“Byrne.”
It was Eric Chavez.
“Where are you?” Chavez asked.
He wasn’t here. Couldn’t be here. He wondered about cell phone tracking. If it came to it, could they track where he was when he received this call? The siren grew closer. Could Chavez hear it?
“Old City,” Byrne said. “What’s up?”
“Call just came in. Nine-one-one. Someone saw a guy carrying a body up to the Rodin Museum.”
Jesus.
He had to go. Now. No time to think. This was how and why people got caught. But he had no choice.
“I’m on my way.”
Before he left, he glanced down the alley, at the dark vista on display there. In the center was a dead kid dropped into the middle of Kevin Byrne’s nightmare, a kid whose own nightmare had just breached the dawn.
34
TUESDAY, 9:20 PM
HE HAD FALLEN ASLEEP. Ever since he had been a child in the Lake District, where the sound of rain on the roof was a lullaby, Simon had been soothed by the clatter of a storm. It was the car backfiring that awakened him.
Or maybe it was a shot.
This was Gray’s Ferry, after all.
He looked at his watch. An hour. He had been asleep an hour. Some surveillance expert. More like Inspector Clouseau.
The last thing he remembered, before being startled awake, was Kevin Byrne disappearing into a rough Gray’s Ferry bar called Shotz, the kind of place where, when you walk in, you go down two steps. Physically and socially. A ramshackle Irish bar full of House of Pain types.
Simon had parked on a side street, partly to keep out of Byrne’s line of sight, partly because there wasn’t a space in front of the bar. His intention was to wait for Byrne to emerge from the bar, follow him, see if he pulled over on some dark street and lit up a crack pipe. If all went well, Simon would have snuck up on the car and snapped a picture of the legendary detective Kevin Francis Byrne with a five-inch glass shooter between his lips.
Then he would own him.
Simon had gotten out his small, collapsible umbrella, opened the car door, spread the umbrella, and sidled up to the corner of the building. He peered around. Byrne’s car was still parked there. It looked as if someone had broken the driver’s window in. Oh Lord, Simon thought. I pity the fool who picked the wrong car on the wrong night.
The bar was still packed. He could hear the dulcet strains of an old Thin Lizzy tune rattling the windows.
He was just about to head back to his car when a shadow caught his attention, a shadow darting across the vacant lot directly across from Shotz. Even in the dim light thrown by the bar’s neon, Simon could recognize Byrne’s huge silhouette.
What the hell was he doing over there?
Simon raised the camera, focused, snapped a few pictures. He wasn’t sure why, but when you shadowed someone with a camera and tried to assemble the collage of images the next day, every image helped in establishing a time line.
Besides, digital images were erasable. It wasn’t like the old days when every snap of a thirty-five millimeter camera cost money.
Back in the car, he had checked the images on the camera’s small LCD screen. Not bad. A little dark, of course, but it was clearly Kevin Byrne coming out of that alley and across the lot. Two of the photographs had been against the side of a light-colored van, and there was no mistaking the man’s hulking profile. Simon made sure that the image was imprinted with date and time.
Done.
Then his police band scanner—a Uniden BC250D, a handheld model that had more than once gotten him to a crime scene ahead of the detectives—crackled to life. He couldn’t make out the details, but a few seconds later, when Kevin Byrne took off, Simon knew that whatever it was he belonged on the scene.
Simon turned the ignition key, hoping that the job he had done securing his muffler would hold. It did. He wouldn’t be sounding like a Cessna aircraft while trying to shadow one of the city’s savviest detectives.
Life was good.
He put the car in gear. And followed.
35
TUESDAY, 9:45 PM
JESSICA SAT IN HER DRIVEWAY, exhaustion beginning to take its toll. Rain hammered the roof of the Cherokee. She thought about what Nick had said. It had crossed her mind that she not had gotten The Talk after the task force was formed, the sit-down that would’ve started: Look, Jessica, this has nothing to do with your abilities as a detective . . .
That talk never happened.
She turned off the engine.
What had Brian Parkhurst wanted to tell her? He hadn’t said that he wanted to tell her what he’d done, but rather that there were things about these girls that she needed to know.
Like what?
And where was he?
If I see anyone else there, I’m leaving.
Had Parkhurst made Nick Palladino and John Shepherd as cops?
Not likely.
Jessica got out, locked the Jeep, and ran to the back door, splashing in puddles along the way. She was soaked. It seemed as if she had been soaked forever. The light over the back porch had burned out a few weeks earlier, and as she fumbled for her house key she chided herself for the hundredth time for not replacing the bulb. Above her, the branches of the dying maple creaked. It really needed to get trimmed before those branches smashed into the house. These things had generally been Vincent’s job, but Vincent wasn’t around, was he?
Get it together, Jess. You are mom and dad for the time being, as well as cook, repairman, landscaper, chauffeur, and tutor.
She got her house key in hand and was just about to open the back door when she heard a noise above her, the scrape of aluminum twisting, shearing, moaning under an enormous weight. She also heard leather-soled shoes scrape across the floor, saw a hand reach for her.
