Richard Montanari (23 page)

    
Where
are you?

    I am
across the street from the church.

    
Are
you alone?

    No.
Mama's with me. She is wearing her long leather coat. The one with the rip in the
right pocket. She is wearing sunglasses. She asked a lady for a cigarette and
the lady gave her one.

    
What
happened then?

    There
was a big bang. It was loud. Even the ground shook.

    
What
did you do?

    I
don't remember exactly.

    
Try
to remember. Do you smell anything? Taste anything
?

    
I
taste milkshake.

    
What
flavor is it
?

    Chocolate.
But it's warm milkshake. I don't like warm milkshake.

    
What
about smell?

    I
smell smoke, but not like regular smoke. Not like burning leaves, or logs in a
fireplace. More like when people burn their plastic garbage bags.

    
What
happens next
?

    I
stand here for a long time, watching the fire and smoke rise up into the sky.

    
Where
is your mother
?

    Right
beside me. Or maybe not.

    
What
do you mean
?

    Someone
is beside me, but I'm not looking at that person. I can't take my eyes off the
smoke over the trees. It is making pretty patterns in the sky.

    
What
kind of patterns
?

    At
first it looks like the face of Jesus. Then it looks likes birds.

    
What
happens next?

    I
reach up my hand for my mother to take me somewhere. Anywhere but here. I'm
scared.

    
Does
she take your hand?

    I
take the person's hand, but as we walk away I realize it can't be my mom.

    
Why
not?

    The hand
is too big. And rough. It is a man's hand.

    
Is
there anything else you remember?

    Yes.
We get into a car. And there is a new smell.
Two
new smells.

    
What
are the new smells?

    A
different kind of smoke. Different from the burning plastic smell. Like from a
pipe, I think. A pipe that people smoke. Like
men
smoke.

    
And
what else
?

    Apples.
Empire apples. We have lots of apples in Western Pennsylvania. Especially near
the fall.

    
Do
you remember what else happened that day
?

    The fire.
The ground shaking. Being scared
.

    
What
about the man? What happened with him
?

    I
don't know
.

    
What
about his face? Do you see his face
?

    When
I look at his face it isn't there
.

    
What
about the fire? Do you remember what that was? Do you remember what caused the
fire
?

    Yes.
I remember, but only because I found out later.

    
What
was it?

    It
was Flight 93. It was September 11, 2001, and Flight 93 crashed right near
Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

    She
smoothed out her uniform, stepped into the bathroom, went through the mental
checklist in her mind, then checked the entire room.

    Done.

    She
opened the door, stepped into the hall. Two older men were approaching from the
elevator. They were probably with the convention. Everyone on the floor this
week was with the convention. They nodded to her, smiled. She smiled back,
although she didn't feel it inside.

    When
she reached the business center on the twelfth floor - really just a small
niche with computer, fax machine and printer - she sensed another guest coming
down the hall. The unwritten rule was that in the hallways, elevators and most
public spaces, guests, along with all front-of-the-house personnel, had the
right of way. You didn't hide or sidestep from anyone, but if you were any good
at your job you knew how to defer with style.

    Lucy
stepped into the alcove just as the man passed the door of the business center.
She did not get a good look at him, just a glimpse of his dark coat.

    But
she didn't have to see him. It was not her sense of sight that took the floor
from beneath her. It was her sense of smell.

    There,
beneath the hotel smells of cleaning products and filtered, heated air, was
another smell, a scent that closed a cold hand over her heart, a smell that
unquestionably trailed behind the man who had just passed her in the hallway.

    
The
smell of apples
.

    She
looked down the hall, and knew that he had come out of one of the rooms. Was it
1208? It had to be. She had just cleaned the other two rooms at that end, and
they were empty.

    Lucy
pushed her cart madly down the hall, caught the service elevator to the
basement. She left her cart in the basement, ran up the steps toward the
service entrance to the first floor. She tried to calm herself as she walked
toward the lobby. She didn't know what she would do if she confronted the man,
or even who she was looking for.

    She
stepped into the northern end of the lobby. There were three men in the lobby,
none of them wearing or carrying a dark overcoat. Everyone else was staff.

    She
went out the side door, onto Sansom Street. The sidewalk was crowded. Men,
women, children, people making deliveries, cab drivers. She rounded the corner,
looked in front of the hotel. Two bellmen were taking bags out of a limo for an
elderly couple.

    Lucy's
heartbeat began to slow. She took a moment, then walked up the drive on the
east side of the hotel.

