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

by Richard Montanari

“Put the weapons down nice and slow.”

  “We’re Philly PD,” Vincent said.

  “I’m not in the habit of repeating myself, young man. Put the weapons on the ground now.”

  Byrne understood. It was the Berks County sheriff ’s department. He glanced to his right. Deputies moved through the trees, their flashlights slicing the darkness. Byrne wanted to protest—every second they delayed was one more second Marius Damgaard had to get away—but they had no choice. Byrne and Vincent complied. They put their weapons on the ground, then their hands on their heads, interlaced their fingers.

  “One at a time,” came the voice. “Slowly. Let’s see some ID.”

  Byrne reached into his coat, produced his badge. Vincent followed suit.

  “Okay,” the man said.

  Byrne and Vincent spun around, retrieved their weapons. Behind them stood Sheriff Jacob Toomey and a pair of younger deputies. Jake Toomey was a grizzled fifty, thick neck, country crew cut. His deputies were both 180 pounds of deep-fried adrenaline. Serial killers didn’t come to this part of the world that often.

  Moments later a county EMS crew ran past, heading to the schoolhouse.

  “This all has to do with the Damgaard boy?” Toomey asked.

  Byrne laid out the evidence quickly and succinctly.

  Toomey looked out over the theme park, then at the ground. “Shit.”

  “Sheriff Toomey.” A call came from the other side of the canals, near the park’s entrance. The group of men followed the voice, reaching the mouth of the canal. Then they saw it.

  A body swung from the center bar of the trellis that spanned the entrance. Above the body, was the once festive legend:

  S ORY OOK RIV R

  Half a dozen flashlights illuminated Marius Damgaard’s corpse. His hands were tied behind his back. His feet were just a few feet over the water. He was hanging by a blue and white rope. Byrne also saw a pair of footprints leading off into the forest. Sheriff Toomey dispatched a pair of deputies to follow. Shotguns in their hands, they disappeared into the woods.

  Marius Damgaard was dead. When Byrne and the others trained their flashlights on the body, they also saw that he had not only been hanged, he had been gutted. A long gaping wound ran from throat to stomach. Entrails dangled, steaming in the frigid night air.

  Minutes later, the two deputies returned empty-handed. They met their boss’s stare, shook their heads. Whoever had been here, at the site of Marius Damgaard’s execution, was gone.

  Byrne looked at Vincent Balzano. Vincent turned on his heels and ran back to the schoolhouse.

  It was over. Except for the steady dripping from Marius Damgaard’s mutilated corpse.

  The sound of blood becoming the river.

  98

  Two days after the uncovering of the horrors in Odense, Pennsylvania, the media had all but set up permanent residence in the small rural community. This was international news. Berks County was not ready for the unwanted attention.

  Josh Bontrager endured six hours of surgery. He was in stable condition at the Reading Hospital and Medical Center. Nicci Malone had been treated and released.

  The initial FBI reports indicated that Marius Damgaard had murdered at least nine people. No forensic evidence had yet been found that tied him directly to the murders of Annemarie DiCillo and Charlotte Waite.

  Damgaard had been committed to a mental-health facility in upstate New York for nearly eight years, from the ages of eleven to nineteen. He was released after his grandmother had been taken ill. Within weeks after Elise Damgaard died, his killings resumed.

  A thorough search of the house and grounds turned up a number of gruesome finds. Not the least of which was that Marius Damgaard had kept a vial of his grandfather’s blood beneath his bed. DNA tests matched it to the “moon” drawings on the victims. The semen belonged to Marius Damgaard himself.

  Damgaard had masqueraded as Will Pedersen, and also as a young man named Sean at Roland Hannah’s ministry. He had been counseled at the county mental-health facility where Lisette Simon worked. He had visited TrueSew many times, choosing Sa’mantha Fanning as his ideal Anne Lisbeth.

