Jessica remained silent.
‘Promise me.’
Jessica took a few deep breaths. She nodded her head. Still, it took Byrne a few seconds before letting her go.
When he eased his grip Jessica sprang out of his grasp, but she did not run down the gangway. She took a few steps in the other direction, then spun on her heels, all but hyperventilating. She glanced at the bow of the ship, and for a moment Byrne thought she would bowl him over and run toward the entrance. She did not.
She looked him in the eye.
‘I’m going up there, Kevin.’ She took out her weapon, checked the action. This put everyone nearby on alert. This was a very fluid scene, and no one really knew what was going to happen next.
As a pair of SWAT officers ran past them, and deployed on either side of the entryway, Byrne put one hand on each of his partner’s shoulders.
‘You can’t go up there, Jess. You know you can’t.’
‘They’ve got Sophie, Kevin.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘And that’s exactly why it has to be me. If one thing goes wrong up there, any little thing, this whole thing could go wrong.’
‘I don’t give a fucking shit, Kevin. That’s my little girl.’
‘I know,’ Byrne said. ‘But you could end up in prison, Jess. Then where would you be for your daughter? There isn’t a lawyer, on either side of the aisle, anywhere in Philadelphia County, that wouldn’t ask the question of why you didn’t stand down. We need you down here. Please. Let me do this.’
Jessica took a few steps away, made another glance at the bow of the ship. She holstered her weapon. She walked right up to Byrne’s face.
‘Kill them,’ she said.
‘Jessica, I can’t—’
‘If you don’t, I swear to Christ I will.’
Byrne looked over his partner’s shoulder, saw Josh Bontrager, John Shepherd, and Maria Caruso arrive. He made eye contact with Maria Caruso. She understood. She would take care of Jessica as long as she had to.
Byrne then glanced at Dana Westbrook, who nodded. She was letting him know that he would be on point.
He left Jessica with Maria, took off his suit coat. Josh Bontrager reached into the open trunk of the department sedan, took out a Kevlar vest. He fitted Byrne with it. While they were doing this an officer from the communications unit slipped a two-way radio onto Byrne’s belt, and ran the earpiece up to Byrne’s ear. In his hand they put a printout of the blueprint of the front of the massive steamship.
As Byrne reached the entrance, he turned and found Jessica at the end of the gangplank. No matter how long he lived – and there was a possibility that it was all ending right here and right now – he would never forget the look on his partner’s face.
Kill them.
80
The wind was fierce. The air was cold, but the moon was full and bright. I wished that I had been more dutiful in preparing our outfits. I had not planned on the elements. It was unlike me.
Below us the lights of the city, the lights of all the police cars, made a festive gouache of the view, but there was no joy in my heart.
We stood on either side of the little girl, the daughter of the policewoman. I knew that, if it were not for her, then the men with guns would certainly have taken a shot at us by now.
When I listened to their conversation in the kitchen that day, the day the men with beards painted the house, I knew it would be the sad little girl. She was the last Sauveterre.
I turned, looked into Anabelle’s beautiful eyes. She was softly crying. In her eyes I saw the abandoned little girl sitting in front of the toy store in Richmond Mall. I saw the girl who, for nearly a year, would not speak to anyone but me, the first of nearly three years we spent in that terrible foster home.
In her eyes I saw the girl sitting next to Solitude House.
Anabelle, who has no memory of a time before the wall of dolls, before we met Valerie, and came to live in her doll house.
For my dearest heart, there was no past.
When she saw the huge ship, perhaps she thought it would be the vessel that would take us to France. I did not have the heart to tell her otherwise.
I took out the small silver flask, one that belonged to Valerie’s father, Jean Marie Sauveterre. I uncapped it, handed it to Anabelle.
‘Here,’ I said.
‘What is it?’
‘Tea,’ I said. ‘It will warm you.’
Anabelle looked confused for a moment, then she understood. We were to be our own guests. This was our thé dansant. We were as much responsible for Valerie’s fate as anyone.
Indeed, more responsible.
We belonged on the shelf for eternity.
81
Byrne made his way slowly up the steel spiral stairs, his weapon in hand. As he neared the portal to the deck he heard the sound of the wind growing ever louder.
He keyed the microphone button on his two-way. He got a response from John Shepherd.
‘Everyone in place?’ Byrne whispered.
‘Affirmative,’ Shepherd whispered. ‘SWAT’s deployed to the east and south of the subjects. If you can get Jessica’s daughter to the deck they will engage.’
‘Copy,’ Byrne said.
He took a deep breath, holstered his weapon behind his back, turned the volume in his earpiece even lower, and stepped onto the deck of the Clermont-Ferrand
The two groups stood on the bow, thirty feet apart. Sophie looked so small between the two of them. The gusts whipped the flags overhead.
‘Detective,’ Marseille said.
Byrne just nodded. He made eye contact with Sophie. She was shivering, but she nodded back.
‘How did you find us?’ Marseille asked.
Byrne tried to consider his answer, but there was not time. ‘It came down to two possibilities. There’s the line about Garbo, and we considered the collection of letters from Greta Garbo at the Rosenbach Museum on Delancey Place.’
