Richard Montanari (39 page)

    'Carlos
looks well,' Jessica said. 'He looks ... happy.' It was a stretch, but Jessica
couldn't think of anything else to say.

    'He's
adjusting,' Martha replied. Martha Reed had seen a lot of children in her time.

    The
woman then rummaged in her bag, took out her BlackBerry. She tapped around, got
to her calendar. 'Can you and your husband be here today at around eleven?'

    Jessica's
heart thundered. They were getting their adoption interview. She'd known this
moment was coming, but now that it was here she wondered how she was going to
handle it. 'Oh yeah. We'll be here.'

    Martha
looked around conspiratorially. She lowered her voice. 'Between you and me, it
looks really good. I'm not supposed to say that, but it looks good.'

    Jessica
drove out of the Hosanna House parking lot on a cloud. Before she could turn
onto Second Street her cellphone rang in her hand. It was Dana Westbrook.

    'Morning,
boss. What's going on?'

    'I
just got the report on the Joseph Novak surveillance.'

    'Okay.'

    'We
had a detective from West on him all night. Experienced guy, used to be in
anti-gang, and did some task-force work with DEA. He sat on the apartment his
whole tour. He said that from the time he came on until six this morning, there
were no lights on in the place, no activity. About eight o'clock this morning
he put on a Philadelphia Water Department jacket, grabbed a clipboard, got the
super to let him in, and knocked on Novak's door. He got no answer, so he went
around back, climbed the fire escape, looked in the window.'

    'Was
Novak home?'

    'He
was,' Westbrook said. 'He was sitting at his desk. It looks like, after he left
the Roundhouse yesterday, he went home, shredded all of his sheet music and
news clippings, and somewhere between six o'clock last night and eight o'clock
this morning put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.'

    The
amount of blood was staggering.

    Jessica
stood next to the stacks of crystal CD cases. The clear boxes were sprayed with
blood and brain matter. Bits of shattered skull stuck to the valance over the
curtains.

    Joseph
Novak's body was in the desk chair at an unnatural angle - the force of the
blast had twisted his body in two directions. The upper third of his head was
missing.
Not missing, exactly,
Jessica thought. It was dispersed around
the wall and drapes behind him. The bullet had blasted out the window. There
were two CSU officers across the street at that moment searching for the slug.

    Was
Joseph Novak their killer? He'd seemed unshakeable when he had been in for
questioning, but why had he run the previous day? What did he have to hide?

    The
body was removed at ten a.m.

    The
death had all the earmarks of a suicide, so there was probably not going to be
a full-blown investigation. The weapon, a Colt Commander, had still been in
Joseph Novak's hand when he was found, his finger curled inside the trigger
guard.

    Jessica
would present her report to her boss, who would pass it along to the DA's
office, who would then make a ruling. Unless there was any compelling evidence
of foul play, this would be ruled a suicide and the homicide division of the
PPD would not be involved any further.

    But
that didn't mean there was not a connection to the serial murders going on in
the city.

    Jessica
got the attention of the two CSU officers who were dusting the doors and table
for fingerprints.

    'Can
you guys give me a few minutes?'

    The
officers, always ready for a break, set aside what they were doing, walked
through the door into the hallway, closed it.

    Jessica
slipped on gloves, turned the laptop to face the other side of the desk. The
screen displayed a default screen saver. She touched the space bar, and in a
second the screen came back to life. It was a Word document, with three short
sentences.

    Jessica
was not familiar with the passage. Was this a suicide note? she wondered. She
scrolled down on the trackpad but there was nothing else. The document was just
the three lines. She glanced at the corner of the window. It had not been
saved.

    Was
this a work in progress? Was this some sort of message from Joseph Novak, some
riddle left behind for friends and family by which they might make some sense
of his final, violent act?

    Jessica
had no idea. As much as she would have liked to take the laptop with her, she
had no jurisdiction over it. Not yet, anyway. She would lobby the DAs office to
establish a material-witness status for the late Joseph Novak, and perhaps she
would get a chance to go through it.

    She
looked around the place. The silence was thick and oppressive.

    Jessica
had to be careful about looking through the contents of the computer. The
homicide unit had recently received directives from the DA's office about
needing court approval for doing anything with a computer that involved
clicking a mouse or touching a keyboard. If there was something on the screen
to be seen, in plain view, that was one thing. If it involved maximizing a
minimized window, launching a program, or visiting a web page located in a
history on a browser, that was something else.

