—saw a man carrying Tara Grendel up to the pump house … a featureless man staring at the moon … a length of blue and white rope in his hands … heard the sound of a small boat slapping against stone … saw two flowers, one white, one red, and—
—pulled his hand back, as if the water had been on fire. The images were getting stronger, clearer, more unnerving.
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes.
Something was coming.
Two flowers.
A few seconds later his cell phone rang. Byrne stood, flipped open the phone, answered. It was Jessica.
“There’s another victim,” she said.
Byrne glanced down, at the dark intractable water of the Schuylkill. He knew, but asked anyway. “On the river?”
“Yeah, partner,” she said. “On the river.”
55
They met on the bank of the Schuylkill River, near the oil refineries in the Southwest. The crime scene was partially hidden from both the river and the nearby bridge. The acrid smell of effluent from the refineries filled the air, their lungs.
The primary detectives on the case were Ted Campos and Bobby Lauria. These two had been partners forever. The old cliché about finishing each other’s sentences was true, but it went beyond that with Ted and Bobby. One time they had even gone shopping separately and bought the same tie. Once they found out, of course, they never wore the ties. They weren’t too crazy about the story being told, for that matter. It was all a little too Brokeback Mountain for the likes of a pair of old-school tough guys like Bobby Lauria and Ted Campos.
Byrne, Jessica, and Josh Bontrager pulled up to find a pair of sector cars, about fifty yards apart, sealing the road. The scene was far south of the first two victims, nearly at the confluence point where the Schuylkill met the Delaware, in the shadow of the Platt Bridge.
Ted Campos met the three detectives at the side of the road. Byrne introduced him to Josh Bontrager. A CSU van was on scene, as well as Tom Weyrich from the ME’s office.
“What do we have, Ted?” Byrne asked.
“We have a female DOA,” Campos said.
“Strangled?” Jessica asked.
“Looks like it.” He pointed toward the river.
The body was lying on the riverbank, near the base of a dying maple tree. When Jessica saw the body, her heart sank. It was something she had feared might happen, and now it had. “Oh no.”
The corpse was that of a child. No more than thirteen or so years old. Her slight shoulders were twisted at an unnatural angle, her torso was covered with leaves and trash. She too wore a long vintage dress. Around her neck was what looked to be an identical nylon belt.
Tom Weyrich stood next to the body, dictating notes.
“Who found her?” Byrne asked.
“Security guard,” Campos said. “Came down for a smoke. Guy’s a fucking wreck.”
“When?”
“About an hour ago. But Tom thinks this woman has been out here a while.”
The word shocked everyone. “Woman?” Jessica asked.
Campos nodded. “I thought the same thing,” he said. “And she’s been dead for some time. There’s a good deal of decay.”
Tom Weyrich approached them. He pulled off his latex gloves, slipped on his leather ones.
“That’s not a child?” Jessica asked. She was stunned. The victim could not have been much taller than four feet.
“No,” Weyrich said. “She’s small, but mature. She was probably about forty.”
“So, how long do you think she’s been out here?” Byrne asked.
“I’m guessing a week or so. No way to tell here.”
“This happened before the Shawmont killing?”
“Oh, yeah,” Weyrich said.
Two officers from the crime-scene unit emerged from the van and began to make their way to the riverbank. Josh Bontrager followed.
Jessica and Byrne watched the team set up a crime scene and perimeter. Until further notice this was not their case, nor was it even officially related to the two murders they were investigating.
“Detectives,” Josh Bontrager called out to them.
Campos, Lauria, Jessica, and Byrne all made their way down to the riverbank. Bontrager was standing in an area about fifteen feet from the body, just slightly upriver.
“Look.” Bontrager pointed to an area behind the scrub of low bushes. In the ground was an item so incongruous in this setting that Jessica had to get right up to it to make sure that what she thought she was looking at was indeed what she was looking at. It was a lily. A red plastic lily stuck into the snow. On the tree next to it, about three feet from the ground, was a painted white moon.
Jessica took a pair of photographs. She then stood back and let the CSU photographer document the whole scene. Sometimes the context of an item at a crime scene was as important as the item itself. The where of something sometimes superseded the what.
A lily.
Jessica glanced at Byrne. He seemed to be riveted by the red flower. She then looked at the body. The woman was so petite that it was easy to see how she could have been mistaken for a child. Jessica could see that the victim’s dress was too large, and had been unevenly hemmed. The woman’s arms and legs were intact. No amputations visible. Her hands were open. She held no bird.
“Does this sync with your boy?” Campos asked.
“Yeah,” Byrne said.
“Same MO with the belt?”
Byrne nodded.
“Want the case?” Campos half smiled, but was also half serious.
Byrne didn’t answer. It wasn’t up to him. There was a good chance that these cases were going to be grouped into a much larger task force soon, one that involved the FBI and other federal agencies. There was a compulsive killer on a rampage, and this woman may have been his first victim. For some reason this freak was obsessed with vintage costumes and the Schuylkill, and they hadn’t the slightest clue who he was, or where he was going to strike next. Or if he already had. There could be ten bodies between where they were standing and the Manayunk crime scene.
