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

by Richard Montanari

  THEY SPLIT UP. Jessica would take the next few row houses. Byrne jumped ahead, around the corner.

  The next residence was a shambling three-story row house with a blue door. The nameplate next to the door read V. TALMAN. Jessica knocked. No answer. Again, no answer. She was just about to move on when the door inched open. An elderly white woman opened the door. She wore a fuzzy gray robe and Velcro-strap tennis shoes. “Help you?” the woman asked.

  Jessica showed her the picture. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am. Have you seen this girl?”

  The woman lifted her glasses, focused. “Pretty.”

  “Have you seen her recently, ma’am?”

  She refocused. “No.”

  “Do you live—”

  “Van!” she shouted. She cocked her head, listened. Again. “Van!” Nothing. “Musta gone out. Sorry.”

  “Thanks for your time.”

  The woman closed the door as Jessica stepped over the rail onto the stoop of the adjoining row house. Beyond that house was a boarded-up retail space. She knocked, rang the bell. Nothing. She put her ear to the door. Silence.

  Jessica walked down the steps, back across the sidewalk, and almost ran into someone. Instinct told her to draw her weapon. Luckily, she did not.

  It was Mark Underwood. He was in plainclothes—dark PPD T-shirt, blue jeans, running shoes. “I heard the call go out,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “What have you cleared?”

  “Right up through this house,” Jessica said, although the word cleared was less than accurate. They had not been inside and checked every room.

  Underwood looked up and down the street. “Let me get some warm bodies down here.”

  He reached out. Jessica gave him her rover. While Underwood made the request of base, Jessica stepped up to the door, put her ear against it. Nothing. She tried to imagine the horror for Colleen Byrne in her world of silence.

  Underwood handed the rover back, said: “They’ll be down here in a minute. We’ll take the next block.”

  “I’ll catch up with Kevin.”

  “Just tell him to be cool,” Underwood said. “We’ll find her.”

  87

  KEVIN BYRNE STOOD in front of the boarded-up retail space. He was alone. The storefront looked as if it had housed a variety of enterprises over the years. The windows were painted black. There was no sign over the front door, but there were years of names and sentiments carved into the wood-framed entrance.

  A narrow alleyway cut between the store and the row house to its right. Byrne drew his weapon, walked down the alley. There was a barred window halfway down. He listened at the window. Silence. He continued forward, emerging into a small courtyard at the back, a courtyard bounded on the three sides by a high wooden fence.

  The back door was not covered in plywood, nor padlocked from the outside. There was a rusted dead bolt. Byrne pushed on the door. Locked tight.

  Byrne knew he had to focus. Many times in his career, someone’s life had hung in the balance, someone’s very existence riding on his judgment. Each and every time he had felt the enormity of the responsibility, the weight of his duty.

  But it was never like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. In fact, he was surprised that Ike Buchanan hadn’t called him in. If he had, though, Byrne would have thrown his badge on the desk and gotten right back out on the street.

  Byrne took off his tie, undid the top button of his shirt. The heat in the confines of the courtyard was stifling. Sweat laced his neck and shoulders.

  He bulled open the door with his shoulder, entered, weapon held high. Colleen was close. He knew it. Felt it. He pitched his head to the sounds of the old building. Water clanging through rusted pipes. The creak of long-dried joists.

  He stepped into the small entrance room. Ahead was a door, closed. To the right was a wall of dusty shelves.

  He touched the door and the images slammed into his mind …

  … Colleen against the wall … the man in the red monk’s robe … help, Dad, oh help hurry, Dad, help—

  She was here. In this building. He had found her.

  Byrne knew he should call for backup, but he did not know what he would do when he found the Actor. If the Actor was in one of these rooms, and he had to draw down on him, he would pull the trigger. No hesitation. If it was not a clean shoot, he didn’t want to put his fellow detectives on the line. He would not draw Jessica into this. He would handle this alone.

  He pulled the earpiece from his ear, turned off the phone, and stepped through the door.

