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

by Richard Montanari

  Jessica crossed the room, opened the closet door. There were just a few dresses and sweaters in garment bags, all fairly new, all good quality. There was certainly nothing like the dress Kristina wore when she was found on the riverbank. Nor were there any baskets or bags of just laundered clothes.

  Jessica took a step back, trying to catch the vibe. As a detective, how many closets had she looked in? How many drawers? How many glove compartments and trunks and hope chests and purses? How many lives had Jessica run through like a trespasser?

  On the floor of the closet was a cardboard box. She opened it. There were tissue-wrapped figurines of glass animals—turtles mostly, squirrels, a few birds. There were also Hummels: miniatures of rosy-cheeked children playing the violin, the flute, the piano. At the bottom was a beautiful wooden music box. It looked to be walnut, and had a pink and white ballerina inlaid on top. Jessica took it out, opened it. There was no jewelry in the box, but the song it played was “The Sleeping Beauty Waltz.” The notes echoed in the nearly empty room, a sad melody charting the end of a young life.

  THE DETECTIVES MET back at the Roundhouse, compared notes.

  “The van belonged to a man named Harold Sima,” Josh Bontrager said. He had spent the afternoon tracking down information on the vehicles at the Manayunk crime scene. “Mr. Sima lived in Glenwood, but unfortunately met an untimely death by way of a fall down the stairs in September of this year. He was eighty-six. His son confessed to leaving the van in that lot a month ago. He said he couldn’t afford to have it towed and junked. The Chevrolet was the property of a woman named Estelle Jesperson, late of Powelton.”

  “Late as in deceased?” Jessica asked.

  “Late as in deceased,” Bontrager said. “She died of a massive coronary three weeks ago. Her son-in-law left the car in that lot. He works in East Falls.”

  “Did you run checks on everyone?” Byrne asked.

  “I did,” Bontrager said. “Nothing.”

  Byrne briefed Ike Buchanan on what they had so far, and the possible direction of further inquiries. As they prepared to leave for the day, Byrne asked Bontrager a question that had probably circled him all day.

  “So where are you from, Josh?” Byrne asked. “Originally.”

  “I’m from a small town near Bechtelsville,” he said.

  Byrne nodded. “You grew up on a farm?”

  “Oh, yeah. My family is Amish.”

  The word slammed around the duty room like a ricocheting .22 bullet. At least ten detectives heard it, and got immediately interested in whatever piece of paper was in front of them. It took every ounce of her power for Jessica not to look at Byrne. An Amish homicide cop. She’d been down the shore and back, as they say, but this was a new one.

  “Your family is Amish?” Byrne asked.

  “They are,” Bontrager said. “I decided a long time ago not to join the church, though.”

  Byrne just nodded.

  “You’ve never had Bontrager Special Preserves?” Bontrager asked.

  “Never had the pleasure.”

  “It’s very good. Damson plum, strawberry rhubarb. We even make a great peanut butter schmier.”

  More silence. The room became a morgue full of tight-lipped corpses in suits.

  “Nothing like a good schmier,” Byrne said. “My motto.”

  Bontrager laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry, I’ve heard all the jokes. I can take it.”

  “There are Amish jokes?” Byrne asked.

  “Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1699,” Bontrager said. “You just might be Amish if you ask, ‘Does this shade of black make me look fat?’ ”

  Byrne smiled. “Not bad.”

  “And then there’s the Amish pickup lines.” Bontrager said. “Are thee at barn-raisings often? Can I buy thee a buttermilk colada? Are thee up for some plowing?”

  Jessica laughed. Byrne laughed.

  “Yeah, yuck it up,” Bontrager said, reddening at his own off-color humor. “Like I said. I’ve heard them all.”

  Jessica glanced around the room. She knew the people in the homicide unit. She had the feeling that, before too long, Detective Joshua Bontrager would hear a few new ones.

  10

  Midnight. The river was black and silent.

