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

by Richard Montanari

  Byrne glanced at the man. There was no reaching him. Not now.

  He started the car. But before he could pull out into traffic his phone rang. It was Jessica.

  “We’ve got something,” she said. “Meet me at the lab.”

  | THIRTY-SEVEN |

  TRACY MCGOVERN WAS DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF THE CRIME LAB. A TALL, slender woman of fifty, she had silver, shoulder-length hair, blunt-cut bangs. She favored shapeless black suits, rock-and-roll T-shirts, and Ecco walkers. Tracy had spent nearly ten years working with the FBI’s Mitochondrial DNA Unit—a division that examines items of evidence associated with cold cases, as well as small pieces of evidence containing little biological material—before returning to her hometown of Philadelphia. According to her colleagues, she had the unique ability to sleep three twenty-minute stretches per twenty-four-hour period, right at her desk, and continue working on a case until the perpetrator was caught. Tracy McGovern was not so much a bloodhound as she was a greyhound.

  THE THREE BOXES from the Shiloh Street crime scene were on the floor. In the harsh light of the lab they looked even brighter, more colorful. It was hard to reconcile this with the purpose for which they had been used.

  “There were no prints on the boxes,” Tracy said. “They’ve been rather thoroughly wiped down with a common household cleaning solution.”

  Byrne again noted the craftsmanship that went into the design and construction of these boxes. The mitered edges were almost invisible.

  “These hinges look expensive,” Byrne said.

  “They are,” Tracy said. “They’re made by an Austrian company called Grass. They’re available from only a few dozen companies on the Internet. You might want to check them out.” Tracy handed Byrne a printout of specialty hardware websites.

  “We’re still collecting trace evidence from the boxes, but there is something else I wanted to show you.”

  Tracy walked across the lab, returned with a large paper evidence bag. “I didn’t work on this last time, so I thought I’d give it a look.”

  She reached in the evidence bag and removed Caitlin O’Riordan’s backpack.

  “Detective Pistone emptied the bag on scene, brought everything back in pieces, I’m afraid. I hate to speak ill of the retired, but it was sloppy work. The exterior got dusted, the interior vacuumed and cleared, and then it got stuck on a shelf. We’ve reprocessed the bag for prints only,” Tracy said. “The only exemplars belong to Miss O’Riordan. We’ll get on hair and fiber again later today.”

  Tracy unzipped the bag.

  “I went poking around inside,” she said. “There’s a plastic insert on the bottom that flips up.”

  Tracy turned the backpack inside out. The inside flap was torn along one edge. “I looked inside here and found something. It was a section of a magazine cover.”

  “It was underneath?” Jessica asked.

  “It was slid inside along this tear,” Tracy said, pointing to the seam. The plastic lining had come away from the hard cardboard insert. “I’m inclined to believe Miss O’Riordan may have put it in there for safekeeping.”

  “Where is the magazine cover now?” Jessica asked.

  “It’s being processed for prints.” Tracy took out two photocopies of photographs, front and back of the evidence.

  The images were of about a third of a page of a magazine cover, torn diagonally. It was Seventeen Magazine, the May 2008 issue. Written on the back was a phone number. The last five numbers were obscured, perhaps with water damage, but the area code was clear enough.

  “Has Hell Rohmer seen this?” Jessica asked.

  “He gets it next,” Tracy said. “He’s already pacing upstairs.”

  Jessica picked up the photocopy, angled it toward the light.

  “Eight-five-six area code,” she said.

  “Eight-five-six,” Byrne echoed. “Camden.”

  THE FINGERPRINT LAB found three distinct sets of prints on the glossy surface of the magazine cover. One belonged to Caitlin O’Riordan. One exemplar was not in the system. One set—thumb and forefinger—were ten point exemplars. They ran the prints through a local database, as well as AFIS. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System was a national database used to match unknown prints against known, using either the newer Live Scan technologies—which employed a laser scanning device—or the old method of prints taken in ink.