  88

  JESSICA STOOD OUTSIDE the store. She looked up and down the street. She had never seen so many police officers on one detail. There had to be twenty sector cars. Then there were the unmarked vehicles, the tech vans, and the ever-growing crowd. Men and women in uniforms, men and women in suits, their badges glinting in the gold sunlight. To many of the people in the crowd, this was just another siege of their world by the police. If they only knew. What if it was their son or daughter?

  Byrne was nowhere in sight. Had they cleared this address? There was a narrow alleyway between the store and the row house. She walked down the alley, stopping for a moment to listen at a barred window. She heard nothing. She continued on until she arrived in a small courtyard behind the shop. The back door was slightly open.

  Had he entered without telling her? It certainly was possible. She thought for a moment about getting backup to enter the building with her, then thought better of it.

  Kevin Byrne was her partner. It may have been a department operation, but it was his show. It was his daughter.

  She made her way back to the street, looked both ways. Detectives and uniformed officers and FBI agents were at either end. She walked back down the alley, drew her weapon, and stepped through the door.

  89

  HE MOVED THROUGH a lair of small rooms. What had once been an interior space designed for retail commerce had many years ago been remodeled into a maze of nooks and alcoves and cubbyholes.

  Designed just for this purpose? Byrne wondered.

  Down the narrow confines of a tight hallway, gun waist-high. He felt a larger space open before him, the temperature dropping a degree or two.

  The main room of the retail space was dark, crowded with broken furniture, retail fixtures, a pair of dusty air compressors. There was no light streaming through the windows. They were painted with thick black enamel. As Byrne ran his Maglite around the large space he saw that the once brightly colored boxes that were stacked in the corners held a decade of mildew. The air—what air there was—was fat with a stagnant, bitter heat that clung to the walls, to his clothes, his skin. The smell of mold and mice and sugar was dense.

  Byrne clicked off his flashlight, tried to adjust to the dim light. To his right were a series of glass retail counters. He could see brightly colored paper inside.

  Shiny red paper. He had seen it before.

  He closed his eyes, touched the wall.

  There had been happiness here. The laughter of children. All of that stopped years earlier when an ugliness entered, a morbid soul that devoured the joy.

  He opened his eyes.

  Ahead was another hallway, another door, its jamb chipped and splintered years earlier. Byrne looked more closely. Fresh wood. Someone had recently brought something large through the doorway, damaging the jamb. Lighting equipment? he thought.

  He put his ear to the door, listened. Silence. This was the room. He felt it. He felt it in a place that did not know his heart or his mind. He slowly pushed open the door.

  And saw his daughter. She was tied to a bed.

  His heart shattered into a million pieces.

  My sweet little girl, what have I done to you?

  Then: Movement. Fast. A flash of red before him. The sound of fabric snapping in the still, hot air. Then the sound was gone.

  Before he could react, before he could bring his weapon up, he
felt a presence to his left.

  Then the back of his head exploded.

  90

  WITH DARK-ADAPTED EYES, Jessica edged her way down the long hallway, moving deeper into the center of the building. Soon she came upon a makeshift control room. There were two VHS editing decks, their green and red lights glowing cataracts in the gloom. This was where the Actor had dubbed the tapes. There was also a television. On it was the website image she had seen at the Roundhouse. The light was dim. There was no sound.

  Suddenly, on screen, there was movement. She saw the monk in the red robe move across the frame. Shadows on the wall. The camera lurched to the right. Colleen was strapped to the bed in the background. More shadows, darting and scurrying over the walls.

  Then a figure approached the camera. Too quickly. Jessica couldn’t see who it was. In a second the screen went to static, then to blue.

  Jessica tore the rover from her belt. Radio silence no longer mattered. She turned up the volume, keyed it, listened. Silence. She banged the rover against her palm. Listened. Nothing.

  The rover was dead.

  Son of a bitch.

  She wanted to fling it against the wall, but thought better of it. There would be plenty of time for rage very soon.

