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

by Richard Montanari

  “Oh yeah,” Patrice said.

  “Well, if you look right under the newel post on the stairs leading under the stage, on the right-hand side, there is a carving that reads JG AND BB 4EVER.”

  “That was you?” Patrice looked quizzically at the business card.

  “I was Jessica Giovanni then. I carved that in tenth grade.”

  “Who was BB?” Patrice asked.

  “Bobby Bonfante. He went to Father Judge.”

  The girls nodded. Father Judge boys were, for the most part, pretty irresistible.

  Jessica added: “He looked like Al Pacino.”

  The two girls glanced at each other, as if to say: Al Pacino? Isn’t he, like, grandpa old? “Is that the old guy who was in The Recruit with Colin Farrell?” Patrice asked.

  “A young Al Pacino,” Jessica added.

  The girls smiled. Sadly, but they smiled.

  “So did it last forever with Bobby?” Ashia asked.

  Jessica wanted to tell these young girls that it never does. “No,” she said. “Bobby lives in Newark now. Five kids.”

  The girls nodded again in deep understanding of love and loss. Jessica had them back. Time to cut it off. She’d take another run at them later.

  “By the way, when do you guys get off for Easter break?” Jessica asked.

  “Tomorrow,” Ashia said, her sobs all but dried.

  Jessica flipped up her hood. The rain had already ruined whatever style her hair had held, but now it was starting to come down hard.

  “Can I ask you something?” Patrice asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Why . . . why did you become a cop?”

  Even before Patrice’s question, Jessica had a feeling that the girl was going to ask her that. It still didn’t make the answer any easier. She wasn’t entirely sure herself. There was legacy; there was Michael’s death. There were reasons even she didn’t know yet. In the end she said, modestly: “I like to help people.”

  Patrice dabbed her eyes again. “Does it ever, you know, creep you out?” she asked. “You know, to be around . . .”

  Dead people, Jessica finished, in her mind. “Yeah,” she said. “Sometimes.”

  Patrice nodded, finding common ground with Jessica. She pointed at Kevin Byrne, sitting in the Taurus across the street. “Is he your boss?”

  Jessica looked over, looked back, smiled. “No,” she said. “He’s my partner.”

  Patrice absorbed this. She smiled through her tears, perhaps in the understanding that Jessica was her own woman, and said, simply: “Cool.”

  JESSICA SHOOK OFF as much rain as she could, then slipped into the car.

  “Anything?” Byrne asked.

  “Not really,” Jessica said, consulting her notepad. It was soaked. She tossed it into the backseat. “Sean Brennan’s family moved to Denver about a month ago. They said Tessa wasn’t seeing anyone else. Patrice said he was kind of a hothead.”

  “Worth looking at?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll put in a call to the Denver Board of Ed. See if young Mr. Brennan has missed any days recently.”

  “What about Dr. Parkhurst?”

  “There’s something there. I can feel it.”

  “What’s your gut?”

  “I think they talk about personal things with him. I think they think he’s a little too personal.”

  “Do you think Tessa was seeing him?”

  “If she was, she didn’t confide in her friends,” Jessica said. “I asked them about Tessa’s three-week sabbatical from school last year. They got hinky. Something happened to Tessa around Thanksgiving last year.”

  For a few moments, the investigation halted, their separate thoughts met only by the staccato rhythms of the rain on the roof of the car.

  Byrne’s phone chirped as he started the Taurus. He flipped the cell open.

  “Byrne . . . yeah . . . yeah . . . outstanding,” he said. “Thanks.” He flipped the phone closed.

  Jessica looked at Byrne, waiting. When it became clear that he was not about to share, she asked. If reticence was his nature, nosiness was hers. If this relationship was going to work, they would have to find a way to jigsaw the two.

  “Good news?”

  Byrne glanced over at her, as if he had forgotten she was in the car. “Yeah. The lab just made a case for me. They matched a hair with evidence found on a vic,” he said. “This fucker is mine.”

  Byrne gave her a recap of the Gideon Pratt case. Jessica heard the passion in his voice, the deep sense of subdued rage as he talked about the brutal, senseless death of Deirdre Pettigrew.

