Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (141 page)

Jessica considered the potent irony of it all.

In death, Walt Brigham had led them to his killer’s house.

In death, Walt Brigham might get his revenge.

77

The six case files were homicides. Each one of the victims had been male, all of them between the ages of twenty-five and fifty. Three of the men had been stabbed to death—one of them with a pair of garden shears. Two of the men had been bludgeoned, one run over by a large vehicle, possibly a van. All of them had been from Philadelphia. Four had been white, one black, one Asian. Three had been married, two divorced, one single.

What they all had in common was that they had all been suspected, to some degree, of violence against young girls. All six were dead. And, it appeared, at the scene of their murders there had been some sort of lavender item. Socks, a barrette, plush toys.

There wasn’t a single suspect in any of the cases.

“Are these files tied to our killer?” Bontrager asked.

Byrne had almost forgotten that Josh Bontrager was still in the room. The kid was quiet that way. Maybe it was out of respect. “I’m not sure,” Byrne said.

“Do you want me to hang around, maybe follow up on some of them?”

“No,” Byrne said. “It’s New Year’s Eve. Go have a good time.”

After a few moments, Bontrager grabbed his coat and walked toward the door.

“Josh,” Byrne said.

Bontrager turned around, expectant. “Yeah?”

Byrne pointed to the files. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” Bontrager held up two of the books by Hans Christian Andersen. “I’m going to read these tonight. I figure that if he’s going to do this again, a clue might be in here.”

Some New Year’s Eve,
Byrne thought.
Reading fairy tales.
“Good work.”

“I thought I’d call you if I came up with something. Is that okay?”

“Absolutely,” Byrne said. The kid was starting to remind Byrne of himself when he’d been new to the unit. An Amish version, but still similar. Byrne got up, put on his coat. “Hang on. I’ll walk you down.”

“Cool,” Bontrager said. “Where are you headed?”

In the case files, Byrne had looked at the investigating officers on each of the homicides. On all cases it had been Walter J. Brigham and John Longo. Byrne had looked up Longo. He had retired in 2001, and now lived in the Northeast.

Byrne hit the button on the elevator. “I think I’ll take a ride to the Northeast.”

JOHN LONGO LIVED
in a well-tended town house in Torresdale. Byrne was greeted by Longo’s wife Denise, a slender, attractive woman in her early forties. She brought Byrne down to the basement workshop, a look of skepticism and slight suspicion behind her warm smile.

The walls were covered with plaques and photos, half devoted to Longo in various locations, wearing various police gear. The other half were family pictures—weddings in a park, Atlantic City, somewhere tropical.

Longo looked a few years older than his official PPD photograph, his dark hair now confettied with gray, but he was still trim and athletic. A few inches shorter than Byrne, a few years younger, Longo looked like he could still run down a suspect if he had to.

After the standard who-do-you-know, who-have-you-worked-with dance, they finally got to the reason for Byrne’s visit. Something about Longo’s responses told Byrne that Longo had in some way expected this day to come.

The six photographs were laid out on the workbench, a surface otherwise devoted to making wooden birdhouses.

“Where did you get these?” Longo asked.

“Honest answer?” Byrne asked.

Longo nodded.

“I thought you sent them.”

“No.” Longo looked at the envelope, inside and out, flipped it over. “It wasn’t me. In fact, I was hoping to go the rest of my life without ever seeing anything like this again.”

Byrne understood. There was plenty he himself didn’t want to ever see again. “How long were you on the job?”

“Eighteen years,” Longo said. “Half a career for some guys. Way too long for others.” He studied one of the photographs closely. “I remember this. There have been many nights when I wished I didn’t.”

The photograph was the one depicting the small plush bear.

“That was taken at a crime scene?” Byrne asked.

“Yes.” Longo crossed the room, opened a cabinet, pulled out a bottle of Glenfiddich. He held up the bottle, and raised an eyebrow questioningly. Byrne nodded. Longo poured them both a drink, handed a glass to Byrne.

“It was the last case I worked,” Longo said.

“This was North Philly, right?” Byrne knew all this. He just needed it to sync.

“Badlands. We were on this prick. Hard. For
months
. Name was Joseph Barber. Had him in for questioning twice for a series of rapes of young girls, couldn’t hold him. Then he did it again. Got a tip he was holed up in an old drug house near Fifth and Cambria.” Longo drained his drink. “He was dead when we got there. Thirteen knives in his body.”

“Thirteen?”

“Yeah.” Longo cleared his throat. This was not easy for him. He poured himself another drink. “Steak knives. Cheap. The kind you might get at a flea market. Untraceable.”

“Was the case ever closed?” Byrne knew the answer to this, too. He wanted to keep Longo talking.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Did you follow it?”

“I didn’t want to. Walt stuck with it for a while. He tried to make a case that Joseph Barber was killed by some sort of vigilante. Never got any traction.” Longo pointed to the photograph on the workbench. “I looked at that lavender bear on the floor, and knew I was finished. I’ve never looked back.”

“Any idea who the bear belonged to?” Byrne asked.

Longo shook his head. “When the evidence was cleared and the property released, I showed it to the little girl’s parents.”

“These were the parents of Barber’s last victim?”

“Yeah. They said they had never seen it before. Like I said, Barber was a serial child rapist. I didn’t want to think how and where he might have gotten it.”

“What was Barber’s last victim’s name?”

“Julianne.” Longo’s voice cracked. Byrne arranged a few tools on the bench, waited. “Julianne Weber.”

“Did you ever follow up?”

