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

by Richard Montanari

The woman stared at the paper, but did not put her glasses back on. She wasn’t reading it. “I … I don’t know anything about this. Anything at all.”

  “Could someone else have called from this number?”

  The woman thought for a moment. “I have a woman come to clean once a month. But she is from Honduras. She doesn’t speak much English.”

  Jessica didn’t bother writing this down. She was just about to ask one final question when Laura Somerville said, “Can you excuse me for just one moment?”

  “Of course.”

  The woman rose slowly, crossed the room, entered what Jessica figured to be the apartment’s solitary bedroom. She closed the door behind her.

  Jessica turned, looked at Byrne, shrugged, palms up and out. Byrne knew what she meant. What she meant was, you cross the city—the concrete canyons of Broad and Market streets, the alleys of North and South Philly—and you really had no idea what was going on behind those walls. Sometimes, you ran across someone who smoked crack and kept their children in a closet. Other times you discovered an elegant woman who lived alone in West Philly, a woman who could do crosswords in ten languages, a woman who had beautifully carved ivory puzzles on her bookshelves, puzzles purchased by a mysterious former suitor on London’s Portobello Road.

  Jessica stared out the window for a moment, at the heat-shimmered expanse of West Philadelphia. In the distance was a hazy iridescent image of the city.

  “What do you think?” Byrne asked, sotto voce.

  Jessica considered the question. “I think I don’t know what to think,” she said, matching his low volume. “You?”

  “I think this woman doesn’t have anything to do with the investigation.”

  “Then how does that explain the phone calls?”

  “I don’t know,” Byrne said. “Let’s leave it open with her.”

  “Okay. I’ll just tell her that—”

  Jessica was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass coming from the bedroom. It did not sound like someone dropping a tumbler or plate on the floor. It sounded as if a brick had been thrown through a window. Seeing as they were on the tenth floor, this was unlikely.

  Byrne fired a glance at Jessica. The glance. They’d been partners for years, had been to hell and back, and there was no mistaking the look.

  “Mrs. Somerville?” Byrne called out.

  Silence.

  Byrne waited a few more moments. “Ma’am?” he asked, a little louder this time. His voice seemed to reverberate between the walls, underscored by the low hum of the air conditioning. “Is everything all right?”

  No response.

  Byrne walked across the living room, put his ear to the bedroom door. He waited a few moments, listening, then looked back at Jessica, shook his head. He called out once more, even louder.

  “Ma’am?”

  Nothing.

  Byrne took a deep breath, counted off a cop’s second, then eased the doorknob to the right. He shouldered open the door, hand touching the grip of his weapon, flanked left, stepped into the room. Jessica followed.

  As expected, it was a bedroom. Inside was a four-poster bed, 1950s vintage, as well as a dresser and writing desk, both from the same era. In the far corner was a brocade settee. In addition, there were two nightstands, a cheval mirror, one closet.

  But no Laura Somerville.

  The room was empty.

  The window overlooking Locust Street had been shattered. A handful of glass shards sparkled on the worn carpeting. Broiling air roared inside, a hot and feral breath from hell. The smell of carbon and oil and exhaust filled the small space, along with a dozen different city sounds—traffic, shouts, hip-hop music among them. Beneath those sounds, closer, the CD player on the nightstand softly offered “Witchcraft.” It was Sinatra’s duet version with Anita Baker.

  Jessica turned the CD player off, crossed the bedroom, slowly eased open the bedroom’s one closet door. A puff of moth cakes and worn leather and sweet perfume leaked out. Inside was clothing on hangers, boxes, luggage, shoes, folded sweaters. On the bottom shelf were a pair of dusty, teal Samsonite suitcases. Above that, neatly stacked woolen blankets and sheets. To the right, on the top shelf, was what looked like a strong box of some sort.

  But no people. The closet was empty.

  Jessica closed the door, put her back to it. The two detectives then crossed the room, looked out the window. Below them, more than ten stories to the pavement, Laura Somerville lay on the baking sidewalk of Locust Street. Her head was demolished pulp, her body a jigsaw of ragged ends. From this height her form appeared to be a dark crimson Rorschach. A crowd was already collecting around the gruesome display.