  Byrne stood on the riverbank in Manayunk. He looked back, toward the road. No streetlights. The parking lot was dim, long-shadowed by moonlight. If someone pulled in at that moment, even to turn around, Byrne would not be seen. The only illumination came from the headlights of the cars on the expressway, glimmering on the other side of the river.

  A madman could pose his victim on the riverbank, take his time, compelled by whatever madness ruled his world.

  Philadelphia had two rivers. Where the Delaware was the working soul of the city, the Schuylkill, and its winding course, always held a dark fascination for Byrne.

  Byrne’s father Padraig had been a longshoreman his entire working life. Byrne owed his childhood, his education, his life to the water. He had learned in grade school that Schuylkill meant “hidden river.” In all his years in Philadelphia—which, except for his time in the service, had been Kevin Byrne’s whole life—he had looked at the river as an enigma. It was more than one hundred miles long, and he honestly had no idea where it led. From the oil refineries in southwest Philly to Shawmont and beyond, he had worked its banks as a police officer, but never really followed it out of his jurisdiction, an authority that ended where Philadelphia County became Montgomery County.

  He stared down into the dark water. In it he saw the face of Anton Krotz. He saw Krotz’s eyes.

  Good to see you again, Detective.

  For what was probably the thousandth time in the past few days, Byrne second-guessed himself. Had he hesitated out of fear? Was he responsible for Laura Clarke’s death? He realized that, for the past year or so, he had begun to question himself more than he ever had, had seen the architecture of his indecision. When he was a young cocky street cop he had known—known—that every decision he made had been right.

  He closed his eyes.

  The good news was that the visions were gone. For the most part. For many years he had been plagued and blessed with a vague sort of second sight, the ability to sometimes see things at a crime scene that no one else could see, an ability that began years earlier when he had been pronounced dead after plunging into the icy Delaware River. The visions were tied to migraine headaches—or so he had convinced himself—and when he had taken a bullet to the brain from the gun of a psychopath, the headaches stopped. He’d thought the visions were gone, too. But now and then they came back with a vengeance, sometimes for only a vivid split second. He’d learned to accept it. Sometimes it was just a glimpse of a face, a sliver of sound, a rippled vision not unlike something seen in a fun-house mirror.

  The premonitions came less often these days, and that was a good thing. But Byrne knew that at any moment he might put his hand on a victim’s hand, or brush up against something at a crime scene, and he would feel that terrible surge, the fearsome knowledge that would take him to the dark recess of a killer’s mind.

  How had Natalya Jakos known this about him?

  When Byrne opened his eyes, Anton Krotz’s image was gone. Now there was another pair of eyes. Byrne thought about the man who had carried Kristina Jakos to this place, the raging storm of madness that compelled someone to do what he had done to her. Byrne stepped onto the edge of the dock, the very spot where they had discovered Kristina’s body. He felt a dark exhilaration knowing he was in the same place where the killer had stood just a few days earlier. He felt the images seep into his consciousness, saw the man—

  —cutting through skin and muscle and flesh and bone … taking a blowtorch to the wounds … dressing Kristina Jakos in that strange dress … slipping one arm into a sleeve, then the other, like you would dress a sleeping child, her cold flesh unresponsive to his touch … carrying Kristina Jakos down to the riverbank under cover of night … getting his twisted scenario
just right as he—

  —heard something.

  Footsteps?

  Byrne’s peripheral vision caught a shape, just a few feet away, a hulking black silhouette stepping from the deep shadows—

  He turned toward the figure, his pulse thrumming in his ears, his hand on his weapon.

  There was no one there.

  He needed sleep.

  Byrne drove home to his two-room apartment in South Philly.

  She wanted to be a dancer.

  Byrne thought of his daughter, Colleen. She had been deaf since birth, but it had never stopped her, never even slowed her down. She was a straight-A student, a terrific athlete. Byrne wondered what her dreams were. When she was small she had wanted to be a cop like him. He had talked her out of that one pronto. Then there was the obligatory ballerina stage, launched when he took her to see a hearing-impaired staging of The Nutcracker. Over the last few years she had talked quite a bit about becoming a teacher. Had that changed? Had he asked her lately? He made a mental note to do so. She would, of course, roll her eyes, flash a sign telling him he was so queer. He’d do it anyway.

