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

by Richard Montanari

  The woman was nude, positioned on her back, her arms out to the sides, her head turned to the left. The stab wounds were too numerous to count at the scene. The cuts were clean, indicating that no animals or river life had been at her.

  Jessica forced herself to look at the victim’s face. Her eyes were open, shocked with red. Open, but totally void of expression. Not fear, not anger, not sorrow. Those were emotions for the living.

  Jessica thought about the original scene in Psycho, the way the camera backed up from a close-up of Janet Leigh’s face, how pretty and intact the actress’s face had looked in that shot. She looked at the young woman in the trunk of this car and thought about what a difference reality makes. No makeup artist here. This was what death really looked like.

  The two detectives gloved up.

  “Look,” Byrne said.

  “What?”

  Byrne pointed to the waterlogged newspaper on the right side of the trunk. It was a copy of the Los Angeles Times. He gently opened the paper with a pencil. Inside were wadded-up rectangles of paper.

  “What is that, fake money?” Byrne asked. Bunched up inside the paper were a few stacks of what looked like photocopied hundred-dollar bills.

  “Yeah,” Jessica said.

  “Oh, this is great,” Byrne said.

  Jessica leaned in, looked a little more closely. “How much do you want to bet there’s forty thousand dollars in funny money in there?” she asked.

  “I’m not following,” Byrne said.

  “In Psycho, Janet Leigh’s character steals forty grand from her boss. She buys a Los Angeles newspaper and stashes the money inside. In the movie it’s the Los Angeles Tribune, but that paper’s defunct.”

  Byrne stared at her for a few seconds. “How the hell do you know this?”

  “I looked it up on the Internet.”

  “The Internet,” he said. He leaned over, poked at the phony money again, shook his head. “This guy’s a real fucking piece of work.”

  At this point, Tom Weyrich, the deputy medical examiner, arrived with his photographer. The detectives stood back and let Dr. Weyrich in.

  As Jessica pulled off her gloves and breathed in the fresh air of a new day, she felt pretty good about her hunch paying off. This was no longer about the gauzy specter of a murder committed in two dimensions on a television screen, the ethereal notion of a crime.

  They had a body. They had a homicide.

  They had a case.

  LITTLE JAKE’S NEWSSTAND was a fixture on Filbert Street. Little Jake sold all the local papers and magazines, as well as the Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Erie, and Allentown papers. In addition, he carried a selection of out-of-state dailies and a selection of adult magazines, discreetly displayed behind him, and covered with squares of cardboard. It was one of the few places in Philadelphia where the Los Angeles Times was for sale over the counter.

  Nick Palladino went with the recovered Saturn and the CSU team. Jessica and Byrne interviewed Little Jake while Terry Cahill canvassed the immediate area up and down Filbert.

  Little Jake Polivka had gotten his nickname due to the fact that he was somewhere in the neighborhood of six three and three hundred pounds. He was always slightly stooped over inside the kiosk. With his bushy beard, long hair, and hunched posture, he reminded Jessica of the Hagrid character in the Harry Potter movies. She had always wondered why Little Jake simply didn’t buy or build a bigger kiosk, but had never asked.

  “Do you have any regulars who buy the Los Angeles Times?” Jessica asked.

  Little Jake thought for a few moments. “Not that I can think of. I only get the Sunday edition, and only four of them at that. Not a big seller.”

  “Do you get them on the day they’re published?”

  “No. I get them maybe two or three days late.”

  “The date we’re interested in was from two weeks ago. Can you remember who you might have sold the paper to?”

  Little Jake stroked his beard. Jessica noticed there were crumbs in it, remnants of this morning’s breakfast. At least, she assumed it was this morning’s. “Now that you mention it, a guy did come by and ask for it a few weeks ago. I was out of the paper at the time, but I’m pretty sure I told him when they were coming in. If he came back and bought one, I wasn’t here. My brother runs the shop two days a week now.”