  The third set rang every bell in the system. It belonged to a man named Ignacio Sanz. The detectives checked his name on PCIC and NCIC and found that Ignacio had a long sheet, had twice been arrested, tried, and convicted for gross sexual imposition and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He had done two stretches at Curran-Fromhold, the last being eighteen months, a sentence ending this past April.

  Jessica glanced at Byrne as they read the sheet. They were definitely of the same mind: Ignacio Sanz was a creep, a deviant, and he was on the street right around the time Caitlin O’Riordan was murdered in May.

  Byrne got on the phone, reached out to Sanz’s parole officer. Within an hour they had a home address and a work address.

  | THIRTY-EIGHT |

  THE SHRIMP DOCK WAS A SEAFOOD TAKE-OUT RESTAURANT IN EAST Camden, New Jersey, a slanted grease-box scaled in salmon-colored tile and torn, sea green awnings, nestled between a boarded-up Dunkin’ Donuts and a Dominican barber shop.

  Jessica and Byrne walked in, scanned the restaurant, then the area behind the counter. There was no sign of Ignacio Sanz. He wasn’t working the register, nor was he bussing tables or sweeping up.

  The service window was double-thick security plastic. Behind it stood a pretty young Hispanic girl in a blue and red tricot uniform and hat, looking about as bored as a human being could look and still register a pulse. She snapped her gum. Byrne showed her tin, even though it was unnecessary.

  “Ignacio around?” Byrne asked.

  The girl didn’t answer. That would’ve required the expending of energy. Instead, she nodded to a door next to the counter, the one marked EM YE S ON Y.

  Twenty seconds later, sufficient time to remind Byrne and Jessica just where they were, the girl buzzed them back.

  IGNACIO SANZ WASN’T on anybody’s list of babysitters. Now in his late twenties, a two-time loser, he was allegedly on the path to respectability. The state had gotten him a job working the fry baskets at the Shrimp Dock, and a room at a halfway house nearby.

  When Jessica and Byrne stepped into the back room of the restaurant, the first thing they noticed was that the door was wide open. The second thing they noticed was that a man—without question, Ignacio Sanz—was running across the back parking lot, full tilt.

  Jessica, who had dressed in one of her better suits—a nice two-button Tahari she had gotten from Macy’s—looked at her partner.

  Byrne pointed to his right leg. “Sciatica.”

  “Ah, shit.”

  By the time Jessica tackled Ignacio Sanz, he was halfway to Atlantic City.

  THEY WERE IN A SMALL, cramped space at the rear of the Shrimp Dock, in what passed for an employee break room. On the walls were curling posters for the tempting bill of fare: light blue haddock, gray coleslaw, hoary fries.

  Iggy was short and spindly, with a caved chest and acne-pitted cheeks. He seemed to be coated in a slick film of fish grease, giving his skin an unnatural sheen. He also had the smallest feet Jessica had ever seen on a grown man. He wore neon aqua cross-trainers and black silk dress socks. Jessica wondered if he was wearing women’s shoes.

  He also sported the same red and blue tricot smock the girl out front was wearing, but instead of a hat he wore a hairnet that reached down to just over his eyebrows. All of which was now covered with dust and gravel, due to his recent visit to the ground, courtesy of the Philadelphia Police Department.

  Byrne sat across from him. Jessica stood behind him. This did not sit well with Ignacio. He was afraid of Jessica. With good reason.

  “My name is Detective Byrne. I’m with Philly Homicide.” He pointed over Ignac
io’s shoulder. “This is my partner, Detective Balzano. You may remember her. She’s the one who bodychecked you against that Chevy van.”

  Ignacio sat stock-still.

  “I want you to give her twenty dollars,” Byrne said.

  Iggy looked punched. “What?”

  “You owe her a pair of pantyhose. Give her twenty dollars.”

  Jessica looked down. When she flipped Iggy onto the ground she tore a big hole in the right knee of her hose.

  “Pantyhose cost twenty dollars?” Iggy asked.

  Byrne stuck his face an inch from Iggy’s face. Iggy shrunk measurably. “Are you saying my partner doesn’t deserve the best?”

