Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (38 page)

It was one thing to know the plan, but it was equally important to understand why. Understanding why would go a long way toward knowing where their doer would strike next. She took out a legal pad and made a grid.

The section of sheep bone found on Nicole Taylor was intended to lead investigators to the Tessa Wells crime scene.

But how?

She thumbed through the indices of some of the books she had taken from the Free Library. She found a section on Roman customs, and learned that scourging practices in the time of Christ included a short whip called a flagrum, to which they often attached leather thongs of variable lengths. Knots were tied in the ends of each thong, and sharp sheep bones were inserted into the knots at the ends.

The sheep bone meant there would be a scourge at the pillar.

Jessica wrote notes as fast as she could.

The reproduction of Blake’s painting
Dante and Virgil at the Gates of Hell
that was found inside Tessa Wells’s hands was obvious. Bethany Price was found at the gates leading into the Rodin Museum.

An examination of Bethany Price had found that she had two numbers written on the insides of her hands. On her left hand was the number 7. On her right hand, the number 16. Both numbers were written in black magic marker.

716.

Address? License plate? Partial zip code?

So far, no one on the task force had had any idea what the numbers meant. Jessica knew that, if she could divine this secret, there was a chance they could anticipate where the murderer’s next victim would be placed. And they could be waiting for him.

She stared at the huge pile of books on the dining room table. She was certain the answer was somewhere in one of them.

She walked into the kitchen, dumped the glass of red wine, put on a pot of coffee.

It was going to be a long night.

56

WEDNESDAY, 11:15 PM

The headstone is cold. The name and date are obscured by time and wind-borne debris. I clean it off. I run my index finger along the chiseled numbers. The date brings me back to a time in my life when all things were possible. A time when the future shimmered.

I think about who she would have been, what she might have done with her life, who she might have become.

Doctor? Politician? Musician? Teacher?

I watch the young women and I know the world is theirs.

I know what I have lost.

Of all the sacred days on the Catholic calendar, Good Friday is, perhaps, the most sacred. I’ve heard people ask: If this is the day that Christ was crucified, why is it called good? Not all cultures call it Good Friday. The Germans call it Charfreitag, or Sorrowful Friday. In Latin it has been called Parasceve, the word meaning preparation.

Kristi is in preparation.

Kristi is praying.

When I left her, secured and snug in the chapel, she was on her tenth rosary. She is very conscientious and, from the way she earnestly says the decades, I can tell that she wants to please not only me—after all, I can only affect her mortal life—but the Lord, as well.

The chilled rain slicks the black granite, joining my tears, flooding my heart full of storms.

I pick up the shovel, begin to dig the soft earth.

The Romans believed that there was significance to the hour that signaled the close of the business day, the ninth hour, the time when fasting began.

They called it the Hour of None.

For me, for my girls, the hour is finally near.

57

THURSDAY, 8:05 AM

T
HE PARADE OF POLICE CARS, both marked and unmarked, that snaked their way up the rain-glassed street in West Philadelphia where Jimmy Purify’s widow made her home seemed endless.

Byrne had gotten the call from Ike Buchanan at just after six.

Jimmy Purify was dead. He had coded at three that morning.

As he walked toward the house, Byrne fielded hugs from other detectives. Most people thought it was tough for cops to show emotion—some said the lack of sentiment was a prerequisite for the job—but every cop knew better. At a time like this, nothing came easier.

When Byrne entered the living room he considered the woman standing in front of him, frozen in time and space in her own house. Darlene Purify stood at the window, her thousand-yard stare reaching far beyond the gray horizon. The TV babbled in the background, a talk show. Byrne thought about turning it off, but realized that the silence would be far worse. The TV indicated that life, somewhere, went on.

“Where do you want me, Darlene? You tell me, I go there.”

Darlene Purify was just over forty, a former R&B singer in the 1980s, having even cut a few records with an all-girl group called La Rouge. Now her hair was platinum, her once slight figure given to time. “I stopped loving him a long time ago, Kevin. I don’t even remember when. It’s just . . . the
idea
of him that’s missing. Jimmy. Gone.
Shit
.”

Byrne walked across the room, held her. He stroked her hair, searching for words. He found some. “He was the best cop I ever knew. The
best
.”

Darlene dabbed her eyes. Grief was such a heartless sculptor, Byrne thought. At that moment, Darlene looked a dozen years older than she was. He thought about the first time they had met, in such happy times. Jimmy had brought her to a Police Athletic League dance. Byrne had watched Darlene shake it up with Jimmy, wondering how a player like him ever landed a woman like her.

“He loved it, you know,” Darlene said.

“The job?”

“Yeah. The job,” Darlene said. “He loved it more than he ever loved me. Or even the kids, I think.”

“That’s not true. It’s different, you know? Loving the job is . . . well . . . 
different
. I spent every day with him after the divorce. A lot of nights, too. Believe me, he missed you more than you’ll ever know.”

Darlene looked at him, as if this were the most incredible thing she had ever heard. “He did?”

“You kidding? You remember that monogrammed hankie? The little one of yours with the flowers in the corner? The one you gave him on your first date?”

“What . . . what about it?”