  “Do you remember what he looked like?” Byrne asked.

  Little Jake shrugged. “Hard to remember. I see a lot of people here. And it’s usually just this much.” Little Jake squared his hands into a rectangular shape, like a movie director, framing the opening in his kiosk.

  “Anything you can remember would be very helpful.”

  “Well, as I recall he was about as ordinary as you can get. Ball cap, sunglasses, maybe a dark blue jacket.”

  “What kind of cap?”

  “Flyers, I think.”

  “Any markings on the jacket? Logos?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “Do you remember his voice? Any accent?”

  Little Jake shook his head. “Sorry.”

  Jessica made her notes. “Do you remember enough about him to talk to a sketch artist?”

  “Sure!” Little Jake said, clearly animated over the prospect of being part of a real-life investigation.

  “We’ll arrange it.” She handed Little Jake a card. “In the meantime, if you think of anything, or if you see this guy again, give us a call.”

  Little Jake handled the card with reverence, as if she had handed him a Larry Bowa rookie card. “Wow. Just like on Law and Order.”

  Exactly, Jessica thought. Except on Law & Order they usually solved everything in about an hour. Less, when you cut out the commercials.

  JESSICA, BYRNE, AND Terry Cahill sat in Interview A. The photocopied money and issue of the Los Angeles Times were at the lab. A sketch of the man Little Jake described was in the works. The car was on its way to the lab garage. It was that downtime between the discovery of the first concrete lead and the first forensic report.

  Jessica looked at the floor, found the piece of cardboard Adam Kaslov had been nervously toying with. She picked it up, started twisting it and untwisting it, finding that it was indeed therapeutic.

  Byrne took out a matchbook, turned it over and over in his hands. This was his therapy. You couldn’t smoke anywhere in the Roundhouse. The three investigators considered the day’s events in silence.

  “Okay, who the hell are we looking for here?” Jessica finally asked, more as a rhetorical question, due to the anger that had begun to roil inside her, fueled by the image of the woman in the trunk of the car.

  “You mean, why did he do it, right?” Byrne asked.

  Jessica considered this. In their line of work, the who and the why were so closely linked. “Okay. I’ll settle for why,” she said. “I mean, is this just a case of someone trying to be famous? Is this an instance of a guy just trying to get on the news?”

  Cahill shrugged. “Hard to say. But if you spend any time at all with the folks from Behavioral Science, you know that ninety-nine percent of cases like this go way deeper than that.”

  “What do you mean?” Jessica asked.

  “I mean it takes a hell of a profound psychosis to do something like this. So deep that you could find yourself sitting next to the killer and never know it. This kind of stuff can be buried big time.”

  “When we ID the vic, we’ll know a lot more,” Byrne said. “Let’s just hope it’s personal.”

  “What do you mean?” Jessica asked again.

  “If it’s personal, it’s going to end here.”

  Jessica knew that Kevin Byrne was of the shoe-leather school of investigation. You hit the street, you question, you intimidate the lowlifes, you get answers. He did not discount the academics. It just wasn’t his style.

  “You mentioned Behavioral Science,” Jessica said to Cahill. “Don’t tell my boss, but I’m not sure exactly what they do.” She had gotten her degree in criminal justice, but i
t didn’t encompass much from the field of criminal psychology.

  “Well, primarily they study behavior and motivation, mostly in the area of training and research,” Cahill said. “It’s a far cry from the excitement of The Silence of the Lambs, though. Most of the time it’s pretty dry, clinical stuff. They study gang violence, stress management, community policing, crime analysis.”

  “They must see the worst of the worst,” Jessica said.

  Cahill nodded. “When the headlines die down about a grisly case, these guys go to work. It may not look all that exciting to the average law enforcement professional, but a lot of cases get made down there. VICAP wouldn’t be what it is without them.”

  Cahill’s cell phone rang. He excused himself, stepped out of the room.