‘Why didn’t you go there?’
Byrne shrugged, took a half step forward. It did not go unnoticed.
‘I don’t know. Then I considered the other line – “The wail of steamers” – and flipped a coin. They were the only other lyrics left.’
Marseille nodded, perhaps in admiration.
‘I expected you, detective. Just not quite this soon.’
Byrne heard soft footsteps behind and below him. It would be the two other SWAT officers. Out of the corner of his eye he saw them on the iron staircase, just below deck.
Byrne looked back toward the bow, took a few tentative steps. Marseille had his free hand in his pocket. Byrne had no idea if he was armed. He took one more step. The man did not tell him to stop.
‘This can end here and now,’ Byrne said. ‘There’s no need to harm the girl.’
Marseille held Sophie’s hand a little tighter.
‘If it weren’t for her we would not even be having this conversation, n’est-ce pas?’
Marseille had, of course, seen the SWAT officers deployed on the pier.
‘Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you,’ Byrne said.
‘Can you rewind the world?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Can you take us back ten years, to the day when Anabelle and I visited Solitude House at the Philadelphia Zoo?’
‘Believe me, if I—’
‘Because that is where our lives began. Before then, there was no Anabelle, no Mr Marseille.’
Byrne waited for the man to continue. He did not. ‘I wish I could do that. I wish it for everybody involved. I wish it for Thomas Rule, too.’
The man looked out at the city for a moment, back. ‘Thomas,’ he said.
Byrne took a few more steps closer. ‘You don’t have to hurt this girl. I was there the night Valerie was arrested. I arrested her.’
‘I know.’
‘So take me instead. If you blamed David Solomon and Judge Gillen and Marvin Skolnik for what happened to Valerie, fine. But I’m more res
ponsible than any of them.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘You’re right,’ Byrne said. ‘I don’t understand. Help me to understand. Take me instead.’
Byrne slowly reached behind, slipped his service weapon out of its holster, put it on the deck of the ship. He then turned slowly, 360 degrees, showing the man he was unarmed.
‘If I wanted to mend you I could have done so at the house,’ Marseille said. ‘You are broken. We watched you many a night.’
Byrne did not want to think about what they might’ve seen and heard from their secret room.
‘Yes, you could have. But you didn’t. That means something.’
Byrne glanced at the girl, at Anabelle. There was little doubt in his mind that she had taken the mushroom. Her eyes were glassy and distant.
Before Byrne could say another word he saw all three of them take a step backward. They were right up against the rail now.
He was losing them.
82
For Detective Jessica Balzano, the concept of time no longer existed. When she saw her daughter on the bow of the ship, time stopped.
As she paced on the pier, as the machinery of a hostage situation deployment unfolded around her, as the flashing of lights and the crackle of two-way radios and the sound of an ambulance siren approaching assaulted her senses, time had no meaning.
She had never felt more helpless in her life. No woman ever had. Her daughter was just a few hundred feet away, and she couldn’t reach her, couldn’t protect her. The sacred oath she had taken the day Sophie Balzano was born was now broken.
Right now her daughter was a tiny silhouette on the bow of a massive steamship, surrounded by a pair of monstrous people, and there was nothing she could do.
She wanted to be able to pray, but right now she didn’t believe. Where was God at this moment? Where was St. Michael?
She put her hand on the grip of her weapon. Right now, this was her God, her saint, her archangel.
Jessica looked at the SWAT officer on top of the shuttered ticket kiosk, in full tactical gear, his high-powered rifle on a tripod, his cap backwards, his eye to the scope.
She had seen this tableau a hundred times before, but it never had any meaning for her. She thought it had, but it hadn’t. Not really. She knew that now.
As time stood still, she had but one thought.
Take the shot.
The more she willed it, the more time refused to budge. Still, the mantra screamed in a never ending loop in her mind.
Taketheshottaketheshottaketheshot …
83
Byrne was now fifteen feet away.
He still had a second weapon in an ankle holster. He had no way of knowing if it was visible. To look at it might mean giving it away.
Martin and Cassandra White, still holding hands with Sophie, were backed up all the way to the railing.
Sophie looked so small.
‘You okay, kiddo?’ Byrne asked.
Sophie nodded.
‘It’s not too late to stop this,’ Byrne said. He gestured to all the lights and people surrounding the ship. ‘We can end this with no one else getting hurt.’ He tore the earpiece from his ear, the two-way from his belt. He threw them both overboard. A strong gust of wind hurtled them into the blackness.
‘It’s just us now,’ Byrne added. ‘No one else is listening.’
‘Did you know her?’ Marseille asked.
‘Who?’
‘Our maîtresse des marionnettes.’
‘You mean Valerie? No. I did not.’
‘And yet you judged her.’
‘I never judged her,’ Byrne said, realizing, as he said the words, how inadequate they were. ‘I just did my job. She had a fair trial.’
‘She was our kind.’
‘What do you mean?’
Before Martin White could say another word, Byrne heard the footsteps behind him. Someone had given the order.
The SWAT officers had breached the ship’s deck.
Byrne looked into Sophie’s eyes.