  When Marius Damgaard learned that the StoryBook River property—a thousand-acre area Frederik Damgaard had incorporated as a township called Odense in the 1930s—had been condemned and seized for back taxes, and that it was scheduled for demolition, he felt his universe began to crumble. He decided to lead the world back to his beloved StoryBook River, making a trail of death and horror as directions.

  ON JANUARY 3, Jessica and Byrne stood near the mouth of the canals that snaked though the theme park. The sun was out; the day portended a false spring. In daylight, it looked drastically different. Despite the rotting timbers and crumbling stonework, Jessica could see how it had once been a place where families had come to enjoy its unique atmosphere. She had seen vintage brochures. It was somewhere she might have brought her daughter.

  Now it was a freak show, a place of death that would draw people from all over the world. Perhaps Marius Damgaard would get his wish. The entire complex was a crime scene, and would remain so for a long time to come.

  Were there other bodies to be found? Other horrors to discover?

  Time would tell.

  They had sorted through the hundreds of papers and files—city, state, county, and now federal. One witness statement stuck out for both Jessica and Byrne, a statement unlikely ever to be fully understood. A resident of Pine Tree Lane, one of the access roads leading to the entrance to StoryBook River, had seen a vehicle that night, an idling vehicle just on the shoulder of the road. Jessica and Byrne had visited the spot. It was less than a hundred yards from the trellis where Marius Damgaard had been found hanging and eviscerated. The FBI had taken footwear impressions leading to and from the entrance. The footprints were made by a very popular brand of men’s rubber overshoe, available everywhere.

  The witness said the idling vehicle was an expensive looking green SUV with yellow fog lamps and extensive detailing.

  The witness did not get a license plate.

  OUTSIDE THE MOVIE Witness, Jessica had never seen so many Amish people in her life. It seemed that the entire Amish population of Berks County had come to Reading. They milled about the lobby of the hospital. The older folks brooded, prayed, observed, shooed the children away from the candy and soda vending machines.

  When Jessica introduced herself, they all shook her hand. It seemed that Josh Bontrager had come by it honestly.

  “YOU SAVED MY life,” Nicci said.

  Jessica and Nicci Malone stood at the foot of Josh Bontrager’s hospital bed. His room was filled with flowers.

  The razor-sharp arrow had slashed Nicci’s right shoulder. Her arm was in a sling. The doctors said she would be IOD—injured on duty—for about a month.

  Bontrager smiled. “All in a day,” he said.

  His color had returned; his smile had never left. He sat up in bed, surrounded by about a hundred different cheeses, breads, jars of preserves, and sausages, all wrapped in wax paper. Homemade get-well cards abounded.

  “When you get better, I’m buying you the best dinner in Philly,” Nicci said.

  Bontrager stroked his chin, apparently considering his options. “Le Bec Fin?”

  “Yeah. Okay. Le Bec Fin. You’re on,” Nicci said.

  Jessica knew that Le Bec would set Nicci back a few hundred. Small price to pay.

  “But you better be careful,” Bontrager added.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know what they say.”

  “No, I don’t,” Nicci said. “What do they say, Josh?”

  Bontrager winked at her and Jessica. “Once you go Amish, you never go back.”

  99

  Byrne sat on a bench outside the courtroom. He had testified countless times in his career—grand juries, preliminary hearings, murder trials. Most of the time he had known exactly what he was going to say, but not this time.

  He entered the courtroo
m, taking a seat in the first row.

  Matthew Clarke looked about half the size he had been the last time Byrne had seen him. This was not uncommon. Clarke had been holding a gun and guns made people appear bigger. Now the man was craven and small.

  Byrne took the stand. The ADA led him through the events of the week leading up to the incident where Clarke took him hostage.

  “Is there anything you’d like to add?” the ADA finally asked.

  Byrne looked into Matthew Clarke’s eyes. He had seen so many criminals in his time, so many men who had no regard for anyone’s property or human life.

