Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (188 page)

“Who is he?”

“I have no idea.”

Byrne reared back, fists clenched.

“Wait!” The kid cowered. “I met him on the street, man. He asked me if I wanted to make some money. It happens to me all the time.”

Jessica looked at Nicci Malone, back at Dylan Pierson, thinking,
You ain’t all
that,
kid.
Still, he was young, and that counted for a lot on the streets of a city like Philadelphia.

“What are you talking about?” Byrne asked.

“I was hanging by the bus station, okay? On Filbert. You know the bus station?”

“We know the bus station,” Byrne said. “Talk. Fast.”

“He started talking to me. He pointed at this girl, maybe sixteen or so. Maybe younger. She looked like a runaway. He said if I would go up to her, give her some shit, and he came in like a white knight, he would pay me fifty bucks.”

“When was this?” Byrne asked.

“I don’t know. Two days ago?” The kid touched his cheek. “He burned my damn face. You should arrest this guy.”

Byrne held up a photograph of the Chinese box. “How did your fingerprints get on this?”

“I have no idea.”

“Say ‘I have no idea’ one more fucking time,” Byrne said. “Go ahead.”

“Wait! Let me think, man. All right. And this is
true.
When I met the guy I sat in his van for a while.”

“What color was the van?”

“White. When I first got in he asked if I would move some of his things around in the back. This box was in there, I swear to God.”

Byrne paced, kicking clothes and debris out of his way. “Then what happened?”

“Then I got out of the car, walked up to the corner, started talking to the chick.”

“Then what? He burned your face?”

“Yeah. Like out of nowhere. And for no reason. When it was all over I met him around the corner and he gave me something.”

“What did he give you?”

“A book. He put the fifty inside it.”

“He gave you a book.”

“Yeah,” Pierson said. “I don’t really—”Byrne lifted the kid off the chair like he was a rag doll. “Where the fuck is it?”

“I sold it.”

“To who?”

“The Book Nook. It’s a used-book store. They’re right around the corner.”

| EIGHTY-TWO |

| 3 : 42 AM |

T
HE
B
OOK
N
OOK WAS A USED-BOOK STORE ON
S
EVENTEENTH
S
TREET
.

The grimy front window haphazardly displayed comic books, graphic novels, a section of recent best-selling fiction, some vintage board games. There was a single light on inside.

Byrne knocked hard, rocking the glass door. Jessica got on her cell phone. They would find the owner. They did not have that much time, but protocol—

Byrne threw a bench through the door. He threw Dylan Pierson in afterwards, then followed him.

—was clearly not going to be followed.

“What was the name of the book?” Byrne yelled, flipping the light switch, turning on the fluorescents overhead. His fellow detectives scrambled to keep up.

“I don’t remember,” Pierson replied, picking bits of glass out of his hair. “I think it was something about outer space.”

“You
think
?”

Dylan Pierson began to pace. He had no shoes on, and he was hot-footing on the glass. “It … it had a red planet on the cover … it was something about—”

“Mars?” Bontrager asked.

He snapped his fingers. “Mars. That’s it. Mars something. Guy named Hendrix wrote it. I remember the name because I’m really into old school stuff like Jimi—”

Byrne ran down the Science Fiction aisle, found the shelf for authors whose last name begins with H.
Heinlein, Herbert, Huxley, Hoban, Hardin.
And then he found it.
Mars Eclectica.
Edited by Raymond Hendrix. He ran back to the main room. “Is this it?”

“That’s it! That’s the one!
Dude.
You are
awesome.
”

Byrne handled the book by its edges. He riffled through the pages. Then a second time. There was nothing. No notes inside. Nothing highlighted.

“Are you sure this is the book?” Byrne asked.

“Positive. Although, I gotta say that one looks a lot newer than the book this guy gave me.”

Byrne reached for Dylan Pierson’s throat. Josh Bontrager was able to step between them. Byrne then flung the book across the store. His eyes roamed the walls, the shelves, the counters. Behind the front desk were a pair of push carts. One of them had a sticky note pasted to the side, with a handwritten
New Books.