“He never went out on a tour without it. In fact, we were halfway to Fishtown one night, heading to a stakeout, and we had to head back to the Roundhouse because he forgot it. And believe me, you didn’t give him lip about it.”

Darlene laughed, then covered her mouth and began to cry again. Byrne didn’t know if he was making it better or worse. He put his hand on her shoulder until her sobbing began to subside. He searched his memory for a story, any story. For some reason, he wanted to keep Darlene talking. He didn’t know why, but he felt that, if she was talking, she wouldn’t grieve.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Jimmy went undercover as a gay prostitute?”

“Many times.” Darlene smiled now, through the salt. “Tell me again, Kevin.”

“Well, we were working a reverse sting, right? Middle of summer. Five detectives on the detail, and Jimmy’s number was up to be the bait. We laughed about it for a week beforehand, right? Like, who the hell was ever gonna believe that big slab of pork was sellin’ it? Forget sellin’ it, who the hell was gonna
buy
?”

Byrne told her the rest of the story by rote. Darlene smiled at all the right places, laughed her sad laugh at the end. Then she melted into Byrne’s big arms and he held her for what seemed like minutes, waving off a few cops who had shown up to pay their respects. Finally he asked: “Do the boys know?”

Darlene wiped her eyes. “Yeah. They’ll be in tomorrow.”

Byrne squared himself in front of her. “If you need anything, anything at all, you pick up the phone. Don’t even look at the clock.”

“Thanks, Kevin.”

“And don’t worry about the arrangements. The association’s all over it. It’s gonna be a procession like the pope.”

Byrne looked at Darlene. The tears came again. Kevin Byrne held her close, felt her heart racing. Darlene was tough, having survived both her parents’ slow deaths from lingering illness. It was the boys he worried about. None of them had their mother’s backbone. They were sensitive kids, very close to each other, and Byrne knew that one of his jobs, in the next few weeks, would be shoring up the Purify family.

W
HEN BYRNE WALKED out of Darlene’s house, he had to look both ways on the street. He couldn’t remember where he had parked the car. The headache was a sharp dagger between his eyes. He tapped his pocket. He still had full scrip of Vicodin.

You’ve got a full plate, Kevin,
he thought.
Shape the hell up.

He lit a cigarette, took a few moments, got his bearings. He looked at his pager. There were still three calls from Jimmy that he’d never returned.

There will be time.

He finally remembered that he had parked on a side street. By the time he reached the corner, the rain began again. Why not, he thought. Jimmy was gone. The sun dared not show its face. Not today.

All over the city—in diners and cabs and beauty parlors and boardrooms and church basements—people were talking about the Rosary Killer, about how a madman was feasting on the young girls of Philadelphia, and how the police couldn’t stop him. For the first time in his career, Byrne felt impotent, thoroughly inadequate, an impostor, as if he couldn’t look at his paycheck with any sense of pride or dignity.

He stepped into the Crystal Coffee Shop, a twenty-four-hour spoon he had frequented many mornings with Jimmy. There was a pall over the regulars. They’d heard the news. He grabbed a paper and a large coffee, wondering if he’d ever be back. When he exited, he saw that someone was leaning against his car.

It was Jessica.

The emotion almost took his legs.

This kid,
he thought.
This kid is something.

“Hey there,” she said.

“Hey.”

“I was sorry to hear about your partner.”

“Thanks,” Byrne said, trying to keep it all in check. “He was . . . he was one of a kind. You would’ve liked him.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

She had a way about her, Byrne thought. A way that made questions like that sound sincere, not like the bullshit that people say just to go on record.

“No,” Byrne said. “Everything’s under control.”

“If you want to take the day . . .”

Byrne shook his head. “I’m good.”

“You sure?” Jessica asked.

“Hundred percent.”

Jessica held up the
Rosarium
letter.

“What’s that?” Byrne asked.

“I think it’s the key to our guy’s mind.”

Jessica briefed him on what she had learned, along with details of her meeting with Eddie Kasalonis. As she talked, she saw a number of things crawl across Kevin Byrne’s face. Two of them mattered most.

Respect for her as a detective.

And, more importantly, determination.

“There’s somebody we should talk to before we brief the team,” Jessica said. “Somebody who could put this all in perspective.”

Byrne turned and looked once, briefly, toward Jimmy Purify’s house. He turned back and said: “Let’s rock.”

T
HEY SAT WITH FATHER CORRIO at a small table near the front window of Anthony’s, a coffeehouse on Ninth Street in South Philly.

“There are twenty mysteries of the rosary in all,” Father Corrio said. “They are grouped into four groups. The Joyful, The Sorrowful, The Glorious, and the Luminous.”

The notion that their doer was planning twenty murders was not lost on anyone at that table. Father Corrio didn’t seem to think that was the case.

“Strictly speaking,” he continued, “the mysteries are assigned days of the week. The Glorious Mysteries are observed on Sunday and Wednesday, the Joyful Mysteries on Monday and Saturday. The Luminous Mysteries, which are relatively new, are observed on Thursday.”

“What about the Sorrowful?” Byrne asked.

“The Sorrowful Mysteries are observed on Tuesday and Friday. Sundays during Lent.”