  Byrne got on his handset, called for an ambulance.

  Jessica glanced at the writing desk in the corner. It was old, not quite an antique, worn, but well maintained. It held a Tiffany-style lamp, a pair of small black-and-white photos in a tarnished silver double-frame. It also bore a vintage Scrabble board. When Jessica looked more closely, she saw that the words on the board had been disturbed. They were off-center, not quite in their squares. A few of the tiles were scattered on the chair and the floor beneath the desk, as if someone had taken letters off the board in a hurry.

  “Jess.”

  Byrne pointed at the windowsill. On the sill were four Scrabble tiles. It appeared to be a hastily spelled word, the wooden letters positioned at oblique angles to one another.

  In her mind’s eye, Jessica saw Laura Somerville enter this room just a few short moments ago, grab four tiles from her Scrabble board, arrange them on the windowsill, then leap to her death. Suddenly, despite the stifling air rushing in, Jessica was cold.

  “Do you have any idea what this means?” she asked.

  Byrne stared at the strange configuration a few more seconds. “No.”

  At that moment a siren erupted, just a few blocks away. Jessica glanced again at the Scrabble tiles on the windowsill.

  One word glared back.

  Ludo.

  Byrne retrieved his phone from his pocket and flipped it open, preparing to call their boss. But before he could complete the call Jessica put her hand on his forearm, stopping him. She sniffed the air.

  In addition to the fact that a woman had just leapt one hundred feet to her death—a woman who, until the Philadelphia Police Department had knocked on her door was only marginally connected to a four-month-old homicide investigation, if at all, a case that was growing more cryptic by the second—something else was wrong.

  In a moment, Jessica knew. The smell of burning cotton and smoldering hardwood suddenly made her gag.

  She looked at Byrne. No words were needed.

  The two detectives bolted from the bedroom as the flames began to tear up the drapes, and across the living room.

  The apartment was on fire.

  | NINE |

  TWO HOURS LATER JOSEPH EDMUND SWANN, THIRTY-EIGHT, STOOD IN the spacious foyer, listening to the sounds of his house, the skittering echoes of his life: the chime of the Freadwin of Exeter clock, the settling of old, dry joists and rafters, the mournful heave of the summer wind in the eaves. It was his nightly ritual, and he never strayed from the custom. He had always believed that Faerwood was a living thing, an entity with a heart and soul and spirit. He had long ago personified its many faces, given life to its raised panels, its slate tiles and brass fittings, its numerous stone hearths.

  Swann was lean and muscular, of average height. He had azure blue eyes, fair hair without yet a single strand of gray, a less than prominent nose.

  When he was a child of six, a woman in Galveston—an aging circus acrobat with flame-red tresses and ill-fitting teeth, the portly doyenne of a Hungarian gypsy troupe—had called his profile “androgynous.” Joseph had been too young to read anything into this, of course, although the word conjured many things dark and disturbing. In his late childhood years he’d had to fend off myriad advances from both men and women alike, all of questionable character and breeding. In his early t
eens he had succumbed to the enchantments of an exotic dancer in the French Quarter in New Orleans, a young woman who had afterward referred to him as oiseau féroce. It was only years later he had learned this meant fierce bird, a word play on his last name it seemed; a comment, perhaps, on his sexual prowess. Or so he had hoped.

  Swann was nimble without being athletic, far stronger than he appeared. His choices in clothing tended to the well-tailored and classic, his shoes always scrupulously polished. He was rarely seen in public without a tie. Unless he was hunting. Then he could, and quite often did, blend into the scenery; urban denizen, country gentleman, midnight jogger, suburban dad. He had dedicated each of the house’s sixteen closets to a different persona.

  This evening Faerwood was ominously quiet. For the moment.

  At eight o’clock he prepared himself a modest dinner of center-cut pork chops, braised butternut squash, and fresh mango chutney. He considered opening a bottle of wine but resisted. There was much to do.