Byrne vaulted the counter. He tore the books off the top shelf of the cart. Nothing. He ripped the books from the bottom shelf. And saw it.
Mars Eclectica.
It was a well-worn copy.

He flipped through the book. It didn’t take long. In the table of contents there were two places where something had been cut out with a razor blade. They were sections of author’s names.

____ White,
The Retreat to Mars.

Robert ____ Williams,
The Red Death of Mars.

Byrne turned the book to Dylan Pierson. “What’s missing here?”

The kid looked. “I have no—I mean, I don’t know. I don’t read that much.”

One by one Byrne showed the page to the other detectives. “Anybody know these people?”

No one knew.

“Fuck!”

“The other copy,” Jessica said. “Get the other copy of the book.”

In a flash Josh Bontrager was at the back of the store, rummaging through the strewn books. He found the book in seconds, and was back.

He put it on the counter next to Byrne’s copy. They looked at both versions of the table of contents.

With the missing names, the entries read:

Cecil B.
White,
The Retreat to Mars

Robert
Moore
Williams,
The Red Death of Mars

“Cecil B. Moore,” Byrne said. He looked at Jessica.

“The baseball field,” she replied.

They’d found the diamond.

| EIGHTY-THREE |

| 4 : 03 AM |

T
HE BASEBALL FIELDS AT
C
ECIL
B. M
OORE
A
VENUE AND
N
ORTH
Eleventh Street were deserted. The mahogany cabinet sat at home plate. Its glossy surface shone in the light thrown from the sodium streetlamps.

Byrne was out of the car before Jessica could stop it.

“God
damn
it!”

Byrne vaulted across the field, reached the box first. There was no hesitation, no stopping him. He opened the box, stared inside. And froze.

Jessica and Bontrager made it across the field. Jessica saw what her partner was looking at. Inside was a girl, wearing an antique white satin dress. It looked to be a wedding gown from the 1920s or 1930s. A veil covered her face. The bodice of the dress was soaked with her blood.

Byrne reached in, put two fingers to the girl’s neck.

“She’s alive.”

| EIGHTY-FOUR |

| 4 : 16 AM |

T
HE AMBULANCE SCREAMED OFF INTO THE NIGHT
. T
HE GIRL HAD LOST A
lot of blood, but when the paramedics got her onto the gurney, her pulse was stronger, her blood pressure stable.

Jessica returned to the car, took the laptop out. She refreshed the killer’s GothOde page. “It’s up.” She clicked on the new file. Same red curtains.

PART SIX: THE BRIDAL CHAMBER

She started the video. It already had sixteen viewings.

“Behold the Bridal Chamber,” the killer said. He gestured to the mahogany cabinet, which was unquestionably empty, doors wide open. He closed the doors of the cabinet. “And behold the lovely Odette.” He held out his hand. A teenage girl walked onto the stage wearing the old bridal gown. She was pretty and thin, with strawberry-blond hair cascading out from beneath her white veil. He kissed her hand, sent her offstage. He then turned the closed cabinet around three times, stepped back, drew a chrome revolver from his pocket and fired it into the cabinet. A moment later, he opened the cabinet to reveal the bride inside.

He waved a hand, and the screen went black.

__________

A
T
4:20 Byrne’s cell phone rang. He checked the screen. Private number. He knew who it was even before he answered it. The communications unit had put “David Sinclair’s” number on autodial, calling it every twenty seconds. They had not, of course, gotten an answer.

Byrne flipped open his phone, remained silent.

“Time is passing, Detective,” the killer said.

“Would that were not true,” said Byrne, trying to keep his rage in check. “Youth is fleeting.”

“I never had a youth, I’m afraid.”

“Why don’t you stop down at the Roundhouse? We’ll trade sob stories. You and me.”

The man laughed. “Six Wonders down, one to go.”

“Well, that’s not exactly true.”

Silence. “What do you mean?”

“The Bridal Chamber. Looks like you were left at the altar.”

This time, a longer silence.

“We’re at the diamond now—this is the diamond, right? The parallelogram part of the tangram puzzle?”

“What about it?”

He didn’t deny it. They
were
right. “The girl is alive.”

“That’s not true. It can’t be true.”

