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

by Richard Montanari

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Fair enough. Here’s what we’ll do,” Byrne said. “If you don’t tell us this woman’s name, you’re going to force us to poke around in your life. We’re going to get the names of all the people in your classes, all your professors. We’re going to drop in at the dean’s office and ask them about you. We’re going to talk to your friends, family, coworkers. Is that what you really want?”

  Incredibly, instead of caving in, Adam Kaslov just looked at Jessica. For the first time since she’d met him she thought she saw something in his eyes, something sinister, something that said he was not just some scared kid in over his head. There might have even been the hint of a smile on his face. Adam asked: “I need a lawyer, don’t I?”

  “I’m afraid we really can’t advise you on something like that, Adam,” Jessica said. “But I will say that, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.”

  If Adam Kaslov was as big a film and TV buff as they suspected he was, he had probably seen enough scenes exactly like this one to know he had every right to stand up and walk out of the building without saying another word.

  “Can I go now?” Adam asked.

  Thanks again, Law & Order, Jessica thought.

  JESSICA CONSIDERED LITTLE Jake’s description: Flyers cap, sunglasses, maybe a dark blue jacket. A uniformed officer had looked through the windows of Adam Kaslov’s car while Adam was being questioned. None of these items was in plain sight, nor was there a gray wig, a housedress, or a dark cardigan.

  Adam Kaslov had a direct connection to the murder tape, he had been to the murder scene, and he had lied to the police. Was it enough for a search warrant?

  “I don’t think so,” Paul DiCarlo said. When Adam had said his father was in real estate, he had neglected to mention that his father was Lawrence Kaslov. Lawrence Kaslov was one of the biggest developers in eastern Pennsylvania. If they moved too soon on this kid, there would be a wall of pin-striped suits up in a second.

  “Maybe this will tip it,” Cahill said, entering the room. He had a fax in hand.

  “What is it?” Byrne asked.

  “Young Mr. Kaslov has a record,” Cahill replied.

  Byrne and Jessica exchanged a glance. “I ran him,” Byrne said. “He was clean.”

  “Not squeaky.”

  They all glanced at the fax. At fourteen, Adam Kaslov was arrested for videotaping his neighbor’s teenaged daughter through her bedroom window. He received counseling and community service. He served no time in a juvenile facility.

  “We can’t use this,” Jessica said.

  Cahill shrugged. He knew as well as anyone else in the room that juvenile records are supposed to be sealed. “Just FYI.”

  “We’re not even supposed to know this,” Jessica added.

  “Know what?” Cahill asked with a wink.

  “Teen voyeurism is a long way from what was done to that woman,” Buchanan said.

  They all knew this was true. Still, every piece of information, regardless of how it was obtained, helped. They just had to be careful about the official path that took them to the next step. Any first-year law student could get a case thrown out based on illegally obtained records.

  Paul DiCarlo, who was doing his best not to listen, on purpose, continued: “Right. So. When you ID the victim, and you put Adam within a mile of her, I’ll be able to sell a search warrant to a judge. But not until then.”

  “Should we put a tail on him?” Jessica asked.

  Adam was still sitting in Interview Room A. But not for long. He had already asked to leave, and every minute the door stayed locked nudged the department toward a problem.

  “I can give it a few hours,” Cahill said.

  Buchanan looked encouraged by this. It meant the bureau would be picking up the tab for overtime on a detail that probably would not produce anything.

  “You sure?” Buchanan asked.

  “Not a problem.”

  A few minutes later, Cahill caught up to Jessica by the elevators. “Look, I really don’t think this kid is going to amount to much. But I’ve got a few ideas about the case. How about after your tour I buy you a cup of coffee? We’ll kick it around.”

  Jessica looked at Terry Cahill’s eyes. There was always a moment with a stranger—an attractive stranger, she was loath to admit—when the innocent-sounding comment, the ingenuous offer had to be examined. Was he asking her out? Was he making a move? Or was he actually asking her for a cup of coffee to discuss a homicide investigation? She had scanned his left hand the moment she met him. He wasn’t married. She, of course, was. However tenuously.

