Richard Montanari (64 page)

    Byrne
pointed to the six SWAT officers gathered on the grounds. They had a direct
line of sight to the eastern side of the mansion, the side where the kitchen
and the music room were located.

    'At
no time were you in jeopardy, Jess. They had Drummond in their sights through
the windows. If he had made a move toward you they would have taken him down.
We just hoped it wouldn't be before he talked. We had to get him to make the
admission.'

    'Why?
What are you talking about?'

    Byrne
held up a CD in a crystal case.

    'What
is that?' she asked.

    'It's
the whole event. Christa-Marie has a very sophisticated recording studio
upstairs. The music room has six microphones in it. Mateo is up in the studio
now. He's like a kid in a candy store.'

    'You're
saying everything that happened in there was
recorded?'

    Byrne
nodded. 'When Drummond got here tonight he slipped upstairs, into that room, started
the whole process. It's all on here. Christa-Marie playing
Danse Macabre
,
including the background of Drummond's sick recordings of death screams. He
finally got his magnum opus.'

    Jessica's
head was spinning. 'What about Lucy?' she asked. 'I don't care how good the
SWAT guys are - Drummond had that razor at her throat.'

    Byrne
looked away for a moment as the ME's transport van pulled into the long drive.
He looked back.

    'We
didn't plan on Lucy,' he said. 'I had no idea she was here.'

    Jessica
stepped through the front door, closed it behind her. She looked at her watch.
It was 2:52.

    It
was All Saints Day.

    Tuesday,
November 2

    There
was no shortage of media interest. For the still photographers and videographers
alike, the Tudor house at Chestnut Hill was a feast of images. It would
probably be on the list of horror tours next Halloween. The road in front of
Christa-Marie Schönburg's house was crowded with national and international
media. Two days after the horror, the numbers were still growing.

    For
the police, the whole story would take far longer to assemble. The
investigation revealed that Michael Drummond and Joseph Novak had both attended
Prentiss, had both taken private lessons from Christa-Marie Schönburg. Over the
years the rivalry between the boys had grown, not for first chair in an
ensemble but rather for the affections of Christa-Marie.

    On
Halloween night 1990, it came to a head. Although investigators might never
know exactly what had happened, they believed that Michael Drummond and Joseph
Novak killed Gabriel Thorne that night. Drummond, being the dominant one of the
pair, held this over Novak's head for the next twenty years.

    The
two men formed a small, unprofitable company, through which they published
limited-edition reproductions of sheet music, penned reproductions in the
composer's hand. The paper they used was Atriana.

    When
Drummond, who had taken a job at Benjamin Curtin's law firm - Paulson Deny
Chambers - learned of Christa-Marie's illness, his own psychosis led him down a
path of destruction, a reign of terror that would be felt for a long time.

    It
was Michael Drummond who had supplied the forged visitor's pass and clothing to
Lucas Anthony Thompson.

    Real-estate
tax records traced back to Drummond led to a small commercial building in South
Philly. Police found his killing room full of recording equipment, as well as a
cache of nearly two hundred CDs and audiocassettes - all meticulously dated -
of street and human sounds, some of them of people in their death throes. It
would be months, maybe years, before police forensic audiologists would be able
to make sense of the recordings, if ever. Michael Drummond had been building to
this dark denouement for a long time.

    At
Josh Bontrager's direction K-9 officers from PPD found an unconsious David
Albrecht at the bottom of the ravine on Sawmill Road. Albrecht had lost a lot
of blood, but paramedics reached him in time. Investigators were certain that
he had been attacked and left for dead by Michael Drummond, but Drummond would
escape this charge posthumously.

    None
of this explained the murder of George Archer.

    Lucy
Doucette, in her statement, told police about the man she had met. The man who
called himself Adrian Costa. The Dreamweaver. Police checked with the
management of the apartment building off Cherry Street. The landlord said that
a man had rented Apartment 106 for six months, paying cash in advance. He gave
police a vague description.

    They
had showed Lucy the video recordings made on Halloween Night at the hotel,
recordings of the hallway on the twelfth floor. Jessica had freeze-framed the
image of the man in the wizard's costume and mask passing by the camera.

    Lucy
said she couldn't remember.

    Jessica
had also visited Garrett Corners again, researched the name Adrian Costa. No
one with that name had ever been registered as a voter or resident of the area.
The people knew the reclusive van Tassels to be travelers, carny people. The
only photograph of the family was nearly fifteen years old. When Jessica
revisited Peggy van Tassel's grave, she looked at the two plots next to it. One
was the grave of a man named Ellis Adrian. The other was the last resting place
of an Evangeline Costa.

    Was
the Dreamweaver Peggy van Tassel's father?

    From
what the investigators could gather, it appeared that Florian van Tassel had
tracked Archer for years but had not known for sure that it was Archer who had
kidnapped both Peggy van Tassel and Lucy Doucette back in September 2001. As
the Dreamweaver, van Tassel enticed Lucy to submit to hypnosis sessions during
which van Tassel determined that he had been right. George Archer had killed
Peggy. It seemed that van Tassel also gave Lucy a post-hypnotic suggestion to
leave a note for Archer in his room, drawing him up there at 9:30p.m., then
instructed her to open the door to Room 1208 at the right moment.

