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

by Richard Montanari

  Jessica knelt down for a closer look. The shoes were low-heeled, round-toed, with a thin strap across the top, a wide toe-box. Jessica took a few pictures.

  A canvass yielded the expected. Nobody had seen or heard anything. But one thing was obvious to the detectives. Something they did not need witness statements to tell them. These body parts had not been flung here randomly. They had been carefully placed.

  WITHIN AN HOUR they had the preliminary report back. To no one’s surprise, blood tests presumptively indicated that the recovered body parts belonged to Kristina Jakos.

  THERE IS A moment in all homicide investigations—investigations where you don’t find the killer standing over the body, dripping knife or smoking gun in hand—when everything grinds to a halt. Calls don’t come in, witnesses don’t show, forensic results lag. On this day, at this time, it was just such a moment. Perhaps the fact that it was Christmas Eve had something to do with it. No one wanted to think about death. Detectives stared at computer screens, they tapped their pencils to some unheard beat, crime-scene photographs stared up from the desk: accusing, questioning, expecting, waiting.

  It would be forty-eight hours before they could effectively question a sampling of people who took the Strawberry Mansion Bridge at approximately the time the remains were left there. The next day was Christmas Day and the usual traffic pattern would be different.

  At the Roundhouse, Jessica gathered her things. She noticed that Josh Bontrager was still there, hard at work. He sat at one of the computer terminals, scrolling through arrest-history data.

  “What are your Christmas plans, Josh?” Byrne asked.

  Bontrager glanced up from his computer screen. “I’m going home tonight,” he said. “I’m on duty tomorrow. New guy, and all.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what do the Amish do for Christmas?”

  “That depends on the group.”

  “Group?” Byrne asked. “There are different kinds of Amish?”

  “Oh, sure. There’s Old Order Amish, New Order Amish, Mennonite, Beachy Amish, Swiss Mennonites, Swartzentruber Amish.”

  “Are there parties?”

  “Well, they don’t put up lights, of course. But they do celebrate. It’s a lot of fun,” Bontrager said. “Plus they have second Christmas.”

  “Second Christmas?” Byrne asked.

  “Well, it’s really just the day after Christmas. They usually spend it visiting their neighbors, eating a lot. Sometimes they even have mulled wine.”

  Jessica smiled. “Mulled wine. I had no idea.”

  Bontrager blushed. “How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm?”

  As Jessica made the rounds of the hapless souls on the next shift, relaying her holiday wishes, she turned at the door.

  Josh Bontrager sat at a desk, looking at the photos of the horrific scene they’d found on the Strawberry Mansion Bridge earlier that day. Jessica thought she saw a slight trembling in the young man’s hands.

  Welcome to Homicide.

  37

  Moon’s book is the most precious thing in his life. It is large and leather-bound, heavy, with gilded edges. It had belonged to his grandfather, and his father before that. Inside the front, on the title page, is the signature of the author.

  This is more valuable than anything.

  Sometimes, late at night, Moon carefully opens the book, looking at the words and drawings by candlelight, savoring the fragrance of the old paper. It smells of his childhood. Now, as then, he is careful not to get the candle too close. He loves the way the golden edges wink in the soft yellow glow.

  The first illustration is of a soldier climbing a great tree, his knapsack slung over his shoulder. How many times had Moon been that soldier, the strong young man in search of the tinderbox?

  The next illustration is of Little Claus and Big Claus. Moon had been both men, many times.

  The next drawing is of Little Ida’s flowers. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Moon used to run through the flowers. Spring and summer were magic times.

  Now, as he enters the great structure, he is filled with magic again.

  The building stands above the river, a lost majesty, a forgotten ruin not far from the city. The wind moans across the wide expanse. Moon carries the dead girl to the window. She is heavy in his arms. He places her on the stone windowsill, kisses her icy lips.

  As Moon goes about his business, the nightingale sings, complaining of the cold.

  I know, little bird, Moon thinks.

  I know.

  Moon has a plan for this, too. Soon he will bring the Snow Man, and winter will be banished forever.

  38

  “I’ll be in the city later,” Padraig said. “I’ve got to stop at Macy’s.”

  “What do you need from there?” Byrne asked. He was on his cell phone, not five blocks from the store. He was on call, but his tour had ended at noon. They had gotten the call from CSU on the paint used at the Flat Rock crime scene. Standard marine paint, available everywhere. The graffiti image of the moon—although an important development—had led nowhere. As yet. “I can get whatever you need, Da.”

  “I’m out of the scruffing lotion.”

  My God, Byrne thought. Scruffing lotion. His father was in his sixties, tough as oak plank, and was just now entering a phase of unbridled narcissism.

  Ever since the previous Christmas, when Byrne’s daughter Colleen had purchased her grandfather an array of Clinique facial products, Padraig Byrne had been obsessed with his skin. Then, one day, Colleen had written a note to Padraig saying that his skin looked great. Padraig had beamed, and from that moment, the Clinique ritual had become a mania, an orgy of sexagenarian vanity.

  “I can get it for you,” Byrne said. “You don’t have to drive in.”

  “I don’t mind. I want to see what else they have. I think they have a new M Lotion.”

