Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands

by Richard Montanari

  “We may need to talk to you again.”

  “I know, I know. Don’t leave town.”

  “We’d appreciate it.”

  “There a reward?”

  “Only in heaven,” Byrne said.

  “I ain’t goin’ to heaven,” Withers said.

  “Look into a transfer when you get to Purgatory,” Byrne said.

  Withers scowled.

  “When you bring him in to get his statement, I want him tossed and all of his things logged,” Byrne said to Davis. Interviews and witness statements were taken at the Roundhouse. Interviews of homeless folks were generally brief, due to the lice factor and the shoe-box proportions of the interview rooms.

  Accordingly, Officer J. Davis looked Withers up and down. The frown on her face fairly screamed: I have to touch this bag of disease?

  “Get the shoes, too,” Byrne added.

  Withers was just about to object when Byrne raised a hand, stopping him. “We’ll get you a new pair, Mr. Withers.”

  “They better be good ones,” Withers said. “I do a lot of walkin’. I just got these broke in.”

  Byrne turned to Jessica. “We can extend the canvass, but I’d say there’s a fairly good chance she didn’t live in the neighborhood,” he said, rhetorically. It was hard to believe anyone lived in these houses anymore, let alone a white family with a kid in a parochial school.

  “She went to the Nazarene Academy,” Jessica said.

  “How do you know?”

  “The uniform.”

  “What about it?”

  “I still have mine in my closet,” Jessica said. “Nazarene is my alma mater.”

  6

  MONDAY, 10:55 AM

  THE NAZARENE ACADEMY was the largest Catholic girls school in Philadelphia, with more than a thousand students in grades nine through twelve. Situated on a thirty-acre campus in Northeast Philadelphia, it was opened in 1928 and, since that time, had graduated a number of city luminaries—among them industry leaders, politicians, doctors, lawyers, and artists. The administration offices for five other diocesan schools were located at Nazarene.

  When Jessica had attended the school, it was number one in the city, academically speaking, winning every citywide scholastic challenge it entered: those locally televised knockoffs of College Bowl where a group of orthodontically challenged fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds sit at bunting-draped tables and rattle off the differences between Etruscan and Greek vases, or delineate the time line of the Crimean War.

  On the other hand, Nazarene had also come in dead last in every citywide athletic challenge it ever entered. An unbroken record, and one not likely to ever be shattered. Thus they were known, among young Philadelphians, to this very day, as the Spazarenes.

  As Byrne and Jessica entered the main doors, the dark-varnished walls and crown molding, combined with the sweet, doughy aroma of institutional food, dragged Jessica back to ninth grade. Although she had always been a good student, and had rarely been in trouble—despite her cousin Angela’s many larcenous attempts—the rarefied air of the academic setting and the proximity to the principal’s office still filled Jessica with a vague, formless dread. She had a nine-millimeter pistol on her hip, she was nearly thirty years old, and she was scared to death. She imagined she always would be when she entered this formidable building.

  They walked through the halls toward the main office just as class broke, spilling hundreds of tartan-clad girls into the corridors. The noise was deafening. Jessica had already been five eight and had weighed 125 in ninth grade—a stat she mercifully maintained to this day, give or take 5 pounds, mostly give. Back then she had been taller than 90 percent of her classmates. Now it seemed that half the girls were her height or taller.

  They followed a group of three girls down the corridor to the principal’s office. As Jessica watched them, she sanded away the years. A dozen years earlier, the girl on the left, the one making a point a little too loudly, would have been Tina Mannarino. Tina was the first to get a French manicure, the first to sneak a pint of peach schnapps into a Christmas assembly. The stout one next to her, the one who rolled the top of her skirt to challenge the rule of hems being an inch from the floor when kneeling, would have been Judy Babcock. Last count, Judy, who was now Judy Pressman, had four daughters. So much for short skirts. Jessica would have been the girl on the right: a little too tall, too angular and thin, always listening, looking, observing, calculating, scared of everything, never showing it. Five parts attitude, one part steel.

