Play dead jbakb-4

by Richard Montanari

  Fuck.

  She sat on the nightstand and looked at the large painting next to her. It was of some castle on a hillside, surrounded by lush forest and flocking birds. Must be nice, she thought. The painting was crooked again. She must have brushed up against it. Without getting up from the nightstand, she reached out, pushed on the edge of the huge gilded frame.

  She heard a noise, a low reverberating sound. She ran to the window. No headlights slicing through the darkness, coming or going. Either he had already pulled into the driveway and garage, or it was not a vehicle. The sound continued, growing a little louder. It was not a car. It was in the room.

  Suddenly it stopped. Lilly glanced back at the wall opposite the door, and saw a passageway. A small door in the middle of the wall.

  Lilly rubbed her eyes and looked again. She was not hallucinating.

  No way it had been there before. Cautiously approaching, Lilly stopped at the door first, listened to the hallway. Still quiet. A loud noise made her jump.

  The passageway was gone. Closed up.

  She felt along the paneled wall, but there was no catch, no seam. It had vanished.

  It took her ten minutes to figure out the sequence of events that led to the noise and the revelation of the door in the wall.

  She had been sitting on the edge of the nightstand, her feet on the floor. She had reached over and pushed on the edge of the painting.

  She did it all again, exactly the same way. A few seconds later the panel raised, and there was the little door again. It seemed to lead into a dark room, a dark space, a dark corridor, but none of that really mattered to Lilly. What mattered was that it was big enough for her to crawl through.

  This time, she did not hesitate.

  Before the panel could slide shut again, she crossed the room. She propped her shoes in the opening, entered the portal, and slipped into the blackness beyond.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  1:40 AM

  Tangram puzzles were five triangles, one square, and one parallelogram. According to the book, these pieces could be arranged into a virtually endless number of shapes. If the Collector was making a tangram puzzle out of the rooftops of North Philadelphia, which problem was he using?

  All four of the crime scenes were corner buildings-essentially triangles. A parallelogram could be seen as a diamond. If their theory was correct, it would leave one more triangle, one square, and one diamond.

  If they could piece together the first four crimes scenes in some sort of a coherent order, based on their geographic location and relevance to each other-in an order that corresponded to a particular tan- gram problem-they might be able to predict the location of the next three. It was a huge long shot-but at the moment it was all they had.

  Byrne raised Josh Bontrager and Dre Curtis on the radio. They needed more eyes on this.

  Byrne stared at the screen, at the map, his eyes roaming the shapes of the buildings, their relationships to one another. He closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the puzzle pieces in Laura Somerville's apartment, the feel of the ivory.

  Moments later, Bontrager and Dre Curtis pulled up, exited their car.

  "What's up?" Bontrager asked.

  Byrne gave them a quick rundown. Bontrager reacted with a young man's enthusiasm for the theory. Curtis, although accepting, was more skeptical.

  "Let's hear some ideas," Byrne said. "Some words or concepts that might apply. Something that might relate to the puzzle he's making."

  "He's a magician," Bontrager said. "An illusionist, a conjuror, a trickster."

  Jessica reached into the back of the car. She retrieved the three books by David Sinclair that Byrne had purchased from Chester County Books. She opened the book of tangram and began to run through the index. There were no problems that related to magicians.

  "Cape, wizard, wand, top hat," Curtis said. "Cards, coins, silks."

  Jessica flipped pages of the index, shook her head. "Nothing even close."

  "How about a castle?" Bontrager asked. "Isn't there a Magic Castle somewhere?"

  "Here's a castle," Jessica said. She found the page in short order, flipped the book open. The tangram problem, in silhouette, looked to be a tall pagoda, with a tiered tower and multiple eaves. If the first four crime scenes represented the bottom of the problem, it could not be this diagram. There had to be at least two triangles at the top.

  "What about the illusions themselves?" Curtis asked. "The Sword Box, the Garden of Flowers, the Water Tank?"