“I don’t make the weather, man. Besides, why would I start lying to you now? It might sully our beautiful friendship.”

Silence again. Then the killer raised his voice. He was starting to crack. “It’s
not
true. It’s
not.
And wait until you see what’s next, Detective Byrne. You will never forget it. Never.”

The line went dead.

Byrne threw his phone halfway to center field. A few minutes later, Josh Bontrager jogged out to get it.

T
HEY HAD SIX
of the tangram pieces—five triangles and one diamond. The killer had left the bodies of Caitlin O’Riordan, Elise Beausoleil, Monica Renzi, Katja Dovic, and a girl they had just identified as Patricia Sato—a runaway from Albany—in North Philadelphia parcels of land that were in the shape of a triangle. He had left his newest victim, as yet unidentified, still alive, on a baseball diamond. All that was left was the square. They had tried dozens of configurations with the pieces they had, trying to build the swan diagram. The horrifying truth was that just about every building in North Philly was either a rectangle or a square.

A
T
4:28 Jessica’s phone rang. They were still at the Cecil B. Moore scene. The crime-scene unit was processing the cabinet. It was Tony Park calling.

“Anything on the canvass?” Jessica asked.

“Nothing yet,” Park said. “It’s late, it’s hot, we have a lot of pissed-off people named Swan or Swann in Philadelphia this morning.”

“They’ll get over it.”

“I do have something interesting on what that magician fellow found. Something about Cygne.”

“What about it?”

“There’s a Galerie Cygne,” Park said. “Spelled exactly the same way. It’s the only listing in the city with a name even close.”

“Where is it?”

“Twenty-fourth and Market.”

Tony Park gave her the address. Jessica clicked off, told Byrne. “I’m going to go check on this,” she said.

Byrne held up his handset. “Stay on channel.”

“You got it.”

| EIGHTY-FIVE |

| 4 : 30 AM |

S
WANN CARRIED THE BOX
. I
T WAS HEAVY
. H
E HAD FORGOTTEN HOW
heavy it could be.

They were lying to him. It was a trick.
Their
trick. Claire was dead. She was in the Bridal Chamber. They would pay for this.

“You have failed.”

“I have not.”

“Acceptance is not enough, Joseph.”

“It is not just acceptance. It is certainty.”

Just about everything was in place for his grand finale. They would forever remember him. He would find a niche in the hierarchy of all things magic, all things puzzling, all things inexplicable. Even Thoreau believed that human beings
require
mystery.

“People must believe the impossible.”

“They will believe.”

“All magic is mentalism, Joseph. All magic makes people believe. The effect is in the mind.”

He could no longer carry the box. He put it down, began to drag it.

“All magic is mentalism,” he repeated. “All magic.”

He got the box into position. He sat down next to it.

The effect is in the mind.

| EIGHTY-SIX |

| 4 : 55 AM |

J
ESSICA PARKED ON
M
ARKET
S
TREET
. T
HE FACADE OF THE
T
HIRTIETH
Street train station loomed in the near distance, its lights reflected on the calm surface of the Schuylkill River.

She replayed the last video over and over in her mind. The Bridal Chamber. She thought of the way the girl looked in that antique dress, how frightened she had been. She thought of the blood. She had called the hospital on the way across town. The girl was being prepped for surgery.

Jessica was just about to get out of her car and enter the building when her phone rang. It was Byrne.

“What’s up?” Jessica asked.

“We have him.”

“We
have
him? What are you talking about? Where?”

“We got a call from the AV Unit two minutes ago. Three street cams saw someone dragging a big box across Nineteenth Street.”

“Where on Nineteenth?”

“Right at Logan Circle.”

Jessica realized the significance. “It’s his square in the tangram puzzle,” she said.

“It’s his square.”

When William Penn planned the development of Philadelphia in the 1600s, he designed five squares—one central square, with four others equidistant from the center. Today those squares are City Hall, Franklin Square, Rittenhouse Square, and Washington Square. The fifth square, located at the midway point between City Hall and the art museum, was originally called Northwest Square. Once a burial site and scene of public executions, the square was renamed Logan Circle in honor of William Penn’s secretary James Logan. Logan Circle, Logan Square—it went by both names.