  Jesus, Jess, she thought. You’ve got a friggin’ gun on your hip. You’re probably safe.

  “Make it a scotch and you’re on,” she said.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER Terry Cahill left, Byrne and Jessica met in the coffee room. Byrne read her mood.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Jessica held up the evidence bag with the Rivercrest Motel matchbook. “I didn’t read Adam Kaslov right the first time,” Jessica said. “And it bugs the shit out of me.”

  “Don’t worry about it. If he’s our boy—and I’m not convinced he is—there are a hell of a lot of layers between the face he shows the world and the nutcase on that tape.”

  Jessica nodded. Byrne was right. Still, she prided herself on her ability to translate people. Every detective brought specials skill to the table. Hers were the ability to organize, and her acumen at reading people. Or so she thought. She was just about to say something when Byrne’s phone rang.

  “Byrne.”

  He listened, his intense green eyes shifting back and forth for a moment. “Thanks.” He snapped shut his phone, the hint of a smile at the edges of his mouth, something Jessica had not seen in a while. She knew the look. Something was breaking.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “That was CSU,” he said, heading out the door. “We’ve got an ID.”

  23

  THE PSYCHO VICTIM’S name was Stephanie Chandler. She was twenty-two years old, single, by all accounts a friendly, outgoing young woman. She lived with her mother on Fulton Street. She worked at a Center City public relations firm called Braceland Westcott McCall. They had identified her through the vehicle identification number on her car.

  The preliminary report from the medical examiner’s office was in. The manner of death, as expected, was ruled a homicide. Stephanie Chandler had been underwater approximately one week. The murder weapon was a large, nonserrated knife. She had been stabbed eleven times and, although he would not testify to it, at least at this point, because it was not his purview, Dr. Tom Weyrich believed that Stephanie Chandler was indeed killed on the videotape.

  The tox screen revealed no evidence of illegal drugs in her system; a trace amount of alcohol. The ME had also run a rape kit. It was inconclusive.

  What the reports could not say was why Stephanie Chandler was in a run-down motel in West Philly in the first place. Or, most important, who with.

  A fourth detective, Eric Chavez, was now on the case, partnered with Nick Palladino. Eric was the fashion plate of the Homicide Unit, always turned out in an Italian suit. Single and available, if Eric wasn’t talking about his new Zegna tie, he was talking about the newest Bordeaux in his wine rack.

  As far as the detectives could piece together, the last day of Stephanie’s life had gone like this:

  Stephanie, a vibrant, petite young woman who favored tailored suits and Thai food and Johnny Depp movies, left for work, as always, at just after 7:00 AM, driving her champagne-colored Saturn from the Fulton Street address to her office building on South Broad Street, where she parked in an underground garage. That day she and a few of her co-workers had gone down to Penn’s Landing at lunchtime to watch a film crew set up for a shot along the riverfront, hoping to catch a glimpse of a celebrity or two. At five thirty, she took the elevator down to the garage, drove out the Broad Street exit.

>   Jessica and Byrne would visit the Braceland Westcott McCall offices while Nick Palladino, Eric Chavez, and Terry Cahill headed down to Penn’s Landing to canvass.

  THE RECEPTION AREA of Braceland Westcott McCall was decorated in a modern Scandinavian style—straight lines, light cherry desks and bookcases, metal-edged mirrors, frosted-glass panels, and well-framed poster art that heralded the company’s upscale clients: recording studios, advertising agencies, clothing designers.

  Stephanie’s boss was a woman named Andrea Cerrone. Jessica and Byrne met Andrea in Stephanie Chandler’s cubicle on the top floor of the Broad Street office building.

  Byrne took the lead in the questioning.

  “Stephanie was pretty trusting,” Andrea said, a bit unsteadily. “A little gullible, I guess.” Andrea Cerrone was clearly shaken by the news of Stephanie’s death.

