On December 12 the District Attorney of Philadelphia announced that the execution of Valerie Beckert was halted indefinitely, while the case for which she had been tried and convicted – the murder of Thomas Rule – was reopened.
Each day Jessica read the overnight reports, as well as the Inquirer and Daily News, hoping and expecting to read of the recovery of the bodies, but it never came.
Far more troubling was that Kevin Byrne had taken a leave of absence, and Jessica had not been able to reach him.
She stood in front of the Wynnefield house. Although it had been less than two weeks since the party, it seemed much longer.
Jessica had to admit that, although she still thought the place haunted, it looked far less threatening in daylight.
She stepped onto the porch, knocked on the door, waited. She knocked again, put her ear to the door, listened for footsteps. Nothing.
She made her way to the rear of the house, looking at the windows for signs of damage or foul play. She found none.
Once on the back porch she knocked again. Again there was no answer. She tried the door, and was surprised to find it unlocked.
Byrne would never leave his door open. He was the type of man who would lock his car if he was going to take eight steps into a dry cleaners. Not paranoid, just practical.
Something was wrong.
Jessica pushed open the door. ‘Kevin?’
No answer.
Jessica drew her weapon, kept her finger on the trigger guard. She held the Glock at her side.
‘Kevin?’
Silence. She listened for sounds. All she heard was the wind rattling the old window panes.
Jessica turned the corner into the front room, and there found a disaster.
She took the room in all at once. There was destruction everywhere – plaster, wood lath, drywall, light fixtures, heating vents, wall switches, glass – all in piles scattered about. It looked like the aftermath of a tornado.
In the middle of it all sat Kevin Byrne. He looked worse than Jessica had ever seen him.
‘You okay?’ she asked. He was clearly not okay.
Byrne looked up, his face a coil of anguish. For a horrifying moment Jessica thought he might have his service weapon in his hand.
He did not.
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
Byrne said nothing.
Jessica took a moment to once again assess the room. The walls were completely torn apart. What had been fresh drywall and paint just a few weeks ago was on the floor in piles. She glanced into the dining room. It was the same. Ditto the kitchen. She had a feeling the whole house was going to look like this.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
Byrne remained silent, reached for the bottle of Tullamore Dew. Jessica noticed an empty nearby. Byrne took a sip.
‘He liked squirrels,’ he said.
It took her a moment to realize what Byrne had said. ‘Squirrels?’ she asked. ‘Who liked squirrels?’
Jessica stepped closer. She now saw that, scattered around Byrne, were dozens of drawings and notes, all sketched and written in a child’s hand. Four of them had names.
Byrne held up the half-full bottle of Dew.
‘Buy you a drink?’ he asked.
Jessica smiled. ‘Sure, sailor.’
‘I’d offer you a glass, but I think there’s a pretty good chance I broke them all.’
‘Bottle’s fine,’ she said. ‘South Philly girls don’t need a glass.’
Jessica cleared a spot on the floor, sat down, glanced at the ceiling. It was intact. At least that was something.
‘How’s Sophie?’ Byrne asked.
‘She’s good. Day at a time. But the days are getting better. She’s sleeping through the night.’
‘Tough kid,’ Byrne said. ‘Wonder where she gets it.’
‘Her father,’ Jessica said. ‘Trust me on that one.’
There were so many things Jessica wanted to say, so many thoughts and feelings that had come together over the past two weeks. Thoughts about her job, thoughts about what happened on that pier, thoughts about putting her daughter in harm’s way. She had no idea where to begin. She decided to just start talking, and hope it all came out right.
‘Kevin,’ she said. ‘That night on the pier. I didn’t mean to—’
Byrne held up a hand, stopping her. He passed her the bottle. She’d said all she needed to say, and for that, and so many other reasons, she loved him.
They sat in silence for a while. Byrne picked up one of the pieces of construction paper on the floor next to him. He handed it to Jessica. At first she didn’t know what it was, but soon it made sense, and she then understood why the house looked the way it did.
In her hand was a crude map of Fairmount Park. On it were five stars, drawn in red crayon. Byrne had torn apart his house looking for it.
‘It’s them,’ she said.
Byrne didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
The paper was a map of where the other children were buried – Jason Telich, Nancy Brisbane, Aaron Petroff, and Thaddeus Woodman – as well as a star where Valerie intended to bury Thomas Rule.
‘I found it in the kitchen,’ Byrne said. ‘Behind the stove. Remember how Valerie said “speak to Mr Lundby”?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Turns out there was once a company called Lundby that made tiny stoves for dollhouses.’
‘Did you call it in?’
‘I did,’ Byrne said. ‘Dana said she put a call into the FBI. They’re going to go to these locations with their equipment. But I know. They’re there.’
Jessica thought about the case, the madness that was Valerie Beckert, the obsessions of Martin and Cassandra White, the anguish of David Solomon.
‘One thing I don’t get,’ Jessica said. ‘What spooked Solomon? What was it about the invitation we showed him that clued him in as to why Nicole had been killed, and that they might be coming after the Gillen boys?’