  Trembling, without another word, Iggy dug around in his pockets, came up with a wad of damp bills, counted them out. Fourteen dollars. He flattened them on the table, stacked them, then handed them to Jessica, who took them without hesitation, even though she wondered where the hell they had recently been.

  “You could, you know, come back for the rest later,” Iggy said. “I get paid today. I’ll have the rest later.”

  “Come back?” Byrne said. “What makes you think you’re not coming with us?”

  This had not occurred to Iggy. “But I didn’t do nothing.”

  Byrne laughed. “You think that matters to someone like me?”

  This also had not occurred to him. But the implications were far more serious. Iggy stared at the floor, remained silent.

  “Now, my partner is going to speak to you,” Byrne said. “I want you to give her your full attention and your full respect.”

  Byrne stood up, held the chair. Jessica sat down, her right knee poking through her torn pantyhose, thinking, Does anything look skankier than this?

  “I’m going to ask you some simple questions,” Jessica said. “And you’re going to tell me the truth. Right, Iggy?”

  It was clear that Ignacio Sanz had no idea what was coming his way. After a lifetime of crime, courts, cops, public defenders, jail, parole, probation, and rehab, it could be anything. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Jessica reached into her portfolio, put a folder on her lap.

  “First of all, we know all about you and Caitlin O’Riordan,” Jessica said. “So don’t even think about insulting our intelligence with a denial.” The truth was, they didn’t know anything of the sort. But with people like Iggy, this was the best approach. “This is not even an option.”

  “Who?”

  Jessica took out a photograph of Caitlin. She showed it to Iggy. “Caitlin Alice O’Riordan. Remember her?”

  Iggy looked at the picture. “I don’t know this girl.”

  “Look a little more closely.”

  Iggy did, opening his eyes wide, perhaps believing this would let in more information. He shook his head again. “No. I’ve never seen her. She could be anybody.”

  “No she can’t. That’s not possible. She has to be this person. She is this person. Or at least she was. You follow me?”

  Iggy bug-eyed for a few seconds, then nodded slowly.

  “Good. Here’s the 411. We have you, Iggy. We have you in Philly in May, out on the street. And the icing, the part with the little candy sprinkles, is that we also have a beautiful set of your fingerprints on something Caitlin had in her backpack.”

  Iggy reacted as if he had just grabbed a hot copper wire. He rose slowly from his chair, shuddering with panic. “Whatever she says I did, I didn’t do it, man,” he pleaded. “I swear on my mother’s eyes. My mother’s grave.”

  “Caitlin’s not saying anything. That’s because she’s dead. She’s been dead for four months. But you already know that, right?”

  “What?” Iggy screamed. “Oh no, no, no, no. Uh-uh.”

  “Well, here’s what I’m willing to do for you, Iggy. First off, I’m willing to cut your hospital stay by a hundred percent.”

  Iggy, already hyperventilating, began to breathe even faster. “My hospital stay?”

  “Yeah,” Jessica said. “What I mean by that is, if you don’t sit down right now, I’m going to break both of your arms. Sit … the fuck … down.”

  Iggy complied. Jessica picked up the magazine cover in the clear plastic evidence envelope. She held it up.

  “Tell me why your prints are on this magazine, Iggy. Start right now.”

  Iggy’s eyes darted side to side, vibrating, like a lemur’s. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I remember. It’s embezzled in my mind.”

  “Embezzled?”

  “Yeah. I found that magazine.”

  Jessica laughed. “So, let me ask you, did you find it in the big pile of guns, knives, crack, jewelry, and wallets, or the small one?”

  Iggy mangled his face again. Huh?

  “Where did you find it, Iggy?”

  “I found it in my house. It was my mother’s.”

  “This was your mother’s magazine?”

  Iggy shook his head. “It was her house. It was my sister’s magazine.”

  “This magazine belonged to your sister? She gave it to you?”

  “Well, no,” he said. “But we share, you know? We family and everything. I like to look at this magazine.”

  “Because there are teenaged girls in it?”

  Iggy just stared.

  “How did this magazine get into Caitlin O’Riordan’s backpack?”

