Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (32 page)

Simon Edward Close.
The Report.

She kneeled on the back of his head a little longer, a little harder. It was at times like these that she wished she weighed in at about 210.

“You know where the Roundhouse is?” she asked.

“Yes, of course. I—”

“Good,” Jessica said. “Here’s the deal. If you want to talk to me, you go through the press office there. If that’s too much trouble, then stay the
fuck
out of my face.”

Jessica eased the pressure on his head by a few ounces.

“Now, I’m going to get up and go to my car. Then I’m going to leave the park. You are going to remain in this position until I am gone. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Simon replied.

She put all her weight on his head. “I mean it. If you move, if you even lift your head, I’m going to take you in for questioning on the Rosary Killings. I can lock you up for seventy-two hours without having to explain myself to anyone. Capeesh?”

“Ga-beetch,” Simon said, the fact that he had a pound of wet sod in his mouth inhibiting his attempt at speaking Italian.

A little while later, when Jessica started her car and headed for the park exit, she glanced back at the trail. Simon was still there, facedown.

God, what an asshole.

45

WEDNESDAY, 10:45 AM

C
RIME SCENES ALWAYS LOOKED DIFFERENT in daylight. The alley looked benign and peaceful. A pair of uniforms stood at its entrance.

Byrne badged the officers, slipped under the tape. When the two detectives saw him, they each gave the homicide wave—palm down, a slight dip to the ground, then straight out.
Everything’s cool.

Xavier Washington and Reggie Payne had been partnered so long, Byrne thought, they were beginning to dress alike and finish each other’s sentences, like an old married couple.

“We can all go home,” Payne said with a smile.

“What do you have?” Byrne asked.

“Just a little thinning of the gene pool.” Payne pulled back the plastic sheet. “This is the late Marius Green.”

The body was in the precise position it had been in when Byrne left it the previous night.

“It’s a through and through.” Payne pointed to Marius’s chest.

“Thirty-eight?” Byrne asked.

“Could be. Looks more like a nine, though. Haven’t found the brass or the slug yet.”

“He’s JBM?” Byrne asked.

“Oh yeah,” Payne replied. “Marius was a very bad actor.”

Byrne glanced at the uniformed officers looking for the slug. He looked at his watch. “I have a few minutes.”

“Oh, now we can really go home,” Payne said. “The face is on the case.”

Byrne walked a few feet toward the Dumpster. The mound of plastic trash bags obscured him from view. He picked up a short piece of lumber, began poking around. When he was sure he was unobserved, he took the baggie from his pocket, opened it, turned it upside down, and dropped the bloodied slug to the ground. He continued to nose around, but not too carefully.

After a minute or so, he returned to where Payne and Washington stood.

“I’ve got my own psycho to catch,” Byrne said.

“Catch
you
at the house,” Payne replied.

“
Got
it,” one of the uniforms standing by the Dumpster bellowed.

Payne and Washington looked at each other, high-fived, walked over to where the uniform stood. They had found the slug.

Facts: Marius Green’s blood was on the slug. It had caromed off brick. End of story.

There would be no reason to look farther or dig deeper. The slug would now be bagged and tagged, taken down to ballistics, where a property receipt would be issued. Then it would be compared to other bullets recovered from crime scenes. Byrne had the distinct feeling that the Smith & Wesson he had taken off Diablo was used in other unsavory undertakings in the past.

Byrne exhaled, looked heavenward, slipped into his car. Only one more detail to address. Finding Diablo and imparting to him the wisdom of leaving Philadelphia forever.

His pager went off.

The call was from Monsignor Terry Pacek.

The hits just keep on coming.

T
HE SPORTING CLUB was Center City’s biggest fitness club, located on the eighth floor at the historic Bellevue, the beautifully ornate building at Broad and Walnut Streets.

Byrne found Terry Pacek on one of the LifeCycles. The dozen or so stationary bikes were arranged in a square, facing each other. Most were occupied. Behind Byrne and Pacek, the slap and shriek of Nikes on the basketball court below offset the whir of the treadmills and hiss of the cycles, as well as the grunts and groans and grumbles of the fit, near fit, and ain’t never gonna
be
fit.

“Monsignor,” Byrne said in greeting.

Pacek didn’t break rhythm, nor seem to acknowledge Byrne in any way. He was perspiring, but he wasn’t breathing hard. A quick glance at the readout on the cycle showed that he had already put in forty minutes, and was still maintaining a ninety-rpm pace. Incredible. Byrne knew Pacek to be in his midforties, but he was in great shape, even for a man ten years younger. In here, out of his cassock and collar, dressed in stylish, Perry Ellis jogging pants and sleeveless T-shirt, he looked more like a slowly aging tight end than a priest. Actually, a slowly aging tight end is precisely what Pacek was. As Byrne understood it, Terry Pacek still held the Boston College record for receptions in a single season. They didn’t call him the Jesuit John Mackey for nothing.

Looking around the club, Byrne saw a well-known news anchor puffing away on a StairMaster, a pair of city councilmen plotting on parallel treadmills. He found himself self-consciously sucking in his stomach. He would start a cardio regimen tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.

He had to find Diablo first.

“Thanks for meeting with me,” Pacek said.

“Not a problem,” Byrne said.

“I know you’re a busy man,” Pacek added. “I won’t keep you too long.”