  The girls now carried MP3 players instead of Sony Walkmans. They listened to Christina Aguilera and 50 Cent instead of Bryan Adams and Boyz II Men. They mooned over Ashton Kutcher instead of Tom Cruise.

  Okay, they probably still mooned over Tom Cruise.

  Everything changes.

  But nothing ever does.

  In the principal’s office Jessica noted that not much had changed, either. The walls were still a bland, eggshell enamel, the air was still fragrant with a mixture of lavender and lemon Pledge.

  They met the principal, Sister Veronique, a bird-like woman in her sixties, with quick blue eyes and even quicker movements. When Jessica had attended the school, the principal had been Sister Isolde. Sister Veronique might have been the older nun’s twin—sturdy, pale, with a low center of gravity. She moved with the surety of purpose that can only come from years of chasing down and disciplining young girls.

  They introduced themselves and took seats in front of her desk.

  “How can I help you?” Sister Veronique asked.

  “I’m afraid we may have some troubling news about one of your students,” Byrne said.

  Sister Veronique had grown up in the age of Vatican I. In those days the notion of trouble at a Catholic high school usually meant petty larceny, smoking, and drinking, maybe the occasional pregnancy. Now it was pointless to speculate.

  Byrne handed her the Polaroid close-up of the girl’s face.

  Sister Veronique glanced at the picture, then quickly averted her eyes and crossed herself.

  “Do you recognize her?” Byrne asked.

  Sister Veronique forced herself to look again at the photograph. “No. I’m afraid I don’t know her. But we have more than a thousand students. About three hundred are new this term.”

  She took a moment, then leaned over and pressed a button on the intercom on her desk. “Would you ask Dr. Parkhurst to step into my office?”

  Sister Veronique was clearly shaken. Her voice trembled slightly. “Is she . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Byrne said. “She’s dead.”

  Sister Veronique crossed herself again. “How did she . . . who would . . . why?” she managed.

  “It’s early in the investigation, Sister.”

  Jessica glanced around the office, which was pretty much as she remembered it. She felt the worn arms of the chair in which she sat, wondering how many girls had nervously perched in this chair over the past dozen years.

  After a few moments, a man walked into the office.

  “This is Dr. Brian Parkhurst,” Sister Veronique said. “He is our head guidance counselor.”

  Brian Parkhurst was in his early thirties, a tall, slender man with fine features, close-cropped reddish gold hair, and the faint remnants of a faceful of childhood freckles. Conservatively dressed in a deep gray tweed sport coat, button-down blue oxford shirt, and shiny kilty-and-tassel loafers, he wore no wedding ring.

  “These people are with the police,” Sister Veronique said.

  “My name is Detective Byrne,” Byrne said. “This is my partner, Detective Balzano.”

  Handshakes all around.

  “How can I help you?” Parkhurst asked.

  “You’re the guidance counselor here?”

  “Yes,” Parkhurst said. “I’m also the school psychiatrist.”

  “You’re an MD?”

  “Yes.”

  Byrne showed him the Polaroid.

  “My God,” he said, the color draining from his f
ace.

  “Do you know her?” Byrne asked.

  “Yes,” Parkhurst said. “It’s Tessa Wells.”

  “We’re going to need to contact her family,” Byrne said.

  “Of course.” Sister Veronique took another moment to compose herself, before turning to her computer and tapping a few keys. In a moment, Tessa Wells’s school records appeared on the screen, along with her personal data. Sister Veronique regarded the screen as if it were an obituary, then hit a key and started the laser printer in the corner of the room.

  “When was the last time you saw her?” Byrne asked Brian Parkhurst.

  Parkhurst paused. “I believe it was Thursday.”

  “Thursday of last week?”

  “Yes,” Parkhurst said. “She stopped by the office to discuss college applications.”

  “What can you tell us about her, Dr. Parkhurst?”

  Brian Parkhurst took a moment to organize his thoughts. “Well, she was very bright. A little on the quiet side.”

  “A good student?”

  “Very,” Parkhurst said. “Carried a 3.8 average if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Was she in school Friday?”

  Sister Veronique tapped a few keys. “No.”