  Iggy took a few moments, apparently calculating that this next answer was going to be crucial. The smell of hot, fishy grease began to fill the back room. The Shrimp Dock was gearing up for lunch. “I don’t know.”

  “We’re going to need to talk to your sister.”

  “I can help you with that,” Iggy said, snapping his fingers, suddenly full of vigor. “I can most definitely help you with that.”

  Jessica glanced at Byrne, wondering if they would spend the rest of the day driving around Camden in ninety-degree heat, looking for a phantom.

  “You’re saying you know where we can find your sister right now?” Jessica asked.

  “Absolutely,” Iggy said. He smiled. Jessica immediately wished he hadn’t. In addition to the five-car pileup that was his dental work, she caught a blast of his breath: a combo of menthol cigarettes and deep fried hush puppies. “She’s standing right behind you.”

  | THIRTY-NINE |

  FRANCESCA SANZWAS THE GIRL THEY HAD SEEN AT THE FRONT COUNTER. Standing closer to her, Jessica could now see she was not a mid-teenager, but rather eighteen or so. Coral lipstick, blue eye shadow. Street pretty. She was also four or five months pregnant.

  Jessica told the young woman why they were there, giving her the bare minimum of details. Jessica then showed her a picture of Caitlin O’Riordan. While Byrne called in a request for Francesca Sanz’s wants and warrants, Jessica and the young woman sat across from each other in a booth.

  “Have you ever met this girl?” Jessica asked.

  Francesca scrutinized the photo for a few moments. “Yeah. I met her.”

  “How do you know her?”

  Francesca chipped at a nail. “We were friends.”

  “You mean school friends? She was from the neighborhood? Something like that?”

  “Nah. Not like that.”

  Francesca did not elaborate. Jessica pressed. “Then like what?”

  A hesitation. “We met at the train station.”

  “Here in Camden?”

  “Nah,” she said. “In Philly. That real big one.”

  “Thirtieth Street?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When was this?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of months ago, I guess.”

  “A couple?”

  “Yeah,” she said. Jessica noticed that the girl had a tattoo on her right wrist, a tattoo of a white dove. “You know. A couple. Maybe more.”

  “I need you to be a little more specific about this, Francesca. It’s very important. Was it June? April?”

  Silence.

  “Could it have been May?”

  “Yeah,” Francesca said. “You know. It could have bee
n.” She did a little air math—counting something with her fingers in front of her face. “Yeah. May sounds right.”

  “So you’re saying you met her at the Thirtieth Street station in May of this year?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Jessica said. “Why were you at the train station? Were you going somewhere, coming from somewhere?”

  Francesca brewed an answer. “I was just getting something to eat.”

  “Do you have friends in that part of Philly? Family?”

  “No,” she said. “Not really.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Jessica said. “You went down to the river, crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge, made your way all the way across the city of Philadelphia, thirty or so blocks, just to get a hoagie and some Boardwalk fries? Is this what you’re saying?”

  Francesca nodded, but she would not make eye contact with Jessica. “What do you want me to say?”

  “The truth would be good.”

  Another few seconds. Francesca tapped her long nails on the scuffed Formica. Finally: “I was on the street, okay?”

  “You ran away from home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Jessica said. She took a moment, giving the girl some space. “I’m not judging, I’m asking.”

  “And I was using. I don’t do it no more, ’cause of the baby. But I had heard that kids used to hang around the station.”

  “Runaways?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I figured I could hook up.”

  Jessica put her notebook down. Francesca was starting to open up, and a cop making notes was intimidating. “Can I ask why you ran away from home?”

  Francesca laughed a wintry laugh. She worried the edge of a table menu, peeling back the plastic. “I don’t know. Why does anyone run away?”

  “There are a lot of possibilities,” Jessica said, knowing that there were really only a handful.

  “My mother, right? My mother is loca. To this day. Her and her pipehead boyfriends. That house is hell. She found out I was pregnant and she hit me.”

  “You were abused?”

  Another laugh. This one laced with irony. “I’m from East Camden, okay? I was born abused.”