Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (126 page)

In his early sixties, Peter Giovanni was still active in the community, as well as in a number of police department charities. He was not a big man, but he carried a power that came from within. He still worked out a few times a week. He was still a clotheshorse, too. Today he wore an expensive black cashmere turtleneck and dove gray wool slacks. His shoes were Santoni loafers. With his ice gray hair, he looked like he had stepped off the pages of
GQ.

He smoothed his granddaughter’s hair, stood up, sat down next to Jessica on the sofa. Jessica was threading popcorn for a garland.

“What do you think of the tree?” he asked.

Every year, Peter and Vincent took Sophie on a drive to a Christmas-tree farm in the appropriately named Tabernacle, New Jersey, where they would cut down their own tree. Usually one of Sophie’s choosing. Every year the tree seemed taller.

“Any bigger and we’re going to have to move,” Jessica said.

Peter smiled. “Hey. Sophie’s getting bigger. The tree has to keep pace.”

Don’t remind me,
Jessica thought.

Peter picked up a needle and thread, began to make his own popcorn garland. “Any leads on the case?” he asked.

Although Jessica was not investigating the Walt Brigham murder, and had three open files on her desk, she knew exactly what her father meant by “the case.” Whenever a cop was killed, all police officers, active and retired, all across the country, took it personally.

“Nothing yet,” Jessica said.

Peter shook his head. “Damn shame. There’s a special place in hell for cop killers.”

Cop killer.
Jessica’s gaze immediately went to Sophie, who was still camped by the tree, pondering a small box wrapped in red foil. Every time Jessica thought about the words “cop killer” she realized that both of this little girl’s parents were targets every day of the week. Was it fair to Sophie? At times like these, in the warmth and safety of their home, she wasn’t sure.

Jessica got up, stepped into the kitchen. Everything was under control. The gravy was simmering; the lasagna noodles were al dente, salad was made, wine was decanted. She took the ricotta out of the refrigerator.

The phone rang. She froze, hoping that it would only ring once, that the person on the other end would realize they had dialed the wrong number and hang up. A second passed. Then another.

Yes.

Then it rang again.

Jessica looked at her father. He looked back. They were both cops. It was Christmas Eve. They knew.

41

Byrne adjusted his tie for what might have been the twentieth time. He sipped his water, looked at his watch, smoothed the tablecloth. He wore a new suit, and he hadn’t gotten comfortable in it yet. He fidgeted, buttoned, unbuttoned, rebuttoned, flattened the lapels.

He was sitting at a table at Striped Bass on Walnut Street, one of the tonier restaurants in Philadelphia, waiting for his date. But it wasn’t just another date. For Kevin Byrne, it was
the
date. He was having Christmas Eve dinner with his daughter, Colleen. He had called in no fewer than four chits to wrangle the last-minute reservation.

He and Colleen had mutually agreed on this arrangement—dinner out—instead of trying to find a window of a few hours at his ex-wife’s house to celebrate the holiday, a window that did not include Donna Sullivan Byrne’s new boyfriend, or the awkwardness of Kevin Byrne trying to be a grown-up about the whole thing.

They agreed that they didn’t need the tension. This was better.

Except for the fact that his daughter was late.

Byrne glanced around the restaurant, coming to the conclusion that he was the only civil servant in the room. Doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, a sprinkling of successful artist-types. He knew that taking Colleen here was overkill—she knew it too—but he wanted to make the evening special.

He took out his cell phone, checked it. Nothing. He was just about to send Colleen a text message when someone approached his table. Byrne looked up. It wasn’t Colleen.

“Would you like to see the wine list?” the attentive waiter asked again.

“Sure,” Byrne said. As if he would know what he was looking at. He had twice resisted ordering bourbon on the rocks. He didn’t want to be sloppy this night. A minute later the waiter returned with the list. Byrne dutifully read it, the only thing registering—amid a sea of words like
Pinot, Cabernet, Vouvray,
and
Fume
—were the prices, all of them beyond his means.

He held the wine list up, figuring that if he put it down he would be pounced upon and forced to order a bottle. Then he saw her. She wore a royal blue dress that brought infinity to her aquamarine eyes. Her hair was down around her shoulders, longer than he had seen it in a while, darker than it was in summer.

My God,
Byrne thought.
She’s a woman. She became a woman and I missed it.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she signed before she was halfway across the room. People stared at her, for any number of reasons. Her elegant sign language, her posture and grace, her stunning looks.

Colleen Siobhan Byrne had been deaf since birth. It had only been in the past few years that both she and her father had become comfortable with her deafness. Whereas Colleen had never seen it as a handicap, it seemed she now understood that her father once had, and probably still did to a degree. A degree that was lessening by the year.

Byrne stood, gave his daughter a soul-replenishing hug.

“Merry Christmas, Dad,” she signed.

“Merry Christmas, honey,” he signed back.

“I couldn’t get a cab.”

Byrne waved a hand as if to say:
What? You think I was worried?

She sat down. Within seconds her cell phone vibrated. She gave her father a sheepish grin, pulled out the phone, flipped it open. It was a text message. Byrne watched her read it, smile, blush. The message was clearly from a boy. Colleen sent a quick reply, put her phone away.

“Sorry,” she signed.

Byrne wanted to ask his daughter two or three million questions. He stopped himself. He watched her delicately place her napkin on her lap, sip her water, peruse the menu. She had a woman’s bearing, a woman’s poise. There could only one reason for this, Byrne thought, his heart shifting and cracking in his chest. Her childhood was over.

And life would never be the same.