  He wondered if Kristina’s father had ever asked his little girl about her dreams.

  BYRNE FOUND A spot on the street and parked. He locked the car, entered his building, pulled himself up the steps. Either he was getting older, or the steps were getting steeper.

  Had to be the latter, he thought.

  He was still in his prime.

  FROM THE DARKNESS of the vacant lot across the street, a man watched Byrne. He saw the light come on in the detective’s second-floor window, watched his big shadow ripple across the blinds. From his perspective he witnessed a man coming home to a life that was in all ways the same as it had been the day before, and the day before that. A man who found reason and meaning and purpose in his life.

  He envied Byrne as much as hated him.

  The man was slight of build, with small hands and feet, thinning brown hair. He wore a dark coat, was ordinary in every manner, except for his facility for mourning, an unexpected and unwanted aptitude he never would have believed possible at this point in his life.

  For Matthew Clarke the substance of grief had settled into the pit of his stomach like a dead weight. His nightmare had started the moment Anton Krotz took his wife from that booth. He would never forget his wife’s hand on the back of the booth, her pale skin and painted nails. The terrifying glimmer of the knife at her throat. The hellish roar of the SWAT officer’s rifle. The blood.

  Matthew Clarke’s world was in a tailspin. He did not know what the next day would bring, or how he would be able to go on. He did not know how he would bring himself to do the simplest of things: order breakfast, make a phone call, pay a bill, pick up the dry cleaning.

  Laura had a dress at the cleaners.

  Nice to see you, they would say. How is Laura?

  Dead.

  Murdered.

  He didn’t know how he would react in these inevitable situations. Who could possibly know? What was the training for this? Would he find a face brave enough to respond? It wasn’t as if she had died from breast cancer, or leukemia, or a brain tumor. It wasn’t as if he’d had a moment to prepare. She’d had her throat cut in a diner, the most degrading, public death possible. All under the watchful eye of the ever-vigilant Philadelphia Police Department. And now her children would live out their lives without her. Their mother was gone. His best friend was gone. How does one go about accepting all that?

  Despite all these uncertainties, Matthew Clarke was sure of one thing. One fact was as apparent to him as the knowledge that rivers ran to the sea, as clear as the crystal dagger of sorrow in his heart.

  Detective Kevin Francis Byrne’s nightmare was just beginning.

  PART TWO

  THE NIGHTINGALE

  11

  “Rats and cats.”

  “Huh?”

  Roland Hannah closed his eyes for a moment. Whenever Charles said huh, it was the spoken equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. It had been this way for a long time, ever since they’d been children. Charles was his stepbrother, slow to the world, sunny in his outlook and demeanor. Roland loved the man as much as he had ever loved anyone in his life.

  Charles was younger than Roland, preternaturally strong and fiercely loyal. More than once he had proven that he would lay down his life for Roland. Instead of admonishing his stepbrother for the thousandth time, Roland continued. There was no dividend to reprimand, and Charles hurt very easily. “That’s all there is,” Roland said. “You’re either a rat or a cat. There is nothing else.”

  “No,” Charles said in full agreement. This was his way. “Nothing else.”

  “Remind me to make a note of that.”

  Charles nodded, adrift on the concept, as if Roland had just decoded the Rosetta Stone.

  They were driving south on Route 299, nearing the Millington Wildlife Management Area in Maryland. The weather in Philadelphia had been brutally cold, but here the winter was a little milder. This was good. It meant the soil would not yet be deeply frozen.

  And while this was good news for the two men in the front of the van, it was probably the worst news of all for the man laying face down in the back, a man whose day had not been going all that well to begin with.