  Jessica thought about what he had said. She replayed the Psycho shower scene in her mind. She tried to imagine the horror of that moment from the victim’s point of view—the shadow on the shower curtain, the sound of the water, the rustle of the plastic as it was being whisked back, the gleam of the knife. She shivered. She twisted her piece of cardboard tighter.

  “What’s your gut on this?” Jessica asked. As sophisticated and high-tech as Behavioral Science and all the federally funded task forces might be, she would trade them all for the instincts of a detective like Kevin Byrne.

  “My gut says that this is no thrill killing,” Byrne said. “This is about something. And whoever he is, he wants our undivided attention.”

  “Well, he’s got it.” Jessica unrolled the piece of twisted cardboard in her hands, fully intending to twist it back up. She never got that far. “Kevin.”

  “What?”

  “Look.” Jessica carefully flattened the bright red rectangle on the battered table, avoiding putting her fingerprints on it. The look on Byrne’s face said it all. He put his matchbook down next to the piece of cardboard. They were identical.

  The Rivercrest Motel.

  Adam Kaslov had been to the Rivercrest Motel.

  22

  HE CAME BACK to the Roundhouse voluntarily, and that was a good thing. They certainly did not have enough to pick him up or hold him. They had told him that they simply needed to clear up a few loose ends. A classic ruse. If he caved during the interview, they had him.

  Terry Cahill and ADA Paul DiCarlo observed the interview through the two-way mirror. Nick Palladino stuck with the car. The VIN was obscured, so identifying the owner was going to take a little while.

  “So how long have you lived in North Philadelphia, Adam?” Byrne asked. He sat across from Kaslov. Jessica stood with her back to the closed door.

  “About three years. Ever since I moved out of my folks’ house.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “Bala Cynwyd.”

  “Is that where you grew up?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does your dad do, if I may ask?”

  “He’s in real estate.”

  “And your mom?”

  “She’s, you know, a housewife. Can I ask—”

  “Do you like living in North Philly?”

  Adam shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  “Spend a lot of time in West Philly?”

  “Some.”

  “How much would that be exactly?”

  “Well, I work there.”

  “At the theater, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cool job?” Byrne asked.

  “I guess,” Adam said. “Doesn’t pay much.”

  “But at least the movies are free, right?”

  “Well, the fifteenth time you have to sit through a Rob Schneider movie it doesn’t seem like a bargain.”

  Byrne laughed, but it was clear to Jessica that he didn’t know Rob Schneider from Rob Petrie. “That theater is on Walnut, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  Byrne made a note, even though they knew all this. It made it look official. “Anything else?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is there any other reason you go to West Philly?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about school, Adam? Last time I checked, Drexel was in that part of town.”

  “Well, yeah. I go there for school.”

  “Are you a full-time student?”

  “Just part-time in summer.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “English,” Adam said. “I’m an English major.”

  “Any film classes?”

  Adam shrugged. “A couple.”

  “What sort of things do you study in those classes?”

  “Theory and criticism mostly. I just don’t see what—”

  “Are you a sports fan?”

  “Sports? Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Hockey maybe. You like the Flyers?”

  “They’re okay.”

  “You have a Flyers cap by any chance?” Byrne asked.

  This seemed to spook him, as if he thought the police might be following him. If he was going to shut down, it would begin now. Jessica noticed one of his shoes begin to tap the floor. “Yeah, why?”

  “We just have to cover all bases.”

  This made no sense, of course, but the ugliness of this room, and the proximity of all these police officers, stayed Adam Kaslov’s objections. For the moment.

  “Ever been to a motel in West Philly?” Byrne asked.

  They watched him closely, looking for the tic. He looked at the floor, the walls, the ceiling, anywhere but Kevin Byrne’s jade eyes. Finally, he said, “Why would I go to a motel there?”

  Bingo, Jessica thought.

  “Sounds like you’re answering a question with a question, Adam.”

