didn’t say anything.’
The woman tried to spit in Jessica’s face, but it went wide.
‘You need to calm down, lady,’ one of the officers said.
Mary Gillen would not be placated. She was hyperventilating. ‘You came to my fucking house, I answered your questions, and you knew my boys were in danger. And now they’re dead. They’re fucking dead!’
Jessica held out a hand, palm out. ‘It’s okay,’ she said to the officer holding Mary Gillen.
The officer wasn’t so sure. He held onto the woman. ‘Are you sure, detective?’
Jessica took a deep breath, tried to clear her head. If she had anticipated the first blow, the way you do in the ring, she might’ve rolled with it. But this was a sucker punch. And, at this moment, Jessica felt she deserved it. She’d had no idea what fate awaited the two Gillen boys when she visited the Gillen house, but still she felt she deserved it.
The Doll Maker Page 16