  For dessert he allowed himself a thin slice of a devilish chocolate ganache he had picked up on a whim from Miel Patisserie on Seventeenth Street.

  As he savored the cake, he thought about Katja. She did not look healthy. He fed her very well, of course, bathed her, smoothed her skin with the finest emollients money could buy, met all her needs religiously. And yet she looked sallow, resigned, older.

  When he finished the cake, he crossed the great room to the kitchen, placed his dish and fork in the sink, then returned. He selected an LP from the shelf, started the turntable, carefully placed the needle. Soon, the strains of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro filled the room. He always played “Dove sono” when things were about to change.

  Before he reached the stairs, the voice thundered up from somewhere deep inside him.

  “Joseph.”

  Swann stopped. The hair rippled on his forearms. “Sir?”

  “Where dwells the effect, Joseph?”

  “The effect is in the mind, sir.”

  “And the method?”

  For a few agonizing moments, Swann could not recall the drill. It was a simple exchange, as old as his ability to talk.

  “Joseph?”

  It came to him. “The method is in the soul.”

  A few moments later, fully returned to the moment, he checked the quality of his breath, the order of his hair, the knot in his tie. He took a few seconds, then climbed the stairs, hesitating briefly on each tread. When he reached the second floor he walked down the hallway, drew the key from his vest pocket, then unlocked and opened the door to Katja’s room.

  She was sitting on the bed, staring out the barred window, her thin legs dangling over the side. She was growing so pale. Her eyes were blank and vacant, her wrists and arms were stick thin. She wore a pale blue nightdress. Her feet were bare.

  Swann stepped into the room, closed the door behind him, locked it.

  “Good evening, my love,” he said.

  She slowly turned her head. She parted her dry lips, but said nothing.

  Swann glanced at the tray on the dresser. For lunch he had made her a Salisbury steak and green peas, real mashed potatoes. She had said weeks ago that real mashed potatoes were her favorite. She hated the Hungry Jack type.

  The lunch sat untouched.

  “You haven’t eaten,” he said.

  For a few moments Katja just stared, as if she did not recognize him. For a further moment he thought she had not even heard him. It got that way near the end. The dreamy look, the soiled sheets, the stuttering. Then, weakly, she said: “I want to go home.”

  “Home?” He tried to say this as innocently as possible, as if it were some sort of revelation. “Why would you want to go home?”

  Katja stared at him, through him, her face a blank, gessoed canvas. “It’s … it’s my …”

  He sat on the bed, next to her. “Your parents? Your family?”

  Katja just nodded, slowly. There was none of the vibrancy he had seen that first day, none of zest. On that day she had been a whirlpool of teenaged energy, ready for any challenge, any idea.

  He took her hand in his. Her palm felt like desiccated parchment.

  “But I am taking care of you now, dearest.” He reached out, gently stroked her hair. It felt damp and greasy between his fingers. Earlier in the day he had reminded himself to give her a bath. Now there hardly seemed any point. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his fingers.

  She nodded weakly.

  “Think of it, Katja. Of all the people in your life, all your family and friends, have I not been the kindest? I read to you, I feed you, I paint your toenails your favorite color.”

  The truth was, it was his favorite color. Persimmon.

  Katja looked toward the window, at the shafts of frail sunlight. She remained silent.

  “Drink some tea,” he said. “You will feel much better.” He stood, crossed the room, lifted the insulated pitcher, poured a cup of tea. It was still warm. He dropped into it a sugar cube. He returned to the bed, sat, stirring, the sound of sterling silver on bone china circling the room.

  He got Katja’s attention, lifted the cup to her lips. She took a small sip. He dabbed her mouth with a linen napkin.

  “You’re taking care of me,” she said.

  Poor Katja. He had tried with her. He had tried so hard with them all.

  “Come with me, love.” He put the cup and saucer down on the nightstand, extended a hand.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Somewhere safe.”

