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

by Richard Montanari

  Andy shook his head. “Mock me all you want. Beer Nuts are a lot better than that fwa gra shit you eat.”

  Simon made a grand gesture of covering his ears. Andy Chase offended at the cellular level.

  They caught up on the day’s events. For Simon, these chats were part of the overhead of doing business with Andy. Penance given and said, it was time to go.

  “So how is Kitty?” Simon asked, perfunctorily, with as much enthusiasm as he could fake. The wee cow, he thought. Kitty Bramlett had been a petite, nearly pretty cashier at Wal-Mart when Andy fell for her. That was seventy pounds and three chins ago. Kitty and Andy had settled into that childless, early-middle-age nightmare of marriage built on habit. Microwave dinners, birthdays at the Olive Garden, and rutting twice a month in front of Jay Leno.

  Kill me first, Lord, Simon thought.

  “She is exactly the same.” Andy tossed the magazine and stretched. Simon caught a glimpse of the top of Andy’s trousers. They were safety-pinned together. “For some reason she still thinks you should try to get together with her sister. As if she would have anything to do with you.”

  Kitty’s sister Rhonda looked like a distaff vision of Willard Scott, but not nearly as feminine.

  “I’ll be sure to give her a call soon,” Simon replied.

  “Whatever.”

  It was still raining. Simon would have to ruin the entire look with his tasteful, yet drearily functional London Fog raincoat. It was the one piece that sorely needed updating. Still, it was better than rain spotting the Zileri.

  “No mood for your shite,” Simon said, making exit gestures. Andy got the hint, stood up, headed toward the door. He had left his apple core on the couch.

  “You can’t harsh my vibe tonight,” Simon added. “I look good, I smell great, I have a cover story in the oven, and life is dolce.”

  Andy pulled a face: Dolce?

  “Good lord,” Simon said. He reached into his pocket, removed the hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to Andy. “Thanks for the tip,” he said. “Keep them coming.”

  “Anytime, bro,” Andy said. He pocketed the bill, walked out the door, and headed down the stairs.

  Bro, Simon thought. If this is Purgatory, I truly fear Hell.

  He gave himself one last look in the full-length mirror inside the coat closet.

  Perfect.

  The city was his.

  28

  TUESDAY, 7:00 PM

  BRIAN PARKHURST WASN’T HOME. Nor was his Ford Windstar.

  The six detectives fanned out in the three-story Garden Court row house. The first floor held a small living room and dining room, kitchen at the back. Between the dining room and the kitchen, a steep set of stairs led to the second floor, which had a bathroom and a bedroom converted to office space. The third floor, which had once been two small bedrooms, had been renovated into a master suite. None of the rooms had dark blue nylon carpeting.

  The furnishings were modern for the most part: leather sofa and chair, teak hutch and dining table. The office desk was older, probably pickled oak. His bookshelves spoke of an eclectic taste. Philip Roth, Jackie Collins, Dave Barry, Dan Simmons. The detectives noted the presence of William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books.

  I can’t say I know very much about Blake, Parkhurst had said during his interview.

  A quick riffling through the Blake book showed that nothing had been cut out of it.

  A scan of the refrigerator, freezer, and kitchen garbage produced no evidence of leg of lamb. The Joy of Cooking in the kitchen was bookmarked on caramel flan.

  There was nothing unusual in his closets. Three suits, a pair of tweed blazers, half a dozen pairs of dress shoes, a dozen dress shirts. All conservative and of good quality.

  The walls of his office boasted his three certificates of higher education: one from John Carroll University and two from the University of Pennsylvania. There was also a well-framed poster for the Broadway production of The Crucible.

  Jessica took the second floor. She went through the closet in the office, which seemed to be dedicated to Parkhurst’s sporting endeavors. It appeared that he played tennis and racquetball, as well as engaging in a little sailboarding. There was also an expensive wet suit.

  She went through his desk drawers, finding all the expected supplies. Rubber bands, pens, paper clips, Tic Tacs. Another drawer held LaserJet toner cartridges and a spare keyboard. All the drawers opened with no problem, except for the file drawer.