  “Was she seeing anyone?”

  “Not that I know of. She got hurt pretty easily, so I think she was in shutdown mode for a while.”

  Andrea Cerrone was not yet thirty-five, a short, wide-hipped woman with silver-streaked hair and pastel blue eyes. Although she was somewhat overweight, her clothes were tailored with an architectural precision. She wore a dark olive linen suit and a honey-colored pashmina.

  Byrne moved on. “How long did Stephanie work here?”

  “About a year. She came here right out of college.”

  “Where did she go to school?”

  “Temple.”

  “Did she have any problems with anyone here at work?”

  “Stephanie? Hardly. Everybody liked her and she liked everyone. I don’t remember a cross word ever coming out of her mouth.”

  “What did you think when she didn’t show up for work last week?”

  “Well, Stephanie had a lot of sick days coming. I thought she took the day off, even though it was unlike her not to call in. The next day I called her cell phone, left a few messages. She never got back to me.”

  Andrea reached for a tissue, dabbed her eyes, perhaps now realizing why her phone never rang.

  Jessica made a few notes. No cell phone had been found in the Saturn or near the crime scene. “Did you call her house?”

  Andrea shook her head, her lower lip beginning to tremble. Jessica knew that the dam was about to break.

  “What can you tell me about her family?” Byrne asked.

  “I think there’s just her mother. I don’t recall her ever talking about her father, or any brothers or sisters.”

  Jessica glanced at Stephanie’s desk. In addition to the pen caddy and neatly stacked file folders, there was a silver-framed five-by-six photograph of Stephanie and an older woman. In this picture—smiling, standing in front of the Wilma Theater on Broad Street—Jessica thought the young woman looked happy. She found it hard to reconcile the photo with the image of the brutalized corpse she had seen in the trunk of the Saturn.

  “This is Stephanie and her mother?” Byrne asked, pointing to the photo on the desk.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever met her mother?”

  “No,” Andrea said. She reached for a tissue from Stephanie’s desk. She dabbed at her eyes.

  “Did Stephanie have a bar or a restaurant she liked to go to after work?” Byrne asked. “Anywhere she frequented?”

  “Sometimes we’d go to the Friday’s next to the Embassy Suites on the parkway. If we felt like dancing we’d go to Shampoo.”

  “I have to ask this,” Byrne said. “Was Stephanie gay or bi?”

  Andrea almost snorted. “Uh, no.”

  “Did you go down to Penn’s Landing with Stephanie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did anything unusual happen?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Was anybody bothering her? Following her?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did you see her do anything out of the ordinary?” Byrne asked.

  Andrea thought for a few moments. “No. We were just hanging around. Hoping maybe to see Will Parrish or Hayden Cole.”

  “Did you see Stephanie talking to anyone?”

  “I wasn’t really paying attention. But I think she did talk to a guy for a while. Men were always coming on to her.”

  “Can you describe the guy?”

  “White guy. Flyers cap. Sunglasses.”

  Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance. This fit with Little Jake’s recollection. “How old?”

  “No idea. I really didn’t get that close.”

  Jessica showed her a picture of Adam Kaslov. “Could this be the guy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I just remember thinking that the guy wasn’t her type.”

  “What was her type?” Jessica asked, flashing back to Vincent’s routine. She imagined everyone had a type.

  “Well, she was pretty picky about the men she dated. She always went for the well-dressed guy. Chestnut Hill types.”

  “Was this guy she was talking to part of the crowd, or was he part of the production company?” Byrne asked.

  Andrea shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

  “Did she say she knew this guy? Or maybe that she gave him her number?”

  “I don’t think she knew him. And I’d be really surprised if she gave him her phone number. Like I said. Not her type. But then again, maybe he was just dressed down. I just didn’t get a really close look at him.”

  Jessica made a few more notes. “We’ll need the names and contact information for everyone who works here,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “Would you mind if we looked through Stephanie’s desk?”

