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

by Richard Montanari

  He retrieved the message, looked at the LCD screen.

  It read: 910 JHOME.

  Byrne knew what it meant. It was a little-used code he had established a long time ago with Jessica. jhome meant she was at her house; 910 meant that she needed him, but it was not an emergency.

  That would be 911.

  Byrne got back into his car and headed to the Northeast.

  | FIFTY-TWO |

  SWANN AWOKE AT 3 AM. HE COULD NOT SLEEP. IT HAD BEEN THE SAME since he was a child. On the night before he and his father were to go on a tour, or even move between venues on a sunrise train, he found the anticipation to be overwhelming. Sleep would not find him.

  This would be such a day.

  He showered and shaved, dressed casually—perhaps an engineer preparing a survey in some wooded expanse, perhaps a junior high school principal about to give a holiday speech.

  He parked near Tacony Creek Park, in a small lot off Wyoming Avenue. They would be arriving at first light. Some may have even spent the night in the park.

  He looked at the screen of his cell phone. It was dark. Lilly would call. He was sure of it. But still, he had to be prepared if she did not.

  | FIFTY-THREE |

  JESSICA SAT ON HER PORCH. BEHIND HER, EVERY LIGHT IN THE HOUSE was blazing. The stereo inside blasted the Go-Gos.

  “Hey, partner!” she yelled.

  Oh, boy, Byrne thought. She’s hammered. The Go-Gos proved it. “Hey.”

  “You got my text message? That is so cool. God, I love technology.”

  “You okay?”

  Jessica butterflied a hand. “Pain-free.”

  “I can see that. Family okay?”

  “Vincent and Sophie are up at Vincent’s father’s house. I talked to them earlier. They went swimming. Sophie went off the low diving board. Her first time.” Jessica’s eyes misted. “I missed it.”

  There was a pint bottle of bourbon between her feet. It was two-thirds full. Byrne knew she hadn’t gotten this plastered on two drinks.

  “There’s got to be another casualty around here somewhere,” he said.

  Jessica hesitated for a moment, then pointed at the hedges to the left of the porch. A glint of moonlight shimmered off an empty bottle of Wild Turkey. Byrne plucked it from the shadows, stood it on the porch.

  “You know … you know how people say ‘life sucks,’ and how someone always says, right after that, ‘No one ever said life is supposed to be fair’?”

  “Yeah,” Byrne said. “I think I’ve heard that one.”

  “Well it’s fucking bullshit.”

  Byrne agreed, but he had to ask. “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is, people say life is fair all the time. Right? When you’re a kid they tell you that you can be anything you want to be. They tell you that if you work hard, the world is your oyster. You can overcome anything. Buckle down! Hang in there! Stay with it!”

  Byrne didn’t have much of an argument for this. “Well, yeah. They do say that.”

  Jessica went south, her mind veering into some new area. She took another slow sip. “What did these girls do to deserve this, Kevin?”

  “I don’t know.” Byrne wasn’t used to this dynamic. He was the melancholy drunk. She was the sane one. More than once—actually, more times than he could count—Jessica had listened to his inebriated ramblings, standing on some freezing street corner, standing on the banks of the river, standing in some steaming parking lot in Northern Liberties. He owed her. In many more ways than this. He listened.

  “I mean, they ran away from home? Is that what this is all about? That was their crime? Shit, I ran away once.”

  Byrne was shocked. Little Jessica Giovanni had run away from home? Strict Catholic, straight-A student, daughter of one of the most decorated cops in PPD history Jessica? “You did?”

  “Oh you bet I did, buddy. You fucking bet I did.” She took another dramatic, Days of Wine and Roses swig from the bottle, wiped off her mouth with her wrist. “I only got as far as Tenth and Washington,” she added. “But I did it.”

  She offered the pint to Byrne. He took it. For two reasons. One was that he didn’t mind having a drink. Two, it was probably a good idea to get the bottle away from Jessica. They fell silent for a while.

  “Why the hell do we do this?” Jessica finally asked, loud and clear.

