Richard Montanari (45 page)

    Jessica
and Byrne rose. 'We really appreciate this,' Byrne said, handing the man a
business card.

    'Not
at all,' Duchesne replied. He walked them to the door of his office, through
the reception area, to the front doors.

    'Were
you here when Christa-Marie Schönburg studied here?' Byrne asked.

    'No,'
Duchesne said. 'I've been here for almost twenty years, but she had left by
then.'

    'Did
she teach here?'

    'She
did. It was only for two years or so, but she was quite something, as I
understand. The students were madly in love with her.'

    They
descended the steps, reached the side door of Prentiss.

    'Perhaps
this is something you are not at liberty to discuss, but does any of this have
something to do with Ms. Schönburg?' Duchesne asked.

    'No,'
Byrne said, the consummate liar. 'I'm just a fan.'

    Duchesne
glanced over at the wall. Jessica followed his gaze. There, next to the door,
mixed into a precise grouping of portraits of young musicians - violinists,
pianists, flutists, oboists - was an expensively framed photograph of a young
Christa-Marie Schönburg sitting in a practice room at Prentiss.

    'You
saw it, didn't you?' Jessica finally asked.

    'Oh
yeah.'

    'Same
one?'

    'Same
one.'

    In
the decades-old photograph of Christa-Marie next to the door she wore a
stainless steel bracelet with a large garnet stone inlaid.

    They
had seen the same bracelet on the shelf at Joseph Novak's apartment.

    The Audio-Visual
Unit of the PPD was located in the Roundhouse basement. The purview of the unit
was to provide A/V support to all of the city's agencies - cameras, TVs,
recording devices, audio and video equipment. The unit was also responsible for
recording every public event in which the mayor or police department was
involved, providing an official record. The detective divisions relied upon the
unit to analyze surveillance footage as it related to their cases.

    In
this regard there was no one better than Mateo Fuentes. In his mid-thirties,
Fuentes was a denizen of the gloomy confines of the basement studios and
editing bays, a fussy and geometrically precise investigator who seemed to take
every foray by detectives into his world as an unwelcome invasion.

    Recently
promoted to sergeant, Mateo was now commander of the unit. What had passed for
punctiliousness when he was Officer Fuentes now bordered on the obsessive.

    When
Jessica and Byrne arrived in the basement, Mateo Fuentes was holding court in one
of the bays off the main studio, chatting with David Albrecht.

    'So,
you prefer the L-series lens, then?' Mateo asked.

    'Oh
yeah,' Albrecht said. 'No comparison.'

    'No
ghosting?'

    'None.'

    Mateo
smirked. 'So, if I mortgage my house and sell all my possessions, I might be
able to buy a rig like this?'

    'You
might be able to
rent
one.'

    Both
men looked over at Jessica and Byrne. Albrecht smiled. Mateo frowned. It
appeared that the two detectives were harshing his vibe. A few minutes later
the rest of the team arrived - six detectives in all, plus Sergeant Dana
Westbrook.

    Mateo
was outnumbered.

    'And
so to business,' Fuentes said. 'Ready?'

    The
detectives gathered around David Albrecht's camera. The LCD screen was about
four inches diagonally, but Mateo had hooked it up to one of the fifteen-inch
monitors from the Comm Unit.

    Mateo
fast-forwarded through footage of the West Philly location until he came to the
sequence showing the parking lot where Jessica had been assaulted.

    The
video showed Jessica walking out of the diner and into the parking lot.
Ordinarily this would have been a moment for hoots and hollers, for a bout of
good-natured ribbing. Everyone was silent. They knew what was coming.

    On the
screen Jessica made a call on her cellphone, then pocketed the phone. She
leaned against the wall of the building, and opened the diary. She pulled
something out of the back. This went on for a full minute. Cars passed in the
foreground. A mother walking with her three small children stopped in front of
the lot. The woman adjusted the jacket on a two-year-old girl, who wanted
nothing to do with it. They soon moved on. Jessica continued to read.

    A few
moments later Thompson emerged from behind the building. It showed him
sucker-punching Jessica, the diary flying from her hand. Two loose pieces of
paper lofted on the wind. Everyone watching winced. The second blow took
Jessica down. Thompson paced for a few moments, strutting. The audio was from
across the street, just the sound of traffic. His words were unintelligible,
but his gestures were not.

    'There,'
Albrecht said. He hit a button on the small remote in his hand. The video
froze. Albrecht pointed to the right side of the screen. There, just beyond the
corner of the building, was a shadow on the ground, the unmistakable shadow of
a person. Albrecht restarted the video. Thompson stood over Jessica's body, but
all eyes were on the shadow. The shadow didn't move.