  “No,” Andrea said. “It’s okay.”

  While Andrea Cerrone drifted back into the reception area, afloat on her wave of shock and grief, Jessica snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She began her invasion of Stephanie Chandler’s life.

  The left-hand drawers held hanging files, mostly press releases and press clippings. A few folders were stuffed with proof sheets of black-and-white press photos. The photos were mostly of the stab-and-grab variety, the type of photo op where two people pose holding a check or a plaque or a citation of some sort.

  The middle drawer held the nutrients of office life: paper clips, pushpins, mailing labels, rubber bands, brass brads, business cards, glue sticks.

  In the top right-hand drawer was the urban survival kit of the young single workingwoman: a small tube of hand lotion, lip balm, a few samplers of perfume, mouthwash. There was also a spare pair of panty hose, a trio of books: The Brethren by John Grisham, Windows XP for Dummies, and a book titled White Heat, the unauthorized biography of Ian Whitestone, the Philadelphia-native director of Dimensions. Whitestone was directing the new Will Parrish movie, The Palace.

  There were no notes, no threatening letters, nothing to tie Stephanie to the horror of what had happened to her on the videotape.

  It was the picture on Stephanie’s desk of her and her mother that had already begun to haunt Jessica. Not the fact that, in the picture, Stephanie was so vibrant and alive, but rather what the picture represented. A week earlier it was an artifact of a life, the proof of a living, breathing young woman, a human being with friends, ambition, sorrows, thoughts, and regrets. A human being with a future.

  Now it was a document of the dead.

  24

  FAITH CHANDLER LIVED in a plain but well-maintained brick-front row house on Fulton Street. Jessica and Byrne met with the woman in her small living room overlooking the street. Outside the window, a pair of five-year-olds played hopscotch under the watchful eyes of their grandmothers. Jessica wondered what the laughing children sounded like to Faith Chandler on this, the darkest day of her life.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Chandler,” Jessica said. Even though she had had occasion to say these words a number of times since joining the Homicide Unit in April, it appeared that it was not going to get any easier to say them.

  Faith Chandler was in her early forties, a woman who had the creas
ed look of late nights and early mornings, a working-class woman who suddenly found herself the statistic of another demographic, that of victim of violent crime. Old eyes in a middle-aged face. She was employed as a night waitress at the Melrose Diner. In her hands was a scratched plastic tumbler with an inch of whiskey. Next to her, on a TV tray, was a half-full bottle of Seagram’s. Jessica wondered how far into the process the woman was.

  Faith didn’t respond to Jessica’s offer of condolence. Perhaps the woman thought that, if she didn’t respond, if she didn’t acknowledge Jessica’s offer of sympathy, it might not be true.

  “When was the last time you saw Stephanie?” Jessica asked.

  “Monday morning,” Faith said. “Before she left for work.”

  “Was there anything unusual about her that morning? Anything different about her mood or her routine?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Did she say that she had plans for after work?”

  “No.”

  “When she didn’t come home Monday night, what did you think?”

  Faith just shrugged, dabbed at her eyes. She sipped her whiskey.

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Not right away.”

  “Why not?” Jessica asked.

  Faith put her glass down, knitted her hands in her lap. “Sometimes Stephanie would stay with friends. She was a grown woman, independent. I work nights, you see. She works days. Sometimes we really didn’t see each other for days on end.”

  “Did she have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  “What about her father?”

  Faith waved a hand, snapping back to the moment, by way of her past. They’d hit a nerve. “He hasn’t been part of her life for years.”

  “Does he live in Philadelphia?”

  “No.”

  “We learned from her coworkers that Stephanie had been dating someone until recently. What can you tell us about him?”

  Faith studied her hands again for a few moments before answering. “You have to understand that Stephanie and I were never close that way. I knew she was seeing someone, but she never brought him around. She was a secretive girl in a lot of ways. Even when she was small.”