by The Echo Man
RECORDING ENGINEER: JOSEPH P. NOVAK.
Chapter 59
Once a stately mansion, the Prentiss Institute of Music was an impressive early-1900s Georgian sandstone building, across from Rittenhouse Square on Locust Street. In the world of classical music it was considered by many to be Philadelphia's version of the Juilliard. Many members of the Philadelphia Orchestra had studied at Prentiss. While most of the courses of study were at the college level, they also maintained a prep school. A number of principal players of major orchestras around the world had gotten their training at Prentiss.
Because of the prestige of the school, and the late hour, Byrne had put in a call to the DAs office. The office had then placed a call to the school and gotten Jessica and Byrne an appointment to speak with someone.
The dean of the Prentiss Institute of Music was Frederic Duchesne. In his forties, Duchesne was tall and sharp-featured, had thinning blond hair, hazel eyes, and an air of rumpled elegance. He met them at the front door of the institute, locking it behind them, and escorted them to his office, a large white-paneled room off the reception area. The room was cluttered with sheet music on stands, stacks of CDs, as well as a variety of musical instruments in their velvet-lined cases.
On the wall was a large framed copy of the school's charter. Duchesne offered coffee, which Jessica and Byrne declined. They sat.
'We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us,' Byrne said. 'I hope we're not keeping you too late.'
'Not at all. I sometimes don't leave here until midnight. Always something to do.' He absently straightened some papers on his desk, then stopped, perhaps realizing it was hopeless. He turned back. 'It's not often we get a visit from the police.'
'We just have a few questions,' Byrne said.
'I assume this has something to do with Joseph Novak.'
'It does,' Byrne said.
Duchesne nodded. 'I saw it on the news.'
'What can you tell us about Novak?'
'Well, as I understand it, Mr. Novak was loosely associated with Prentiss for ten years or so.'
'He was an employee?'
'No, no. He freelanced as an engineer for various recordings. The institute hires a number of different technicians based on the project.'
Byrne held up the CD he had gotten from Christa-Marie. 'He worked on this project?'
Duchesne put on his glasses. When he saw the CD he smiled fondly. 'That was recorded more than twenty years ago. Novak didn't record the original. He worked on the remastering.'
'Were you acquainted with Joseph Novak?'
'We met once or twice. I never worked with him personally, no.' Duchesne shook his head. 'Terrible tragedy what happened.'
'When was the last time you saw him?'
Duchesne thought for a moment. 'It must be two years now.'
'You've had no contact since?'
'None.'
'Do you know how many recordings he worked on here?'
'Not off hand,' Duchesne said. 'I can get that information for you.'
Byrne glanced at his notes. 'I have just a few more questions. I'm afraid some of them are probably going to seem pretty basic.'
Duchesne held up a hand. 'Please. This is a place of learning.'
'Can you tell us a little bit about the institute?'
'You want the tourist version or the potential-donor version?'
'Tourist,' Byrne said. 'For now.'
Duchesne smiled, nodded. 'The institute was founded in 1924 by a woman named Eugenie Prentiss Holzman, and is known worldwide as one of the leading conservatories. It's difficult to get into, but the tuition is free. A number of the current members of the Philadelphia Orchestra are faculty here, as well.'
'How many students do you have?'
'Right now, around one hundred sixty.'
'And this is all free?'
'Well, not the private lessons.'
'Expensive?'
'Very,' Duchesne said. 'The hourly fee can be quite high.'
Duchesne continued, relating how Prentiss recruited its students, what the general curriculum was. He also name-dropped some of the more famous alumni. It was an impressive list. When he finished he reached into his desk, produced a pair of large full-color booklets, handed one to Byrne, one to Jessica. The publication was called Grace Notes.
'Prentiss publishes this quarterly,' Duchesne said. 'Inside you'll find all the background you need.'
Jessica and Byrne thumbed through the booklets. Byrne held up his copy. 'Thanks.'
Duchesne nodded.
'I do have one last question, if I may,' Byrne added.
'Of course.'
'When it comes to orchestral music - symphonies - is there always a book?'
'A book?'
'Like in musical theater. Someone writes the book, someone writes the music, someone else writes the lyrics.'
'I think I may know what you're asking. You want to know if symphonies have a story behind them. A narrative.'
'Yes.'
'It's a difficult question,' Duchesne said. 'And one that's been a topic for discussion and debate for a long time. I believe what you're talking about, insofar as instrumental music is concerned, is called program music.'
'Program music has a story?'
'Yes and no. In its purest form, program music can be a mere suggestion of a narrative.'
'So a piece of music that follows a narrative approach might not be particularly coherent?'
Duchesne smiled. 'Tell me, detective. Where did you study music?'
'A little honky-tonk at the crossroads.'
'With the esteemed Mr. Johnson.'
'Yeah, well,' Byrne said. 'I made a different deal with the devil.'
Duchesne took a moment, thinking. 'To answer your astute question, yes. For the most part. There are a few exceptions, one being Vivaldi's Four Seasons'
Jessica tried to listen closely but the only sound she could hear was the conversation flying over her head. She knew that Byrne took cryptic but detailed notes. She hoped he was getting all this. She was completely lost when it came to classical music. Whenever someone mentioned The Barber of Seville she thought of Bugs Bunny.
'Are there any symphonic poems, program music, that involve the use of animal imagery?'
'My goodness. Many.'
'Specifically a lion, a rooster, a swan, or a fish?'
'Perhaps the most famous of all. Carnival of the Animals,' Duchesne said without a moment's hesitation. 'It is a musical suite of fourteen movements. Much beloved.'
'The movements are all about animals?'
'Not all,' Duchesne said.
'Who was the composer?' Byrne asked.
'Carnival of the Animals was written by a great proponent of the tone poem. A French Romantic composer named Camille Saint-Saens.'
'Do you have information on this that you might let us borrow?' Byrne asked.
'Of course,' Duchesne said. 'It will take me a little while to collate all of it. Do you want to wait?'
'Can you fax it to us as soon as you have it all together?'
'Sure,' Duchesne said. 'I'll get right on it.'
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.'
Duche
sne 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.
On the way to the van - parked just off Locust Street on a narrow lane called Mozart Place - they walked in silence.
'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.
Chapter 60
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.'
The scene was a Chinese takeout on York Street, in a section of Philadelphia known as Fishtown. A longtime working-class neighborhood in the northeast section of Center City, running roughly from the Delaware River to Frankford Avenue to York Street, Fishtown now boasted a number of arts and entertainment venues, mixing arty types with the cops, firefighters, and blue-collar workers.
As Byrne and Jessica threaded through the cordon to the area behind the restaurant, Jessica dreaded what she was about to see.
A pair of uniformed officers stood at the mouth of the alley. Jessica and Byrne signed onto the crime scene, gloved up, and walked down the narrow passageway. No one was in a hurry.
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.
At first, Jessica didn't see the victim. CSU had not yet set up their field lighting, and in the dim light of the sodium street lamps, combined with the meager yellow light thrown by the security light over the back door to the restaurant, the flesh of the corpse blended in with the trash and pitted asphalt. It was as if he had become part of the city itself. Stepping closer, she saw the body.
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 g
ently 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.'
On York Street, the media crews swarmed. In the mix Jessica noted CNN, Fox and other national news outlets. Among them David Albrecht jockeyed for position.
Five victims.
Chapter 61
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?