Jessica’s eyes.
No.
84
At the moment the world began to end, I looked at Anabelle. I know it is not possible for a doll to feel love, but at that moment I loved her.
I always have.
‘Is it beautiful?’ I asked her.
She nodded. ‘It is the most beautiful thing ever.’
‘Do you trust me?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Always.’
She looked down. In my free hand was the cameo brooch we had been given by our maîtresse des marionnettes so many years ago. I handed it to her.
‘These foolish things,’ I said.
A tear rolled down Anabelle’s cheek. ‘Never foolish, Mr Marseille.’
She saw the gun in my hand just as the men came up through the floor. She looked into my eyes. She brought the girl closer to her.
‘No, Mr Marseille.’
Anabelle and the girl took a step away from me.
‘It has to be this way,’ I said.
‘No.’
To my left I saw the shadows moving quickly toward us. I looked into Anabelle’s eyes.
‘My dearest heart.’
I wrapped my arms around Anabelle and the little girl. We all fell backward, over the railing, into life, into the eternal fire that is the moment of creation for all our kind.
85
When the three figures fell from the bow of the ship, Jessica was standing at the end of the pier. For an agonizing moment it didn’t seem real.
She heard a bloodcurdling cry, a heart-rending scream of pain and anguish. It seemed to come down a long, echoing tunnel.
The screams were her own.
She found herself running down the pier. When she reached the end she tore off her coat and her shoes. The water beneath her was black and roiling. Before she could dive into the water, strong arms grabbed her from behind and pulled her back.
‘Let me go!’
There were now four arms around her. From somewhere she found the strength to fight them off. She heard the siren whoop on the marine unit boats. Lights flashed. More hands grabbed for her. She pivoted, lashed out with her fist, connected. The pain burned up her arm.
Jessica was free for one moment, no hands on her. It was long enough. She vaulted the few steps, jumping for the back of the marine unit boat as it left the pier. She barely landed on the rear deck. In the process she slipped, hitting her head. Hands pulled her on board. For a few seconds her face was near the outboard, the smell of fuel and heat from the engine clogging her senses.
The sound of the sirens became louder. More shouting. Jessica tried to stand, but the blow to her head was dizzying. She lost her balance, struggled to her feet.
‘Sophie!’ she screamed.
On unsteady legs she made her way to the front of the craft. The water was lighted by a pair of halogen spotlights as it neared the bow of the SS Clermont-Ferrand. Jessica saw a figure in the water, no more than thirty yards away. Again she tried to dive into the water, but was held back.
‘You can’t go in, detective!’
‘Get your fucking hands off me!’
As the officer held her, Jessica saw her daughter. Sophie was trying to swim against the tide. Every stroke brought her head under the frigid water. Stroke after stroke she tried, but the tide was too strong. She was pulled under.
Two divers went in. More shouts.
The longest moments of Jessica’s life passed. She tried to battle the arms holding her back, but she had no strength.
Moments later the divers pulled Sophie on board. Her skin looked blue. She wasn’t moving.
She wasn’t breathing.
Jessica did not remember anything after that. All she could see was her dark-haired toddler, struggling to her feet next to the coffee table at her father’s house on Catharine Street.
Then, amid the sound of the rescue team shouting, amid the smoke and noise and chaos, there was only dar
kness.
86
Hour dissolved into hour. Night into day into night.
The sound of sirens and screaming had become the sound of a blood pressure monitor, the whoosh of the oxygenator, the soft murmur of doctors, nurses, aides, orderlies.
Jessica opened her eyes to a gray light filtering in a window. She felt her head. It was bandaged. As was her right hand.
She fought the pain, tried to sit up. She looked around the room. She was in a hospital bed. Someone was sleeping in the chair next to her.
It was Vincent. Somehow he sensed she was awake. He stood up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes. She had never seen him look so pained. He took her hand.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Jesus Christ, no.’
‘Jess.’
‘Sophie,’ Jessica said.
‘Mom?’
Jessica turned. Sophie was sitting up in the bed next to hers. Jessica tore the nasal cannula from her nose, the IV from her arm. She rolled out of bed, knelt next to her daughter.
‘My baby girl,’ she said. ‘My baby girl.’
Sophie stroked her hair. ‘Did I beat Angie Alberico?’
For Jessica, the tears came, and would not stop.
Nor did her prayers.
87
The marine unit of the Philadelphia Police Department was one of the elite divisions in the country. With hundreds of square miles to patrol, as well as the not infrequent performance of rescue and recovery operations – on both the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers – their equipment and their training of officers and divers was world class.
In the weeks that followed the events on the SS Clermont-Ferrand, the unit found no trace of Cassandra and Martin White. Police departments in Camden, New Jersey, and other departments from New York to Maryland were also alerted.
The two had vanished.
This was not unusual for the Delaware River. The current was so strong, and the river – in some places three miles wide and more than fifty feet deep – had concealed and consumed shipping vessels, fishing boats, human beings, and myriad secrets for centuries. Investigators conceded that they might never know the fate of the young man and woman who called themselves Anabelle and Mr Marseille.
The Doll Maker Page 37