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

by Richard Montanari

  There were always a few guys in the Homicide Unit who were not very good around dead bodies, and they usually would do whatever they had to do to avoid going out to a crime scene. They made themselves available to go get warrants, round up and transport witnesses, work stakeouts. Kessler was just this sort of detective. He liked the idea of being a homicide detective, but the actual homicide itself freaked him out.

  Byrne had worked only one job with Kessler as his primary partner, the case of a girl found in an abandoned gas station in North Philly. It turned out to be an overdose, not a homicide, and Byrne couldn’t get away from the man fast enough.

  Kessler had retired a year ago. Byrne had heard that the man had late-stage pancreatic cancer.

  “I heard he was sick,” Byrne said. “I don’t know much more than that.”

  “Well, the word is he doesn’t have more than a few months,” DiCarlo said. “Maybe not even that long.”

  As much as Byrne didn’t like Phil Kessler, he didn’t wish such a painful end on anyone. “I still don’t know what this has to do with Julian Matisse.”

  “Kessler went to the DA and told her that he and Jimmy Purify planted the bloody glove on Matisse. He gave a sworn statement.”

  The room began to spin. Byrne had to steady himself. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’m only telling you what he said, Kevin.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Well, number one, it’s not my case. Number two, the Homicide Unit here is looking into it. And three, no. I don’t believe him. Jimmy was the most stand-up cop I ever knew.”

  “Then why does this have traction?”

  DiCarlo hesitated. Byrne read the pause as meaning something even worse was coming. How was that possible? He found out. “Kessler had a second bloody glove, Kevin. He turned it over. The gloves belonged to Jimmy.”

  “It’s pure fucking bullshit! It’s a setup!”

  “I know it. You know it. Anybody who ever rode with Jimmy knows it. Unfortunately, Conrad Sanchez is representing Matisse.”

  Jesus, Byrne thought. Conrad Sanchez was a legend in the public defender’s office, a world-class obstructionist, one of the few who’d decided long ago to make a career out of legal aid. Now in his fifties, he had been a public defender for more than twenty-five years. “Is Matisse’s mother still alive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Byrne never got a handle on Matisse’s relationship with his mother, Edwina. He’d had his suspicions, though. When they were investigating Gracie’s murder, they obtained a search warrant for her apartment. Matisse’s room was decorated like a little boy’s room: cowboy shades on the lamps, Star Wars posters on the walls, a Spider-Man bedspread.

  “So he’s out?”

  “Yeah,” DiCarlo said. “They released him two weeks ago pending the appeal.”

  “Two weeks? Why the hell didn’t I read about it?”

  “This is not exactly a shining moment in the commonwealth’s history. Sanchez found a sympathetic judge.”

  “Do they have him on a monitor?”

  “No.”

  “This fucking city.” Byrne slammed his hand into the drywall, caving it in. There goes the security deposit, he thought. He didn’t feel even a slight ripple of pain. Not at that moment, anyway. “Where’s he staying?”

  “I don’t know. We sent a pair of detectives out to his last-known, just to show him a little muscle, but he’s in the wind.”

  “That’s just great,” Byrne said.

  “Listen, I’ve got to be in court, Kevin. I’ll call you later and we’ll plot a strategy. Don’t worry. We’ll put him back. This charge against Jimmy is bullshit. House of cards.”

  Byrne hung up, rose slowly, painfully to his feet. He grabbed his cane and walked across the living room. He looked out the window, watched the kids and their parents on the street.

  For a long time, Byrne had thought that evil was a relative thing; that all sorts of evil walked the earth, each in its own shoes. Then he saw Gracie Devlin’s body, and knew that the man who had done that monstrous thing was the embodiment of evil. All that hell would allow on this earth.

  Now, after contemplating a day and a week and a month and a lifetime with nothing to do, Byrne had moral imperatives in front of him. All of a sudden there were people he had to see, things he had to do, regardless of how much pain he was in. He walked into the bedroom, pulled open the top drawer of his dresser. He saw Gracie’s handkerchief, the small pink silk square.