  ROLAND HANNAH WAS tall and lithely muscular, precise in his language, although he’d never been formally educated. He wore no jewelry, kept his hair short, his body clean, his clothes modest and well pressed. He was of Appalachian descent, the child of a Letcher County, Kentucky, mother and a father whose ancestry and criminal past could be traced to the hollows of Helvetia Mountain, no further. When Roland had been four years old his mother had left Jubal Hannah—a brutal, violent man who had on many occasions taken the strap to his wife and child—and moved her son to North Philadelphia. Specifically, to an area known derisively, but quite accurately, as the Badlands.

  Within a year Artemisia Hannah married a man far worse than her first husband, a man who controlled every aspect of her life, a man who gave her two damaged children. When Walton Lee Waite was killed in a botched robbery in Northern Liberties, Artemisia—a woman of fragile mental health to begin with, a woman who looked at the world through the prism of burgeoning madness—sank into the bottle, into self-harm of all manners, into the devil’s own caress. By the age of twelve Roland was fending for his family, doing odd jobs of various natures, many of them criminal, dodging the police, the welfare services, the gangs. Somehow, he survived them all.

  At fifteen, through no choice of his own, Roland Hannah found a new path.

  THE MAN WHOM Roland and Charles had transported from Philadelphia was named Basil Spencer. He had molested a young girl.

  Spencer was forty-four, grossly overweight and equally overeducated, a Bala Cynwyd estate lawyer with a client list comprising mostly elderly and wealthy Main Line widows. His taste for young girls went back many years. Roland had no idea how many times Spencer had done this profane and defiling thing, but it really didn’t matter. On this day, at this time, they were meeting in the name of one particular innocent.

  By nine o’clock that morning the sun had breached the tops of the trees. Spencer knelt next to a freshly dug grave, a hole perhaps four feet deep, three feet wide, six feet long. His hands were tied behind his back with strong twine. Despite the chill, his clothes were soaked with sweat.

  “Do you know who I am, Mr. Spencer?” Roland asked.

  Spencer looked up, around, clearly wary of his own answer. The truth was, he didn’t know precisely who Roland was—he had never laid eyes on him until the blindfold had come off half an hour earlier. In the end Spencer said, “No.”

  “I am the other shadow,” Roland replied. His voice bore the slightest trace of his mother’s Kentucky idiom, although he had long ago surrendered her accent to the streets of North Philadelphia.

  “The … the what?” Spencer asked.

  “I am the spot on the other man’s X-ray, Mr. Spen
cer. I am the car that runs the red light just after you pass through the intersection. I am the rudder that fails on the earlier flight. You have never seen my face because, until today, I have been that which happens to everyone else.”

  “You don’t understand,” Spencer said.

  “Enlighten me,” Roland replied, wondering what elaborate story would be coming his way this time. He glanced at his watch. “You have one minute.”

  “She was eighteen,” Spencer said.

  “She is not yet thirteen.”

  “That’s crazy! Have you seen her?”

  “I have.”

  “She was willing. I didn’t force her to do anything.”

  “This is not what I have heard. I heard you took her to the crawlspace in your house. I heard you kept her in the dark, fed her drugs. Was it amyl nitrite? Poppers, as you call them?”

  “You can’t do this,” Spencer said. “You don’t know who I am.”

  “I know precisely who you are. What is more important is where you are. Look around. You are in the middle of a field, your hands are tied behind your back, you are begging for your life. Do you feel the choices you have made in this life have served you well?”

  No answer. None was expected.

  “Tell me about Fairmount Park,” Roland said. “April 1995. The two girls.”

  “What?”

  “Admit what you did, Mr. Spencer. Confess to what you did back then and you may survive this day.”

  Spencer looked from Roland, to Charles, back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Roland nodded at Charles. Charles picked up the shovel. Basil Spencer began to cry.

  “What are you going to do with me?” Spencer asked.

  Without a word, Roland kicked Basil Spencer in the chest, knocking the man back into the grave. As Roland stepped forward he could smell the feces. Basil Spencer had soiled himself. They all did.