She pointed at the wall again. ‘Down to Weirton.’
‘And when was this?’
‘I was fifteen, some.’
‘Is that where the children were born?’
She nodded.
‘We’ll need to know the name of the hospital.’
Crystal looked up. She almost smiled, as if this were the dumbest question imaginable. ‘Weren’t no hospital.’
Byrne stared at her for a moment. ‘So you’re saying there are no birth certificates for the children?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘When was the last time you saw your children?’
At this Crystal looked at her hands. She began to shake. Jessica figured that this was as much from this interview as it was from her paroxysms of withdrawal.
The interview was over.
The detective that Paris had put on background had made a few hits. When the two children were put into emergency foster care it was at the county level. The group home was located on the city’s near east side.
When the children went through intake, the case worker did not have an ID on them, so they entered as a John and Jane Doe.
Jessica knew this often happened, especially if the father was unknown. The children were not given the last name Anders because there was no birth certificate for them, no birth records of any kind.
The detective learned that, at this group home, there were eight children that were unidentified at the time – four boys and four girls –ranging in age from three to seven. They were all Jane and John Does, so the trail on Crystal Anders’ children grew a little fuzzy at that time.
When the home was closed due to cutbacks, the forty-one children were sent to different homes. Where the two children in question went was still unknown.
The CPD detective was working the phone and fax machines at that moment.
He did provide a lead that might have been useful. Crystal Anders’s probation officer still worked for Cuyahoga County. His name was Marc Santos, and he had first met Crystal about a year after she had abandoned her children.
Marc Santos was in his mid-forties, rotund and easy going. Jessica could see how that affability could turn to discipline in short order. If there was a profession that heard more lies on a daily basis than a police officer, it was a probation officer.
What the two jobs had in common was that each of them had the legal right to take away a person’s liberty.
They met in the lobby of the Justice Center. Santos had brought with him some documents.
‘I remember her well,’ he said. ‘She was one of my cases at two different times. Once when she was nineteen, and once when she was twenty-six.’
Santos put two photographs down on the bench. They were not police mug shots, but rather Polaroids taken at the probation officer’s office. Both had a painted white concrete wall as a background.
But that’s where the similarities ended.
At nineteen, Crystal Anders had been a pretty young woman. Her blue eyes were clear, her skin was smooth. The photograph, and its lighting, was not particularly flattering, but despite this she was quite attractive.
The photograph of her at twenty-six was a shock, especially in contrast, side by side, to her younger self. In the second photograph she had open sores on her forehead and chin. She had cut off the left side of her hair – or had it roughly done for her. As bad as the woman looked today, at thirty-two, she did not look quite as bad as she had six years earlier.
‘I’d like to tell you that her appearance in these two photos is a rarity, but I see it every day,’ Santos said.
‘These were both for drug offenses?’
Santos nodded. ‘She did a year and change on the first one, about ten months on the second.’
‘And she never violated her probation?’
‘Hard to say. Random drug testing back then was expensive and infrequent. But I can say she kept her appointments with me.’
‘Did she ever mention her children?’
‘Just once, that I can recall.’
‘How so?’
‘She knew they were in foster care, and she wanted to see them. I told her that it wasn’t going to happen.’
‘This was during her first probation?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How did she react?’
‘Not well,’ Santos said. ‘I see it all the time. At first, when I started – I’d been a PO about a year when I got Crystal’s first case – I was a lot more sympathetic to it all. Now, I’m sorry to say, I’m unmoved. I’ve seen women who have sold their newborns for a five dollar rock, then come crying about how they love their baby. Once you cave, you crumble.’
‘What was the upshot?’
Santos looked out at the huge lobby, back. ‘I probably shouldn’t have done this – and it’s something I’ve only done a few times since, and not for a long time, now – but I told her that seeing the kids was not a possibility, not until she cleaned up her act, and went through court-appointed rehab. But I told her that, if she wanted to write a note, without using her name, I would get it to the director of the foster home.’
‘Did she write one?’
‘She did.’
‘Did you pass it along?’
Santos took a few moments. He nodded to a pair officers passing by. He seemed to be organizing his thoughts.
‘There’s this little piece of the world you get, you know?’ he said. ‘Some eight by ten room, some mansion, some cave, some utility room off a basement in Detroit or Baltimore or Mexico City. Maybe the room smells like mildew and mice, maybe you only get a moldy sandwich to eat, maybe not even that, but it’s some place where four walls meet, some place where you can be safe from all the knives this life throws at you, even if it’s just for a little while.’
Jessica and Byrne just listened.
‘These two kids got dealt a shit hand, and their mother probably did, too. I knew that someone else was going to make the decision on whether or not to give those kids Crystal’s note, if and when they were ready to read it. At the moment she handed it to me, I couldn’t think of a single reason not to pass it along. I’ve thought of a hundred since. But then? I just did it.’
Jessica didn’t want to ask if he’d read the note, but she had to. Marc Santos said he did not.