  There is a terrible memory in this cloth, he thought. It had been in Gracie’s pocket when she was murdered. Gracie’s mother had insisted Byrne take it the day Matisse was sentenced. He removed it from the drawer and—

  —her screams echo in his head her warm breath enters his body her blood washes over him hot and glossy in the frigid night air—

  —stepped back, his pulse now slamming in his ears, his mind deep in denial that what he had just felt was a recurrence of a frightful power he believed was part of his past.

  The prescience was back.

  MELANIE DEVLIN STOOD at the small barbecue on the tiny back patio of her row house on Emily Street. The smoke rose lazily from the rusting grill, mingling with the thick, humid air. A long-empty bird feeder sat atop the crumbling back wall. The tiny terrace, like most so-called backyards in Philly, was barely big enough for two people. Somehow she had managed to fit a Weber grill, a pair of sanded wrought-iron chairs, and a small table on it.

  In the two years since Byrne had seen Melanie Devlin, she had gained thirty pounds or so. She wore a yellow short set—stretch shorts and a horizontal-striped tank top—but it was not a cheerful yellow. It was not the yellow of daffodils and marigolds and buttercups. It was instead an angry yellow, a yellow that did not welcome the sunshine but rather attempted to drag it into her shattered life. Her hair was short, perfunctorily cut for summer. Her eyes were the color of weak coffee in the midday sun.

  Now in her midforties, Melanie Devlin had accepted the burden of sorrow as a constant in her life. She did not fight it any longer. Sadness was her mantle.

  Byrne had called and said he was in the neighborhood. He had told her nothing further.

  “You sure you can’t stay for dinner?” she asked.

  “I have to get back,” Byrne said. “But thanks for the offer.”

  Melanie was preparing ribs on the grill. She poured a good amount of salt into her palm, sprinkled it on the meat. Then repeated it. She looked at Byrne, as if to apologize. “I can’t taste anything anymore.”

  Byrne knew what she meant. He wanted to establish a dialogue, though, so he responded. If they chatted for a while, it would make it easier to tell her what he had to tell her. “What do you mean?”

  “Since Gracie … died, I lost my sense of taste. Crazy, huh? One day, it just disappeared.” She dumped more salt on the ribs, quickly, as if in penance. “Now I have to put salt on everything. Ketchup, hot sauce, mayonnaise, sugar. I can’t taste food without it.” She waved a hand at her figure, explaining her weight gain. Her eyes began to swell with tears. She wiped them away with the back of a hand.

  Byrne remained silent. He had observed so many people deal with grief, each in their own way. How many times had he seen women clean their houses over and over after a loss to violence? They fluffed the pillows endlessly, made and remade the beds. Or how many times had he seen men wax their cars beyond reason, or mow their lawns every day? Grief stalks the human heart slowly. People often feel that, if they remain in motion, they might outrun it.

  Melanie Devlin stoked the briquettes on the grill, closed the lid. She poured them both a glass of lemonade, sat on the tiny wrought-iron chair opposite him. Someone a few houses down was listening to a Phillies game. They fell silent for a while, feeling the punishing heat of the afternoon. Byrne noticed that Melanie was not wearing her wedding ring. He wondered if she and Garrett had divorced. They certainly wouldn’t be the first couple ripped apart by the violent death of a
child.

  “It was lavender,” Melanie finally said.

  “Excuse me?”

  She glanced at the sun, squinted. She looked back down, spun the glass in her hands a few times. “Gracie’s dress. The one we buried her in. It was lavender.”

  Byrne nodded. He hadn’t known this. Grace’s service was closed-casket.

  “Nobody got to see it, because she was … you know,” Melanie said. “But it was very pretty. One of her favorites. She was fond of lavender.”

  Suddenly it occurred to Byrne that Melanie knew why he was there. Not exactly why, of course, but the tenuous thread that bound them—the death of Marygrace Devlin—had to be the reason. Why else would he stop by? Melanie Devlin knew that this visit had something to do with Gracie, and probably felt that if she talked about her daughter in the gentlest of manners, it might ward off any further pain.