  “Gotta make a quick stop,” he said.

  A few minutes later they came to a rolling rest in front of a proud but struggling row house on Ingersoll Street. The rain was coming down in broad, cold sheets. As they exited the car and drew near the house, Jessica saw a frail, light-skinned black woman in her forties standing in the doorway. She wore a quilted magenta housecoat and tinted, oversized glasses. Her hair was in a multicolored African wrap; her feet were clad in white plastic sandals at least two sizes too large.

  The woman put her hand to her breastbone when she saw Byrne, as if the sight of him stole her ability to breathe. A lifetime of bad news had walked up these steps, it seemed, and it probably all came from the lips of people who looked like Kevin Byrne. Big white men who were cops, tax assessors, welfare agents, landlords.

  As they climbed the crumbling steps, Jessica noticed a sun-faded eight-by-ten photo in the living room window, a leached print made on a color copier. The photo was an enlargement of a school snapshot of a smiling black girl of about fifteen. There was a loop of fat pink yarn in her hair, beads in her braids. She wore a retainer and seemed to be smiling despite the serious hardware in her mouth.

  The woman did not invite them in, but mercifully there was a small awning over her front stoop, shielding them from the downpour.

  “Mrs. Pettigrew, this is my partner, Detective Balzano.”

  The woman nodded at Jessica, but continued to bunch her housecoat to her throat.

  “Have you . . . ,” she began, trailing off.

  “Yes,” Byrne said. “We caught him, ma’am. He’s in custody.”

  Althea Pettigrew’s hand covered her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes. Jessica could see that the woman wore a wedding ring, but the stone was gone.

  “What . . . what happens now?” she asked, her body vibrating with anticipation. It was clear that she had prayed for and dreaded this day for a long time.

  “That’s up to the DA’s office and the man’s attorney,” Byrne replied. “He’ll be arraigned, and then there will be a preliminary hearing.”

  “Do you think he might . . .?”

  Byrne took her hand in his, shaking his head. “He’s not getting out. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he never walks free again.”

  Jessica knew how many things could go wrong, especially in a capital murder case. She appreciated Byrne’s optimism and at this moment it was the right sentiment to convey. When she was in Auto, she’d had a hard time telling people she was sure they were going to get their cars back.

  “Bless you, sir,” the woman said, then all but threw herself into Byrne’s arms, her whimpers morphing into full-grown sobs. Byrne held her gingerly, as if she were made of porcelain. His eyes met Jessica’s, saying: This is why. Jessica glanced over at the picture of Deirdre Pettigrew in the window. She wondered if the photo would come down today.

  Althea composed herself somewhat, then said: “Wait right here, would you?”

  “Sure,” Byrne said.

  Althea Pettigrew disappeared inside for a few moments, reappeared, then placed something into Kevin Byrne’s hand. She wrapped her hand around his, closing it. When Byrne opened his hand, Jessica could see what the woman had handed him.

  It was a well-worn twenty-dollar bill.

  Byrne stared at it for a few moments, a bit bewildered, as if he had never seen American currency before. “Mrs. Pet
tigrew, I . . . I can’t take this.”

  “I know it isn’t much,” she said, “but it would mean so much to me.”

  Byrne straightened out the bill as he appeared to organize his thoughts. He waited a few moments, then handed the twenty back. “I can’t,” he said. “Knowing that the man who did that terrible thing to Deirdre is in custody is enough payment for me, believe me.”

  Althea Pettigrew scrutinized the big police officer in front of her with a look of disappointment and respect on her face. Slowly, reluctantly, she took the money back. She put it into the pocket of her housecoat.

  “Then you will have this,” she said. She reached behind her neck and took off the delicate silver chain. The chain held a small silver crucifix.

  When Byrne tried to decline this, the look in Althea Pettigrew’s eyes told him she would not be refused. Not this time. She held it out until Byrne took it.

  “I, uh . . . thank you, ma’am,” was all that Byrne could manage.

