Broken Angels jbakb-3

by Richard Montanari

  Locally, between marine-supply and pool-supply retailers in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware, there were dozens of dealers who carried this type of rope. The minute Jessica had the final report from the lab, detailing a type and model, she would get on the phone.

  At just after eleven, Byrne came into the duty room. He had the 911 tape of the call-in of Kristina's body. THE AUDIO VISUAL Unit of the PPD was located in the basement of the Roundhouse. Its main purview was to supply A/V equipment to the department as needed-cameras, video equipment, recording and surveillance devices-as well as monitor the local television and radio channels for important information the department could use.

  The unit also aided in investigating surveillance tapes and audiovisual evidence.

  Officer Mateo Fuentes was a veteran of the unit. He had been instrumental in cracking a recent case where a psychopath with a movie fetish had been terrorizing the city. In his thirties, precise and meticulous in his work, strangely scrupulous with his grammar, nobody in the AV unit was better at finding the hidden truth in an electronic recording.

  Jessica and Byrne entered the control room.

  "What do we have, Detectives?" Mateo asked.

  "Anonymous 911 call," Byrne said. He handed Mateo the audiocas- sette.

  "No such thing," Mateo replied. He slipped the cassette into a machine. "I take it there was no caller ID?"

  "No," Byrne said. "It looks like it was a terminated cell."

  In most states, whenever a citizen calls 911 they give up their proprietary right to privacy. Even if you have a block on your phone-which prevents most people who receive your calls from seeing your number on their caller ID-the police-department radio unit and dispatchers can still see your number. With a few exceptions. One of them is a 911 call from a terminated cell. When cell phones are turned off-for nonpayment, or perhaps because the subscriber has moved to a new number- the 911 capabilities remain. Unfortunately for investigators, the ability to trace the number does not.

  Mateo hit PLAY on the tape machine.

  "Philadelphia Police, Operator 204, how can I help you?" answered the operator.

  "There's… there's a dead body. It's behind the old auto parts warehouse on Flat Rock Road."

  Click. That was the extent of the recording.

  "Hmmm," Mateo said. "Not exactly long-winded." He hit STOP. Then REWIND. He played it again. When it was finished, he rewound the tape and played it a third time, cocking his head to the speakers. He hit STOP.

  "Man or woman?" Byrne asked.

  "Man," Mateo replied.

  "Are you sure?"

  Mateo turned, glared.

  "Okay," Byrne said.

  "He's in a car or a small space. No echo, good acoustics, no background hiss."

  Mateo played the tape again. He adjusted a few dials. "Hear that?"

  There was music in the background. Very faint, but there. "I hear something," Byrne said.

  Rewind. A few more adjustments. Less hiss. A melody emerged.

  "Radio?" Jessica asked.

  "Maybe," Mateo said. "Or a CD."

  "Play it again," Byrne said.

  Mateo rewound the tape, fed it into another deck. "Let me digitize it."

  The AV Unit had an ever-expanding arsenal of audio forensic software with which they could not only clean up the sound of an existing audio file, but also separate the tracks of a recording, thereby isolating them for closer scrutiny.

  A few minutes later Mateo was on a laptop. The 911 audio files were now a series of green and black spikes on the screen. Mateo clicked PLAY, adjusted the volume. This time the melody in the background was clearer, more distinct.

  "I know this song," Mateo said. He played it again, adjusting slide controls, bringing the voice down to a barely audible level. Mateo then plugged in a pair of headphones, slipped them on. He closed his eyes, listened. He played the file again. "Got it." He opened his eyes, pulled off the headphones. "The name of the song is 'I Want You.' By Savage Garden."

  Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance. "Who?" Byrne asked.

  "Savage Garden. Australian pop duo. They were big in the late nineties. Well, medium-big. That song is from 1997 or 1998. Fair-sized hit then."

  "How do you know all this?" Byrne asked.

  Mateo glared again. "My life is not all Channel 6 Action News and McGruff videos, Detective. I happen to be a very social individual."

  "What's your take on the caller?" Jessica asked.

