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

by Richard Montanari

  When Jessica and Byrne arrived, the other personnel deferred to them. This could only mean one thing. The homicide that had occurred here was clearly connected to their investigations.

  When Jessica opened the flap on the plastic tent, she knew it to be true. She felt the gorge rise in her throat. In front of her was a girl, no more than seventeen, with long dark hair, deep hazel eyes. She wore a thin black sweater and blue jeans, a pair of sandals on her small feet. None of this made her much different from any of the other young murder victims Jessica had seen in her career. What set this girl apart, what tied her irrevocably to the case she and her partner were working on, was the manner in which she was killed.

  Protruding from the girl’s chest and abdomen were seven steel swords.

  JESSICA STARED at the girl’s pallid face. It was clear that in life she had been exotically pretty, but here, on a blistering rooftop in North Philadelphia, drained of all her blood, she looked almost mummified.

  The good news, for the investigators, was that according to the ME’s office this victim had been dead little more than twenty-four hours. It was the closest they had come to the Collector. This was no cold case. This time they could amass evidence unadulterated by time. The very scent and presence of the murderer lingered.

  Jessica snapped on a pair of gloves, stepped closer to the body. She gently examined the girl’s hands. Her nails had recently been manicured and painted. The color was a deep red. Jessica looked at her own nails through the latex, and wondered if she and the victim had been sitting in a manicurist’s chair at the same time.

  Even though she was seated, Jessica determined that the girl was about five-three, less than a hundred pounds. She sniffed the girl’s hair. It smelled of mint. It had been recently shampooed.

  Nicci Malone stepped onto the roof, saw Jessica.

  “We’ve got an ID,” Nicci said.

  She handed Jessica an FBI printout. The girl’s name was Katja Dovic. She was seventeen. She had last been seen at her house in New Canaan, Connecticut, on June twenty-sixth.

  Dr. Tom Weyrich approached.

  “I take it this is not the primary scene,” Jessica said.

  Weyrich shook his head. “No. Wherever she was killed she bled out, and was cleaned up. The hearts stops, that’s it. The dead don’t bleed.” He paused for a moment. Jessica knew him to be a man not given to hyperbole or arch comment. “And, as bad as that is, it gets worse.” He pointed to one of the slices in the girl’s sweater. “It looks like she was run through with these swords at the primary scene, they were removed, and reinserted here. This guy re-created the murder on this rooftop.”

  Jessica tried to wrap her mind around the image of someone stabbing this girl with seven swords, removing them, transporting the body, and doing it all over again.

  While Nicci went off to advise the other investigators on the ID, Byrne sidled silently next to Jessica. They stood this way while the mechanics of a murder investigation swirled around them.

  “Why is he doing this, Kevin?”

  “There’s a reason,” Byrne said. “There’s a pattern. It looks random, but it isn’t. We’ll find it, and we’ll fucking put him down.”

  “Now there’s three girls. Three methods. Three different dump sites.”

  “All in the Badlands, though. All runaways.”

  Jessica shook her head. “How do we warn these kids when they don’t want to be found?”

  There was no answer.

  | FORTY-SEVEN |

  LILLY HAD STARTED TALKING AND SHE JUST COULDN’T SEEM TO STOP herself. When she stopped, she felt five pounds lighter. She also felt like crying. She probably did. She couldn’t remember. It was kind of a fog.

  Lilly had expected one of two reactions from the man. She expected him either to turn on his heels and walk away from her, or call the police.

  He did neither. Instead, he was silent for a few moments.

  He said he would help her, but only if this was something she really wanted to do. He told her to sleep on it, but only for one night. He said the best decisions in life are made after waiting twenty-four hours, never longer. He then gave her one hundred dollars and his phone number. She promised to call him one way or another. She never broke a promise.

  She went back to the hostel. It was as good a place as any.

  Despite the early hour, despite the insanity of her day, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she put her head down on a pillow and fell fast asleep.

  | FORTY-EIGHT |

  JESSICA STOOD OUTSIDE EVE GALVEZ’S APARTMENT. IT WAS A SMALL suite on the third floor of a nondescript, blocky brick building on Bustleton Avenue.