    
He's
watching, Jessica thought. He's just standing there watching what's happening.
He's not helping me. He's part of this
.

    When
Thompson got close to the corner of the building a pair of arms reached out,
over his head. A second later the arms descended and Thompson all but disappeared,
dragged off his feet with enormous force.

    Albrecht
rewound the video, played it again, this time frame by frame. The arms were
dark-clad. The subject wore dark gloves. When the hands were over Thompson's
head Albrecht froze the video. Silhouetted against the white of the garage
behind the building, it was possible to see what the man in shadows had in his
hands. It was a wire. A long loop of thin wire. He slipped the wire over
Thompson's head and around his neck, yanking back and pulling Thompson from the
frame.

    The
screen went black.

    'I
want a copy of this sent to Technical Services,' Dana Westbrook said. 'I want
this broken down frame by frame.'

    'Sure.'

    'I
want tire impressions from that lot and the area behind the building,' Westbrook
said. 'See if we have any police cameras on that street.'

    Before
Westbrook could say anything else, Dennis Stansfield came down the stairs in a
hurry. He bulled into the center of the room.

    'Detective?'
Westbrook asked. 'You're late.'

    Stansfield
looked at the floor, the ceiling, the walls. He opened his mouth, but nothing
emerged. He seemed stuck.

    '
Dennis
?'

    Stansfield
snapped out of it. 'There's another one.'

    As
Byrne and Jessica threaded through the cordon to the area behind the
restaurant, Jessica dreaded what she was about to see.

    The
call had come in to 911 at just after nine p.m. The victim, it appeared, had
been dead for days.

    Garbage
bags had been piling up behind the restaurant for weeks. Apparently the
restaurant owner had an ongoing feud with the private hauling company, and it
had become a matter of principle. Pushed against one wall were more than a
hundred bulging plastic bags, ripped and torn by all manner of vermin, their
rotting contents spilling out. The foul smell of the decomposing body was
masked by a dozen other acrid odors of decaying meats and produce. A trio of
brave rats milled at the far end of the alley, waiting their turn.

    Light
brown skin. Nude and hairless. Head shaved bald. The body was bloated with
gases.

    The
entire team was present, along with Russell Diaz, Mike Drummond, and now a
representative of the mayor's office.

    They
all waited for the ME's investigator to clear the body for investigators. Tom
Weyrich was taking a day off. The new investigator was a black woman in her
forties whom Jessica had never met. She examined the body for wounds, made her
notes. She opened the victim's hand, shone her Maglite, and everyone saw the
small tattoo on the middle finger of the left hand. It appeared to be a
kangaroo. Photos were taken from every angle.

    The
ME's investigator rose and stepped back. Stansfield walked forward and gently
removed the white paper band that was wrapped around the victim's head.

    The dead
man was Latino, in his late thirties. Like the other victims he had a slash
across his forehead, but this time the puncture wound was over his left eye.
His right ear was shredded into a scabrous tangle of blood and ruined
cartilage.

    Byrne
saw the victim's face, turned, and took a few steps away, his hands in his
pockets.

    What
was
this
about? Jessica wondered. Why was he stepping away?

    'I
know him,' Drummond said. 'That's Eduardo Robles.'

    All
eyes turned to Kevin Byrne. Everyone knew that Byrne had been trying to get the
grand jury to indict Robles in the death of Lina Laskaris. And now Robles was a
victim of their serial murderer.

    'This
is where she died,' Byrne said. 'She was shot on the street and she crawled
back here to die. This is the Lina Laskaris crime scene.'

    Five
victims.

    Byrne
got in the van and drove. At first he had no idea where he was going. But soon
he found himself on the expressway, and not long after that back in Chestnut
Hill, looking beyond the high iron fence at the huge house.

    He
saw a light in a window, a shadow cross the elegant silk drapery.

    Christa-Marie.

    Closing
his eyes and leaning back in the driver's seat, he returned to that night in
1990. He and Jimmy Purify had been grabbing a bite to eat. They had just closed
a double homicide, a drug murder in North Philadelphia.

    Had
he really been that young? He'd been one of the newer detectives in the unit
then, a brash kid who carried over the nickname of his youth. Riff Raff. He
wore it with the expected cocky Irish swagger. They called Jimmy 'Clutch.'

    Riff
Raff and Clutch.

    But
that was ancient history.

    Byrne
glanced up at the second floor, at the figure in the window. Was she looking
out at him?

    He
picked up the file next to him on the seat, opened it, looked at the photos, at
the body of Gabriel Thorne lying on the floor, the bloody white kitchen where
all this had begun.