  Jessica thought: Frank Wells yesterday, Althea Pettigrew today. Two parents separated by worlds and just a few blocks, joined in unimaginable grief and sorrow. She hoped they would have the same results for Frank Wells.

  Although he was probably doing his best to mask it, as they walked back to the car Jessica noticed a slight spring in Byrne’s step, despite the downpour, despite the grimness of their current case. She understood it. All cops did. Kevin Byrne was riding a wave, a small ripple of satisfaction known to law enforcement professionals when, after a lot of hard work, the dominoes fall and they spell out a beautiful pattern, a clean, borderless image called justice.

  Then there was the other side of the business.

  Before they could get in the Taurus, Byrne’s phone rang again. He answered, listened for a few seconds, his face void of expression. “Give us fifteen minutes,” he said.

  He snapped the phone shut.

  “What is it?” Jessica asked.

  Byrne made a fist, poised to smash it into the windshield, stopped himself. Barely. Everything he had just felt was gone in an instant.

  “What?” Jessica repeated.

  Byrne took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, said: “They found another girl.”

  21

  TUESDAY, 8:25 AM

  BARTRAM GARDENS was the oldest botanical garden in the United States, having been frequented by Benjamin Franklin, after whom John Bartram, the garden’s founder, had named a genus of plant. Located at Fifty-fourth Street and Lindbergh, the forty-five-acre site boasted a landscape of wildflower meadows, river trails, wetlands, stone houses, and farm buildings. Today it hosted death.

  A police cruiser and an unmarked were parked near the River Trail when Byrne and Jessica arrived. A perimeter had already been established around what appeared to be half an acre of daffodils. As Byrne and Jessica approached the scene, it was easy to see how the body could have been overlooked.

  The young woman lay on her back amid the bright flowers, her hands clasped in prayer at her waist, holding a black rosary. Jessica could see immediately that one of the decades of beads was missing.

  Jessica looked around. The body was placed about fifteen feet into the field and, except for a narrow path of tramped flowers, probably caused by the medical examiner, there was no obvious ingress into the field. The rain had certainly washed away any footprints. If there was an abundance of forensic possibilities in the row house on Eighth, out here, after hours of torrential rain, there would be none.

  Two detectives stood at the edge of the immediate crime scene: a slender Hispanic man in an expensive-looking Italian suit and a shorter, powerfully built man whom Jessica recognized. The cop in the Italian suit seemed equally concerned with the rain ruining his Valentino as with the investigation. At least at the moment.

  Jessica and Byrne approached, considered the victim.

  The girl wore a navy blue and green plaid skirt, blue knee socks, penny loafers. Jessica recognized it as the uniform belonging to Regina High School, a Catholic girls school on Broad Street in North Philly. She had raven-black hair cut into a pageboy style and, from what Jessica could see, had about a half dozen piercings in her ears and one in her nose, piercings that bore no jewelry. It was clear that this girl played the Goth role on weekends, but, due to the strict dress code at her school, wore none of her hardware in class.

  Jessica looked at the young woman’s hands and although she didn’t want to accept the truth, there it was. The hands were bolted together in prayer.

  Out of earshot of the others, Jessica turned to Byrne and asked, softly: “Have you ever had a case like this before?”

  Byrne didn’t have to think long about it. “No.”

  The two other detectives approached, thankfully bringing their big golf umbrellas with them.

  “Jessica, this is Eric Chavez, Nick Palladino.”

  Both men nodded. Jessica returned the greeting. Chavez was the Latin pretty boy, long lashes, smooth skin, midthirties. She had seen him at the Roundhouse the day before. It was clear that he was the unit’s fashion plate. Every squad had one: the type of cop who, on a stakeout, would bring along a fat wooden hanger on which to hang his suit coat in the backseat, along with a beach towel he would tuck into his shirt collar when he ate the crap food you were forced to eat on a stakeout.

  Nick Palladino was well dressed, too, but in a South Philly style—leather coat, tailored slacks, polished loafers, gold ID bracelet. He was about forty, with deep-set dark chocolate eyes, stone-set features; his black hair was combed straight back. Jessica had met Nick Palladino a few times before; he had partnered with her husband in Narcotics before moving over to Homicide.