  Jessica scanned the index again. "Nothing like that."

  Byrne thought for a moment, poring over the map. "Let's work backwards. Let's start with the shapes themselves, see if they match a pattern."

  Jessica tore the center section from the book, handed each of the other detectives ten or so pages of problems. They gathered around the map they had received from Hell Rohmer, eyes searching, matching shapes. Every so often, each of the detectives glanced at their watches. Time was passing.

  Byrne stepped away from the car. Rain fell again. The other detectives grabbed everything from the car, crossed the street, and entered an all but empty twenty-four-hour diner called Pearl's. They set up on the counter in front of an apprehensive fry cook.

  Soon after, Byrne walked in. He finger-walked his notebook, finding David Sinclair's cell phone number, and punched it in. Sinclair answered. Identifying himself, Byrne apologized for the late hour. Sinclair said it was fine, he was awake.

  "Where are you?" Byrne asked.

  "I'm in Atlanta. I have a book signing tomorrow."

  "Do you have e-mail access right now?"

  "I do. I'm in my hotel room. They have high-speed access here. Why, do you want to-"

  "What's your e-mail address?"

  David Sinclair gave it to him.

  "Can you hang on one minute?" Byrne asked.

  "Sure."

  Byrne raised Hell Rohmer on the handset. He gave him David Sinclair's e-mail address. "Can you make a composite of the four buildings, and outline them in some way?"

  "I'll drag it into PhotoShop and put a red line around the edges. Will that work?"

  "That'll work," Byrne said. "Can you save it as a file and e-mail it to this guy?"

  Byrne gave him the address.

  "I'm on it," Hell said. "Shouldn't take more than two minutes."

  Back on his cell, Byrne told David Sinclair to expect the file.

  "If you don't get the file in five minutes, I'd like you to call me back at this number," Byrne said. "I'll also give you a second number if, for some reason, you don't reach me." Byrne gave the man his and Jessica's cell numbers.

  "Got them. One question."

  "Go."

  "This is about the breaking news story out of Philly, isn't it? It's on CNN."

  There was no point in dancing around it. They needed this man's help. "Yes."

  Sinclair was silent for a few moments. Byrne heard him draw a deep breath, release it. "Okay," he said. "One more question."

  "I'm listening."

  "What exactly am I looking for?"

  "A developing pattern," Byrne said. "A problem. A tangram problem."

  "Okay. Let me look at it. I'll get back to you."

  Byrne clicked off. He turned his attention to the man behind the counter. "You have today's paper?" he asked the wide-eyed fry cook.

  No response. The man was all but catatonic.

  "The paper. Today's Inquirer?"

  The man slowly shook his head. Byrne looked to the back of the diner. There was only one customer. He was reading the Daily News. Byrne stormed to the rear, grabbed it out of the man's hands.

  "Hey!" the man said. "I was reading that."

  Byrne dropped a five on the table. If everyone got out of this alive he would consider it a bargain. He handed each of the detectives a pair of sheets and a pair of shapes to create. He kept one. In a few moments they had all seven shapes.

  Josh Bontrager's cell phone rang. He stepped outside.

  Byrne pu
t the pieces on the floor. Five triangles, one square, one diamond. Jessica put the torn pages from the tangram book along the length of the counter.

  Page after page of tangram problems, all categorized by country of origin and puzzle designer. There were jewelry, vessels, tools, animals, musical instruments, buildings. One page was devoted to plants. Another to mountains.

  "The first four crime scenes were here." Byrne pushed the newspaper triangles together in the relative placement to each other. All put together, the overall shape looked like a capsized boat. Or a mountain range. He moved two shapes up, two down. Now it resembled a clock or bell tower.

  Bontrager stepped back inside. "I just talked to Lieutenant Hurley. He heard back from the FBI."

  "What do we have?" Byrne asked.

  "They said they're closing in on a location for the GothOde server. It looks like it's not in Romania after all. It's in New York."