  And there it was, Byrne thought. The question. Every homicide cop on the face of the earth asked it at one time or another. Some asked every day.

  “I don’t know,” Byrne said. “I guess it’s because we’re no good for anything else.”

  “Okay. Okay. Okay. I’ll buy that. But how do you know when it’s time to quit? That’s what I want to know. Huh? Is that in the handbook?”

  Byrne looked off into the night. He took a healthy quaff. He needed it for what he was about to say. “Last story of the night. Okay?”

  Jessica sat up straight, mimicking a five-year-old. A story.

  “Do you know a cop named Tommy Delgado?” Byrne asked.

  Jessica shook her head. “Never met him. I’ve heard the name, though. Vincent has brought him up a few times. Homicide?”

  Byrne nodded. “In the blood. One of the best ever. Remember the Manny Utrillo case?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Tommy cracked it. Walked into the unit one day with the piece of shit killer in irons. Walked him in like a prom date. Eight detectives were working the phones, tracking down leads on the case, Tommy Delgado walks the fucker in. Brought Danish for everyone in the other hand.”

  Byrne hit the Wild Turkey again, capped it.

  “So, anyway, we get called to a scene in Frankford. We weren’t the primaries, we were there to back up Tommy and his partner Mitch Driscoll. I was working with Jimmy then. I was in the unit for maybe three years. Still wet. I was still calling the scumbags ‘sir.’ ”

  Jessica laughed. She had only given up that practice recently.

  “Okay.”

  “This place was ugly. Job was even worse. The victim was an eighteen-month-old baby. Her so-called father had strangled her with a lamp cord.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Jesus wasn’t there that day, partner.” Byrne sat down next to Jessica. “Two hours in we’re wrapping it up. I mean, the guy copped to it on the scene. Not too much intrigue. Now, Jimmy and I are keeping a close eye on Tommy, because he’s looking a little shaky, right? Like he’s going to burn down the whole block, like he’s going to cap the first addict he sees on the street, just for drawing air. We’re standing on the porch, and I see Tommy staring at something on the ground. Mesmerized. I look down and I see what he’s looking at. Know what it was?”

  Jessica tried to imagine. Based on what Byrne had told her about the job, it couldn’t be a crucial piece of evidence—a shell casing, a bloody footprint. “What?”

  “A Cheerio.”

  At first Jessica thought she hadn’t heard him right, then soon realized she had. She nodded. She knew what he meant, knew where this was going. Cheerios were the universal toddler pacifiers. Cheerios were baby crack.

  “One Cheerio was sitting on this shitty, Astroturf porch, and Tommy Delgado can’t take his eyes off it. Now, keep in mind, here was a man who had seen it all. Two tours in Nam, twenty-five plus on the job. A few minutes later he walks to the back of the building, crying his eyes out. I checked on him, just to make sure he didn’t have his piece out, but there he was, just sitting on this bench, sobbing. Broke my heart, but I didn’t approach him.

  “That one thing snapped him in half, Jess. One Cheerio. He was never the same after that.”

  “Do you know what happened to him?”

  Byrne took a few moments, shrugged. “He worked another few years, took his thirty. But he was just sleepwalking the job, you know? Bringing up the rear, hauling water.”

  They fell silent for a full minute.

  “When did it all go to crap, Kevin?”

  Byrne had his ideas on this. “I think it was when box
es of pasta went from sixteen ounces to twelve ounces and nobody told us.”

  Jessica looked fallen. “They did?”

  Byrne nodded.

  “Son of a bitch. No wonder I’m always hungry.”

  Byrne glanced at his watch. “Want to get some breakfast?”

  Jessica looked at the black, star-dotted sky. “At night?”

  “Coffee first.” He helped Jessica to her feet, and marched her into the kitchen.

  | FIFTY-FOUR |

  LILLY WALKED THE STREETS. HER STOMACH RUMBLED. SHE HAD NEVER been this exhausted in her life. And still she walked. Spruce, Walnut, Locust, Sansom, Chestnut, Market. Up and down and across. She lingered for a while on Rittenhouse Square. She watched the city yawn and stretch and come awake. She watched the medical personnel arriving at Jefferson, the delivery trucks bringing the day’s news, the day’s bagels; she watched the homeless stir in doorways; she watched the cabs and the cops, two groups who knew no time.