  Jessica shook hands with both men. “Nice to meet you,” she said to Chavez.

  “Likewise,” he responded.

  “Nice to see you again, Nick.”

  Palladino smiled. There was much danger in that smile. “How are you, Jess?”

  “I’m good.”

  “The family?”

  “All good.”

  “Welcome to the Show,” he added. Nick Palladino had been with the squad less than a year himself, but he was solid blue. He had probably heard about her and Vincent separating, but he was a gentleman. Now was neither the time nor place.

  “Eric and Nick work out of the Fugitive Squad,” Byrne added.

  The Fugitive Squad was one-third of the Homicide Unit. Special Investigations and the Line Squad—that section that handled the new cases—were the other two. When a big case came along, or whenever the wheel began to spin out of control, every homicide cop caught.

  “Any ID?” Byrne asked.

  “Nothing yet,” Palladino said. “Nothing in her pockets. No purse or wallet.”

  “She went to Regina,” Jessica said.

  Palladino wrote it down. “That’s the school on Broad?”

  “Yeah. Broad and CB Moore.”

  “This the same MO as your case?” Chavez asked.

  Kevin Byrne just nodded.

  The idea, the very notion, that they might be up against a serial killer set all their jaws tight, throwing an even heavier pall over the day.

  It had been less than twenty-four hours since this scene had played out in a dank and putrid basement of a row house on Eighth Street, and here they were again in a lush garden of cheerful flowers.

  Two girls.

  Two dead girls.

  All four detectives watched as Tom Weyrich knelt next to the body. He pushed up the girl’s skirt, examined her.

  When he stood and turned to look at them, his face was grim. Jessica knew what it meant. This girl had suffered the same indignity in death as had Tessa Wells.

  Jessica looked at Byrne. There was a deep anger rising within him, something primal and unrepentant, something that reached far beyond the job, his sense of duty.

  A few moments later Weyrich joined them.

  “How long has she been here?” Byrne asked.

  “At least four days,” Weyrich said.

  Jessica di
d the math and a cold frost crept over her heart. This girl was dumped here right around the time Tessa Wells was kidnapped. This girl was killed first.

  One decade of beads was missing from this girl’s rosary. Two were missing from Tessa’s.

  Which meant that, of the hundreds of questions that floated above them, like the dense gray clouds, there was one truth here, one reality, one horrific fact apparent in this morass of uncertainties.

  Someone was killing the Catholic schoolgirls of Philadelphia.

  From all appearances, the rampage had just begun.

  PART THREE

  22

  TUESDAY, 12:15 PM

  THE ROSARY KILLER task force was assembled by noon.

  As a rule, task forces were organized and authorized by the big bosses in the department, and always after an assessment of the political impact of the victims. Despite all the rhetoric regarding how all homicides are equal, manpower and resources are always made more readily available when the victims are important. If someone is knocking off drug dealers or gangbangers or streetwalkers, it’s one thing. If someone is killing Catholic schoolgirls, it’s quite another. Catholics vote.

  By noon a good deal of the initial legwork and preliminary lab work had been rushed through the channels. The rosaries both girls held in death were identical, available at a dozen religious article retail stores in Philadelphia. Investigators were currently compiling a customer list. The missing beads were not found at either scene.

  The preliminary report from the medical examiner’s office concluded that the killer had used a carbon bit drill to bore the hole in the hands of the victims, and that the bolt used to secure their hands together was also a common item, a four-inch galvanized carriage bolt available at any Home Depot, Lowe’s, or corner hardware store.

  No fingerprints were found on either victim.

  The cross on Tessa Wells’s forehead was of blue chalk. The lab had not yet concluded a type. There was trace evidence of the same material on the second victim’s forehead. In addition to the small William Blake print found on Tessa Wells, there was also an object found clasped between the hands of the other victim. It was a small segment of bone, approximately three inches in length. It appeared to be very sharp, and had not yet been identified by type or species. These two facts were not given to the media.