  She stepped inside, and almost turned the lights on. But then she thought that doing so might be disrespectful. The last time Eve left these rooms she had every intention of returning.

  Jessica danced the beam of the flashlight around the space. There was a card table in the dining area, one folding chair, a loveseat in the living room, a pair of end tables. There were no prints or framed posters on the wall, no houseplants, no area rugs. Black fingerprint powder claimed every surface.

  She stepped into the bedroom. There was a double bed on a frame, no footboard or headboard. There was a dresser, but no mirror. Jimmy Valentine was right. Eve was a Spartan. The nightstand next to the bed held a cheap lamp and what looked like a photo cube. Jessica glanced in the closet: a pair of dresses, a pair of skirts. Black and navy blue. A pair of white blouses. They’d all been taken off the hangers, searched, and carelessly replaced. Jessica reached inside, smoothed the clothing, more out of habit than anything else.

  The entire apartment was tidy, almost sterile. It seemed that Eve Galvez didn’t so much live here as stay here.

  Jessica crossed the bedroom, picked up the photo cube. There were pictures on all six sides. One photo showed a picture of Eve at five or so, standing next to her brother on a beach. There was another that had to be Eve’s mother. They had the same eyes, the same cheekbones. One looked like Eve in, perhaps, eleventh grade. She was heavier in this snapshot than the others. Jessica turned it over, looked again at all sides. There were no photographs of Eve’s father.

  Out of habit, or training, or just nosiness that had at least something to do with her becoming a police officer to begin with, Jessica shook the cube. Something inside rattled. She shook it again. The rattle was louder. There was something inside.

  It took a few moments, but she found the way to open it. Inside was a ball of tissue and a plastic object, perhaps two inches long by a half inch wide. Jessica put her flashlight beam on it.

  It was a USB flash drive, the kind that plugs into a port on a computer. It was not labeled or marked in any way. Jessica saw the print powder on the cube, so she knew someone at CSU had touched this. She looked inside the cube again. The flash drive had been wrapped in the tissue. Jessica understood. Eve had hidden it in there and put in the tissue so it would not rattle. She had done this for the possibility of a moment just such as this.

  Against her better judgment—in fact, against all the judgment she had—she slipped the flash drive into her pocket, and clicked off her flashlight.

  Five minutes later, leaving the apartment virtually the way she had found it, she headed home.

  AN HOUR LATER Jessica sat in the bathtub.

  It was Saturday. Vincent had two days off. He had taken Sophie to visit his parents. They would be back Sunday afternoon.

  The house had been ghostly quiet, so she had taken her iPod into the tub. When she’d gotten home she’d plugged Eve’s flash drive into her desktop computer, and found that there were a few dozen mp3s on it, mostly songs by artists of whom Jessica had never heard. She added some them to her iTunes library.

  Her Glock sat on the edge of the sink, right next to the tumbler containing three inches of Wild Turkey.

  Jessica turned the hot water on again. It was already almost scalding in the tub, but she couldn’t seem to get it hot enough. She wanted the memo
ry of Katja Dovic, and Monica Renzi, and Caitlin O’Riordan to wash off. She felt as if she would never be clean again.

  EVE GALVEZ’S MUSIC was a mix of pop, salsa, tejano, danzón—a sort of old-time formal Cuban dance music—and something called huayño. Good stuff. New stuff. Different stuff. Jessica listened to a few songs by someone named Marisa Monte. She decided to add the rest of the songs to her iPod.

  She got out of the tub, threw on her big fluffy robe and went into the small room off the kitchen they used as a computer room. And it was small. Room enough for a table, chair, and a G5 computer. She poured herself another inch, sat down, selected the flash drive. It was then that she noticed a folder she hadn’t seen, a folder labeled vademecum. She double-clicked it.

  A few moments later, the screen displayed more than two hundred files. These were not system files, nor were they music files. They were Eve Galvez’s personal files. Jessica looked at the extensions. All of them were .jpg files. Graphics.

  None of the files were named, just numbered, starting with one hundred.

