The Stolen Ones (33 page)

Jessica got the call from the commander of the 8th District, Sergeant Cullen Sweeney. She reached Byrne on his iPhone.

‘Is he in custody?’ Byrne asked.

‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘He’s gone. The officer who fired his weapon said he thinks he may have hit him, but he can’t be sure. He said if there was any blood on the sidewalk it was instantly washed away.’

‘How did they lose him?’

‘It’s dark and it’s raining. They just lost him. They said he was there one second, and in the next second he was gone.’

‘What about the girl?’ Byrne asked.

‘EMS is checking her now.’

‘He didn’t cut her?’

‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘He didn’t.’

Byrne was silent a few moments. ‘What about tracking the subject?’

‘We don’t have him. He must have turned off the phone, or threw it away.’

‘He didn’t throw it away,’ Byrne said.

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he’s not done yet.’

Jessica glanced at the map on the computer monitor. ‘We’ve got a perimeter set up. Five blocks in all directions. If he’s hit, he can’t be moving that fast. We’ll get him.’

Byrne put the phone in his pocket. He glanced into the train tunnel, at the swallowing darkness.

He closed his eyes, thought about the last call from Luther, the video image of the cell phone camera panning across the street. Something had been out of place, but he could not put his finger on it.

Then he saw it in his mind’s eye. Behind the girl, the sewer grate had been taken off, and was propped next to the curb.

They said he was there one second, and in the next second he was gone.
 

Byrne thought about the night Ray Torrance had slept on his couch. After they had watched the videotape of the little girl called Bean, Ray had passed out. As he slept he had mumbled something, something Byrne had not quite understood.

Ray did not say
PPD
. He’d said
PWD
.

Philadelphia Water Department.

Detective Ray Torrance had suspected that whoever was breaking into all those homes was using the miles of interconnecting sewers and catacombs beneath the city.

Byrne knew where the madman had gone.

At first Rachel thought she was hallucinating. Her little sister stood in the doorway to the room. She wore a small pink rain slicker.

‘My
God
,’ Rachel said. ‘Bean.’

Rachel slowly fell to her knees. She put out her arms.

The girl stepped into the room. She hugged Rachel. It was no hallucination, no dream. She was real, and she was just like Rachel remembered her when she was a toddler, the same clear blue eyes, the same fine blond hair.

Rachel pulled back just as a shadow fell across the doorway. She looked up.

Behind the girl was a man. A big man. He wore a long dark coat. He was not the raggedy man, but someone else, someone who walked the very edge of Rachel’s memory, a memory that had been lost to her dreams for years.

Then she remembered. It had been sixteen years, and his face was lined and drawn, but she remembered his eyes. His kind, sad eyes.

He walked across the room, sat on the edge of the bed. Bean took a few steps, put her tiny hand in the man’s hand.

‘My name is Ray,’ the man said. He pulled the little girl onto his knee. ‘And this is your niece.’

Byrne stood at the mouth of the tunnel. He took out his TracFone, dialed Ray Torrance’s number, the throwaway phone he had bought for him. He didn’t expect a response, but Ray answered.

‘Where are you, Ray?’

A long pause. Byrne could hear the sound of rushing water in the background.

‘I’m where I should have been three years ago.
Sixteen
years ago.’

‘You knew this guy lived underground. PWD. You knew it.’

‘I didn’t know it, Kevin. But I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights to think about it. It’s the only thing that made sense.’

‘Why did you bring the little girl into all this?’

‘You heard him,’ Torrance said. ‘If he didn’t see the girl, he wasn’t going to deal. It had to be done. She’s with me now. She’s safe.’

‘You put her in harm’s way.’

‘She’ll be fine. When this is over, I’m going to take her somewhere safe. I should have done it for Marielle three years ago, and I didn’t. This is my chance to make it right.’

‘Let me help,’ Byrne said. His voice had taken on a pleading tone. He knew that Torrance heard right through it.

‘Walk away, Kevin,’ Torrance said. ‘This is my play.’

‘Ray, you can’t —’

‘I love you, brother.’