Byrne reached to his side, sifted through a short stack of what looked like a court reporter’s transcripts. He handed one of the documents to Jessica. It was a partial transcript of a therapy session between David Solomon and Valerie Beckert. Jessica scanned it. She saw it at the bottom of the second page.
‘It was thé dansant,’ she said. ‘Valerie told him she’d see him at the thé dansant.’
Byrne said nothing.
Before leaving the Roundhouse, Jessica learned that the straight razor they had recovered in the secret rooms upstairs was matched to a wound inflicted on a homicide victim found in the Lemon Hill section of Fairmount Park, a teenager named Latrelle Hopwood. One of Hopwood’s wounds – a cut to the back of the neck – was consistent with a wound found on the body of Ezekiel Moss.
When brought in for questioning on an unrelated matter, Hopwood’s cousin George identified Martin White as someone he and Latrelle tried to rob in the park.
Jessica looked at the other papers scattered around the room. She noticed a stack of drawings near the hearth. On top was a drawing of a black sky and a tiny crescent moon. She pointed at it.
‘I take it those aren’t your memoirs.’
Byrne offered a sad smile.
‘May I?’
‘Sure.’
Byrne handed her the drawings.
Valerie Sauveterre’s drawings.
88
They sat in the parlor.
‘We’ve done terrible things,’ Valerie said. ‘I’m going to leave now. I should be back soon, but if I am not, you know what to do. You will be all right. You know where everything is. I’ve signed all the necessary papers.’
‘What terrible things have we done?’ the girl asked.
Valerie just looked at the girl, her beautiful blue eyes, her flawless skin, a priceless Bru.
Valerie closed her eyes for a moment, hoping the image would last. It would not, of course. They were children, not dolls.
Only dolls remained children forever.
Valerie stood, p
aused in the doorway, considered the question. She wondered what they would understand, then remembered that they were far more worldly than she in many ways. In other ways, they lived in a world of counterweighted eyes, bright colors, and pretty bows.
‘You are our maîtresse des marionnettes,’ the boy said. ‘We can’t lose you.’
‘The big people will try to hurt you, but first they must find you. You know where to hide.’
Valerie knew that the children knew what could be seen, and what must remain unseen. The groceries would come every two weeks, delivered to the back door. Aunt Josephine had arranged for the real estate taxes, as well as the utilities, to be paid monthly, for many years.
By the time this was all discovered the children would be old enough to strike out on their own.
Valerie just hoped that the authorities would blame her for what went on here, not the children.
She touched the girl’s cheek. ‘You will be Anabelle.’ She touched the boy’s cheek with her other hand. ‘You will be Mr Marseille. I want you to be strong, little man.’
‘I will,’ the boy said.
‘You must always look after Anabelle.’
The boy took the girl’s hand in his. ‘I promise.’
‘The big people will not understand what went on here. They will put you on the shelf.’
‘Just like Vista House,’ the boy said.
‘Just like that.’
Valerie opened her bag. From it she retrieved a pair of photographs. One of the boy, one of the girl.
She held up their pictures.
‘Ces petites choses,’ she added, ‘me parlent de vous.’
She reached into her pocket, took out the cameo brooch.
‘This belonged to my mother,’ she said. ‘Keep it always as a remembrance of me.’
She handed it to the boy.
‘We will,’ he said.
Valerie glanced at the door, at the small form of Thomas Rule, wrapped in the shower curtain liner, then back at Anabelle and Mr Marseille.
They really didn’t know it was wrong.
She kissed them each on the forehead, turned, and walked out the door, closing it behind her.
She never came back.
89
One by one Byrne explained what he had learned from Dr Allen about Valerie Sauveterre’s childhood drawings.
‘She didn’t do it, did she?’ Jessica said. ‘She didn’t kill the children.’
‘No,’ Byrne replied. ‘It was the boy and girl. Martin and Cassandra White. Valerie may have brought the children here, but she only wanted friends. All she had growing up were the imperfect dolls. That’s why she went after the kids she saw as damaged. She wanted to fix them.’
Jessica shuddered at the thought of young children, no more than eight years old at the time, causing the death of other children. She wondered what, if anything, they would find in and around the grounds of this house.
Byrne went on to explain the secret rooms. When the house was built for one of Philadelphia’s railroad barons, the man had included in the design three small rooms in which he kept and consumed his liquor during Prohibition. The deliveries were through a trapdoor in the garage ceiling, the same door by which Martin and Cassandra White made their entrances and exits.
‘I didn’t like the color in here anyway,’ Byrne said.
Jessica laughed. She wanted to cry, but she laughed.
‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said.
Byrne held up the bottle. There were a few inches left.
‘Not just yet,’ he said.
As Jessica took the bottle, the cat came around the corner, considered them.
‘Who is this guy, anyway?’ Jessica asked.
Byrne looked over. ‘His name is Tuck.’
Byrne told her about how he and Tuck met, about the bricks tumbling from the roof that had almost killed the cat.
