Richard Montanari (57 page)

    'These
two were walking up the street about a half-hour ago. They said they were not
really paying attention but when they got here to the edge of the block they
saw someone walking in the shadows to the center of the cemetery. They said it
was a man carrying something heavy over his shoulders.'

    'Did
they get a good look at the guy?' Jessica asked. Nicci shook her head. 'Too
dark on that side. But they still watched what he was doing. They said he
dropped the parcel to the ground, unwrapped it. When they saw that it was a
body, they froze. Then they saw the man position the leg, propping it up on one
of the low headstones.'

    Jessica
knew what came next. She remained silent.

    'Then,
according to our witnesses, the man jumped high into the air and came down on
the leg. The woman said she heard the sound of the breaking bone all the way on
the other side of the cemetery.'

    A
news helicopter roared overhead. Jessica wondered what this grotesque display
might look like from above.

    'What
about the vehicle? Did they get a look?'

    Again
Nicci shook her head. 'They were both pretty much over the edge at this point.
We were lucky they had the wherewithal to call us.'

    Jessica
glanced at the street corners. She did not see any police cameras. This was not
a high-crime or high-drug-traffic area. She looked at the walls of the stone
church. She did not see any surveillance cameras there, either.

    When
she stepped into the gated graveyard, Jessica saw the corpse, the now-familiar
signature. The body was nude, a white middle-aged male, shaved clean. There was
a band of paper around his forehead. The left foot rested on the headstone.
Jessica crossed over to the plot, aimed her Maglite at the dead body, and saw
the sharp bone protruding from the skin, just above the left knee. She thought
about the line from
Danse Macabre.

    Then
Jessica leaned in, moved the victim's left leg a few inches, directed the beam
of her flashlight at the headstone. At the top she saw:

    The
name of the person in the grave was Melina Laskaris.

    She
angled the light to the victim's right hand, which was on the ground, palm up. On
the ring finger she saw a small tattoo of a donkey. It was the seventh animal,
which meant there was one more to go.

    Before
Jessica could stop her - and she didn't really want to stop her - Nicci Malone
stepped forward, knelt down, pulled off the bloodied white headband. When
Jessica saw the victim's face, the triangle was complete.

    The
dead woman was Lina Laskaris.

    Her
killer was Eduardo Robles.

    The
accomplice, the harmony in this horror show - the broken body sprawled before
them in this crumbling graveyard - was Detective Dennis Stansfield.

    He
stood in shadows, just a block from the Le Jardin hotel, the sounds of his city
all around him, the flashing police lights a few blocks away. He felt the hand
on his arm.

    'Kevin.'

    Christa-Marie
looked fragile, sculpted from moonlight. She raised a hand to his cheek, a warm
finger tracing the lines in his face. She slipped her hand around the back of
his head, leaned forward and kissed him, gently at first, then with a growing
passion.

    A
moment later she leaned back, looked into his eyes.

    'It's
time, isn't it?' she asked.

    'Yes,'
Byrne said. 'Are you ready?'

    'Yes.'
She took his hand in hers. 'Take me home.'

    'Jess?'

    It was
Russell Diaz. The city block had been taken over by law enforcement. Residents
had begun to drift out of their houses. Endlessly, the helicopter flew back and
forth, hovering overhead. Jessica looked around. David Albrecht was not to be
found.

    'You
have a minute?' Diaz asked.

    She
did not. But she knew that this was coming, just as she knew what it was about.
'Sure.'

    Diaz
looked at his two men. 'Give us a second.'

    The
two officers walked a few feet away, leaned against Jessica's car. When Diaz
felt they were out of earshot, he spoke.

    'You
know what I have to ask, don't you?' he said, lowering his voice.

    Jessica
remained silent. It was a rhetorical question. Diaz plowed ahead. Niceties were
over.

    'I need
to talk to Kevin,' Diaz said. 'Have you heard from him?'

    'Not
since earlier this evening.'

    'About
what time was that?'

    Jessica
had to think about this. She had to be accurate. This was all going on the
record. 'Maybe an hour ago.'

    'He called
you?'

    'Yes.'

    'Did
he mention where he was going?'

    Now
she had to be careful. Byrne had not said anything specific. 'No.'

    'Is
he still driving that van?'

    'I
don't know.'

    Diaz
looked out over the gathering crowd, back.

    'I want
to show you something.'

    They
walked over to the unmarked police van. Diaz opened the sliding side door.
Inside was a rack of electronic equipment, surveillance monitors, three locked
gun racks. Diaz grabbed a laptop off the front seat, opened it, put it on the
floor of the van. The screen instantly displayed a flow chart. On it were six
different squares. Diaz clicked the first one.

    Seconds
later three separate documents cascaded across the screen. Jessica recognized
them as PPD witness statements, presented in .pdf format.

    'We
have statements from three people who live on West Tioga Street,' Diaz said.
'Neighbors of Sharon and Kenneth Beckman. They all stated that they saw
Detective Byrne at the Beckman house an hour before her son reported her
missing.'