  Jessica clicked on the first file. She found that she was holding her breath as the hard drive turned, launching Preview, the default graphic display program she used on her computer. This was, after all, a picture of some kind, and she wasn’t all that sure it was something she wanted to see. Or should see.

  A moment later, when the graphic showed up the screen, it was probably the last thing Jessica expected. It was the scanned image of a piece of paper, a yellowed, three-holed piece of notebook paper with blue lines, something akin to a leaf from a child’s school composition book. On it was a young woman’s back-slanted, loopy handwriting.

  Jessica scrolled to the top of the file. When she saw the handwritten date, her heart began to race.

  SEPTEMBER 3, 1988.

  It was Eve Galvez’s diary.

  | FORTY-NINE |

  SEPTEMBER 3, 1988

  I hide.

  I hide because I know his anger. I hide because it took more than six months to heal the last time I saw this much rage in his eyes. The bones in my right arm, even now, tell me of a coming rainstorm. I hide because my mother cannot help me, not with her pills and her lovers; nor can my brother, my sweet brother who once stood up to him and paid so dearly. I hide because, not to hide, could very easily mean the end of me, the final punctuation of my short story.

  I hear him in the foyer of the house, now, his huge boots on the quarry tile. He does not know about this secret place, this rabbit hole which has been my salvation so many times, this dusty sanctuary beneath the stairs. He does not know about this diary. If he ever found these words, I don’t know what he would do.

  The drink has taken over his mind, and made it a house of red mirrors where he cannot see me. He can only see himself, his own monstrous face in the glass, reflected a thousand times over like some uncontrollable army.

  I hear him walking up the stairs, just above me, calling my name. It won’t be long until he finds me. No secret can remain so forever.

  I am afraid. I am afraid of Arturo Emmanuel Galvez. My father.

  I may never make another entry in this journal.

  And, dearest diary, if I do not, if I never speak to you again, I just wanted you to know why I do what I do.

  I hide.

  AUGUST 1, 1990

  There is a place I go, a place that exists only behind my eyes. It all started when I was ten years old. A light in the heavens. More like a yellow moon, perhaps, a soft yellow moon in an aluminum sky. Heaven’s porch light.

  Soon the moon becomes a face. A devil’s face.

  JANUARY 22, 1992

  I left yesterday. I hitchhiked along Frankford Avenue for awhile, caught a few good rides. One guy wanted to take me to Florida with him. If he hadn’t looked like Freddy Krueger I might have considered it. Even still I considered it. Anything to get away from Dad.

  I am sitting on the steps at the art museum. It is hard to believe that I have lived in Philadelphia most of my life, and I have never been here. It is another world.

  Enrique will be in this place one day. He will paint pictures that will make the world laugh and think and cry. He will be famous.

  JULY 23, 1995

  I still hide. I hide from my life, my obligations. I watch from afar.

  Those tiny fingers. Those dark eyes.

  These are my days of grace.

  MAY 3, 2006

  Nobody who is truly happy is an alcoholic or a drug addict. These things are mutually exclusive. Drugs are what you do instead of loving someone.

  JUNE 2, 2008

  I walk the Badlands. The nights here are made of broken glass, broken people. I carry two firearms now—one is my service weapon, a Glock 17. Full mag, plus a round in the chamber. There is no safety. I carry it in a holster on my hip.

  The other weapon is a .25-caliber Beretta. I have an ankle rig for it, but it fits nicely into the palm of my hand. I do not enter a convenience store without it palmed. I do not walk the streets without my finger on the trigger. When I drive, even through Center City, its weight is familiar on my right thigh. It is always within reach. It is part of me now.

  __________

  I am drinking too much. I am not sleeping. The alarm sounds at six. A shot before I can face the shower, the coffee, the mirror. No breakfast. Remember breakfast? Bagels and juice with Jimmy Valentine? Remember laughter?

  All I want is one good night’s sleep. I would trade everything I have for one night’s sleep. I would trade my life for the sanctity of slumber, the sanction of rest.

  Graciella mi amor. I have nothing. Not anymore.