Then the phone went dead.

Byrne tried calling again, but it went to the generic voicemail. He took out his iPhone, plugged in the earbuds with the inline microphone. He called Jessica.

‘I’m going to look for Ray,’ Byrne said.

‘Let me get someone down there with you. I’ll come.’

‘There’s no time.’

Byrne turned off the phone, drew his weapon, and stepped into the blackness of the tunnel.

The water in the runoff was over a foot deep. For a while Byrne tried to walk the edges, but it was useless. He had to walk the middle of the sewer pipe to have any chance of maintaining balance.

His small Maglite was of little use in the utter blackness of the channel.

After a few hundred yards he came to a corridor that met the main tunnel at a T-junction. Byrne could see dome lights in the distance. Trying to preserve his bearings he walked down the narrow hallway. Every so often he came to doors, many cut crudely into the brick. Most had no hardware.

A hundred feet or so from the main tunnel he found a door, slightly ajar. He shouldered it open, shone his flashlight. Inside the huge room, piled floor to ceiling, was furniture, clothing, lamps, toys. A few feet further into the tunnel he found more doors. Room after room were filled with discarded items, possibly collected for decades, all had the smell of decay and mold. One room was a small, makeshift surgery. There were long brown streaks of dried blood on the floor.

The water in the runoff was now up to Byrne’s shins, and rising fast. He soon came to an opening, a spacious two-level junction with sanitary sewers above, and a storm sewer below. There were a pair of dim lights in mesh cages overhead. Byrne checked his phones. There was no signal where he was. He looked behind him, back to where he had come from.

This was a mistake. He had to get backup.

When he turned back he saw a trio of shadows growing on the wall. He spun around, his weapon raised.

It was Ray Torrance. He stood on the other side of the opening. With him was Violet, and a young woman, the young woman in the room they had seen on Luther’s phone. Torrance took a step back. He did not have a weapon in hand.

‘Take them out of here,’ Torrance said.

‘I will,’ Byrne replied. ‘You’re coming with us.’

Torrance shook his head. ‘No. I can’t do that.’

‘What are you talking about, Ray? It’s over. We’ve got officers at every outlet from this section. He can’t get out. It’s over.’

‘It’s not over. You don’t know.’

Byrne edged closer. ‘Then tell me. Let’s get up on the street, we’ll dry off, grab a bottle or two, and you’ll tell me.’

‘You know, and I know, that’s not going to happen,’ Torrance said. ‘I took your badge. I stole your car.’

‘You
borrowed
my car, Ray. And when I lost my ID you found it. Clean hands. Over.’

‘Then I showed it to the woman at the foster home. Come on, Kevin. I kidnapped the girl.’

‘Let me talk to the DA,’ Byrne said. ‘You know I can be convincing. Old Irish soft-shoe.’

Torrance shook his head. ‘You go on ahead. I’m going to stay here and finish this thing. It started sixteen years ago, and I finish it tonight.’

‘Ray, I can’t —’

‘He cut me, Kevin. In that filthy fucking alley. I pissed blood for a month. It ends here. It ends now.’

As Torrance stepped back, a shadow darted across the wall overhead. Before anyone could react, Luther dropped from the spill-off tunnel near the ceiling. He landed just behind Violet. Byrne heard the bone snap in one of his arms.

Luther’s shirt was drenched with blood. Even in the dim yellow light Byrne saw the wound in his shoulder. He had been hit with a round.

In his right hand was the bone-handled knife.

Luther pulled Violet closer to him, looked down at her. ‘Bean.’

‘No,’ the young woman said. Byrne could now see that she was a little older than he originally thought. ‘
I’m
Bean.’

Luther looked confused, as though he had never seen the young woman before. ‘But you —’

‘Yes,’ the young woman said. ‘I’ve grown up.’

Luther loosened his grip on Violet’s shoulder.

‘I said I’d come back for you,’ Luther said. ‘Why didn’t you wait?’

‘You’re here now.’ She reached out a hand. ‘Come with me. We’ll go back.’

The sound started as a low-level hum. It was more a sensation than a sound. The cobblestones beneath their feet seemed to vibrate.