WHEN THEY FINISHED
eating, it was that time. They both knew it. Colleen was full of teenage energy, probably had a friend’s Christmas party to attend. Plus she had to pack. She and her mother were going out of town for a week, visiting Donna’s relatives for New Year’s Eve.

“Did you get my card?” Colleen signed.

“I did. Thanks.”

Byrne silently chastised himself for not sending out Christmas cards, especially to the one person who mattered. He’d even gotten a card from Jessica, slipped covertly into his briefcase. He saw Colleen sneak a glance at her watch. Before the moment became uncomfortable, Byrne signed, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

Here goes,
Byrne thought. “What are your dreams?”

A flush, then a look of confusion, then acceptance. At least she didn’t roll her eyes. “Is this going to be one of our talks?” she signed.

She smiled and Byrne’s stomach flipped. She didn’t have time to talk. She probably wouldn’t have time for years to come. “No,” he said, feeling his ears get hot. “I was just wondering.”

A few minutes later she kissed him good-bye. She promised that they would have a heart-to-heart soon. He put her in a cab, returned to the table, ordered the bourbon. A double. Before it arrived, his cell phone rang.

It was Jessica.

“What’s up?” he asked. But he knew that tone.

In response to his question, his partner uttered the four worst words a homicide detective could hear on Christmas Eve.

“We’ve got a body.”

42

The crime scene was once again on the bank of the Schuylkill River, this time adjacent to the Shawmont train station, near Upper Roxborough. The Shawmont station was one of the oldest stations in the United States. The trains no longer stopped there, and it had fallen into disrepair, but it was a frequent stop for railroad aficionados and purists, much photographed and rendered.

Just below the station, down a steep incline that angled toward the river, was the enormous derelict Shawmont waterworks, located on one of the last publicly owned riverfront parcels of land in the city.

The exterior of the mammoth pump house was overgrown with decades of scrub and vines and gnarled branches hanging from dead trees. In daylight it was an imposing relic of a time when the facility had taken water from the pool behind Flat Rock Dam and pumped it up to the Roxborough Reservoir. At night it was all but an urban mausoleum, a dark and forbidding haven for drug deals, clandestine unions of all sorts. The inside was gutted, stripped of anything even remotely of value. There was graffiti around the walls to a height of seven feet or so. A few ambitious taggers had written their sentiments at a height of perhaps fifteen feet on one wall. The floor was an uneven topography of pebbled concrete, rusted iron, and sundry urban rubble.

As Jessica and Byrne approached the building, they could see the bright temporary lights illuminating the front of the building, the façade facing the river. A dozen officers, CSU techs, and detectives waited for them.

The dead woman sat in the window, legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap. Unlike Kristina Jakos, this victim did not appear to be mutilated in any way. At first, it looked as if she were praying, but closer inspection showed that her hands were cupped around an object.

Jessica stepped into the building. It was almost medieval in scale. Since the facility’s closing, it had fallen into decay. A number of ideas had been floated regarding its future, not the least of which had been the possibility of turning it into a training facility for the Philadelphia Eagles. The cost of renovation would be enormous, though, and so far nothing had been done.

Jessica approached the victim, careful not to disturb any possible footprints, although there was no snow inside the building and collecting any thing usable was unlikely. She shone her light on the victim. This woman was in her late twenties or early thirties. She wore a long dress. It, too, seemed to be from another time, with its elasticized velvet bodice and fully shirred skirt. There was a nylon belt around her neck, knotted at the back. It appeared to be an exact duplicate of the one found around the neck of Kristina Jakos.

Jessica hugged the wall as she scanned the interior. The CSU techs would soon be setting up a grid. Before leaving, she took her Maglite, made a slow careful sweep of the walls. And saw it. About twenty feet to the right of the window, buried in a jumble of gang tags, was the graffiti of the white moon.

“Kevin.”

Byrne stepped inside, followed the beam of light. He turned, found Jessica’s eyes in the gloom. They had stood there before, as partners, at the threshold of a burgeoning evil, at a moment when something they thought they’d understood had become something bigger, something far more sinister, something that had redefined everything they’d believed about a case.

Standing outside, their breath formed vapor clouds in the night air. “ME’s office won’t be here for an hour or so,” Byrne said.

“An hour?”

“Christmas in Philly,” Byrne said. “Two other homicides already. They’re stretched.”

Byrne pointed to the victim’s hands. “She’s holding something.”

Jessica looked closely. Something was in the woman’s grasp. Jessica took a number of close-up pictures.

If they were to follow procedure to the letter, they would have to wait for the ME’s office to pronounce the woman dead, and for a full set of photographs and perhaps video to be taken of the victim and the scene. But Philadelphia was not exactly following procedure this night—that bit about love thy neighbor came to mind, followed closely by that peace-on-earth business—and the detectives knew that the longer they waited, the more likely it was that precious information would be lost to the elements.

Byrne stepped closer, tried to gently pry apart the woman’s fingers. Her fingertips responded to his touch. Full rigor had not set in.

At first glance it appeared that the victim had a ball of leaves or twigs in her cupped hands. In the harsh light it looked to be a dark brown material, definitely organic. Byrne stepped closer, set himself. He spread a large evidence bag on the woman’s lap. Jessica tried to hold her Maglite steady. Byrne continued to pry apart the victim’s grasp, slowly, one finger at a time. If the woman had scooped a ball of earth or compost from the ground during a struggle, it was possible that she had gotten important evidence from her killer lodged beneath her nails. There could even have been a piece of direct evidence in her hands—a button, a clasp, a piece of fabric. If something could immediately point to an individual of interest, such as hair or fiber or DNA evidence, the sooner they could begin looking for him the better.