  She flattened her back against the wall. She felt the rumble of a truck pass by. She was on an outside wall. She was six to eight inches away from daylight. She was miles from safety.

  She followed the cables coming out of the back of the monitor. They snaked up to the ceiling, down the hallway to her left.

  Of all the uncertainties of the next few minutes, of all the unknowns lurking in the darkness around her, one thing was clear. For the foreseeable future, she was on her own.

  91

  HE WAS DRESSED like one of the extras they had seen at the train station—red monk’s robe, black mask.

  The monk had struck him from behind, taken his service Glock. Byrne had fallen to his knees, dizzied but not out. He closed his eyes, waiting for the thunder of the gunshot, the white infinity of his death. But it didn’t come. Not yet.

  Byrne now knelt in the center of the room, his hands behind his head, his fingers interlaced. He faced the camera on the tripod in front of him. Colleen was behind him. He wanted to turn around, to see her face, to tell her it was going to be all right. He couldn’t risk it.

  When the man in the monk’s robe touched him, Byrne’s mind reeled with the images. The visions pulsed. He felt queasy, light-headed.

  Colleen.

  Angelika.

  Stephanie.

  Erin.

  A field of torn flesh. An ocean of blood.

  “You didn’t take care of her,” the man said.

  Was he talking about Angelika? Colleen?

  “She was a great actress,” he continued. He was behind him now. Byrne tried to calculate his position. “She would have been a star. And I don’t mean just a star. I mean one of those rare supernova stars who captures the attention of not only the public, but also the critics. Ingrid Bergman. Jeanne Moreau. Greta Garbo.”

  Byrne tried to trace his steps into the bowels of this building. How many turns had he taken? How close was he to the street?

  “When she died, they just moved on,” he continued. “You just moved on.”

  Byrne tried to organize his thoughts. Never easy when there may be a gun pointed at you. “You … have to understand,” he began. “When the medical examiner rules a death accidental, there’s nothing the Homicide Unit can do about it. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. The ME rules, the city records it. That’s how it’s done.”

  “Do you know why she spelled her name that way? With a k? Her given name was spelled with a c. She changed it.”

  He wasn’t listening to a word Byrne was saying. “No.”

  “Angelika is the name of a famous art house theater in New York.”

  “Let my daughter go,” Byrne said. “You have me.”

  “I don’t think you understand the play.”

  The man in the monk’s robe walked around in front of Byrne. In his hand was a leather mask. It was the same mask worn by Julian Matisse in Philadelphia Skin. “Do you know Stanislavksy, Detective Byrne?”

  Byrne knew he had to keep the man talking. “No.”

  “He was a Russian actor and teacher. He founded the Moscow Theater in 1898. He more or less invented method acting.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Byrne said. “Let my daughter go. We can end this without any more bloodshed.”

  The monk put Byrne’s Glock under his arm for a moment. He began to unlace the leather mask. “Stanislavsky once said: ‘Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing—all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art—at the door.’

  “Please put your hands behind your back for me,” he added.

  Byrne complied. His legs were crossed behind him. He felt the weight on his right ankle. He began to lift the cuff of his pants.

  “Have you left your petty difficulties at the door, Detective? Are you ready for my play?”

  Byrne lifted the hem another inch. His fingers touched the steel as the monk dropped the mask onto the floor in front of him.

  “In a moment, I will ask you to put on this mask,” the monk said. “And then we will begin.”

  Byrne knew he could not take the chance of a shootout in here, not with Colleen in the room. She was behind him, strapped to the bed. Crossfire would be deadly.

  “The curtain is up.” The monk stepped to the wall, flipped a switch.

  A single bright spotlight filled the universe.

  It was time. He had no choice.

  In one smooth motion Byrne drew the SIG-Sauer from his ankle holster, leapt to his feet, turned toward the light, and fired.

  92

  THE GUNSHOTS WERE close, but Jessica couldn’t tell where they came from. Was it this building? Next door? Upstairs? Had the detectives outside heard it?