    
The
smell of apples
.

    It
had to be her imagination. Brought on by going to see that crazy old man. She
was never going to find out what had happened on those three days. Not really.

    She
rounded the wall at the back of the hotel, turned the corner.

    'Hello,
Lucy.'

    She
stopped, her heart in her throat, her legs all but giving out. She knew the man
standing before her. She knew his
face.

    'It's
you,' she said.

    'Yes,
Lucy,' he replied. 'It's Detective Byrne.'

    
Jessica
spent the early afternoon running data through ViCAP,
the Violent Criminal
Apprehension Program. Started by the FBI in 1985, ViCAP was a national registry
of violent crimes - homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons, and
unidentified remains. Case information submitted to ViCAP was available to
authorized law-enforcement agencies around the world, and the system allowed
investigators to compare their evidence with all other cases in the database
and to identify similarities.

    Jessica
searched the database with the most salient points of the case, those being the
signature marks of the shaving of the victims, as well as the use of paper to
blindfold them.

    She
found a similar case from 2006 in Kentucky, where a man had shaved off the hair
of three prostitutes before stabbing them to death and dumping their bodies
along the banks of the Cumberland River. In this case the man had shaved only
the hair on the victims' heads, including their eyebrows - not their entire
bodies. There was another 1988 case in Eureka, California of a man who had
shaved a strange pattern into the scalps of four victims. The pattern was later
identified, through the man's confession, as what he thought were the first
four letters of an alien alphabet.

    There
were many cases of blindfolded victims, most being execution- style homicides.
There were also numerous examples of pre- and post-mortem mutilations. None
matched Jessica and Byrne's case.

    There
were no incidents where all three signatures were present.

    Jessica
was just about to print off what she needed when all hell broke loose in the
duty room. She stood aside as a half-dozen members of the Fugitive Squad ran
down the hallway, then through the door to the stairs. They were soon followed
by three men wearing US Marshals windbreakers.

    Why
were the US Marshals there? The purview of the marshal's office, among other
things, was the apprehending of fugitives, the transport and managing of
prisoners, as well as the protection of witnesses.

    Jessica
looked across the room to see Dana Westbrook walking toward her. 'What
happened?' she asked.

    'We
had a break.'

    Unfortunately,
what Westbrook clearly meant was there had been a
prison
break, not a
break in Jessica's case.

    'From
downstairs?' The sub-basement of the Roundhouse was where the PPD holding cells
were located. The holding cells were staffed by the county sheriffs office, not
the police.

    Westbrook
shook her head. 'From CF.'

    Curran-Fromhold
Correctional Facility, on State Road, was a prison in Northeast Philly. In
Jessica's entire time on the job she had never heard of a break from CF. 'What happened?'

    'It's
sketchy right now, but it looks like the prisoner got his hands on a visitor's
pass and some street clothes. They've got video of him just waltzing out of the
visitor's area.'

    The
security at CF was tight, which probably meant that the escapee had an
accomplice of some sort. Jessica knew the drill. Members of the PPD Fugitive
Squad would team up both with US Marshals and with officers from the
Pennsylvania State Police. They would scour motels, bus stations, train
stations, and of course establish surveillance of the prisoner's residence and
those of his known associates. She also knew there was a pretty good chance
that a head or two would roll at Curran-Fromhold.

    'Fugitive
Squad is all over it, and as you can see the marshals are in,' Westbrook said.
'Only a matter of time. Captain wanted me to give you a heads-up, anyway.'

    This
got Jessica's attention. 'Me? Why?'

    'The
prisoner? The guy who escaped?'

    'What
about him?'

    'He's
your AA Killer suspect. Lucas Anthony Thompson.'

    'How
did the doctor's appointment go?' she asked.

    'Good.'

    Jessica
just stared. Byrne knew better than to give her the bum's rush on something
like this, yet still he tried. Her icy look firmly in place, the moment drew
out. Byrne caved in.

    'They
took the MRI, now they have to read the results. They said they'd call me.'

    'When?'

    Byrne
took a deep breath, realizing he had to play this game or he'd never hear the
end of it. 'Maybe tomorrow.'

    'You'll
let me know the second you hear from them, right?'

    'Yes,
Mom.'

    'Don't
make me ground you.'

    Jessica
told Byrne about Thompson, as well as the scant information she had harvested
on ViCAP. Then she gathered her notes, filled him in on the rest of the details
regarding the second victim found that day. Black male, mid-fifties, no ID.
Initial canvass turned up nothing.