  "I'll need to run it some more, but I can tell you that this Savage Garden song doesn't get much airplay anymore, so it probably wasn't the radio," Mateo said. "Unless it was an oldies station."

  "Ninety-seven is oldies?" Byrne asked.

  "Deal with it, pops."

  "Man."

  "If the person who made the call has the CD, and is still playing it, they are probably under forty," Mateo said. "I'd guess thirty, maybe even twenty-five, give or take."

  "Anything else?"

  "Well, you can tell by the way he says the word 'there's' twice that he was nervous about calling. He probably rehearsed it a bunch of times."

  "You're a genius, Mateo," Jessica said. "We owe you."

  "And here it is, almost Christmas, with only a day or so left to shop for me."

  Jessica, Byrne, and Josh Bontrager stood outside the control room.

  "Whoever called knows it was once an auto parts warehouse," Jessica said.

  "Which means he is probably from the area," Bontrager said.

  "Which narrows it down to about thirty thousand people."

  "Yeah, but how many of them listen to Savage Garbage?" Byrne asked.

  "Garden," Bontrager said.

  "Whatever."

  "Why don't I hit some of the bigger stores-Best Buy, Borders?" Bontrager asked. "Maybe this guy asked for the CD recently. Maybe someone will remember."

  "Good idea," Byrne said.

  Bontrager beamed. He grabbed his coat. "I'm working with Detectives Shepherd and Palladino today. If something breaks, I'll call you later."

  A minute after Bontrager left, an officer poked his head into the room. "Detective Byrne?"

  "Yeah."

  "There's someone upstairs to see you."

  When Jessica and Byrne walked into the lobby of the Roundhouse they saw a diminutive Asian woman, clearly out of her element. She wore a visitor's ID badge. As they got closer Jessica recognized the woman as Mrs. Tran, the woman from the All-City Launderette. "Mrs. Tran," Byrne said. "What can we do for you?" "My father found this," she said.

  She reached into her tote bag, held up a magazine. It was last month's issue of Dance Magazine. "He says she left it. She was reading it that night."

  "By 'she' you mean Kristina Jakos? The woman we asked you about?" "Yes," she said. "That blond lady. Maybe this will help you." Jessica gripped the magazine by its edges. They'd brush it for prints. "Where did he find this?" Jessica asked. "It was on top of dryers."

  Jessica carefully flipped through the pages, making her way to the back of the magazine. On one of the pages-a full-page ad for Volkswagen, an ad made up of mostly white space-there was an elaborate web of doodles: phrases, words, drawings, names, symbols. It appeared that Kristina, or whoever had done the drawings, had doodled for hours.

  "Your father is sure that Kristina Jakos was reading this magazine?" Jessica asked.

  "Yes," Mrs. Tran said. "You want me to get him? He's in the car. You could ask again."

  "No," Jessica said. "That's okay."

  Upstairs, in the duty room of the homicide unit, Byrne pored over the magazine page with the drawings. Many of the words were written in the Cyrillic alphabet, in what he figured was Ukrainian. He already had a call in to a detective he knew from Northeast, a young guy named Nathan Bykovsky whose parents came from Russia. In addition to the words and phrases, there were drawings of small houses, three- dimensional hearts, pyramids. There were also a few sketches of dresses, although nothing resembling the vintage-style dress Kristina Jakos wore in d
eath.

  Byrne got the call from Nate Bykovsky, then faxed the page. Nate called him back immediately.

  "What is this about?" Nate asked.

  Detectives never had a problem with another cop reaching out. Still, by nature, they liked to know the play. Byrne told him.

  "I believe this is Ukrainian," Nate said.

  "Can you read it?"

  "Mostly. My family is from Belarus. The Cyrillic alphabet is shared by many languages-Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian. They are similar, but some symbols are not used by the others."

  "Any idea what this says?"

  "Well, two of the words-the two written above the hood of the car in the photograph-are illegible," Nate said. "Below them she has written the word 'love' twice. At the bottom, the most legible words on the page, she has written a phrase."

  "What's that?"

  " 'I am sorry.' "

  "I am sorry?"

  "Yes."

  Sorry, Byrne wondered. Sorry for what?