“This guy is not going to stop until he makes his point, is he?” Byrne asked.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Campos said.
“The river is a hundred fucking miles long.”
“One hundred twenty-eight fucking miles long,” Campos replied. “Give or take.”
One hundred twenty-eight miles, Jessica thought. Much of it shielded from roads and expressways, bounded by trees and shrubs, a river that snaked through maybe a half dozen counties into the heart of southeast Pennsylvania.
One hundred twenty-eight miles of killing ground.
56
It was her third cigarette of the day. Her third. Three wasn’t bad. Three was like not smoking at all, right? Back when she was using she’d been up to two packs. Three was like she had already quit. Or whatever.
Who was she kidding? She knew she wasn’t going to quit for real until her life was in order. Sometime around her seventieth birthday.
Sa’mantha Fanning opened the back door, peeked into the store. Empty. She listened. Baby Jamie was quiet. She closed the door, pulled her coat tightly around her. Man, it was cold. She hated having to come outside to smoke, but at least she wasn’t one of those gargoyles you saw on Broad Street, standing in front of their buildings, hunched against the wall, sucking away on a butt. That was the reason she never smoked in front of the store, even though it was a lot easier to keep an eye on things from there. She refused to look like some criminal. Still, it was colder than a pocketful of penguin shit out here.
She thought about her plans for New Year’s Eve, or rather her non-plans. It would just be her and Jamie, maybe a bottle of wine. Such was the life of a single mother. A single broke mother. A single barely employed broke mother whose ex-boyfriend and father of her child was a lazy-ass pipehead who had yet to give her one friggin’ dime in child support. She was nineteen and
her life story was already written.
She opened the door again, just to give a listen, and almost jumped out of her skin. A man stood right in the doorway. He had been alone in the store, all by himself. He could have stolen anything. She was definitely going to get fired, family or no.
“Man,” she said. “You scared the crap outta me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He was well dressed, had a nice face. He was not her typical customer.
“My name is Detective Byrne,” he said. “I’m with the Philadelphia Police Department. The homicide division.”
“Oh, okay,” she said.
“I was wondering if you might have a few minutes to talk.”
“Sure. No problem,” she said. “But I did already speak with a …”
“Detective Balzano?”
“Right. Detective Balzano. She had on this great leather coat.”
“That’s her.” He gestured to the inside of the store. “Would you like to go inside where it’s a little warmer?”
She held up her cigarette. “I can’t smoke in there. Ironic, huh?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I mean half the stuff in there already smells pretty funky,” she said. “Is it okay if we talk out here?”
“Sure,” the man replied. He stepped through the doorway, closed the door. “I just have a few more questions. I promise not to keep you too long.”
She almost laughed. Keep me from what? “I’ve got nowhere to be,” she said. “Fire away.”
“Actually, I have only one question.”
“Okay.”
“I was wondering about your son.”
The word caught her off guard. What did Jamie have to do with anything? “My son?”
“Yes. I was wondering why you are going to put him out. Is it because he isn’t pretty?”
At first she thought the man was making a joke—albeit a joke she didn’t get. But he wasn’t smiling. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” she said.
“The count’s son is not nearly as fair as you think.”
She looked into his eyes. He seemed to look right through her. Something was wrong here. Something was way wrong. And she was all by herself. “Do you think I might, like, see some identification or something?” she asked.
“No.” The man stepped toward her. He unbuttoned his coat. “That won’t be possible.”
Sa’mantha Fanning took a few steps backward. A few steps were all she had. Her back was already against the bricks. “Have … have we met before?” she asked.
“Yes, we have, Anne Lisbeth,” the man said. “Once upon a time.”
57
Jessica sat at her desk, worn out, the events of the day—the discovery of the third victim, coupled with the near miss with Kevin—having all but drained her.
Plus, the only thing worse than fighting Philly traffic was fighting Philly traffic on ice. It was physically exhausting. Her arms felt like she had gone ten rounds; her neck was stiff. On the way back to the Roundhouse she had narrowly avoided three accidents.
Roland Hannah had spent almost two hours with a book of mug shots. Jessica had also given him a sheet with five more recent photos, one of which was the visitor ID photograph of David Hornstrom. He had not recognized anyone.
The investigation into the murder of the victim found in the Southwest would soon be turned over to the task force, and new files would soon pile up on her desk.
Three victims. Three women strangled, left on a riverbank, all of them dressed in vintage dresses. One had been horribly mutilated. One had held a rare bird in her grasp. One had been found with a red plastic lily nearby.
Jessica turned to the evidence of the nightingale. There were three companies in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware that bred exotic birds. She decided not to wait for a call back. She picked up the phone. She got basically the same information from all three firms. She was told that with sufficient knowledge, and the proper conditions, a person could breed a nightingale. They gave her a list of books and publications. She hung up the phone, each time feeling she was at the foothills of a huge mountain of knowledge she did not have the energy to climb.
She got up to get a cup of coffee. Her phone rang. She answered, punched the button.
“Homicide, Balzano.”
“Detective, my name is Ingrid Fanning.”