    A case
against a man trafficking in child pornography had recently been tossed because
the detective, knowing there were thousands of images on the man's hard drive,
had opened a graphics program. It turned out that every time a program was
launched, there was a log of the event and a record of the precise time it
happened. If the suspect was in custody at that moment, the detective could not
claim that the program was already open.

    Jessica
clicked over to the side bar. There was no harm in looking, as long as she
didn't open any files or programs. She glanced at the contents of the drive.
There was one file, saraband.doc. That was it. Other than that, there was
nothing on the drive. No documents, no spreadsheets, no databases, no photos,
music or audio files. It had all the earmarks of a drive that had been recently
erased.

    Any
good computer-forensic lab would be able to tell when a drive had been
formatted, and could usually find evidence of the files that were originally on
the drive. Jessica was already formulating the case she would make to the DA's
office to allow them to do just that.

    In
the meantime she would get a couple of warm bodies down here to canvass the
building, just to see if Joseph Novak had had any visitors earlier in the day.
If he had, maybe it could lead to a full-scale investigation of his death as
something other than a suicide.

    She
took out her phone, checked her voicemail. Two messages.

    When
did she get two messages? Why hadn't it rung? She checked the side of the
phone. With an iPhone, the switch to toggle from
silent
to
ring tone
was on the upper left, and was easily activated when you put the phone in your
pocket. Too easily. The ringer had been off.

    Jessica
switched it back on, tapped the first voicemail message. It was from the man
who was hoping to install the awnings on the new house. He wanted two grand.
Dream on.

    The
second call was from an unknown caller. She played it.

    
'Detective
Balzano, this is Joseph Novak
.'

    Jessica
jumped to her feet. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh. She glanced behind her,
at the dark sienna stains on the carpet and walls. She could still smell the
cordite in the air, could taste the coppery airborne blood at the back of her
throat. Joseph Novak's blood. She was listening to a message from the grave.

    
'I
want to apologize for my behavior. I can't go on like this. There is more to
this than you know. Much more. You don't know him. I cannot live with myself
anymore
.'

    Jessica
paused the message for a moment, paced the living room. Everything she looked
at - the books, the CDs, the furniture itself - took on a new meaning.

    She
stopped pacing, tapped the button, continued the message.

    
'I
hear him coming down the hall. Look in the cabinet above the range in the
kitchen
.'

    The
message ended.

    Jessica
put her phone in her pocket, crossed the living room into the compact Pullman
kitchen. She opened the cabinets above the range hood. There she found a dozen
or so cookbooks - Mexican, Italian, Cajun. She pulled a few of them out,
riffled the pages. Nothing. The second-to-last cookbook was labeled
Home
Recipes.
She pulled it out. When she did, something fell on the floor. It
was a slim leather-bound journal. The cover was worn and creased. She picked it
up. Stuck in the front was an old photograph. It was Joseph Novak at fifteen or
so, standing next to a beautiful cello. Jessica slipped the picture back in the
book, opened it.

    It
was a diary.

    Jessica
flipped ahead to the back of the journal. She read the final entry.

    
Zig,
zig, zig.

    
He
is death in cadence.

    She
walked across the street, grabbed a coffee-to-go at the diner, stepped into the
parking lot behind. She called Byrne, got his voice- mail. She called Dana
Westbrook, gave her a status report. Westbrook said she would send two other
detectives from the Special Investigations Unit to aid in the search.

    Jessica
opened the journal. There was something under the back cover. She peeled it
back gently. There was a second photograph there, an old Polaroid, a long shot
of a window in a huge stone building. In the window was a figure. It was impossible
to see who it was, but it looked like a slender woman. On the back of the
photograph was one word scrawled in red pencil.

    
Hell.

    Before
Jessica could get the photograph back into the journal she heard someone approaching,
footfalls on hard gravel. She turned.

    The
fist came from nowhere, connecting with the right side of her face in a dull
thud. She staggered back, saw stars. The journal flew out of her hands. The
second blow was more glancing, but it carried enough force to knock her to the
ground. She had enough presence to roll onto the side where she had her weapon
holstered.

    Through
the haze she saw her assailant. White-blond hair, filthy jeans, laceless
sneakers. She didn't recognize him. Not by sight, not at first. When he spoke
again, she knew. And there was no mistaking those eyes.

    'I
think we have some unfinished business, Detective Balzano,' Lucas Anthony
Thompson said. 'Or should I say Detective
Cunt
Balzano.'