  The file drawer was locked.

  Odd, for a man who lived alone, Jessica thought.

  A quick but thorough scan of the top drawer yielded no key.

  Jessica looked out of the office door, listened to the chatter. All the other detectives were busy. She returned to the desk, quickly took out her pick set. You don’t work in the Auto Unit for three years without picking up some locksmithing skills. Within seconds, she was in.

  Most of the files were for household and personal business. Tax records, business receipts, personal receipts, insurance policies. There was also a stack of paid Visa bills. Jessica wrote down the card number. A quick perusal of purchases yielded nothing suspicious. There was no charge to a religious supply house.

  She was just about to close and lock the drawer when she saw the tip of a small manila envelope peeking out from behind the drawer. She reached back as far as she could and pulled the envelope out. It had been taped out of sight, but never properly sealed.

  Inside the envelope were five photographs. They had been taken in Fairmount Park during the fall. Three of the pictures were of a fully clothed young woman, shyly posing in a faux-glamour pose. Two of them were the same young woman posing with a smiling Brian Parkhurst. The young woman sat on his lap. The pictures were dated October of the previous year.

  The young woman was Tessa Wells.

  “Kevin!” Jessica yelled down the stairs.

  Byrne was up in a flash, taking four steps at a time. Jessica showed him the photographs.

  “Son of a bitch,” Byrne said. “We had him and we let him go.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get him again.” They had found a complete set of luggage beneath the stairs. He wasn’t on a trip.

  Jessica summed up the evidence. Parkhurst was a doctor. He knew both victims. He claimed to have known Tessa Wells in a professional sense, only as her counselor, and yet he had personal photographs of her. He had a history of sexual involvement with students. One of the victims had begun to spell his last name on her palm, just before her death.

  Byrne got on Parkhurst’s desk phone and called Ike Buchanan. He put the phone on speakerphone and briefed Buchanan on what they had found.

  Buchanan listened, then uttered the three words for which Byrne and Jessica were hoping and waiting: “Pick him up.”

  29

  TUESDAY, 8:15 PM

  IF SOPHIE BALZANO was the most beautiful little girl in the world when she was wide awake, she was positively angelic in that moment when day became night, in that sweet twilight of half sleep.

  Jessica had volunteered to take the first watch on Brian Parkhurst’s home in Garden Court. She was told to go home, get some rest. As was Kevin Byrne. There were two detectives on the house.

  Jessica sat on the edge of Sophie’s bed, watching her.

  They had taken a bubble bath together. Sophie had washed and conditioned her own hair. No help needed, thank you very much. They had dried off, shared a pizza in the living room. It was breaking a rule—they were supposed to eat at the table—but now that Vincent wasn’t around, a lot of rules seemed to be slipping by the wayside.

  No more of that, Jessica thought.

  As she got Sophie ready for bed, Jessica found herself hugging her daughter a little more closely, a little more often. Even Sophie had given her the fish eye, as if to say: What’s up, Mom? But Jessica knew what was up. The way Sophie felt at these times was her salvation.

  And now that Sophie was tucked in, Jessica allowed herself to relax, to start to un
wind from the horrors of the day.

  A little.

  “Story?” Sophie asked, her tiny voice riding on the wings of a big yawn.

  “You want me to read a story?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “Okay,” Jessica said.

  “Not the Hoke,” Sophie said.

  Jessica had to laugh. The Hoke was Sophie’s bogeyman du jour. It all began with a trip to the King of Prussia mall, about a year earlier, and the presence of the fifteen-foot-tall inflatable green Hulk they had erected to promote the release of the DVD. One look at the giant figure and Sophie had immediately taken trembling refuge behind Jessica’s legs.

  “What’s that?” Sophie had asked, lips aquiver, fingers clutching Jessica’s skirt.

  “It’s only the Hulk,” Jessica had said. “It’s not real.”

  “I don’t like the Hoke.”

  It had gotten to the point where anything green and more than four feet tall inspired panic these days.