  It was hard to believe he was speaking to Padraig Byrne. The same Padraig Byrne who had spent nearly forty years on the docks, a man who had once taken on a half dozen drunken Italian Mummers with only his fists and a gutful of Harp lager.

  “Just because you don’t care about your skin, doesn’t mean that I have to look like a lizard in my autumn years,” Padraig added.

  Autumn? Byrne thought. He checked his face in the rearview mirror. Maybe he could take better care of his skin at that. On the other hand, he had to admit that the real reason he offered to stop at the store was that he really didn’t want his father driving across town in the snow. He was getting overprotective, but he couldn’t seem to help it. His silence won the argument. This time.

  “Okay, you win,” Padraig said. “Pick it up for me. But I want to stop by Killian’s later, though. To say good-bye to the boys.”

  “You’re not moving to California,” Byrne said. “You can go back anytime.”

  In Padraig Byrne’s eyes, moving to the Northeast was the equivalent of moving out of the country. It had taken the man five years to make the decision, and five more to make the first move.

  “So you say.”

  “Okay. I’ll pick you up in an hour,” Byrne said.

  “Don’t forget my scruffing lotion.”

  Christ, Byrne thought as he clicked off his cell phone.

  Scruffing lotion.

  KILLIAN’S WAS A rough and tumble bar near Pier 84, in the shadow of the Walt Whitman Bridge, a ninety-year-old institution that had survived a thousand donnybrooks, two fires, and a wrecking ball. Not to mention four generations of dockworkers.

  A few hundred feet from the Delaware River, Killian’s was a bastion of the ILA, the International Longshoreman’s Association. These men lived, ate, and breathed the river.

  Kevin and Padraig Byrne entered, turning every head in the bar toward the door and the icy blast of wind it brought with it.

  “Paddy!” they seemed to yell in unison. Byrne took a seat at the bar while his father made the rounds. The bar was half full. Padraig was in his element.

  Byrne surveyed
the gang. He knew most of them. The Murphy brothers—Ciaran and Luke—had worked side by side with Padraig Byrne for nearly forty years. Luke was tall and robust; Ciaran was short and thickset. Next to them were Teddy O’Hara, Dave Doyle, Danny McManus, Little Tim Reilly. If this hadn’t been the unofficial home of ILA Local 1291, it could have been the meetinghouse of the Sons of Hibernia.

  Byrne grabbed his beer, made his way over to the long table.

  “So, what, you need a passport to go up there?” Luke asked Padraig.

  “Yeah,” Padraig said. “I hear they have armed checkpoints on Roosevelt. How else we gonna keep out the South Philly riffraff from the Northeast?”

  “Funny, we look at it exactly the opposite. Seems to me you did too. Back in the day.”

  Padraig nodded. They were right. He had no argument for it. The Northeast was a foreign country. Byrne saw that look cross his father’s face, a look he had seen a number of times over the past few months, the look that all but screamed Am I doing the right thing?

  A few more of the boys showed up. Some brought houseplants with bright red bows on pots covered in bright green foil. This was the tough guy version of a housewarming gift, the greenery undoubtedly purchased by the distaff half of the ILA. It was turning into a Christmas party/going-away party for Padraig Byrne. The juke played “Silent Night: A Christmas in Rome” by the Chieftains. The lager flowed.

  An hour later Byrne glanced at his watch, slipped his coat on. As he was saying his good-byes, Danny McManus approached with a young man Byrne didn’t know.

  “Kevin,” Danny said. “Ever meet my youngest son, Paulie?”

  Paul McManus was slender, a little birdlike in his demeanor, wore rimless glasses. He was not at all like the mountain that was his father. Still, he looked strong enough.

  “Never had the pleasure,” Byrne said, extending a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too, sir,” Paul said.

  “So, are you working the docks like your dad?” Byrne asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Paul said.

  Everyone at the nearby table exchanged a glance, a quick inspection of the ceiling, their fingernails, anything but Danny McManus’s face.

  “Paulie works at Boathouse Row,” Danny finally said.

  “Ah, okay,” Byrne said. “What do you do down there?”

  “Always something to do at Boathouse Row,” Paulie said. “Scraping, painting, shoring up the docks.”

  Boathouse Row was a cluster of privately owned boathouses on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill River, in Fairmount Park, right near the art museum. They were home to the sculling clubs, and managed by the Schuylkill Navy, one of the oldest amateur athletic organizations in the country. They were also about the furthest thing imaginable from the Packer Avenue Terminal.

  Was it river work? Technically. Was it working the river? Not in this pub.

  “Well, you know what da Vinci said,” Paulie offered, standing his ground.

  More sideways glances. More cleared throats, shuffled feet. He was actually going to quote Leonardo da Vinci. In Killian’s. Byrne had to give the kid credit.

  “What did he say?” Byrne asked.

  “In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed, and the first of that which comes,” Paulie said. “Or something like that.”

  Everybody took a long, slow gulp from their bottles, no one wanting to be the first to say anything. Finally, Danny put an arm around his son. “He’s a poet. What can you say?”

