by The Echo Man
In addition to its main purpose - the treatment and rehabilitation of the emotionally disturbed - the facility had a secure wing maintained and staffed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. In its twenty beds slept some of the most notorious criminals of the early twentieth century.
By the early 1950s the facility's funding had begun to dry up. Staff were laid off, buildings were not maintained, equipment became outdated and plagued by time and disrepair. Rumors of inhumane conditions at Convent Hill circulated. In the 1970s a documentary film was made, showing deplorable and sickening conditions. Public and political outrage followed, with a million dollars being pumped into the coffers.
By 1980 Convent Hill had once again been forgotten. More gossip of corruption circulated, as did tales of incalculable horror. But the public can only be outraged about something for so long.
Convent Hill closed for good in 1992 and its inmates and patients were moved to other state-run mental health facilities, as well as to correctional facilities throughout New York and Pennsylvania.
Over the next eighteen years the grounds were bequeathed to the elements, the vandals, the ghost-hunters and derelicts. A few attempts were made to secure the facility, but with its nearly two hundred acres and many points of entry, much of it surrounded by forest, it was impossible.
The fieldstone wall near the winding road that led up to the entrance still bore a sign. As Kevin Byrne and Christa-Marie Schönburg approached, Byrne noticed that someone had altered the sign, painting over it, rewording the message. It no longer announced entry to what had once been a state-of-the-art mental-health facility, a place of healing and rehabilitation, a place of serenity and peace.
It now announced entry to a place called Convict Hell.
As they drove the twisting road leading to the main buildings, a thin fog descended. The surrounding woods were cocooned in a pearl-gray mist.
Byrne thought about what he was doing. He knew the clock was ticking, that he was needed back in the city, but he also believed that the answers to many of his questions - past and present - were locked inside Christa-Marie's mind.
'Will you come back on Halloween?' she had asked. 'I want to show you a special place in the country. Well make a day of it. We'll have such fun.'
A special place.
Christa-Marie wanted him to come here for a reason.
Byrne knew he had to take the chance.
Once they crested the hill the ground leveled off, but the fronts of the buildings were still somewhat obscured by pines, evergreens, and barren maples. The walkways were crosshatched in rotting branches, matted with fallen needles. The arched entrance was flanked by two massive rows of Palladian windows. The roof boasted a main cupola, with two smaller watchtowers.
As he parked the van Byrne heard the call of larks, announcing an impending storm. The wind began to rise. It seemed to encircle the stone buildings like a frigid embrace, holding inside its many horrors.
Byrne got out of the vehicle, opened Christa-Marie's door. She gave him her delicate hand. They walked up the crumbling steps.
The two immense oak doors were secured by large rusted hinges.
Over the years the doors had been marked with epithets, pleas, confessions, denials. To the right of the entry was an inscription carved in the weathered stone.
Christa-Marie turned, an animated look on her face.
'Take a picture of me,' she said. She smoothed her hair, adjusted the silk scarf at her neck. She looked beautiful in the pale morning light.
Taking a photograph was the last thing Byrne had expected to do. He took out his cellphone, opened it, framed Christa-Marie in the doorway, and snapped.
A moment later he pocketed his phone, put a shoulder to one of the huge doors, pushed it open. A cold breeze rushed through the atrium, bringing with it years of mildew and decay.
Together they stepped over the threshold, into Christa-Marie Schönburg's past, into the infernal confines of Convent Hill.
Chapter 72
The dead walk here. The dead and the insane and the forgotten. If you come with me, and hear what I hear, there is much more than the whistle of the wind.
There is the young man who came here in 1920. He had been wounded at St. Mihiel Salient. He bleeds from both wrists. 'I am going home,' he says to me. 'First to Pont-a-Mousson, then home.'
He never left.
There is the solicitor from Youngstown, Ohio. Twice he has tried to take his life. His neck is deeply scarred. He cannot speak above a whisper. His voice is a dry wind in the night desert.
There are the two sisters who tried to eat each other's flesh, found in the basement of their Olney row house, locked in an embrace, wrapped in barbed wire, blood dripping from their lips.