  Byrne carried that pain in his pocket. How was he going to find the courage to take it out?

  He sipped his lemonade. The silence became awkward. A car rolled by, its stereo blasting an old Kinks song. Silence again. Hot, empty, summer silence. Byrne shattered it with what he had to say. “Julian Matisse is out of prison.”

  Melanie looked at him for a few moments, her eyes stripped of emotion. “No he’s not.”

  It was a flat, even statement. For Melanie, saying it made it so. Byrne had heard it a thousand times. It wasn’t as if the person had misunderstood. It was a stall, as if making the statement might cause it to be true, or, given a few seconds, the pill might become coated or smaller.

  “I’m afraid so. He was released two weeks ago,” Byrne said. “His conviction is being appealed.”

  “I thought you said that—”

  “I know. I’m terribly sorry. Sometimes the system …” Byrne trailed off. There really was no explaining it. Especially to someone as scared and angry as Melanie Devlin. Julian Matisse had killed this woman’s only child. The police had arrested the man, the courts had tried him, the prisons had taken him and buried him in an iron cage. The memory of it all—although never far from the surface—had begun to fade. And now it was back. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  “When is he going back?” she asked.

  Byrne had anticipated the question, but he simply did not have an answer. “Melanie, a lot of people are going to be working very hard on that. I promise you.”

  “Including you?”

  The question made the decision for him, a choice with which he’d been wrestling since he’d heard the news. “Yes,” he said. “Including me.”

  Melanie closed her eyes. Byrne could only imagine the images playing out in her mind. Gracie as a little girl. Gracie in her junior high school play. Gracie in her casket. After a few moments, Melanie stood up. She seemed unhooked in her own space, as if she might float away at any second. Byrne stood up, too. It was his cue to leave.

  “I just wanted to make sure you heard it from me,” Byrne said. “And to let you know that I’m going to do everything I can to get him back where he belongs.”

  “He belongs in hell,” she said.

  Byrne had no argument to answer this.

  They stood facing each other for a few uncomfortable moments. Melanie put out her hand to shake. They had never hugged—some people simply didn’t express themselves that way. After the trial, after the funeral, even when they said goodbye on that bitter day two years earlier, they had shaken hands. This time, Byrne decided to chance it. He did it as much for Melanie as himself. He reached out and gently pulled her into his arms.

  At first, it appeared as if she might resist, but then she fell into him, her legs all but quitting her. He held her closely for a few moments—

  —she sits in Gracie’s closet with the door closed for hours and hours on end she talks baby talk to Gracie’s dolls she has not touched her husband in two years—

  —until Byrne broke the embrace, a little shaken by the images in his mind. He made his promises to call soon.

  A few minutes later, she walked him through house to the front door. She kissed him on the cheek. He left without another word.

  As he drove away, he looked in the rearview mirror one last time. Melanie Devlin stood on the small front stoop of her row house, watching him, her heartache born anew, her cheerless yellow outfit a cry of anguish against a backdrop of callous red brick.

  HE FOUND HIMSELF parked in front of the abandoned theater where they had found Gracie. The city flowed around him. The city didn’t remember. The city didn’t care. He closed his eyes, felt the icy wind as it cut across the street that night, saw the fading light in that young woman’s eyes. He had grown up Irish Catholic, and to say he was lapsed was an understatement. The destroyed human beings he had encountered in his life as a police officer had given him a deep understanding of the temporary and brittle nature of life. He had seen so much pain and misery and death. For weeks he had wondered if he was going to go back on the job or take his twenty and run. His papers were on the dresser in the bedroom, ready to be signed. But now he knew he had to go back. Even if it was for just a few weeks. If he wanted to clear Jimmy’s name, he would have to do it from the inside.

  That evening, as darkness embraced the City of Brotherly Love, as the moonlight crested the skyline, and the city wrote its name in neon, Detective Kevin Francis Byrne showered and dressed, slid a fresh magazine into his Glock, and stepped into the night.