Byrne knew that
I won’t keep you long
was code for
Get comfortable, you’re gonna be here a while
. He just nodded, waited for a moment. The moment played out empty. Then: “What can I do for you?”

The question was as rhetorical as it was rote. Pacek hit the
COOL DOWN
button on the cycle, rode it out. He slipped off the seat, threw a towel around his neck. And although Terry Pacek was far more toned than Byrne, he was at least four inches shorter. Byrne found cheap solace in this.

“I’m a man who likes to cut through the layers of bureaucracy when possible,” Pacek said.

“What makes you think it’s possible in this instance?” Byrne asked.

Pacek stared at Byrne for a few, uncomfortable seconds too long. Then he smiled. “Walk with me.”

Pacek led the way to the elevator, which they took to the third floor mezzanine and its jogging track. Byrne found himself hoping that
Walk with me
meant precisely that. Walking. They got out on the carpeted track, which ringed the fitness room below.

“How is the investigation going?” Pacek asked as they began their way around at a reasonable pace.

“You didn’t call me here for a status report.”

“You’re right,” Pacek replied. “I understand that there was another girl found last night.”

This was no secret, Byrne thought. It was even on CNN, which meant that no doubt people in Borneo knew. Great publicity for Philly’s tourism board. “Yes,” Byrne said.

“And I understand that your interest in Brian Parkhurst remains high.”

An understatement. “We’d like to talk to him, yes.”

“It is in everyone’s interest—especially the heartbroken families of these young girls—that this madman be caught. And that justice is done. I know Dr. Parkhurst, Detective. I find it hard to believe that he has had anything to do with these crimes, but that is not for me to decide.”

“Why am I here, Monsignor?” Byrne was in no mood for palace politics.

After two full circuits of the jogging track, they were back at the door. Pacek wiped the sweat from his head, and said: “Meet me downstairs in twenty minutes.”

Z
ANZIBAR BLUE WAS A CHIC JAZZ CLUB and restaurant in the basement of the Bellevue, just beneath the lobby of the Park Hyatt, nine floors beneath the Sporting Club. Byrne ordered a coffee at the bar.

Pacek entered, bright-eyed, flushed with his workout.

“Vodka rocks,” he said to the bartender.

He leaned against the bar next to Byrne. Without a word, he reached into his pocket. He handed Byrne a slip of paper. On it was an address in West Philly.

“Brian Parkhurst owns a building on Sixty-first Street, near Market. He’s renovating it,” Pacek said. “He’s there now.”

Byrne knew that nothing was free in this life. He pondered Pacek’s angle. “Why are you telling me this?”

“It’s the right thing to do, Detective.”

“But your bureaucracy is no different from mine.”

“I have done judgment and justice: leave me not to mine oppressors,”
Pacek said with a wink. “Psalms, One Hundred and Ten.”

Byrne took the piece of paper. “I appreciate this.”

Pacek sipped his vodka. “I wasn’t here.”

“I understand.”

“How are you going to explain obtaining this information?”

“Leave it to me,” Byrne said. He would have one of his CIs make a call to the Roundhouse, logging it in about twenty minutes.

I seen him . . . that guy youse are lookin’ for . . . I seen him up around Cobbs Creek.

“We all fight the good fight,” Pacek said. “We choose our weapons early in life. You chose a gun and a badge. I chose the cross.”

Byrne knew this wasn’t easy for Pacek. If Parkhurst turned out to be their doer, Pacek would be the one to take the flak for the Archdiocese having hired him in the first place—a man who’d had an affair with a teenaged girl being put in proximity to, perhaps, a few thousand more.

On the other hand, the sooner the Rosary Killer was caught—not only for the sake of the Catholic girls in Philadelphia, but also for the church itself—the better.

Byrne slid off the stool, towering over the priest. He dropped a ten on the bar.

“Go with God,” Pacek said.

“Thanks.”

Pacek nodded.

“And, Monsignor?” Byrne added, slipping on his coat.

“Yes?”

“It’s Psalms One Nineteen.”

46

WEDNESDAY, 11:15 AM

J
ESSICA WAS IN HER FATHER’S KITCHEN, washing dishes, when the “talk” came. Like all Italian American families, anything of any importance was discussed, dissected, resected, and solved in only one room of the house. The kitchen.

This day would be no different.

Instinctively, Peter picked up a dish towel and stationed himself next to his daughter. “You having a good time?” he asked, the real conversation he wanted to have hiding just beneath his policeman’s tongue.

“Always,” Jessica said. “Aunt Carmella’s cacciatore brings me back.” She said this, lost, for the moment, in a pastel nostalgia of her childhood in this house, in memories of those carefree years at family functions with her brother; of Christmas shopping at the May Company, of Eagles games at a frigid Veterans Stadium, of seeing Michael in his uniform for the first time: so proud, so fearful.

God, she missed him.

“. . . the
sopressata
?”

Her father’s question yanked her back to the present. “I’m sorry. What did you say, Dad?”

“Did you try the
sopressata
?”

“No.”

“Out of this world. From Chickie’s. I’ll make you a plate.”

Jessica had never once left a party at her father’s house without a plate. Nor had anyone else for that matter.

“You want to tell me what’s wrong, Jess?”

“Nothing.”

The word fluttered around the room for a while, then took a nosedive, as it always did when she tried it with her father. He always knew.

“Right, sweetie,” Peter said. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” Jessica said. “Just, you know, the usual. Work.”

Peter took a plate, dried it. “You nervous about the case?”