Draw your weapon Jess—
The Glock was in her purse. Rule number one never keep your weapon in your purse—
The shadow formed a body. A man’s body.
A priest.
He closed his hand around her arm.
And pulled her into the darkness.
36
TUESDAY, 9:50 PM
THE SCENE AROUND THE RODIN MUSEUM was a madhouse. Simon hung at the back of the gathering crowd, rubbernecking with the unwashed. What was it that drew ordinary citizens to scenes of misery and chaos like flies to a pile of dung, he wondered.
I should talk, he thought with a smile.
Still, in his own defense, he felt that, in spite of his penchant for the dreadful and predilection for the morbid, he still hung on to a scrap of dignity, still guarded closely that morsel of grandeur regarding the work he did, and the public’s right to know. Like it or not, he was a journalist.
He worked his way toward the front of the crowd. He pulled his collar up, slipped on his tortoiseshell glasses, brushed his hair over his forehead.
Death was here.
So was Simon Close.
Bread and jam.
37
TUESDAY, 9:50 PM
IT WAS FATHER CORRIO.
Father Mark Corrio was the pastor of St. Paul’s when Jessica was growing up. He was newly installed as pastor when Jessica was around nine, and she remembered how all the women swooned over his dark good looks at the time, how they all commented on what a waste it was that he had entered the priesthood. The dark hair had gone ice gray, but he was still a good-looking man.
On her porch, in the dark, in the rain, however, he was Freddie Krueger.
What happened was, one of the gutters over the porch was perched precariously overhead, about to break off under the weight of a waterlogged branch that had fallen from a nearby tree. Father Corrio had grabbed Jessica to get her out of harm’s way. A few seconds later, the gutter had ripped free of the gutter board and crashed to the ground.
Divine intervention? Perhaps. But that didn’t prevent Jessica from being scared shitless for a few seconds.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he said
.
Jessica almost said, I’m sorry I almost punched your freakin’ lights out, Padre.
“Come on inside,” she offered instead.
DRIED OFF, COFFEE MADE, they sat in the living room and got the pleasantries out of the way. Jessica called Paula and told her she’d be there shortly.
“How is your father?” the priest asked.
“He’s great, thanks.”
“I haven’t seen him at St. Paul’s lately.”
“He’s kind of short,” Jessica said. “He might be in the back.”
Father Corrio smiled. “How do you like living in the Northeast?”
When Father Corrio said it, it sounded like this part of Philadelphia was a foreign country. On the other hand, Jessica thought, to the cloistered world of South Philly, it probably was. “Can’t get any good bread,” she said.
Father Corrio laughed. “I wish I had known. I would have stopped at Sarcone’s.”
Jessica remembered eating warm Sarcone’s bread as a little girl. Cheese from DiBruno’s, pastries from Isgro’s. These thoughts, along with the proximity of Father Corrio, filled her with a deep sadness.
What the hell was she doing in the ’burbs?
More important, what was her old parish priest doing up here?
“I saw you on television yesterday,” he said.
For a moment, Jessica almost told him that he must be mistaken. She was a police officer. Then, of course, she remembered. The press conference.
Jessica wasn’t sure what to say. Somehow she knew Father Corrio had stopped by because of the murders. She just wasn’t sure if she was ready for a homily.
“Is that young man a suspect?” he asked.
He was referring to the circus surrounding Brian Parkhurst’s departure from the Roundhouse. He had walked out with Monsignor Pacek, and—perhaps as an opening salvo in the PR wars to come—Pacek had deliberately and dramatically declined comment. Jessica had seen the constant replay of the scene at Eighth and Race. The media managed to get Parkhurst’s name and plaster it all over the screen.
“Not exactly,” Jessica lied. To her priest, yet. “We’d sure like to talk to him again, though.”
“I understand he works for the archdiocese?”
It was a question and a statement. The sort of thing priests and shrinks were really good at.
“Yes,” Jessica said. “He counsels students from Nazarene, Regina, and a few others.”
“Do you think he is responsible for these . . .?”
Father Corrio trailed off. He clearly had trouble saying the words.
“I really don’t know for sure,” Jessica said.
Father Corrio absorbed this. “This is such a terrible thing.”
Jessica just nodded.
“When I hear of crimes such as these,” Father Corrio continued, “I have to wonder just how civilized a place we live in. We like to think that we have become enlightened through the centuries. But this? It’s barbaric.”
“I try not to think of it that way,” Jessica said. “If I think about the horrors of it all, there’s no way I can do my job.” It sounded easy when she said it. It wasn’t.
“Have you ever heard of the Rosarium Virginis Mariae?”
“I think so,” Jessica said. It sounded like something she had run across in her research at the library, but like most of the information it was lost in a bottomless chasm of data. “What about it?”
Father Corrio smiled. “Don’t worry. There won’t be a pop quiz.” He reached into his briefcase and produced an envelope. “I think you should read this.” He handed her the envelope.
“What is this?”
“The Rosarium Virginis Mariae is an apostolic letter regarding the rosary of the Virgin Mary.”