  6

  SOPHIE BALZANO, EVEN at the age of three, was a bona fide fashion maven. Granted, when left to her own devices and given free rein over her clothes, Sophie was likely to come up with an outfit that ran the entire spectrum from orange to lavender to lime green, from checks to plaid to stripes, fully accessorized, all within the same ensemble. Coordinates were not her strong suit. She was more of a freewheeling kind of gal.

  On this sweltering July morning, the morning that was to begin an odyssey that would take Detective Jessica Balzano into the mouth of madness and beyond, she was late, as usual. These days, mornings in the Balzano house were a frenzy of coffee and cereal and gummy bears and lost little sneakers and missing barrettes and mislaid juice boxes and snapped shoelaces and traffic reports on KYW on the twos.

  Two weeks earlier, Jessica had gotten her hair cut. She’d worn her hair at least to her shoulders—usually much longer—ever since she was a little girl. When she had been in uniform, she had tied it in a ponytail almost constantly. At first, Sophie had followed her around the house, silently evaluating the fashion move, giving Jessica the eye. After a week or so of intense scrutiny, Sophie wanted her hair cut, too.

  Jessica’s short hair had certainly helped in her avocation as a professional boxer. What began as a lark had taken on a life of its own. With what seemed like the whole department behind her, Jessica had a record of 4–0 and was starting to get some good press in the boxing magazines.

  What a lot of women in boxing didn’t understand is, you have to keep your hair short. If you wear your hair long, and keep it in a ponytail, every time you even get tapped on the jaw your hair flies, and the judges give your opponent credit for landing a clean, hard shot. Plus, long hair has the potential to come loose during the fight and get in your eyes. Jessica’s first knockout came against a girl named Trudy “Kwik” Kwiatkowski who, in the second round, paused for a second to brush the hair from her eyes. The next thing Kwik knew, she was counting the lights on the ceiling.

  Jessica’s great-uncle Vittorio—who acted as her manager and trainer—was negotiating a deal with ESPN2. Jessica didn’t know if she was more scared of getting in the ring or getting on television. On the other hand, she didn’t have JESSIE BALLS on her trunks for nothing.

  As Jessica got dressed, the ritual of retrieving her weapon from the hall closet lockbox was missing, as it had been for the past week. She had to admit that she felt naked and vulnerable without her Glock. But it was standard procedure for all officer-involved shootings. She had been on the desk for nearly a week, on administrative leave p
ending an investigation of the shoot.

  She fluffed her hair, applied a bare minimum of lipstick, glanced at the clock. Running late again. So much for schedules. She crossed the hall, tapped on Sophie’s door. “Ready to go?” she asked.

  Today was Sophie’s first day at a preschool not far from their twin row house in Lexington Park, a small community in the eastern section of Northeast Philadelphia. Paula Farinacci, one of Jessica’s oldest friends and Sophie’s babysitter, was taking her own daughter, Danielle.

  “Mom?” Sophie asked from behind the door.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Mommy?”

  Uh-oh, Jessica thought. There was always a Mom/Mommy preamble whenever Sophie was about to ask a tough question. It was the toddler version of the perp-stall—the technique that knuckleheads on the street used when they were trying to cook an answer for the cops. “Yes, sweetie?”

  “When is Daddy coming back?”

  Jessica was right. The question. She felt her heart drop.

  Jessica and Vincent Balzano had been in marriage counseling for almost six weeks and, although they were making progress, and although she missed Vincent terribly, she was not quite ready to allow him back into their lives. He had cheated on her and she was not yet able to forgive him.

  Vincent, a narcotics detective working out of Central detectives division, saw Sophie whenever he wanted, and there wasn’t the bloodletting there had been in those weeks after she’d introduced his clothing to the front lawn via the upstairs bedroom window. Still, the rancor remained. She had come home and discovered him in bed, in their house, with a South Jersey skank named Michelle Brown, a gap-toothed, saddlebag tramp with frosted hair and QVC jewelry. And those were her selling points.

  That was nearly three months ago. Somehow, time was easing Jessica’s anger. Things weren’t great, but they were getting better.

  “Soon, honey,” Jessica said. “Daddy’s coming home soon.”