He nodded. “A few years ago I drove by their house, parked across the street. I saw Julianne as she left for school. She looked okay—at least, to the world she looked okay—but I could see that sadness in her every step.”

Byrne could see that this conversation was nearing a close. He gathered the photos, his coat and gloves. “I’m sorry about Walt. He was a good man.”

“He was the job,” Longo said. “I couldn’t make it to the party. I didn’t even—” The emotion took over for a few moments. “I was in San Diego. My daughter had a little girl. My first grandchild.”

“Congratulations,” Byrne said. As soon as the word left his lips—although heartfelt—it sounded empty. Longo drained his glass. Byrne followed suit, stood, slipped on his coat.

“This is the part where people usually say ‘If there’s anything else I can do, please don’t hesitate to call,’ ” Longo said. “Right?”

“I guess it is,” Byrne replied.

“Do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“Hesitate.”

Byrne smiled. “Okay.”

As Byrne turned to leave, Longo put a hand on his arm. “There is something else.”

“Okay.”

“Walt said I was probably seeing things at the time, but I was convinced.”

Byrne folded his hands, waited.

“The pattern of the knives,” Longo said. “The wounds on Joseph Barber’s chest.”

“What about them?”

“I wasn’t sure until I saw the postmortem photos. But I’m positive the wounds spelled out a
C.
”

“The letter
C
?”

Longo nodded, poured himself another drink. He sat down at his workbench. The conversation was now officially over.

Byrne thanked him again. On the way up, he saw that Denise Longo had been standing at the top of the stairs. She saw him to the door. She was much cooler to him than she had been when he’d arrived.

While his car was warming up, Byrne looked at the photograph. There was probably going to be a lavender-bear sort of case in his future, probably his near future. He wondered if he, like John Longo, would have the courage to walk away.

78

Jessica searched every inch of the trunk, flipped through every magazine. There was nothing else. She found a few yellowed recipes, a few
McCall’s
patterns. She found a box of small paper-wrapped demitasse cups. The newspaper wrapping was dated March 22, 1950. She turned back to the portfolio.

Tucked into the back of the binder was a page bearing a number of horrific drawings—hangings, mutilations, disembowelings, dismemberments—childlike in their scrawl, extremely disturbing in their content.

Jessica turned back to the first page. The news article on the murder of Annemarie DiCillo and Charlotte Waite. Nicci read it too.

“Okay,” Nicci said. “I’m calling this in. We need cops out here. Walt Brigham liked whoever lived here for the Annemarie DiCillo case, and it looks as though he was right. God knows what else we’re going to find in this place.”

Jessica handed Nicci her phone. A few moments later, after trying and not getting a signal in the cellar, Nicci walked up the stairs and outside.

Jessica turned back to the boxes.

Who had lived here?
she wondered.
Where is that person now?
In a small town like this, if the person was still anywhere in the area, people would surely know. Jessica sifted through the boxes in the corner. There were more old newspapers, some in a language she couldn’t identify, perhaps Dutch or Danish. There were moldy board games, rotting in their long-mildewed boxes. Nothing else mentioned the Annemarie DiCillo case.

She opened yet another box, this one not as timeworn as the others. Inside were newspapers and magazines of a more recent vintage. On top was a year’s worth of
Amusement Today,
a newsletter-style magazine that appeared to be a trade publication devoted to the amusement-park industry. Jessica flipped over an issue. She found an address label.
M Damgaard.

Is this Walt Brigham’s killer?
Jessica tore off the label, shoved it in her pocket.

She had been hauling boxes toward the door when a noise stopped her in her tracks. At first it sounded as if it might just be the settling of dry timbers, creaking in the wind. She heard it again, the sound of old, thirsty wood.

“Nicci?”

Nothing.

Jessica was just about to head up the stairs when she heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps.
Running
footsteps, muffled by the snow. She then heard what might have been a struggle, or maybe it was Nicci struggling to carry something. Then another sound. Her name?

Did Nicci just call her?

“Nicci?” Jessica asked.

Silence.

“Did you make contact with—”

Jessica never finished her question. At that moment the heavy cellar doors slammed shut, the sound of the timbers resounding loudly in the cold stone confines of the cellar.

Then Jessica heard something far more ominous.

The huge doors were being secured with the crossbeam.

From the outside.

79

Byrne paced the parking lot at the Roundhouse. He didn’t feel the cold. He thought about John Longo and his story.

He tried to make a case that Barber was killed by some sort of vigilante. Never got any traction.

Whoever had sent Byrne the photographs—and it was probably Walt Brigham—was trying to make that same argument. Why else would every item in the photographs be lavender? It must be some sort of calling card the vigilante left, a personal touch from someone who had taken it upon himself to eliminate men who had committed violence against girls and young women.

Someone had killed these suspects before the police could make a case against them.

Before leaving the Northeast, Byrne had put in a call to Records. He had requested that they pull every unsolved homicide for the past ten years. He had also asked for a cross reference with the search term “lavender.”

Byrne thought about Longo, ensconced in his basement, making birdhouses, of all things. To the outside world, Longo looked content. But Byrne could see the ghost. If he looked closely at his own face in the mirror—something he did less and less these days—he would probably see it in himself.

The town of Meadville was starting to look good.

Byrne shifted gears, thought about the case.
His
case. The river killings. He knew he had to tear it all down and build it back up from the beginning. He had encountered psychos of this sort before, murderers who took their cue from something we all saw and took for granted every day.

Lisette Simon was first. Or at least they thought so. A forty-one-year-old woman who worked in a mental-health-care facility. Maybe the killer started there. Maybe he met Lisette, worked with her, made some discovery that triggered this rampage.