    The
enhanced video taken from the twelfth-floor hallway that night showed the man
dressed as a wizard - believed to be Florian van Tassel - with an old-style
school bell in his hand.

    While
all of this was circumstantial, it wasn't until forensic results started to
come in that police issued an arrest warrant for Florian van Tassel, aka The Dreamweaver.
Blood belonging to George Archer was found on the old photograph left behind in
the room where the Dreamweaver had met with Lucy Doucette.

    The
George Archer file sat in a file cabinet at the Roundhouse.

    The
case remains open.

    Monday,
November 8

    Byrne
sat in the small lunch-room at the back of the Roundhouse. The four-to-twelve
shift had already come and gone and were out on the street. Byrne, who had been
on administrative leave since the shooting, sat by himself, a cold cup of
untouched coffee in front of him.

    When
Jessica entered the room and approached him she saw something else on the
table. It was Byrne's fifty-cent piece.

    'Hey,
partner.'

    'Hey,'
Byrne replied. 'You finish that FAS?'

    A
Firearms Analysis System form was a trace request sent to the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

    'All
done.' Jessica slid into the booth across from Byrne. 'You heading home?'

    'In a
while.'

    They sat
in silence. Byrne looked tired, but not nearly as tired as he had looked
recently. He'd gotten the results from all his follow-up tests. There was no
tumor, nothing serious. They said it was a combination of fatigue, poor diet,
insomnia, with a Bushmills chaser. Jessica glanced at the menu displayed over
the counter in the corner, and thought about how eating in this place might be
part of the problem.

    Byrne
looked up, at the scarred booths, the plastic flowers, the line of vending
machines against the wall, at the place to which he had come to work for more
than twenty years. 'I didn't do my job, Jess.'

    She'd
known this was coming, and here it was. Everything she planned to say vaporized
from her mind. She decided to just speak from her heart. 'It wasn't your
fault.'

    'I
was so young,' Byrne said. 'So arrogant.'

    'Christa-Marie
confessed to the crime, Kevin. I wouldn't have handled it any differently. I
don't know any cop who would.'

    'She
confessed because she was ill,' Byrne said. 'I didn't dig any deeper. I should
have, but I didn't. I turned in my report, it went to the DA. Just like always.
Boss says move on, you move on.'

    'Exactly.'

    Byrne
spun the coffee cup a few times.

    'I
wonder what her life would have been like,' he said. 'I wonder where she would
have gone, what she would have done.'

    Jessica
knew there was no answer to this, none that would help. She waited awhile, then
slipped out of the booth.

    'How
about I buy you a drink?' she said. 'It's fifty-cent Miller Lite night at
Finnigan's Wake. We can get hammered, drive around, pull people over, do some
traffic stops. Be like old times.'

    Byrne
smiled, but there was sadness in it. 'Maybe tomorrow.'

    'Sure.'

    Jessica
put a hand on Byrne's shoulder. When she got to the door she turned, looked at
the big man sitting in the last booth, surrounded by all the whispering ghosts
of his past. She wondered if they would ever be silent.

    He
found her behind the hotel. She was sitting alone on a stone bench, on her
dinner break, an untouched salad next to her. When she saw Byrne she stood up,
hugged him. He held on as long as she wanted.

    She
pulled away and turned, brushing off the bench for him.
Ever considerate,
Byrne thought. He sat down.

    They
were silent for a few moments. Finally Byrne asked, 'You doing okay?'

    Lucy
Doucette shrugged. 'Just another day in the big city.'

    'Did
you have any problems giving your statement?' He had put out the word that she
was to be treated with kid gloves. The report back was that she had been. Byrne
wanted to hear it from her.

    'Yeah,'
she said. 'But if I never go back to a police station for the rest of my life,
that will be okay with me.'

    'About
that other matter,' Byrne said, referring back to Lucy's detainment for
shoplifting. 'I talked to the DAs office, and to the owner of the store on
South. It's all smoothed over. Just a big misunderstanding.' Because Byrne had
intervened before Lucy was charged there would not be a record.

    'Thanks,'
she said. She looked at Byrne, at the bench, at the surrounding area. 'Where's
your man bag?'

    'I'm
not carrying it anymore.'

    Lucy
smiled. 'Were you getting grief from your fellow officers?'

    Byrne
laughed. 'Something like that.'

    A
wink of silver caught Byrne's eye. It was a small heart-shaped pendant around
Lucy's neck.

    'Nice
necklace,' he said.

    Lucy
lifted the heart, ran it along the chain. 'Thanks. I got it from David.'

    'David?'

    'David
Albrecht. I went and saw him in the hospital.'

    Byrne
said nothing.

    'We're
kind of in this thing together, you know?' Lucy said, perhaps feeling the need
to explain. 'I guess he's going to be okay?'