  She spun around in the darkness, Glock leveled. She could no longer see the door through which she had entered. It was too dark. She had lost her bearings. She had traversed a series of small rooms, and she had forgotten how to get back.

  Jessica sidled up to a narrow archway. A musty curtain hung over the opening. She peered through. Ahead, another dark room. She stepped through the opening, her weapon out front, her Maglite over the top. To the right, a small Pullman kitchen. It smelled of old grease. She ran her Maglite along the floor, the walls, the sink. The kitchen had not been used in years.

  Not for cooking, that is.

  There was blood on the side of the refrigerator, a wide fresh swath of scarlet. The blood streaked toward the floor in thin rivulets. Blood splatter from a gunshot.

  Beyond the kitchen was yet another room. From where Jessica stood it looked like an old stockroom, lined with broken shelves. She continued forward, and nearly tripped over the body. She knelt down. It was a man. The right side of his head had been almost taken off.

  She shone her Maglite on the figure. The man’s face was destroyed, a wet mass of tissue and shredded bone. Brain matter slithered onto the dusty floor. The man was wearing jeans and running shoes. She moved her Maglite up the body.

  And saw the PPD logo on the dark blue T-shirt.

  Bile rose in her throat, thick and sour. Her heart kicked hard in her chest, rattling her arms, her hands. She tried to calm herself as the horrors piled up. She had to get out of this building. She had to breathe. But she had to find Kevin first.

  She raised her weapon out front rolled to her left, her heart hammering in her chest. The air was so thick it felt like liquid entering her lungs. Sweat poured down her face, salting her eyes. She wiped at them with the back of one hand.

  She summoned her courage, slowly glanced around the corner, down the wide hallway. Too many shadows, too many places to hide. The grip of her weapon now fel
t slick in her hand. She changed hands, wiped her palm on her jeans.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. The far door led to the hallway, the stairs, the street, safety. Ahead of her lay the unknown. She stepped forward, slid into an alcove. Eyes scanning the interior horizon. More shelves, more cases, more display counters. No movement, no sound. Just the clock-hum of silence.

  Staying low, she moved down the hall. At the far end was a door, perhaps leading to what was once a stockroom or employee lounge. She edged forward. The doorjamb was battered, chipped. She slowly turned the knob. Unlocked. She threw open the door, scanned the room. The scene was surreal, sickening:

  A big room, twenty by twenty … impossible to clear from the entrance … bed to the right … a single overhead bulb … Colleen Byrne tied to the four posts … Kevin Byrne standing in the middle of the room … kneeling in front of Byrne is the monk in the red robe … Byrne has a gun to the man’s head …

  Jessica glanced into the corner. The camera was smashed to bits. No one back at the Roundhouse, or anywhere else, was watching this.

  She reached deep inside herself, to a place unknown to her, and stepped fully into the room. She knew that this moment, this brutal aria, would score the rest of her life.

  “Hey, partner,” Jessica said, softly. There were two doors to the left. To the right, a huge window, painted black. She was so disoriented that she had no idea onto what street the window faced. She had to turn her back on those doors. It was dangerous, but there was no choice.

  “Hey,” Byrne replied. He sounded calm. His eyes were cold emerald stones in his face. The monk in the red robe was motionless, kneeling in front of him. Byrne had the barrel of a weapon to the base of the man’s skull. Byrne’s hand was firm and steady. Jessica she could see that it was a SIG-Sauer semi-auto. It was not Byrne’s service weapon.

  Don’t Kevin.

  Don’t.

  “You okay?” Jessica asked.

  “Yes.”

  His answer was too fast, too clipped. He was operating on some untamed energy, not reason. Jessica was about ten feet away. She needed to close the distance. He needed to see her face. He needed to see her eyes. “So, what are we going to do?” Jessica tried to sound as conversational as possible. Nonjudgmental. For a moment, she wondered if he had heard her. He had.