  “What time do classes start?”

  “Seven fifty,” Parkhurst said.

  “And what time do you let out?”

  “Generally around two forty-five,” Sister Veronique said. “But intramural and extracurricular activities can sometimes keep students here until five and six o’clock.”

  “Was she a member of any clubs?”

  Sister Veronique tapped a few more keys. “She’s a member of the Baroque Ensemble. They’re a small classical chamber group. But they only meet every two weeks. There were no rehearsals last week.”

  “Do they meet here on campus?”

  “Yes,” Sister Veronique said.

  Byrne turned his attention back to Dr. Parkhurst. “Anything else you can tell us?”

  “Well, her father is pretty sick,” Parkhurst said. “Lung cancer, I believe.”

  “Is he living at home?”

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  “And her mother?”

  “She’s deceased,” Parkhurst said.

  Sister Veronique handed Byrne the printout listing Tessa Wells’s home address.

  “Do you know who her friends were?” Byrne asked.

  Brian Parkhurst again appeared to think carefully about this before answering. “Not . . . offhand,” Parkhurst said. “Let me ask around.”

  The slight delay in Brian Parkhurst’s reply was not lost on Jessica—and if he was as good as she knew he was, it was not lost on Kevin Byrne, either.

  “We’ll probably be back later today.” Byrne handed Parkhurst a card. “But if you think of anything in the meantime, please give us a call.”

  “I sure will,” Parkhurst said.

  “Thanks for your time,” Byrne said to both of them.

  When they reached the parking lot, Jessica asked: “A little too much cologne for daytime, don’t you think?” Brian Parkhurst had been wearing Polo Blue. A lot of it.

  “Just a bit,” Byrne replied. “Now why would a man over thirty need to smell that good around teenaged girls?”

  “Good question,” Jessica said.

  THE WELLS HOUSE WAS A SHABBY TRINITY on Twentieth Street, near Parrish, a straight-through row house on the sort of typical North Philadelphia street where the working-class residents try to differentiate their homes from their neighbors’ by the little details—the window boxes, the carved lintels, the decorative numbers, the pastel awnings. The Wells house had the look of a house maintained out of necessity, rather than any sense of vanity or pride of place.

  Frank Wells was in his late fifties, a lumbering, raw-boned man with thinning gray hair that fell into his light blue eyes. He wore a patched flannel shirt and sun-faded khakis, along with a pair of hunter-green corduroy house slippers. His hands were dotted with liver spots, and he had the gaunt, spectral bearing of a man who had recently lost a lot of weight. His glasses had thick, black plastic frames, the type worn by math teachers in the 1960s. He also wore a nasal tube that led to a small oxygen tank on a stand next to his chair. Frank Wells, they would learn, had late-stage emphysema.

  When Byrne had showed him the photo of his daughter, Wells had not reacted. Or rather, he had reacted by not visibly reacting. A crucial moment in all homicide investigations is when key players—spouses, friends, family, co-workers—are informed of the death. Reactions to the news are important. Few people are good enough actors to conceal their true feelings effectively upon receiving such tragic news.

  Frank Wells took the news like a man who had survived a lifetime of tragedy with stony aplomb. He had not cried, or cursed, or railed against the horror of it all. He closed his eyes for a few moments, handed the photo back, and said: “Yes, that’s my daughter.”

  They met in the small, tidy living room. A worn, oval braided rug sat in the center. Early American furniture lined the walls. An ancient color TV console hummed a fuzzy game show, volume low.

  “When did you last see Tessa?” Byrne asked.

  “Friday morning.” Wells removed the oxygen tube from his nose and let the hose drape over the armrest of the recliner in which he sat.

  “What time did she leave?”

  “Just before seven.”

  “Did you speak to her at all during the day?”

  “No.”

  “What time did she usually get home?”

  “Three thirty or so,” Wells said. “Sometimes later when she had band practice. She played the violin.”

  “And she did not come home or call?” Byrne asked.

  “No.”

  “Did Tessa have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Yes,” Wells said. “One brother, Jason. He’s much older. He lives in Waynesburg.”