  She walked, her treasure in hand.

  When she was twelve or so she had gone to a house party. As she was about to leave, her friend Roz slipped her a huge bud of weed, but she’d had nowhere to put it, no foil or plastic or anything. So she walked all the way home with it pinched between her thumb and forefinger, hanging on to it for dear life. She was not going to lose it. She walked more than two miles, cutting through Culver Park, across the reservoir, across the tracks. Somehow she made it home, her riches intact and whole, and dropped it into an empty pill vial with no small hum of accomplishment.

  She had something even more important than that in her hand now. She couldn’t even bring herself to put it in her pocket. She needed the feel of it against her skin.

  She had his phone number. He was going to help her.

  And so she walked, from Front Street to Broad Street, until she could walk no more. She sat on one of those big concrete planters.

  She waited for the sun.

  | FIFTY-FIVE |

  THE MURDERS WERE THE LEAD STORY OF THE DAY. IT WAS ABOVE THE fold in the Inquirer, on the front page of the Daily News. It led all three network affiliate television broadcasts. It was featured on every local news website.

  The lab was fast-tracking every piece of forensic evidence. A partial shoe print had been lifted off the roof where Katja had been posed on the wooden chair. The chair itself had yielded a number of friction ridge prints, which were being fed through AFIS. The swords were identified as a homemade version of a double-wide épée, the type commonly used in fencing. They yielded no prints.

  Katja’s mother, Birta Dovic, was driving in from Connecticut. Two investigators from the Connecticut state police were interviewing Katja’s friends and classmates. Photographs of the three victims were now on the dashboards of every sector car in the city. Patrol officers were instructed to ask everyone they encountered if they had ever seen them.

  The investigation had reached a whirlwind pace, but the one thing it had not produced, the one thing they all sought, was still eluding them.

  They needed a name.

  AT JUST AFTER 8:00 AM Josh Bontrager came running into the duty room, out of breath.

  “What’s up?” Jessica asked. Her head felt like it was made of cast iron. She’d gotten three hours’ sleep and driven into the city in a fog. It reminded her of her college days.

  Bontrager held up a hand. He couldn’t catch his wind.

  “Take it easy, Josh.”

  Bontrager nodded.

  “Water?”

  Another nod.

  Jessica handed him a bottle. He chugged a full bottle of Aquafina. Deep breath. Then: “A woman called 911. She was in the park.”

  “What park? Fairmount Park?” Byrne asked.

  “Tacony Creek,” Josh said, nearly recovered. “You know the one I mean?”

  Everyone did. Tacony Creek Park, which was technically part of the Fairmount Park system, was a 300-acre park that ran along the Tacony Creek, connecting Frankford Creek in the south to Cheltenham Township in the north. It skirted a very densely populated area in North Philadelphia.

  “Anyway, the woman calls in, says she saw a man—a well-dressed white man—let a teenage girl get into his car. It was a black Acura. She said the whole thing looked a little funny, so she kept watching them. After a few seconds, she said she saw the man and the girl fighting in the car.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Well, I guess while the woman was on the line with 911 a sector car drove by. She hung up, flagged it down, told the officer what was going on.”

  “Did she get a plate?”

  “Better than that. She said the car went up an alley and the sector car blocked it in. It’s a dead end.”

  “What are you saying, we have the car?” Jessica asked.

  “Not only do we have the car,” Bontrager said. He raised his empty bottle of spring water, like a toast. “We’ve got the guy.”

  | FIFTY-SIX |

  SWANN SAT ON THE CURB. HE CALMED HIMSELF. AS A BOY HE HAD BEEN in chains many times.

  He reached over with his left hand, slid over the back of his watch, removed the thin steel needle. Nearby, the girl sat crying in the back of the patrol car. A very nervous young officer leaned against the trunk.