  Matthew Clarke did not belong in jail. He needed help.

  “Yes,” Byrne said, “there is.”

  THE AIR OUTSIDE the courthouse had warmed since morning. The weather in Philadelphia was incredibly fickle, but somehow it was nearing forty-two degrees.

  As Byrne exited the building he looked up and saw Jessica approaching.

  “Sorry I couldn’t make it,” she said.

  “No problem.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “I don’t know.” Byrne shoved his hands into his coat pockets. “I really don’t.” They fell silent.

  Jessica watched him for a while, wondering what was going through his mind. She knew him well, and knew that the matter of Matthew Clarke would weigh heavily on his heart.

  “Well, I’m heading home.” Jessica knew when the walls went up with her partner. She also knew there would eventually come a day when Byrne would talk about it. They had all the time in the world. “Need a ride?”

  Byrne looked at the sky. “I think I’m going to walk for a while.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “You start walking, the next thing you know you’ll be running.”

  Byrne smiled. “You never know.”

  Byrne turned up his collar, descended the steps.

  “See you tomorrow,” Jessica said.

  Kevin Byrne didn’t answer.

  PADRAIG BYRNE STOOD in the front room of his new home. The boxes were stacked everywhere. His favorite chair was positioned across from his new 42-inch plasma television, a housewarming gift from his son.

  Byrne walked into the room, a pair of glasses in hand, glasses containing two inches of Jameson each. He handed one to his father.

  They stood, strangers in a strange place. They had never been in a moment like this before. Padraig Byrne had just left the only house in which he had ever lived. The house into which he had carried his bride, raised his son.

  They lifted their glasses.

  “Dia duit,” Byrne said.

  “Dia is Muire duit.”

  They clinked glasses, downed the whiskey.

  “You going to be okay?” Byrne asked.

  “I’m fine,” Padraig said. “Don’t you worry about me.”

  “Right, Da.”

  Ten minutes later, as Byrne was pulling out of the driveway, he glanced up to see his father standing in the doorway. Padraig looked a little smaller in this place, a little further away.

  Byrne wanted to freeze the moment in his mind. He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, how much time they would have together. But he knew that, for the moment, for the foreseeable future, everything was okay.

  He hoped his father felt the same way.

  BYRNE RETURNED THE moving van, retrieved his car. He got off the expressway and headed down to the Schuylkill. He got out, stood at the riverbank.

  He closed his eyes, reliving the moment when he pulled the trigger in that house of madness. Had he hesitated? He honestly couldn’t remember. Regardless, he had taken the shot, and that was what mattered.

  Byrne opened his eyes. He watched the river, contemplated the secrets of a thousand years as it flowed silently past him; the tears of desecrated saints, the blood of broken angels.

  The river never tells.

  He got back into his car, reached the entrance to the expressway. He looked at the green and white signs. One led back to the city. One led west, toward Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and points northwest.

  Including Meadville.

  Detective Kevin Francis Byrne took a deep breath.

  And made his choice.

  100

  There was purity in his darkness, a clarity underscored by the serene weight of permanence. There were moments of relief, as if it had all happened—all of it, from the moment he first stepped onto that damp field, to the day he first turned the key in the door of that ramshackle row house in Kensington, to the stinking breath of Joseph Barber as he bid good-bye to this mortal coil—to lead him to this black, seamless world.

  But darkness was not darkness to the Lord.

  Every morning they came to his cell and led Roland Hannah to the small chapel, where he would hold service. At first he did not want to leave his cell. But soon he realized that this was just a diversion, a stopover on his road to salvation and glory.

  He would be in this place the rest of his life. There had been no trial. They had asked Roland what he had done, and he had told them. He would not lie.

  But the Lord came here too. In fact, the Lord was here this very day. And in this place were many sinners, many men in need of correction.

  Pastor Roland Hannah would deal with them all.