  “Did you call any of Tessa’s friends?” Byrne asked.

  Wells took a slow, clearly painful breath. “No.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Yes. I called the police around eleven on Friday night.”

  Jessica made a note to check on the missing-person report.

  “How did Tessa get to school?” Byrne asked. “Did she take the bus?”

  “Mostly,” Wells said. “She had her own car. We got her the Ford Focus for her birthday. It helped with her errands. But she insisted on paying for her own gas, so she usually took the bus three or four days a week.”

  “Is it a diocese bus or did she take SEPTA?”

  “A school bus.”

  “Where is the pickup?”

  “Over on Nineteenth and Poplar. A few other girls take the bus from there, too.”

  “Do you know what time the bus passes there?”

  “Five after seven,” Wells said with a sad smile. “I know that time well. It was a struggle every morning.”

  “Is Tessa’s car here?” Byrne asked.

  “Yes,” Wells said. “It’s out front.”

  Both Byrne and Jessica made notes.

  “Did she own a rosary, sir?”

  Wells thought for a few seconds. “Yes. She got one from her aunt and uncle for her first communion.” Wells reached over, taking a small, framed photo from the end table, handing it to Jessica. It was a picture of the eight-year-old Tessa clasping a crystal bead rosary in her steepled hands. It was not the rosary she held in death.

  Jessica made a note of this as the game show welcomed a new contestant.

  “My wife, Annie, died six years ago,” Wells said, out of the blue.

  Silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Byrne said.

  Jessica looked at Frank Wells. She saw her own father in those years after her mother had died, smaller in every way except his capacity for sorrow. She glanced at the dining room and envisioned the wordless dinners, heard the scrape of smooth-edged silverware on chipped melamine. Tessa had probably prepared the same sorts of meals for her father
that Jessica had: meat loaf with jar gravy, spaghetti on Friday, roast chicken on Sunday. Tessa had almost certainly done the ironing on Saturdays, growing taller each year, eventually standing on phone books instead of milk crates in order to reach the ironing board. Tessa, as had Jessica, had surely learned the wisdom of turning her father’s work pants inside out to iron the pockets flat.

  Now, suddenly, Frank Wells lived alone. Instead of home-cooked leftovers, the refrigerator would be colonized by the half can of soup, the half container of chow mein, the half-eaten deli sandwich. Now Frank Wells would buy the individual serving cans of vegetables. Milk by the pint.

  Jessica took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. The air was cloying and close, nearly corporeal with solitude.

  “It’s like a clock.” Wells seemed to hover a few inches over his La-Z-Boy, afloat on fresh grief, his fingers interlaced carefully on his lap. It was as if someone had positioned his hands for him, as if such a simple task were foreign to him in his bleak anguish. On the wall behind him was a skewed collage of photographs: family milestones of weddings, graduations, and birthdays. One showed Frank Wells in a fishing hat, his arm around a young man in a black windbreaker. The young man was clearly his son, Jason. The windbreaker bore an institutional crest Jessica could not immediately place. Another photograph showed a middle-aged Frank Wells in a blue hard hat in front of a coal-mine shaft.

  Byrne asked: “I’m sorry? A clock?”

  Wells stood, moving with an arthritic dignity from his chair to the window. He studied the street outside. “When you have a clock in the same place for years and years and years. You walk in that room and, if you want to know what time it is, you look at that space, because that’s where the clock is. You look in that particular space.” He fiddled with his shirt cuffs for the twentieth time. Checking the button, rechecking. “And then one day you rearrange the room. The clock is now in a new place, a new space in the world. And yet, for days, weeks, months—maybe even years—you look at the old place, expecting to find out the time. You know it’s not there, but you look anyway.”

  Byrne let him talk. It was all part of the process.

  “That’s where I am now, Detectives. That’s where I’ve been for six years. I look at that place where Annie was in my life, where she always was, and she isn’t there. Somebody moved her. Somebody moved my Annie. Somebody rearranged. And now . . . and now Tessa.” He turned to look at them. “Now the clock has stopped.”