  Swann thought about the precision-crafted device three floors below them, the box and its seven keen blades.

  Katja stood, shaking, her thin legs not quite supporting her. Joseph Swann put a strong arm around her waist. She felt brittle.

  “Are you taking me home?” she asked.

  He looked into her eyes. He found no trace of the firebrand he had met in the park, the young woman who had so willingly accepted his aid and comfort. All without thanks.

  Moments later, they descended the stairway. Mozart filled the house. Three floors below the magic box awaited.

  “Yes,” Swann said. “I am taking you home.”

  | TEN |

  KEVIN BYRNE SAT ACROSS FROM THEDENISON APARTMENTS. THE TOP floor of the building, the side facing Locust Street, was smoke blackened, charred. Gnarled ebony fingers caressed the brick façade. The air on the entire block was still dense with carbon.

  Byrne was exhausted, but exhaustion was an old friend. He glanced at his watch: 2:15 AM.

  Byrne had always suffered from some degree of insomnia, but he had rarely slept more than five or six hours a night since he had become a detective. When he was in uniform he had drawn last-out as often as not, and the schedule of working all night was something the body clock never forgot. The routine and rhythms of sitting in a cramped, airless car at three and four and five in the morning, drinking coffee, eating high-sugar, high-fat foods became the usual, not the exception. Sleep became unnatural. Indigestion and sleeplessness the rule. Byrne did not know one detective on the job for more than twenty years who slept well.

  Now the insomnia was invasive and seemingly permanent. Since moving over to SIU, the schedule had been a little easier to predict, and that was both the good news and the bad news, at least as far as the victims were concerned. In SIU there wasn’t the heat of a new homicide, the buzz of the immediate chase, the drive to get the forensics and witnesses and collateral personnel lined up in a hurry before your doer got away. Cold cases were just that—cold. The dead stayed dead.

  Still, when you picked up a scent, Byrne had to admit, if only to his partner, it was the same thrill, the same rush that accompanied that first sniff of the chase you encountered when you were a rookie at twenty-two.

  Byrne glanced up at the window, at the smoke-blackened bricks of the top floor of the Denison, the area surrounding apartment 1015. In the sodium streetlights the building was bathed in pale blue. The two windows were large eyes staring
down at him, defying him to understand what had happened in that apartment.

  Because they were able to make the 911 call early—Byrne had phoned the fire department from just outside Laura Somerville’s front door—the fire had destroyed less than half of the space. Much of the apartment had been left virtually intact. There was smoke and water damage to the furniture, the bookcases, the walls, but little else.

  Byrne had seen quite a bit in his time on the job. He had seen just about everything a human being could do to another human being, had seen just about everything human beings could do to themselves, had encountered every weapon, every opportunity, every motive. Despite his experience, he had to admit that Laura Somerville’s suicide was as startling as anything he had ever come across.

  Byrne had cornered Mickey Dugan, an old friend and PFD captain. Dugan told him that, presumptively—which meant very little at this stage—the Philadelphia Fire Department believed the source of the fire was an oil lamp under the mattress in the bedroom. Moments before Laura Somerville dove through that window, moments after she excused herself from the living room, she had walked into her bedroom, pulled an oil lamp from her closet, lit a match, placed it beneath the bed, and deliberately set her apartment on fire.

  What was she trying to conceal by burning down her apartment, her possessions, perhaps the entire building? Not to mention her prized collection of games and puzzles. Could it be that the Philadelphia Police Department had coincidentally shown up on the same day this elegant, cultured woman planned to commit suicide?

  Byrne sipped his coffee, a thought circling him, a dark feeling he knew he was not shaking anytime soon. Unvarnished, unwarranted, unearned, yet all too real.

  There was no evidence that this was anything other than a suicide. Jessica and Byrne were homicide detectives, and there were plenty of homicides to go around in the City of Brotherly Love. They had a full day ahead of them. A day belonging to Caitlin O’Riordan. A day Kevin Byrne knew would be haunted by the image of Laura Somerville’s demolished body, and one strange word.

  Ludo.