It was the voice of an older woman. Jessica didn’t recognize the name. “What can I do for you ma’am?”
“I’m the co-owner of TrueSew. My granddaughter spoke to you earlier.”
“Oh, right, yes,” Jessica said. The woman was talking about Sa’mantha.
“I’ve been looking at the photographs you left,” Ingrid said. “The photographs of the dresses?”
“What about them?”
“Well, for one thing, these are not vintage dresses.”
“They’re not?”
“No,” she said. “These are reproductions of vintage dresses. I would put the originals at around the second half of the nineteenth century. Closer to the end. Perhaps 1875 or so. Definitely a late Victorian silhouette.”
Jessica wrote down the information. “How do you know they are reproductions?”
“A few reasons. One, much of the detailing is missing. They don’t appear to be very well made. And two, if these were original, and in this kind of shape, they would sell for three to four thousand dollars each. Believe me, they would not be on the rack at a thrift store.”
“But reproductions might be?” Jessica asked.
“Oh, sure. There are a lot of reasons to reproduce clothing like this.”
“For instance?”
“For instance someone might be producing a play or a film. Someone might be recreating a particular event at a museum, perhaps. We get calls all the time from local theater groups. Not for anything like these dresses, mind you, but rather for more recent period clothing. Lots of calls for 1950s and 1960s stuff these days.”
“Has clothing like this ever passed through your store?”
“A few times. But what these dresses are is costuming, not vintage.”
Jessica considered the fact that she had been looking in the wrong places. She should have concentrated on theatrical supply. She would begin now.
“I appreciate the call,” Jessica said.
“It’s quite all right,” the woman replied.
“Say thanks to Sa’mantha for me.”
“Well, my granddaughter’s not here. When I came in the store was locked and my great-grandson was in his crib in the office.”
“Is everything all right?”
“I’m sure it is,” she said. “She probably ran out to the bank or something.”
Jessica hadn’t thought Sa’mantha the type to up and leave her son alone. On the other hand, she didn’t really know the young woman at all. “Thanks again for calling,” she said. “If you think of anything else, please give us a ring.”
“I will.”
Jessica thought about the date. The late 1800s. What was the reason? Was the killer obsessed with that time period? She made notes. She would look up important dates and events in Philadelphia around that time. Perhaps their psycho was fixated on some incident that took place on the river in that era.
BYRNE SPENT THE late afternoon doing background checks on everyone even remotely connected with Stiletto—bartenders, parking attendants, night cleaners, delivery people. Although they were not the most savory lot, none of them had anything on their records to indicate the kind of violence unleashed in the river killings.
He walked over to Jessica’s desk, sat down.
“Guess who came up blank?” Byrne asked.
“Who?”
“Alasdair Blackburn,” Byrne said. “Unlike his father, he has no record. And the odd thing is that he was born here. Chester County.”
This was a little surprising to Jessica. “He sure gives the impression he’s from the old country. ‘Aye’ and all that.”
“Exactly my point.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
“I think we should take a ride to his house. See if we can catch him out of his element.”
“Let’s go.” Before Jessica could grab her coat her phone rang. She answered. It was Ingrid Fanning again.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jessica said. “Did you remember something else?”
It wasn’t something else Ingrid Fanning had remembered. It was something else altogether. Jessica listened for a few moments, a little incredulous, and said, “We’ll be there in ten minutes.” She hung up the phone.
“What’s up?” Byrne asked.
Jessica took a moment. She needed it to process what she’d just heard. “That was Ingrid Fanning,” she said. She gave Byrne a brief recap of her earlier conversation with the woman.
“Does she have something for us?”
“I’m not sure,” Jessica said. “She seems to think someone has her granddaughter.”
“What do you mean?” Byrne asked. He was on his feet now. “Who has her granddaughter?”
Jessica took another moment before responding. It wasn’t nearly enough time. “Somebody named Detective Byrne.”
58
Ingrid Fanning was a tough seventy—thin, wiry, vigorous, dangerous in her youth. Her cloud of white hair was tied into a ponytail. She wore a long blue wool skirt and cream cashmere turtleneck. The store was empty. Jessica noticed that the music had changed to Celtic. She also noticed that Ingrid Fanning’s hands were shaking.
Jessica, Byrne, and Ingrid stood behind the counter. Beneath the counter was an older model Panasonic VHS machine and a small black-and-white monitor.
“After I called you the first time I began to straighten up a bit behind here, and I noticed that the videotape had stopped,” Ingrid said. “It’s an old machine. It’s always doing that. I rewound it some, and I accidentally hit PLAY instead of RECORD. I saw this.”
Ingrid played the tape. When the high-angle image appeared on the screen it showed an empty hallway leading to the back of the store. Unlike most surveillance systems, this was nothing very sophisticated, just an ordinary VHS cassette machine, set on SLP. It probably provided six hours of real-time coverage. There was also audio. The view of the empty hallway was underscored by the faint sounds of traffic passing on South Street, the occasional car horn, the same music Jessica recalled from her visit.
Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense: The Rosary Girls, the Skin Gods, Merciless, Badlands Page 95