  “We don’t have any Hoke stories, honey,” Jessica said. She’d figured that Sophie had forgotten about the Hoke. Some monsters died hard, it seemed.

  Sophie smiled and scrunched down under the covers, ready for a Hoke-free dream.

  Jessica went to the closet, got out the book box. She perused the current slate of toddler lit. The Runaway Bunny; You’re the Boss, Baby Duck!; Curious George.

  Jessica sat down on the bed, looked at the spines of the books. They were all for children two and under. Sophie was nearly three. She was actually too mature for The Runaway Bunny. Dear God, Jessica thought, she’s growing up way too fast.

  The book on the bottom was How Do I Put It On?, a primer on getting dressed. Sophie could easily dress herself, and had been able to do so for months. It had been a long time since she had put her shoes on the wrong feet, or slipped her OshKosh overalls on backward.

  Jessica decided on Yertle the Turtle, the Dr. Seuss story. It was one of Sophie’s favorites. Jessica’s, too.

  Jessica began to read, chronicling the adventures and life lessons of Yertle and the gang on the island of Sala-ma-Sond. After a few pages she looked over at Sophie, expecting to see a big smile. Yertle was a laugh riot, usually. Especially the part where he becomes King of the Mud.

  But Sophie was already fast asleep.

  Lightweight, Jessica thought with a smile.

  She flipped the three-way bulb onto the lowest setting, bunched the covers around Sophie. She put the book back in the box.

  She thought about Tessa Wells and Nicole Taylor. How could she not? She had the feeling that these girls would not be far from her conscious thoughts for a long time.

  Had their mothers sat on the edges of their beds like this, marveling at the perfection of their daughters? Had they watched them sleep, thanking God for every breath in, and every breath out?

  Of course they had.

  Jessica looked at the photo frame on Sophie’s nightstand, the Precious Moments frame covered in hearts and bows. There were six photos displayed. Vincent and Sophie at the shore when Sophie was just over a year old. Sophie wore a floppy orange bonnet and sunglasses. Her chubby little legs were caked with wet sand. There was a picture of Jessica and Sophie in the backyard. Sophie was holding the one and only radish they got out of the container garden that year. Sophie had planted the seed, watered the plant, harvested her crop. She had insisted on eating the radish, even though Vincent had warned her she wouldn’t like it. Being a trouper, and stubborn as a little mule, Sophie had tasted the radish, trying not to make a face. Eventually her face went cabbage-patch with the bitterness, and she spit it into a paper towel. That marked the end of her agricultural curiosity.

  The picture in the lower right-hand corner was of Jessica’s mother, taken when Jessica had been a toddler herself. Maria Giovanni looking spectacular in a yellow sundress, her tiny daughter on her knee. Her mother looked so much like Sophie. Jessica wanted Sophie to know her grandmother, although Maria was barely a lucid memory to Jessica these days, more like an image glimpsed through a glass block.

  She flipped off Sophie’s light, sat in the dark.

  Jessica had been on the job two full days, and it already seemed like months. The entire time she had been on the force, she had looked at homicide detectives the way many cops did: They only had one job to do. Divisional detectives handled a much broader range of crimes. As the saying goes, a homicide is just an aggravated assault gone wrong.

  Boy, was she mistaken.

  If this was only one job to do, it was enough.

  Jessica wondered, as she had every day for the past three years, if it was fair to Sophie that she was a cop, that she put her life on the line every day when she left the house. She had no answer.

  Jessica went downstairs, checked the front and the back door to the house for the third time. Or was it the fourth?

  She was off on Wednesday, but she hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with herself. How was she supposed to relax? How was she supposed to go about her life when two young girls had been brutally murdered? Right now she didn’t care about the wheel, the duty roster. She didn’t know a cop who would. At this point, half the force would donate their overtime to take this son of a bitch down.

  Her father always had his yearly Easter get-together on Wednesday of Easter Week. Maybe that would get her mind off things. She would go and try to forget about the job. Her father always had a way of putting things in perspective for her.