‘When you got Crystal’s case the second time, did she ask about the note?’ Byrne asked.
Santos shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She didn’t ask about the children, either.’
‘Any idea where the kids are?’
The man shrugged. ‘That’s above my pay grade, I’m afraid.’
As Santos walked out onto Superior Avenue, Paris got off the main elevator. He found Jessica and Byrne, walked across the lobby. He’d put his suit coat on, and had a smile on his face.
‘You know how a day starts off being about one thing, then it turns into something totally different?’
‘I do,’ Byrne said.
‘Well, I’ve got one for you and one for me.’
‘We could use one,’ Byrne said.
‘I found out about Crystal’s kids, and where they might have gone when the group home here was closed.’
He opened the envelope, took out a document, continued.
‘The forty-one children were sent to five different facilities.’ Paris read from the list. ‘Six went to Columbus, eight went to Indianapolis, ten went to Youngstown, eleven went to Toledo, and six went to Erie.’
None of this was good news to Jessica and Byrne.
‘Do we know where Crystal’s children went?’ Jessica asked.
‘One of two places. The John and Jane Does went to Toledo and Youngstown. Four each.’ Paris held up a document, but did not show it to either Jessica or Byrne. ‘I called the Youngstown facility, and was told that the home closed a year after the children got there. From there they went to a home outside Pittsburgh. I called that home, and found out they closed eleven months later. All twenty-one kids living there at
the time went to one facility.’
Paris handed Jessica the document. It was a fax from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Welfare.
When Jessica saw the address of the group home, she felt her pulse spike.
The foster home was in North Philadelphia.
Jessica wanted to hug detective Jack Paris, but it would have been inappropriate. Instead she smiled, wagged a finger. ‘You could have just told us this.’
‘Now what would be the fun in that?’
‘I’m never playing poker with you,’ Jessica said. ‘Mind if I ask a question?’
‘Not at all.’
‘When Crystal mentioned the father’s name, I saw you react.’
Paris raised an eyebrow. ‘You should be a detective.’ He gestured to a corner of the lobby, overlooking Superior Avenue. They walked over.
Paris lowered his voice. Most of the people passing by were cops, but there were a number of civilians, as well.
‘She said the children’s father was a man named Ezekiel Moss.’
‘What about him?’ Byrne asked.
‘About twenty years ago we had an Ezekiel Moss on radar. Very bad actor. Allegedly killed eight prostitutes, that we know of, over the course of thirty-six months. Long-haul trucker used to make a Georgia to Detroit run.’
‘And you’re thinking he may have passed through Weirton, West Virginia.’
‘If it’s the same Ezekiel Moss.’
‘It’s certainly on the route,’ Byrne said. ‘What happened to him?’
Paris shrugged, ran a hand over his chin. ‘In the wind. I walk by that wanted poster every day. I still think he’s going to pop up one day, but he’s probably gone underground or dead. Either way, he’s stopped hunting.’
‘You think he’s the father of her kids?’
Paris held up his iPhone. On it was a mug shot of a wiry, hard-looking man in his thirties. ‘Let’s find out.’
They passed through a series of locked doors, went down in an elevator to the basement. There Jessica saw a pair of holding cells, one of which held Crystal Anders.
Paris excused himself, walked past a security station, and into her cell. When Crystal saw him, she stood up.
Jessica and Byrne watched as Paris showed her the picture on his phone, the mug shot of Ezekiel Moss.
Crystal Anders fell to her knees.
They had their answer.
Paris dropped them at the USAir gate at Hopkins International airport.
He got out, flashed a badge at one of the TSA agents. The man nodded.
Paris shook hands with both detectives.
‘I can’t thank you enough for this, detective,’ Byrne said.
‘Any time. If we hadn’t put Crystal in the box, I wouldn’t have this fresh page on Ezekiel Moss. Strange how things work in this business.’
‘If you ever think about moving, the PPD would be lucky to have you.’
‘Thanks, but I’m happy here. After all, we did get the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Sorry about that.’
‘You did, indeed,’ Byrne said. ‘But we have those World Series pennants.’
Paris smiled. ‘Just the two, though, right?’
The two men shook hands. ‘Be safe.’
This time Jessica did hug Paris.
After checking in, Jessica turned to see Paris standing on the sidewalk, hands on hips, looking toward his city. She had the feeling that they would one day again cross paths, and that whatever route Detective Jack Paris had pointed them down, they had helped do the same for him.
Paris’s case began when a man named Ezekiel Moss first lifted his hand in madness to another human being.
Their case might just turn on the same legacy of evil.
49
Byrne was fatigued – travel always exhausted him – but found some energy around eight p.m.
Tonight’s project was the room off the parlor, the one with the smallest of the three fireplaces in it.