  101

  Jessica arrived at the Devonshire Acres facility at just after four o’clock on February 5. The imposing fieldstone complex was set atop a gently rolling hill. A few outbuildings dotted the landscape.

  Jessica came to the facility to speak with Roland Hannah’s mother, Artemisia Waite. Or to try to. Her boss had left it up to her whether or not to conduct the interview, to put a period at the end of the report, the story that began on a bright spring day in April 1995, a day when two little girls went to the park for a birthday picnic, the day when a long litany of horrors began.

  Roland Hannah had pled out, and was serving eighteen life sentences, no parole. Kevin Byrne, along with a retired detective named John Longo, had helped compile the state’s case against the man, much of it based on Walt Brigham’s notes and files.

  It was unknown whether Roland Hannah’s stepbrother Charles had been involved in the vigilante murders, or whether he had been with Roland that night in Odense. If he had, one mystery remained: How had Charles Waite gotten back to Philly? He could not drive. It was the court-appointed psychologist’s opinion that the man functioned at the level of a bright nine-year-old.

  Jessica stood in the parking lot, next to her car, her mind swirling with questions. She sensed a presence approaching. She was surprised to see it was Richie DiCillo.

  “Detective,” Richie said. It was almost as if he had been expecting her.

  “Richie. Good to see you.”

  “Happy New Year.”

  “Same to you,” Jessica said. “What brings you all the way out here?”

  “Just following up on something.” He said it with the sort of finality Jessica recognized in all veteran cops. There would be no more questions about it.

  “How’s your father?” Richie asked.

  “He’s good,” Jessica said. “Thanks for asking.”

  Richie glanced at the complex of buildings, back. The moment drew out. “So, how long have you been on the job now? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” Jessica said, smiling. “It’s not like you’re asking my age. It’s been more than ten years.”

  “Ten years.” Richie mugged, nodded. “I’ve been at it almost thirty. Flies by, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. You don’t think it will, but it seems like just yesterday I put on the blues and hit the street for the first time.”

  It was all subtext, and they both knew it. Nobody saw through or created bullshit better than cops. Richie rocked on his heels, glanced at his watch. “Well, I’ve got bad guys waiting to be caught,” he said. “Good seeing you.”

  “Same here.” Jessica wanted to add a great deal to that. She wanted to say something about A
nnemarie, about how sorry she was. She wanted to say how she understood that there was a hole in his heart that would never be filled, no matter how much time passes, no matter how a story ends.

  Richie got out his car keys, turned to go. He hesitated for a moment, as if he had something to say, but had no idea how to say it. He glanced at the main building of the facility. When he looked back at Jessica, she thought she saw something in the man’s eyes she had never seen before, not in a lifer, not in a man who had seen as much as Richie DiCillo had seen.

  She saw peace.

  “Sometimes,” Richie began, “justice is done.”

  Jessica understood. And the understanding was a cold dagger in her chest. She probably should have let it lie, but she was her father’s daughter. “Didn’t someone once say that we get justice in the next world, but in this world we have the law?”

  Richie smiled. Before he turned and walked across the parking lot, Jessica glanced at his overshoes. They looked new.

  Sometimes justice is done.

  A minute later Jessica saw Richie pull out of the parking lot. He waved one last time. She waved back.

  As he drove away, Jessica found she was not all that surprised to find that Detective Richard DiCillo drove a large green SUV, an SUV with yellow fog lamps and extensive detailing.

  Jessica looked at the main building. On the second floor were a series of small windows. In the window she spotted two people watching her. It was too far away to make out their features, but there was something about the tilt of their heads, the set of the shoulders, that told her she was being observed.

  Jessica thought about StoryBook River, about that heart of madness.

  Had Richie DiCillo been the one who tied Marius Damgaard’s hands behind him and hanged him? Had Richie driven Charles Waite back to Philadelphia?

  Jessica decided that she just might take another ride to Berks County. Maybe justice had not yet been done.