  "The rest are individual letters."

  "They don't spell anything out?" Byrne asked.

  "Not that I can see," Nate said. "I will write them out in order, top to bottom, and fax them back to you. Maybe they add up to something."

  "Thanks, Nate."

  "Any time."

  Byrne scanned the page again.

  Love.

  I'm sorry.

  In addition to the words and letters and drawings there was one recurring image, a succession of numbers that were drawn in an ever- decreasing spiral. It looked to be a series of ten numbers. The drawing was on the page three times. Byrne took the page over to the copy machine. He positioned it on the glass, adjusted the settings to increase the size to three times that of the original. When the page emerged he saw that he had been right. The first three numbers were 215. It was a local phone number. He picked up a phone, dialed the number. When someone answered, Byrne apologized for dialing wrong. He hung up, his pulse quickening. They had a direction.

  "Jess," he said. He grabbed his coat.

  "What's up?"

  "Let's take a ride."

  "Where to?"

  Byrne was nearly out the door. "A club called Stiletto."

  "Want me to get an address?" Jessica asked, grabbing a two-way radio, hurrying to keep up.

  "No. I know where it is."

  "Okay. Why are we going there?"

  They reached the elevators. Byrne punched the button, paced. "It's owned by a guy named Callum Blackburn."

  "Never heard of him."

  "Kristina Jakos doodled his phone number in that magazine three times."

  "And you know this guy?"

  "Yeah."

  "How so?" Jessica asked.

  Byrne stepped into the elevator car, held the door. "I helped put him in prison nearly twenty years ago."

  24

  There was an emperor of China and he lived in the most magnificent palace in the world. A nightingale lived nearby, in the great forest that ran to the sea, and people came from all over the world to hear it sing. Everyone marveled at the bird's beautiful song. The bird became so famous that when people met each other on the street one would say "nightin" and the other would say "gale."

  Moon has heard the nightingale's song. He has watched her for many days. Not long ago he sat in the dark, surrounded by others, lost in the wonder of the music. Her voice had been pure and magical and lilting, the sound of tiny glass bells.

  Now the nightingale is silent.

  Today Moon waits for her underground, the sweet fragrance of the emperor's garden dizzying his head. He feels like a nervous suitor. His palms sweat, his heart beats. He has never felt quite like this before.

  If she had not been his nightingale, she might have become his princess.

  Today it is time for her to sing again.

  25

  Stiletto was an upscale-upscale for a Philly strip joint-"gentlemen's club" on Thirteenth Street. Two levels of jiggling flesh, short skirts, and glossy lipstick catering to the horny businessman. One floor was a live strip club, one level was a noisy bar and restaurant with scantily clad barmaids and waitresses. Stiletto had a liquor license, so the dancing wasn't full nude, but it was everything but.

  On the way to the club, Byrne filled Jessica in. On paper, Stiletto was owned by a well-known former nose tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles, a high-profile, personable sports star who had made the Pro Bowl three times. The truth was there were four partners in all, including Callum Blackburn. The hidden partners were most likely the mob.

  Mob. Dead girl. Mutilation.

  I am sorry, Kristina wrote.

  Jessica thought: Promising.

  Jessica and Byrne walked into the bar.

  "I've got to hit the bathroom," Byrne said. "You going to be okay?"

  Jessica stared at him for a moment, unblinking. She was a veteran police officer, a professional boxer, and she was armed. Still, it was kind of sweet. "I'll be fine."

  Byrne went to the men's room. Jessica took the last stool at the bar, the one next to the pass-through, the one in front of the lemon wedges, pimiento olives, and maraschino cherries. The room was decorated like a Moroccan brothel, all gold paint, red flocking, and velvet furniture with pinwheel cushions.

  The place did a brisk business. Not surprising. The club was located close to the convention center. The sound system blared George Thoro- good's "Bad to the Bone."

  The stool next to her was empty, but the one beyond that was occupied. Jessica glanced over. The guy sitting there was right out of strip- club-creep central casting-fortyish, shiny flowered shirt, tight navy blue double-knit slacks, scuffed loafers, gold-plated ID bracelets on both wrists. His two front teeth overlapped, giving him a sort of clueless, chipmunk look. He smoked Salem Light 100s with the filters busted off. He was staring at her.