When he had knocked out the brick in the fireplace, he found a number of old issues of Life Magazine lying across the andirons, all but intact. Perhaps Valerie Gautier, or the tenant before her, had meant to use them for kindling. He glanced briefly at the covers, all from within a six-month period in the early 1960s. The faces staring out at him brought him back. Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, an impossibly youthful, incredibly blue-eyed Paul Newman.
They were all so very young in the pictures. They were all gone now.
As was a young girl named Nicole Solomon, and boys named Robert and Edward Gillen.
Against his better judgment Byrne stacked the magazines on the mantel. There was a pretty good chance that after he died, someone would be going through the house and find them again.
He had never been much of a pack rat, but now that he was living – although he was far from taking occupancy – in the largest place of his entire life, he had no intention of starting.
Byrne’s first order of business was to remove the old plaster from the walls. He had priced out restoring the plaster and had almost laughed into the phone when he heard the estimate. For a fleeting moment he thought the man had given him a price on the entire job, that being six rooms. Even that seemed high.
The truth was, he was being quoted a price on just the parlor.
Hearing that, making the decision to use drywall instead was a no-brainer.
By ten, Byrne had three of the four walls done. The hard part was knocking off the dried plaster that was keyed between the horizontal slats of wood lath.
There was one wall left.
He brought the lamp with the 200 watt bulb in it across the room, plugged it in. On this, the wall opposite the fireplace, he saw that there was a large rectangle, a shape that was lighter in color than the rest of the room. It appeared that there had, at one time, been a rather large painting in that space. The number of nail holes supported this theory. Unfortunately there was a fist-sized hole in the wood lath. Not a big deal, if the studs on either side were in good shape. They would still be able hang drywall.
He got a keyhole saw out of his toolbox, returned to the room, proceeded to cut out the splintered sections of wood lath.
When he got down to about waist level, he looked into the opening. There was something at the bottom. It looked like a wad of paper, folded into quarters. He walked to the kitchen, poked around his makeshift toolbox. None of the tools looked like they could do the job.
Byrne found a piece of door trim, drove a nail through it, bent it forward. He went back into the room in which he had been working, shone a flashlight down between the studs with one hand, and attempted to spear the paper with the other.
After a few attempts he got it.
He carefully brought the sheaf of papers up and out from behind the wall.
In the kitchen he unfolded the pages, and carefully smoothed them out on the table. They were large, perhaps ten inches by fourteen, and yellowed by time. On the front of the first page were a pair of drawings, clearly made by a child. The top drawing was of a rectangle, hastily – perhaps angrily – drawn in blue crayon. In the lower left-hand of the rectangle was a black mark, a vertical slash no more than a half-inch high.
Below this drawing was a large stick figure. It was drawn in brown crayon and appeared to be a man with big white gloves and a top hat.
A man with no face.
At the bottom were six words, all written in a child’s careful scrawl.
Room is blue. Room is dark.
Byrne looked at the drawing at the top of the first page. There was no question that the rectangle, furiously colored, was indeed blue. But what was the mark in the lower left-hand corner of the rectangle?
He went to the kitchen, opened up the box he had brought containing some basic office supplies – envelopes, rubber bands, his one and only stapler, a rubber-banded group of pencils. At the bottom was an old magnifying glass. He fished it out, gave it a shot of Windex, cleaned it off. He positioned himself under the overhead light and looked at the
blue rectangle again.
What he had thought was merely a vertical black mark in the lower left-hand corner, was a drawing of a little girl. The stick figure drawing beneath the rectangle, the man wearing a top hat and big white gloves, was extremely crude.
The drawing of the little girl, even though no more than one inch high, was far more detailed. It looked to have been drawn with a fine-tipped pen, perhaps a fountain pen.
Byrne put the paper down on the table. He looked at all the other pages – six in all. On them were drawings of children; some were carefully rendered, some were primitive. One was a full page drawing of a girl. It was highly detailed – mouth, hair, dress, legs, feet, fingers – but the whole drawing was scribbled over, as if the child wanted to obliterate it.
All the drawings of adults, always a man, had some part missing.
There were no drawings of women.
At midnight he sat at the small card table in the kitchen, three fingers of Black Bush in a glass. The Thomas Rule binder was open in front of him.
On the night he had come to this house for the first time – the night Valerie Beckert had been arrested – he had signed into the crime scene log. It took nearly four hours for him and a pair of West Division detectives to search the premises, all to no avail.
The crime scene log in front of him showed him signing in, then out four hours and six minutes later.
But there was something in the log that he was not able to explain, something that had haunted him for ten years. Now, sitting in the very house, it hit home.
The crime scene log showed him signing back in at midnight that same night, then signing out forty-four minutes later.
Forty-four minutes. Not unusual, but he had no memory of doing so.
It was at a time in his life when he suffered from migraines with aura, but even then he had never lost track of time.
Why had he come back to the house that night? What had he done while he was here? What, if anything, had he discovered? And, most importantly, if he had found something, where was it now?
The Doll Maker Page 26