    'She
was next of kin, Russell. Both Kevin and I were there that morning. We made
notification.'

    'As
you know, he returned a short time later. Did you accompany Detective Byrne
back to the premises?'

    'No,'
Jessica said. 'He returned to follow up. We had received additional
information.'

    'What
was the information?'

    Diaz
knew the answer to his question. He was testing her. 'That Kenneth Beckman was
questioned in the murder of Antoinette Chan.'

    'When
did Detective Byrne return to the Roundhouse?'

    'It
had to be around three.'

    'What
did he say about the interview?'

    'He
said that Sharon Beckman didn't answer the door.'

    Diaz
took a moment, then tapped another square on the chart. This was the ME's
preliminary report on Joseph Novak. 'The coroner puts the time of death for
Joseph Novak at between eight p.m. and six a.m. Do you know where Detective
Byrne was during those hours?'

    This
was getting so bad, so fast. Was Diaz making an attempt to establish some sort
of conspiracy here?

    'I do
not.'

    'Did
Detective Byrne mention anything about seeing Mr. Novak again that day?'

    'No.'

    Diaz
hit yet another button on the laptop. A grainy video began to play. It was the stationary
image of a city street at night.

    'This
is PPD surveillance footage near the corner of Frankford and York.'

    At
the thirty-four-second mark on the video a man crosses the top of the frame,
hesitates for a moment, walks off frame. A few seconds later, a second man
walks across the frame, right to left. He continues off. Diaz rewound the
recording. He pointed to the lower right of the image, at a van parked on the
street. 'This tag is registered to a man named Patrick Connolly. He is Detective
Byrne's cousin. Connolly stated that he lent this vehicle to Detective Byrne
last week.'

    Jessica
looked closely. It was clearly the Sedona minivan. She looked closely at the
whole image. 'I believe Kevin already acknowledged that he was there that night.
This is not new information.'

    Diaz
hit
play.
The image scrolled by in slow motion this time. He
freeze-framed it as the first man walked into the frame. 'This is Eduardo
Robles.' He hit
play
again. Robles disappears off frame, walking down
the alley, the alley in which his body was found. The second man enters the
frame. Diaz froze the image again.

    'Do
you recognize this person, detective?' he asked.

    Jessica
noted that she had gone from
Jess
to
detective.
To another person
it might have gone unnoticed. Not to anyone in law enforcement. 'No. Sorry. It
could be anyone.'

    'Not
exactly.' Diaz hit a few keys, zoomed in. It increased the size of the pixels,
but some things were obvious. Like the man's left hand. 'It can only be a white
male, so it can't be "just anyone".' He pointed to something next to
the figure. 'We took measurements on this stand- pipe. This person is over six
feet tall. He is wearing a dark overcoat and a dark watch cap.' Diaz reached
onto a shelf. He produced a photograph of Kevin Byrne, a picture that Jessica
recognized instantly.

    It
had been taken a year ago at a benefit in the Poconos. It was of Kevin and her
standing with a bunch of kids. Kevin wore a dark overcoat and navy blue watch
cap.

    Jessica
said nothing.

    Diaz
directed her gaze to the body on the ground across the cemetery from where they
stood. 'Everyone was well aware of the friction between Detective Byrne and
Detective Stansfield. Add to that the incident between them at the Roundhouse
and you can see what I'm faced with, right?' Diaz closed the laptop, squared
himself in front of her. 'I now have a dead cop, and Kevin Byrne is missing
again.'

    Diaz
opened a second laptop. There on the screen were two microscope photographs of
hair shafts. Diaz pointed to the one on the left. 'This is a sample taken from
a brush belonging to Sharon Beckman.' He pointed to the example on the right.
Jessica was far from an expert, but to her eye the samples were identical.
'This was found on the driver's seat of Kevin Byrne's van. They match.'

    Jessica
recalled the hair on Byrne's shoulder.

    '
Did
you get a haircut
?'

    '
Yeah.
I popped in and got a trim
.'

    Jessica
began to feel nauseated. She remained silent, which was just as well because
she had no idea what to say. Diaz closed the side door of the van, signaled to
his two men. They approached, stopped a few feet away.

    'Look,
Jess. If you were looking at this from the outside, you would see why we need
to talk to Detective Byrne.'

    Jessica
knew that Diaz was right. In her career she had brought people in for
questioning based on far less.

    'I
don't know where he is, Russ. I've left five voicemails for him in the past
half-hour.'

    'When
was the last time you called?'

    'Five
minutes ago.'

    'Want
to try again?'

    Jessica
took out her phone. She put it on speaker, hit Byrne's speed- dial number. It
rang twice, and his voicemail greeting came on. There was no point leaving a
sixth message. Jessica closed her phone.

    Diaz nodded.
'Detective Byrne carries a 17?'

    He
was referring to a Glock 17, the standard-issue service weapon for PPD
detectives. 'Yeah.'