Jessica then told Byrne how it was the cat who had alerted her to the hidden door in the closet, maybe saving his life.
‘He did that?’ Byrne asked.
‘Yeah.’
Byrne thought for a moment. ‘I guess we really are even, then.’
Tuck, perhaps sensing the balancing of the books, jumped onto Jessica’s lap, curled around once, and lay down.
Within moments, he was fast asleep.
90
Byrne stood on the porch, rang the doorbell. He smoothed his tie, ran a quick hand through his hair, Father Tom Corey’s words caroming in his mind:
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
It had been a month since the disappearance of Martin and Cassandra White. In the weeks that followed, the remains of four small bodies had been found buried within a few hundred yards of each other in Fairmount Park.
Somehow it had taken this long to complete the paperwork, clearing a path for Byrne to do what he was about to do. It took only a second to end someone’s life, but it took a month to complete the paperwork.
Over the past two days he had met with the other families. Aaron Petroff’s, Jason Telich’s, Thomas Rule’s, and Nancy Brisbane’s.
Thaddeus Woodman had been the first of the victims.
Theresa Woodman had poured coffee. It sat cooling between them.
‘Do you have children?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Boys?’
‘No,’ Byrne said. ‘One daughter.’
‘I always wanted one of each. God said no.’
Byrne wanted to say that she was young enough to try again, but it was not his place. ‘I always thought I would have more,’ he said. ‘We’re blessed to have them in our lives, even if it’s not for very long.’
Byrne reached into his bag, handed Theresa the drawing he’d found in his house. The big green yard with the skinny squirrels in the trees. The drawing was signed Thad W.
Theresa Woodman touched a hand to her heart.
‘His grandfather’s house in Berks County,’ she said. ‘He loved to go to the farm. He loved to watch the squirrels.’
She began to softly cry. Byrne reached over, pulled a few tissues from the box on the counter, handed them to her.
‘He would be sixteen now,’ she said.
Byrne just listened.
‘I’m not even sure I would know what to do as the mother of a sixteen-year-old boy.’
‘You would have figured it out,’ Byrne said.
He thought about all the drawings he’d found in the house, and how he had, for a moment, contemplated keeping them, perhaps one day taking them out as a talisman against some as yet unimagined evil, the innocence of each scribbled line an armor around him.
In the end he burned them all, except for five, sending the ashes aloft over the city he loved.
Theresa held up the drawing. ‘Thank you.’
From the moment he’d found the map, he knew he would do this. The Woodman home was the fifth out of five. This was a good thing because Byrne did not have one more ounce of energy – neither physical nor spiritual – left to spend.
As Byrne stood in the driveway he considered the wire, the malleable but unbreakable filament that began with a monster named Ezekiel Moss, and ended with a boy and girl who inherited his legacy of evil and committed these terrible crimes. He wanted to lash out, to assign blame, but he had no idea where to begin.
He looked through the kitchen window, at Theresa Woodman putting the drawing he’d given her on the refrigerator.
It fit perfectly in the space that had only moments ago held the calendar, the calendar Theresa Woodman would no longer have to tend, crossing off the days and weeks and months until either her son returned, or his remains were found.
Byrne got into the car. He felt as if a veil had been lifted from his heart.
‘You okay?’
Byrne turned to look at her. He didn’t know what the future would hold for them – or what their past together had wrought – but, at this moment, he knew he didn’t want to be anywhere
else in the world than sitting next to her.
‘I’m good,’ he said.
Donna Sullivan Byrne leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, then thumbed off her lipstick. It had always been her way.
She started the car, buckled her seatbelt.
‘Where to?’ she asked.
Byrne said: ‘I need to stop somewhere.’
The crime scene unit had found the doll that was made to look like Andrea Skolnik at the base of the spiral staircase leading to the deck of the SS Clermont-Ferrand. On its head was scratched the number 13, matching the number etched into the scalp of the victim.
On either side were two other dolls, faithful replicas of Martin and Cassandra White, who called themselves Anabelle and Mr Marseille. These dolls were numbered 14 and 15.
It wasn’t until a week later, while Byrne considered the presence and placement of these dolls, that he began to further tear out the interior walls of the secret rooms.
He knew the other doll had to be there.
He was right.
Standing in a grove of trees, in Fairmount Park, just a few feet from where Thaddeus Woodman’s body had been found, Byrne took out the small garden trowel, made a hole deep enough for what he had to bury.
He had lost two nights’ sleep wrestling with what he should do with the doll, and everything he’d come up with did not seem right. Everything seemed to have the potential to backfire, to one day be discovered or, worst of all, hurt someone he loved.
When he looked down, at the just-turned earth, he realized that this, too, was wrong. He firmly believed that, in this life, energy echoed across time, and that the spirit of Thaddeus Woodman – a boy who loved the outdoors, a boy who loved to laugh – would watch over this small figurine for all eternity, keeping it safe.
Still, he could not do it.
The Doll Maker Page 38