  Swann rocked gently to one side, then the other. “Officer, I’m afraid you’ve gotten these cuffs on far too tightly. I’m losing the feeling in both my arms.”

  At first the officer pretended not to hear him.

  “Officer?”

  The young man looked up the alleyway, then reluctantly walked over, unsnapping his holster. “If you try anything, I swear to God I will mace you in the face. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Roll onto your knees and stand up.”

  In one graceful move Swann rose. He dropped the handcuffs to the ground, then pulled the officer’s weapon out of its holster. He leveled it at the young man’s head.

  “Don’t!” the officer screamed. “Oh God Jesus don’t.” He closed his eyes, waiting for the click, the pain, the dark.

  “Cuff yourself to the front wheel. Do it now.”

  The young man grabbed the cuffs, did as he was told. The girl in the back seat began to cry. Swann took the handcuff keys from the officer’s belt, then took a few steps away. He ejected the magazine from the weapon, racked the slide. Empty now. He threw the magazine and keys as far as he could. He leaned close to the young man’s ear. “I’m sorry for all this. I would never have hurt you.”

  He held up the weapon. “You will find this in a sewer on Castor Avenue.”

  Swann smoothed his clothing. He grabbed his bag from the backseat of the black car, walked up the alley, and was gone.

  | FIFTY-SEVEN |

  TWO SECTOR CARS AND TWO DETECTIVE CARS ROARED TO A HALT AT THE same moment. Jessica and Byrne hit the ground running. Behind them were Josh Bontrager and Dre Curtis.

  They arrived to find a disturbing tableau. A sector car was at the mouth of the alley between two blocks of row houses. In front of it was a black Acura TSX. A young officer was handcuffed to one of the spokes of the right front aluminum alloy wheel. In the backseat of the Acura was a young girl, perhaps sixteen. Her face was streaked with mascara tears.

  All four detectives drew their weapons, held them at their sides.

  “Where is he?” Byrne asked the officer.

  “He’s gone.” The young man’s shame was palpable. He slammed his free hand into the front fender.

  “Which way?”

  The officer pointed east, toward Castor Avenue.

  “How long ago?”

  “Two minutes, max.”

  “Describe him.”

  The officer described the man as a white male, thirties, blue and brown, thick mustache, medium build, no distinguishing marks or scars. He wore a tan windbreaker, black Docker-style pants, black hikers.

  “Is he armed?” Byrne asked.

  “He took my weapon. He said he was going to dump it on Castor. He ejected the mag
first.”

  Byrne glanced at two of the four uniformed officers. He pointed them in the opposite direction. If their guy said he’d go east, he’d go west. They were off in an instant.

  While Jessica got out her keys and unlocked the handcuffs, Dre Curtis got on his handset. “Suspect is not in custody,” he said. “Repeat, suspect is not 10-15.”

  “Put in a call to K-9,” Byrne said.

  “We need some warm bodies down here,” Dre Curtis continued. “We need a search team now. We need K-9.”

  The officer, a two-year rookie named Randy Sweetin, described what happened. He said he was patrolling, and a woman came across Wyoming Avenue, waving her hands. She told him that she saw a man talking to a teenage girl. She thought it looked funny, so she flagged him down.

  “You’re saying the cuffs on him were secure?” Byrne asked.

  “They were secure. I’m sure of it.”

  Josh Bontrager approached. “I called in the plates. Stolen off a black Acura in long-term parking at the airport.”

  “When?” Byrne asked.

  “Three days ago.”

  “Shit.”

  They would have to identify the vehicle by its VIN.

  THE GIRL HAD STOPPED CRYING for the moment. She sat on the back of a detective car, a ball of damp tissues in her hands. Someone had brought her a can of Mountain Dew. It sat unopened next to her.

  She said her name was Abigail Noonan. She was sixteen. They had not yet pressed her on ID, address, or Social Security number. As a rule, street kids were only truthful about one out of three.

  “Are you okay?” Jessica asked.

  The girl nodded.

  “Is there anything else we can get you right now?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I don’t know. He was just, like, parked there, listening to the radio, okay?”