  "When do they think they might have it?" "They said sometime in the next two hours or so." Byrne looked at his partner, then at his watch, then at his cell phone.

  They had less than twenty minutes.

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  1:50 AM

  Lilly was in a long, dark shaft. It was big enough for her to crawl through, but not by much. The walls were made of wood. It was not a heat duct of any sort.

  Lilly was not particularly claustrophobic, but the combination of utter darkness and the thick, hot air of the passageway made her feel entombed. She did not know how far she had gone, nor did she see any end. More than once she thought it would be best to go back to the room and take her chances there, but the passageway was not large enough for her to turn around. She'd have to back up all the way. In the end, the decision was a no-brainer.

  She continued forward, stopping every so often, listening. Music came from somewhere. Classical music. She heard no voices. She had no sense of time.

  After what felt like minutes of edging through the passage she came to a sharp right turn, and felt a breeze. Thin light spilled down from above. Lilly looked up and saw an even narrower passage, too small to pass through. It led to an iron grate. She tried to reach it but it was just beyond her fingertips.

  And that was when she heard the crying.

  The grate appeared to be a floor register. The crying seemed to be coming from that room. Lilly banged on the wall of the shaft, listened. Nothing. She banged harder, and the crying stopped.

  There was someone in there.

  "Hello?" Lilly whispered.

  Silence. Then the rustling of material, the padding of footsteps.

  "Hello?" Lilly repeated, this time louder.

  Suddenly, the register went dark. Lilly looked up. She came face- to-face with a girl.

  "Oh my God," the girl said. "Oh my God!"

  "Not so loud," Lilly said.

  The girl calmed herself. Her crying faded to the occasional sob. "My name is Claire. Who are you?"

  "I'm Lilly. Are you hurt?"

  The girl didn't answer right away. Lilly supposed "hurt" was a relative thing. If this girl had been kidnapped, like Lilly had been, it was bad enough.

  "I'm… I'm okay," Claire said. "Can you get me out of here?"

  The girl looked about sixteen or seventeen. She had long strawberry-blond hair, fine features. Her eyes were puffed and red. "Have you searched the room?" Lilly asked. "Have you looked for a key?"

  "I tried, but all the drawers are glued shut."

  Tell me about it, Lilly thought. She glanced ahead. The endless, ink-black shaft glared back. She looked at Claire. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

  "No," Claire said. She started sobbing again. "I just met this guy in the park. He told me there was a campsite nearby. I walked with him through the woods, and the next thing I knew I was in bed. In this room."

  My God, Lilly thought. How many girls were here? "Look," she whispered. "I'm going to get us out of here."

  "How?"

  Lilly had no frigging idea. Not at the moment. "I'll try to find a way."

  "I'm scared. He came in before. I pretended I was still knocked out. He left a dress in the room."

  "What kind of dress?"

  Claire hesitated. Her tears returned in full. "It looks like a wedding dress. An old wedding dress."

  Jesus, Lilly thought. What the hell is that about? "Okay. Hold tight."

  "You're not leaving me, are you?"

  "I'll be back," Lilly said.

  "Don't go!"

  "I have to. I'll be back. Don't make any noise."

  Lilly hesitated for a few moments, not really wanting to leave, then continued forward. If her bearings were right, she was heading toward the back of the house. She hadn't sensed an incline or a decline, so she was probably still on the second floor. The sound of the classical music had faded to silence, and all Lilly could hear now was the scrape of her knees along the floor of the shaft, and the sound of her own breathing. The air was getting hotter.

  She took a break, the sweat pouring off her. She lifted her T-shirt, wiped her face. After a full minute, she started moving again. Before she got ten feet she sensed another opening above her. It wasn't anything dramatic, just a change in the atmosphere. She ran her hand along the ceiling of the shaft, and felt A ladder?