  Jessica met his gaze, held it.

  "Something I can do for you?" she asked.

  "I'm the assistant bar manager here." He slithered onto the stool next to her. He smelled like Old Spice stick deodorant and pork rinds. "Well, I will be in three months."

  "Congratulations."

  "You look familiar," he said.

  "Do I?"

  "Have we met before?"

  "I don't think so."

  "I'm sure we have."

  "Well, it's certainly possible," Jessica said. "I'm just not remembering it."

  "No?"

  He said this like it was hard to believe. "No," she said. "But you know what? I'm okay with that."

  Thick as a batter-dipped brick, he pressed on. "Have you ever danced? I mean, you know, professionally."

  Here we go, Jessica thought. "Oh, sure."

  The guy snapped his fingers. "I knew it," he said. "I never forget a beautiful face. Or a great body. Where did you dance?"

  "Well, I was with the Bolshoi for a couple of years. But the commute was killing me."

  The guy cocked his head at a ten-degree angle, thinking-or whatever he did as a substitute for thinking-that the Bolshoi might have been a strip club in Newark. "I'm not familiar with that place."

  "I'm stunned."

  "Was that full nude?"

  "No. They make you dress like a swan."

  "Wow," he said. "Sounds hot."

  "Oh, it is."

  "What's your name?"

  "Isadora."

  "I'm Chester. My friends call me Chet."

  "Well, Chester, it was great chatting with you."

  "You leaving?" He made a slight move toward her. Spidery. Like maybe he was thinking about keeping her on the stool.

  "Yeah, unfortunately. Duty calls." She slipped her badge onto the bar. Chet's face went drab. It was like showing a cross to a vampire. He backed off.

  Byrne returned from the men's room, locked stares with Chet.

  "Hey, how ya doin'?" Chet asked.

  "Never better," Byrne said. To Jessica: "Ready?"

  "Let's do it."

  "See you around," Chet said to her. Cool now, for som
e reason.

  "I'll count the minutes."

  On the second floor the two detectives, led by a pair of massive bodyguards, traversed a maze of hallways, the journey ending at a reinforced steel door, above which, encased in thick security plastic, was a CCTV camera. A pair of electronic locks graced the wall next to the hardware- free door. Thug One spoke into a handheld radio. A moment later the door inched open. Thug Two pulled it wide. Byrne and Jessica entered.

  The large room was sparsely lighted with indirect spots, deep-orange sconces, pin-light cans recessed into the ceiling. An authentic-looking Tiffany lamp graced the colossal oak desk, behind which sat a man who, based on Byrne's description, could only have been Callum Blackburn.

  The man's face lit up when he saw Byrne. "I don't believe it," he said. He arose, put both hands in front of him, handcuff-style. Byrne laughed. The men hugged, clapped each other on the back. Callum took a half step backward, did a second inventory of Byrne, hands on his hips. "You look well."

  "You too."

  "I cannae complain," he said. "I was sorry to hear of your troubles." His accent was broad Scots, tempered by a number of years in eastern Pennsylvania.

  "Thank you," Byrne said.

  Callum Blackburn was a vigorous sixty. He had chiseled features, dark lively eyes, a pure silver goatee, salt-and-pepper hair swept back. He wore a well-tailored charcoal suit, white shirt, open collar, and a small hoop earring.

  "This is my partner, Detective Balzano," Byrne said.

  Callum straightened, turned fully toward Jessica, dipped his chin in greeting. Jessica had no idea what to do. Was she supposed to curtsy? She stuck her hand out. "Nice to meet you."

  Callum took her hand, smiled. For a white-collar criminal, he was kind of charming. Byrne had filled her in on Callum Blackburn. His stretch had been for credit-card fraud.

  "The pleasure is mine," Callum said. "If I knew that detectives were so beautiful these days, I would nae have given up my life of crime."

  "Have you?" Byrne asked.

  "I am just a humble businessman from Glasgow," he said with a glimmer of a smile. "Soon to be an auld father, at that."