  Three of the men at the table pushed their shot glasses, brimming with Jameson, over toward Paulie McManus. “Drink up, da Vinci,” they said in unison.

  They all laughed. Paulie drank.

  A few moments later Byrne stood at the door, watching his father throw darts. Padraig Byrne was two games up on Luke Murphy. He was also up three lagers. Byrne wondered if his father should even be drinking at all these days. On the other hand, Byrne had never seen his father tipsy, let alone drunk.

  The men formed a line on either side of the dartboard. Byrne imagined them all as young men in their twenties, just starting out with families, the notions of hard work and union loyalty and city pride a bright red pulse in their veins. They’d been coming to this place for more than forty years. Some even longer. Through every Phillies and Eagles and Flyers and Sixers season, through every mayor, through every municipal and private scandal, through all of their marriages and births and divorces and deaths. Killian’s was a constant, and the lives and dreams and hopes of its denizens were, too.

  His father threw a bull’s-eye. Cheers and disbelief erupted around the bar. Another round. And so it went for Paddy Byrne.

  Byrne thought about his father’s upcoming move. They had the truck scheduled for February 4. This move was the best thing for his father. It was quieter in the Northeast, slower. He knew that this was the beginning of a new life, but he could not shake that other feeling, the distinct and unsettling feeling that it was also the end of something.

  39

  The Devonshire Acres mental-health facility sat on a gentle slope in a small town in southeastern Pennsylvania. In its glory years, the huge fieldstone and mortar complex had been a spa and convalescent home for wealthy Main Line families. Now it was a state-subsidized long-term warehouse for lower income patients who required constant supervision.

  Roland Hannah signed in, declining the escort. He knew his way around. He took the stairs to the second floor one at a time. He was in no hurry. The institutional-green hallways were ornamented with cheerless, time-faded Christmas decorations. Some looked as if they were from the 1940s or 1950s: jolly water-stained Santas, reindeer with their antlers bent and taped and repaired with long-yellowed Scotch tape. One wall held a message misspelled in individual letters made of cotton, construction paper, and silver glitter:

  H A P P Y H O D L I A Y S !

  Charles no longer came inside the facility.

  ROLAND FOUND HER in the common room, near a window overlooking the rear grounds and the forest beyond. It had snowed for two days straight and a layer of white caressed the hills. Roland wondered what it looked like to her, through her young old eyes. He wondered what memories, if any, were triggered by the soft planes of virgin snow. Did she remember her first winter in the north? Did she remember snowflakes on her tongue? Snowmen?

  Her skin was papery, fragrant, translucent. Her hair had long ago spent its gold.

  There were four others in the room. Roland knew them all. They did not acknowledge him in any way. He crossed the room, removed his coat and gloves, put the present on the table. It was a robe and slippers, both lavender. Charles had meticulously wrapped and rewrapped the gift in festive foil paper featuring elves and workbenches and brightly colored tools.

  Roland kissed her on the top of her head. She did not respond.

  Outside the snow continued to fall—huge velvety flakes that lilted silently down. She watched, seeming to select an individual flake from the flurry, following it to the ledge, to the earth below, beyond.

  They sat, not speaking. She had said only a few words in many years. The music in the background was Perry Como’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

  At six o’clock they brought her a tray. Creamed corn, breaded fish sticks, Tater Tots, along with a butter cookie with green and red sprinkles on a Christmas tree made of white icing. Roland watched as she arranged and rearranged her red plastic silverware from the outside in—fork, spoon, knife, then the reverse order. Three times. Always three times, until she had it right. Never two, never four, never more. Roland always wondered by what internal abacus this number had been determined.

  “Merry Christmas,” Roland said.

  She looked up at him, eyes the palest blue. Behind them lived a universe of mystery.

  Roland glanced at his watch. It was time to go.

  Before he could stand up she took his hand in hers. Her fingers were carved ivory. Roland saw her lips tremble, and knew what was coming.

  “Here are
maidens, young and fair,” she said. “Dancing in the summer air.”

  Roland felt the glaciers of his heart dislodge. He knew it was all Artemisia Hannah Waite remembered of her daughter Charlotte, and those terrible days in 1995.

  “Like two spinning wheels at play,” Roland answered.

  His mother smiled, and finished the verse: “Pretty maidens dance away.”

  ROLAND FOUND CHARLES standing next to the van. A dusting of snow sat on his shoulders. In years past, Charles would look into Roland’s eyes at this moment, searching for some sign that things had improved. Even to Charles, with his innate optimism, this was a practice long since dropped. Without a word, they slipped into the van.

  After a brief prayer, they drove back to the city.

  THEY ATE IN silence. When they were finished, Charles cleared the dishes. Roland could hear the television news in the office. A few moments later Charles poked his head around the corner.

  “Come here and look at this,” Charles said.

  Roland walked into the small office. On the television screen was a shot of the parking lot at the Roundhouse, the police administration building on Race Street. Channel Six was doing a remote stand up. A reporter was following a woman across the parking lot.

  The woman was young, dark-eyed, attractive. She carried herself with a great deal of poise and confidence. She wore a black leather coat and gloves. The name under her face on the screen said she was a detective. The reporter asked her questions. Charles turned up the volume on the television.