“Does it have something to do with these murders?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Jessica glanced at the folded papers inside. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll read it tonight.”
Father Corrio drained his cup, looked at his watch.
“Would you like some more coffee?” Jessica asked.
“No thanks,” Father Corrio said. “I really should get back.”
Before he could rise, the phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said.
Jessica answered. It was Eric Chavez.
As she listened, she looked at her reflection in the night-black window. The night threatened to open up and swallow her whole.
They had found another girl.
38
TUESDAY, 10:20 PM
THE RODIN MUSEUM was a small museum dedicated to the French sculptor at Twenty-second Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
When Jessica arrived, there were already a number of patrol cars on the scene. Two lanes of the parkway were blocked. A crowd was gathering.
Kevin Byrne huddled with John Shepherd.
The girl sat on the ground, her back against the bronze gates leading into the museum courtyard. She looked about sixteen. Her hands were bolted together, just like the others. She was heavyset, red-haired, pretty. She wore a Regina uniform.
In her hands was a black rosary, with three decades of beads missing.
On her head was a crown of thorns, fashioned out of concertina wire.
Blood trickled down her face in a delicate crimson web.
“Goddamn it,” Byrne yelled, slamming his fist into the hood of the car.
“I put out an all-points on Parkhurst,” Buchanan said. “There’s a BOLO on the van.”
Jessica had heard it go out on her way into the city, her third trip of the day.
“A crown?” Byrne asked. “A fucking crown?”
“Gets better,” John Shepherd said.
“What do you mean?”
“You see the gates?” Shepherd pointed his flashlight toward the inner gates, the gates leading to the museum itself.
“What about them?” Byrne asked.
“Those gates are called The Gates of Hell,” he said. “This fucker is a real piece of work.”
“The picture,” Byrne said. “The Blake painting.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s telling us where the next victim is going to be found.”
For a homicide detective, the only thing worse than having no leads was being played with. The collective rage at this crime scene was palpable.
“The girl’s name is Bethany Price,” Tony Park said, consulting his notes. “Her mother reported her missing this afternoon. She was at the Sixth District station when the call came in. That’s her over there.”
He pointed to a woman in her late thirties, dressed in a tan raincoat. She reminded Jessica of those shell-shocked people you see on foreign news footage, just after a car bomb has gone off. Lost, numb, hollowed out.
“How long had she been missing?” Jessica asked.
“She didn’t make it home from school today. Everybody with a daughter in high school and junior high is pretty jumpy.”
“Thanks to the media,” Shepherd said.
Byrne began to pace.
“What about the guy who called in the nine-one-one?” Shepherd asked.
Park pointed to a man standing behind one of the patrol cars. He was about forty, well dressed in a three-button navy suit, club tie.
“His name is Jeremy Darnton,” Park said. “He said he was driving about forty miles an hour when he went by. All he saw was the victim being carried on a man’s shoulder. By the time he could pull over and double back, the man was gone.”
“No description of the man?” Jessica asked.
Park shook his head. “White shirt or jacket. Dark pants.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s every waiter in Philly,” Byrne said. He went back to his pacing. “I want this guy. I want to put this fucker down.”
“We all do, Kevin,” Shepherd said. “We’ll get him.”
“Parkhurst played me.” Jessica said. “He knew I wouldn’t come alone. He knew I’d bring the cavalr
y. He tried to draw us off.”
“And he did,” Shepherd said.
A few minutes later, they all approached the victim as Tom Weyrich stepped in to do his preliminary exam.
Weyrich searched for a pulse, pronounced her dead. He then looked at her wrists. On each wrist was a long-healed scar, a snaky gray ridge, crudely cut, laterally, about an inch below the heel of her palm.
At some point in the last few years, Bethany Price had attempted suicide.
As the lights from the half dozen patrol cars strobed against the statue of The Thinker, as the crowd continued to gather, as the rain picked up in intensity, washing away precious knowledge, one man in the crowd looked on, a man who carried a deep and secret knowledge of the horrors that were befalling the daughters of Philadelphia.
39
TUESDAY, 10:25 PM
The lights on the face of the statue are beautiful.
But not as beautiful as Bethany. Her delicate white features give her the appearance of a sad angel, as radiant as the winter moon.
Why don’t they cover her?
Of course, if they only realized how tormented a soul Bethany was, they wouldn’t be quite so upset.
I have to admit that I get a deep chill of excitement standing among the good citizens of my city, watching it all.
I’ve never seen so many police cars in my life. The flashing racks illuminate the parkway like a carnival midway. It is almost a festive atmosphere. There are about sixty or so people gathered. Death is always an attraction. Like a rollercoaster. Let’s get close, but not too close.
Unfortunately, we all get closer one day, whether we like it or not.
What would they think if I opened my coat and showed them what I am carrying? I look to my right. There is a married couple standing next to me. They appear to be in their midforties, white, affluent, well dressed.
“Do you have any idea what happened here?” I ask the husband.
He looks at me, a quick up and down. I do not offend. I do not threaten. “I’m not sure,” he says. “But I think they found another girl.”
“Another girl?”
Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands Page 20