  Jessica sat on the couch, ran through the cable channels five or six times. She turned the set off. She was just about to climb into bed with a book when the phone rang. She really hoped it wasn’t Vincent. Or maybe hoped it was.

  It wasn’t.

  “Is this Detective Balzano?”

  It was a man’s voice. Loud music in the background. Disco beat.

  “Who is calling?” Jessica asked.

  The man didn’t answer. Laughter and ice cubes in glasses. He was in a bar.

  “Last chance,” Jessica said.

  “It’s Brian Parkhurst.”

  Jessica glanced at the clock, noted the time on a notepad she kept near the phone. She looked at the screen on her caller ID. Private number.

  “Where are you?” Her voice sounded high and nervous. Reedy.

  Calm, Jess.

  “Not important,” Parkhurst said.

  “It kinda is,” Jessica said. Better. Conversational.

  “I’m doing the talking.”

  “That’s good, Dr. Parkhurst. Really. Because we’d really like to talk to you.”

  “I know.”

  “Why don’t you come to the Roundhouse? I’ll meet you there. We can talk.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not a stupid man, Detective. I know you were at my house.”

  He was slurring his words.

  “Where are you?” Jessica asked a second time.

  No answer. Jessica heard the music morph into a Latin disco beat. She made another note. Salsa club.

  “Meet me,” Parkhurst said. “There are things you need to know about these girls.”

  “Where and when?”

  “Meet me at The Clothespin. Fifteen minutes.”

  Next to salsa club she wrote: within 15 min. of city hall.

  The Clothespin was the huge, Claes Oldenburg sculpture at the Center Square Plaza, right next to city hall. In the old days, people in Philly would say Meet me at the eagle at Wanamaker, the late, great department store with the mosaic of the eagle in the floor. Everyone knew the eagle at Wanamaker’s. Now, it was The Clothespin.

  Parkhurst added: “And come alone.”

  “Not gonna happen, Dr. Parkhurst.”

  “If I see anyone else there, I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m not talking to your partner.”

  Jessica didn’t blame Parkhurst for not wanting to be in the same room as Kevin Byrne at this point. “Give me twenty minutes,” she said.

  The line went dead.

  Jessi
ca called Paula Farinacci who, once again came through for her. There was certainly a special place in Babysitter Heaven for Paula. Jessica bundled a drowsy Sophie into her favorite blanket and shuttled her three doors down. When she got back home, she called Kevin Byrne on his cell phone, got his voice mail. She called him at home. Ditto.

  Come on, partner, she thought.

  I need you.

  She put on jeans and running shoes, her rain slicker. She grabbed her cell phone, popped a fresh mag into her Glock, snapped on her holster, and headed into Center City.

  JESSICA WAITED near the corner of Fifteenth and Market Streets in the pouring rain. She decided not to stand directly beneath The Clothespin sculpture for all the obvious reasons. She didn’t need to be a sitting target.

  She glanced around the square. Few pedestrians were out, due to the storm. The lights on Market Street formed a shimmering red-and-yellow watercolor on the pavement.

  When she was small, her father used to take her and Michael to Center City and the Reading Terminal Market for cannoli from Termini’s. Granted, the original Termini’s in South Philly was only a few blocks from their house, but there was something about riding SEPTA downtown and walking to the market that made the cannoli taste better. It still did.

  In those days they used to saunter up Walnut Street after Thanksgiving, window-shopping at all the exclusive shops. They could never afford anything they saw in the windows, but the beautiful displays had sent her little-girl fantasies adrift.

  So long ago, Jessica thought.

  The rain was relentless.

  A man approached the sculpture, snapping Jessica out of her reverie. He wore a green rain slicker, hood up, hands in pocket. He seemed to linger near the foot of the giant art piece, scanning the area. From where Jessica stood, he looked to be Brian Parkhurst’s height. As to weight and hair color, it was impossible to tell.

  Jessica drew her weapon, kept it behind her back. She was just about to head over when the man suddenly walked down into the subway stop.

  Jessica drew a deep breath, holstered her weapon.

  She watched the cars circle the square, headlights cutting the rain like cat’s eyes.