  Lilly slowly stood up. Her knees popped, and in the confines of the space, the sound was like gunfire. She reached out. It was a ladder. There were only five or six rungs. Above them, something solid. She gently pushed on it. It lifted an inch. She eased it all the way open, took a deep breath, then climbed the ladder. The rush of fresh air was dizzying. She lifted herself out of the hole, into another nearly pitch-black space. She had no idea how large a room it was. The air was cool and damp, and there was a sour smell of licorice and body odor. It took some time to allow her eyes to adjust to the scant light. She made out a few shadows-an armoire, perhaps; a cheval mirror.

  Suddenly, there was a sound behind her. Heavy footsteps on a bare floor. Each step was punctuated with something that sounded like the screech of a wheel that needed oil.

  Clump, squeak, clump, squeak.

  Lilly couldn't see a thing. The sounds drew closer.

  Clump, squeak, clump, squeak.

  Someone was walking across the dark room.

  Lilly felt her way, crawling through the blackness. She came across something that might have been a bed, or a large sofa. She crawled beneath it, and held her breath.

  Clump, squeak.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  1:52 AM

  Jessica stood on the sidewalk in front of the diner. The rain had backed off, but the sidewalk steamed. Watching a pair of sector cars troll up the street, she wished she could be in one of them, just a rookie again. There would be none of the weight, none of the responsibility. She glanced at her watch. They would never make it. She had never felt this angry or frustrated in her life.

  Byrne banged on the window, beckoning her inside. Jessica nearly jumped. She stepped inside the restaurant.

  All seven pieces of the puzzle were close to each other on the floor. Next to them was the SEPTA map. Byrne tapped a location on the map. "Here's where we are in relation to the first four crime scenes." He pointed to the triangle on the lower left. "Slide it up, Josh."

  Bontrager slid the triangle northeast.

  "A lot of these problems combine two of the triangles to make a square, right?" Byrne asked.

  "Right," Jessica said.

  "So, let's assume for a second he is saving the real square for last." North Philly had a lot of squares-Norris, Fotterall, Fairhill. The city at large had dozens. "If it's a triangle, and it fits here, it can only be two places." Byrne knelt down, picked up the map, circled two corner buildings with a felt tip pen. "These are the only two corner triangular buildings in this whole area. What do you think?"

  Jessica looked at the shapes as they related to the whole. It was a possibility. "I agree, if his next move is another triangle it would have to be one of these two."

  Byrne shot to his
feet. "Let's move."

  The eight detectives spilt into two groups of four. Seconds later, they sped off into the rain.

  This area of Jefferson was blighted and bleak. There were only a few lights on in the scattered freestanding blocks of row houses. Gentrifi- cation came slowly to this part of the city, if at all. The block was dotted with boarded up structures, separated by weed-blotted lots, abandoned cars.

  At just after 2 AM, two teams pulled up to the address. Byrne checked the street number, then checked it again.

  It was a vacant lot. The overhead map showed a building, but there was no telling how old the photograph was. This had been a corner building, almost a perfect triangle. They hurried out of their vehicles, scanned the block, the nearby buildings, the empty parcel. And saw it. There, against a low stone wall, at the back of the lot, amid the debris and wild flowers sat a Chinese red lacquer box, decorated with gold dragons.

  Josh Bontrager hit the ground at a run. He bolted across the lot, opened the box.

  Byrne glanced at his watch. It was 2:02.

  Bontrager turned back, and the look on his face told them everything they needed to know. They were too late.

  The next piece of the tangram had been placed.

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  2:13 AM

  Lilly cringed in the darkness. The footsteps had drawn to within ten feet or so, and then stopped. She had no idea how much time had passed. Ten minutes, maybe more. She had held her breath as long as she could.

  Where had he gone? Had he left this room? Was he in the room with Claire? Had Lilly abandoned the girl and now something bad was happening to her? Unable to wait any longer, Lilly slowly crept out from beneath the bed, got to her feet. She did not know what she was walking into, but could not stay where she had been, just waiting for her terrible fate.