  “Okay, then,” he said. “No.”

  “You’ve never been to a place called the Rivercrest Motel on Dauphin Street?”

  Adam Kaslov swallowed hard. Again, his eyes roamed the room. Jessica gave him something on which to focus his attention. She dropped the unrolled matchbook on the table. It was flattened in a small evidence bag. When Adam saw it, his face drained of all color. He asked: “Are you telling me that the … the incident on the Psycho tape was done at the … this Rivercrest Motel?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think that I—”

  “Right now we’re just trying to sort out what happened. That’s what we do,” Byrne said.

  “But I’ve never been there.”

  “Never?”

  “No. I … I found those matches.”

  “We have a witness who puts you there.”

  When Adam Kaslov had arrived at the Roundhouse, John Shepherd had taken a digital photograph of him, creating for him a visitor ID badge. Shepherd had then headed out to the Rivercrest, where he had shown the picture to Karl Stott. Shepherd called in and said that Stott recognized Adam as someone who had been to the motel at least twice in the past month.

  “Who said I was there?” Adam asked.

  “Not important, Adam,” Byrne said. “What is important is that you just lied to the police. That’s something we never recover from.” He glanced at Jessica. “Isn’t that right, Detective?”

  “That’s correct,” Jessica said. “It hurts our feelings, and then we have a very hard time trusting you.”

  “She’s right. We don’t trust you now,” Byrne added.

  “But why … why would I bring the tape to you if I had anything to do with it?”

  “Can you tell us why someone would kill somebody, videotape the murder, then insert the footage onto a prerecorded tape?”

  “No,” Adam said. “I can’t.”

  “Neither can we. But if you can accept that someone actually did that, it’s not much of a leap to think that the same person would bring the tape in just to taunt us. Crazy is crazy, right?”

  Adam looked at the floor, remained silent.

  “Tell us about the Rivercrest, Adam.”

  Adam rubbed his face, wrung his hands. When he looked up, the detectives were still there. He spilled. “Okay. I’v
e been there.”

  “How many times?”

  “Twice.”

  “Why do you go there?” Byrne asked.

  “I just did.”

  “What, for a vacation or something? Did you book it through your travel agent?”

  “No.”

  Byrne leaned forward, lowered his voice. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Adam. With or without your help. Did you see all those people on the way up here?”

  After a few seconds, Adam realized that an answer was expected. “Yes.”

  “See, those people never go home. They have no social or family lives whatsoever. They are on the job twenty-four hours a day, and nothing gets by them. Nothing. Take a moment to think about what you’re doing. The very next thing you say may be the most important thing you ever say in your life.”

  Adam looked up. His eyes were shiny. “You can’t tell anybody about this.”

  “That depends on what it is you have to tell us,” Byrne said. “But if it doesn’t figure into this crime, it won’t leave this room.”

  Adam looked at Jessica, then quickly looked away. “I went there with somebody,” he said. “A woman. She’s a woman.”

  He said this emphatically, as if to say that suspecting him of murder was one thing. Suspecting him of being gay was far worse.

  “Do you remember what room you stayed in?” Byrne asked.

  “I don’t know,” Adam said.

  “Try real hard.”

  “I … I think it was room ten.”

  “Both times?”

  “I think so.”

  “What kind of car does this woman drive?”

  “I really don’t know. We never went in her car.”

  Byrne leaned back. No need to come at him hard for the moment. “Why didn’t you just tell us this earlier?”

  “Because,” Adam began, “because she’s married.”

  “We’re going to need her name.”

  “I … can’t tell you that,” Adam said. He glanced from Byrne to Jessica, then at the floor.

  “Look at me,” Byrne said.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Adam complied.

  “Do I strike you as the kind of person who’s going to accept that as an answer?” Byrne asked. “I mean, I know we don’t know each other, but take a quick glance around this place. Do you think it looks this shitty by accident?”