‘Go back?’ Luther asked.

‘Yes,’ the young woman said. ‘We’ll be a family.’

The sound got louder. The solitary bulb in the cage housing flickered.

Luther dropped his hand slightly. The knife was now just a few inches from Violet’s cheek. ‘To Tallinn?’

The young woman took a few steps toward Luther and Violet. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘To Tallinn.’

Luther looked at the young woman. He dropped his hand further, began to tap the blade on his thigh.

It was all Ray Torrance needed.

He lunged at the man with full force. As he did, Luther brought down the knife, slicing Torrance from his right shoulder to his left hip. Torrance shrieked as blood splattered against the wall.

Torrance locked Luther in a bear hug as the man continued to slash at his back, the blade plunging deep into his flesh.

‘Go!’ Torrance yelled.

Rachel grabbed Violet by the hand. They trudged through the rising water toward Byrne.

Torrance had the man in a death grip. He began to move him toward the edge of the high wall over the storm sewer.

Below them the water raged.

As they neared the brink, Ray Torrance locked eyes with Byrne. It was a look Byrne had seen before. He’d known a few people who had suffered years from a terminal illness. It was the look of acceptance.

Torrance closed his eyes, fell backward, bringing Luther with him, just as the water roared through the storm sewer beneath them. The noise was deafening. It filled the cavernous opening with thunder.

Moments later, as the sound of the rushing underground river echoed off the stone walls, the two men were gone.

In the aftermath of the storm, which had spanned from New Jersey to central Ohio, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania put the amount of damages to roads, buildings and infrastructure at close to three hundred million dollars, with most of the damage occurring in the eastern part of the state.

The marine unit of the Philadelphia Police Department was kept very busy in the days after storm. The Delaware River was a major shipping channel, and while crews worked to clear debris from the river, passages needed to be kept open.

In the end, it was the Coast Guard that found the body of an unidentified male in his late thirties or early forties near the Baxter Water Treatment Plant. About two hundred yards south they found the body of Raymond Torrance, a retired detective with the PPD.

Despite their wounds, autopsies concluded that both men had died as a result of drowning.

The first day of spring in Philadelphia was always a mystery. There had been years when the city was pummeled with five inches of snow, high winds and icy rain. There were also years when the sun shone brightly and skies were scrubbed blue. This year 21 March was one of the latter. By eight a.m. the temperature was already sixty degrees.

The story of the man named Luther, and his murderous rampage, was still being unraveled. The
Inquirer
ran a series of articles about Cold River, focusing partly on the new construction that had been temporarily halted while the parks and forests nearby were examined for more remains.

The Philadelphia Police Department, along with the FBI, were using methane probes, and other sophisticated devices, to help determine where, if any, other bodies had been buried. The process promised to take weeks, if not months.

In the meantime, the newspapers ran grainy, black-and-white photographs of the deplorable conditions that existed at the hospital.

While investigators believed that the full story of what happened during the last days of the Delaware Valley State Hospital might never be known, little by little people were coming forward, both hospital personnel and former patients alike.

The PPD turned the audio recordings of Eduard Kross’s dreams over to the FBI’s behavioral science unit, in the hope of divining meaning from them, and perhaps applying their findings to unsolved homicides that had occurred in and around Philadelphia County over the last twenty years.

Both James Delacroix and Edward Richmond’s son Timothy were treated for their wounds, and released from the hospital.

The funeral was attended by police officers from as far away as Chicago.

Ray Torrance was buried next to his parents in Holy Cross Cemetery in Lansdowne.

Jessica had not known the man well, but she could not stop the tears. It was such a waste. She thought of the torment Ray Torrance had lived with for years, and it broke her heart. As she stood watching the casket lowered into the earth, Byrne put his arm around her. They both had seen this too many times in their time on the force.

As the first flower was dropped on the casket, Jessica glanced at her father. Peter Giovanni, in full dress blues, was stoic, as always. But Jessica knew that each time this happened, each time the bagpipes played, it took a little more from him.

It took something from them all.