  I walk the Badlands, searching, dying, asking.

  I am asking to be found.

  Find me.

  | FIFTY |

  THE RAIN CAME AT MIDNIGHT. AT FIRST IT WAS AN UNREPENTANT downpour, thick bulbs of water smashing against the pavement, the buildings, the grateful city. In time, it relented. It was now a thin drizzle. The asphalt steamed. With the pitted road, the rusted and abandoned hulks of old vehicles, the flickering neon, it looked like an alien landscape. Traffic was light on Kensington, the few cars taking advantage of the free car wash, the removal of the dust of a hot, dry August. Five styles of rap pounded in the distance.

  Jessica had read more than twenty of Eve Galvez’s diary entries. She discovered early on in her reading that the files were not in any order. Eve as a child, Eve as an adult, Eve as a teenager. Jessica read them in the order in which they were scanned. There were still at least a hundred more.

  Jessica’s tears had come after reading just a few. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. Eve was abused. Her father was monstrous. Eve was a runaway.

  It was all a continuum of death—Monica Renzi, Caitlin O’Riordan, Katja Dovic, Eve Galvez.

  Jessica stood in a doorway, surveyed the area. It was one of the worst parts of the city. Eve Galvez had walked these streets at night. Had she paid the price for it?

  Jessica put the earbuds in her ears. She looked at the backlighted LCD screen, scrolled down, selected a song. The beat began to build. She felt the comforting weight of the Tomcat 32 in her pancake holster. Eve Galvez had carried two weapons. It was probably not a bad idea.

  Jessica pulled up the hood on her rain slicker. She looked left, right. She was alone. For the moment.

  Sophie, my love. Graciella, mi amor.

  The music matched her heartbeat. She stepped out onto the sidewalk, and began to run.

  Into the Badlands.

  | FIFTY-ONE |

  THE TENTH FLOOR OF THE DENISON SMELLED LIKE WET SMOKE, WET lumber, wet dog. Byrne was six bourbons into his plot, and should be home. He should be sleeping.

  But here he was. At Laura Somerville’s apartment. The walls in the hallway were still warm. The wallpaper was peeled and cracked, some of it charred.

  He pulled out his knife, slit the seal on the door, picked the lock, and entered the apartment.

  The odor of burned upholstery and paper was overwhelmin
g. Byrne put his tie over his mouth and nose. He had an old friend, Bobby Dotrice, who had retired from the PFD fifteen years earlier, and Byrne would swear under oath that man still smelled like smoke. Bobby had all new clothes, a new car, a new wife, even a new house. It never left you.

  Byrne wondered if he smelled like the dead.

  Even though the tenants of the building had been reassured there was no structural damage, Byrne stepped lightly through the space, his Maglite bouncing on overturned tables, chairs, bookcases. He wondered what had done more damage, the fire or the fire brigade.

  He stood before the partially opened bedroom door. It seemed a lifetime ago he had been there. He pushed into the bedroom.

  The window had been boarded up. The mattress and box spring were gone, as was the dresser. He saw blackened Scrabble tiles all over the room.

  He opened the closet. It was mostly untouched, except for the water damage. On one side was a canvas garment bag. Byrne unzipped it, peered inside. Old dresses. Very old, very theatrical. She—

  —sees the countryside from a cracked and taped truck window … she knows …

  Byrne shut his eyes to the pain in his head.

  She knows …

  HE LOOKED at the top shelf. The strongbox was still there. He put his flashlight under his arm, took down the box. It was warm. There was no latch. The box was perfectly smooth. He shook it. Something shifted inside. It sounded like paper.

  When Byrne left the apartment, just a few minutes later, he took the box with him. Out in the hallway he closed the door, reached into his pocket, took out a fresh police seal. He peeled off the back, smoothed it over the doorjamb, and pocketed the backing.

  He drove back to South Philly.

  AS HE STEPPED onto the sidewalk in front of his apartment building his phone beeped. It was a text message. Before reading the message, Byrne looked at his watch. It was 2:45 AM. Just about the only person who sent him text messages was Colleen. But not in the middle of the night.