They gather around me, their voices lifted in a chorus of madness.
I walk with my lover.
I walk with the dead.
Chapter 73
They strolled arm in arm through the hallways, their heels echoing on the old tiles. A powdery light sifted through the windows.
Overhead was a vaulted ceiling, at least thirty feet high, and on it Byrne saw three layers of paint, each a dismal attempt at cheerfulness. Lemon yellow, baby blue, sea-foam green.
Christa-Marie pointed to a room off the main entry. 'This is where they take you on arrival,' she said. 'Don't let the flowers fool you.'
Byrne peeked inside. The remains of a pair of rusted chains, bolted to the wall, lay on the ground like dead snakes. There were no flowers.
They continued on, deeper into the heart of Convent Hill, passing dozens of rooms, rooms pooled with stagnant water, rooms tiled floor to ceiling, grout stained with decades of mold and long-dried blood, drains clogged with sewage and discarded clothing.
One room held six chairs still in a semicircle, the cane seats missing, one chair curiously facing away from the others. One room had a three-tiered bunk bed bolted to the floor over a decayed Oriental rug. Byrne could see where attempts had been made to tear away the rug. Both ends were shredded. Three brown fingernails remained.
One room, at the back of the main hallway, had rusted steel buckets lined against the wall, each filled with hardened feces, white and chalky with time. One bucket had the word happy painted on it.
They took the winding staircase to the second floor.
In one meeting room was a slanted stage. Above the stage, on the fascia, was a large medallion made of crisscrossed black string, perhaps an occupational-therapy project of some sort.
They continued through the wing. Byrne noted that many of the individual rooms had observation windows, some as small and simple as a pair of holes drilled into the door. Nothing, it seemed, went unobserved at Convent Hill.
'This was Maristella's room,' Christa-Marie said. The room was no larger than six by six feet. Against the wall, a long-faded pink enamel, were three threadbare stretchers. 'She was my friend. A little crazy, I think.'
The massive gymnasium had a large mural, measuring more than fifty feet long. The background was the rolling hills surrounding the facility. Scattered throughout were small scenes, all drawn by different hands - hellish depictions of rape, murder, and torture.
When they turned the corner into the east wing, Byrne stopped in his tracks. Someone was standing at the end of the wide hallway. Byrne could not see much. The person was small, compact, unmoving.
It took Byrne a few moments to realize, in the dim light, that it was only a cutout of a person. As they drew closer, he could see that it was a plywood pattern of a child, a boy perhaps ten or twelve years old. The figure wore a yellow shirt and dark brown pants. Behind the figure, on the wall, was painted a blue stripe, perhaps meant to mimic the ocean. As they passed the figure, Byrne saw pockmarks in the plywood, along with a few holes. Behind the figure were corresponding holes. At some point the figure had been riddled with bullets. Someone had drawn blood on the shirt.
They stopped at the end of the hall. Above them the roof had rot
ted away. A few drops of water found them.
'You know at the first note,' Christa-Marie said.
'What do you mean?'
'Whether a child has the potential to be a virtuoso.' She looked at her hands, her long, elegant fingers. 'They draw you in. The children.
At Prentiss they asked me a hundred times to teach. I kept refusing. I finally gave in. Two boys stood out.'
Byrne took her hand. 'Who are these boys?'
Christa-Marie did not answer right away. 'They were there, you know,' she eventually said.
'Where?'
'At the concert,' she said. 'After.'
There was a sound, an echoing sound from somewhere in the darkness. Christa-Marie seemed not to notice.
'That night, Christa-Marie. Take me back to that night.'
Christa-Marie looked at him. In her eyes he saw the same look he had seen twenty years earlier, a look of fear and loneliness.
'I wore black,' she said.
'Yes,' Byrne said. 'You looked beautiful.'
Christa-Marie smiled. 'Thank you.'
'Tell me about the concert.'
Christa-Marie glided across the corridor, into the semi-darkness. 'The hall was decorated for the holidays. It smelled of fresh pine. We debated fiercely over the program. The audience was, after all, children. The director wanted yet another performance of Peter and the Wolf:
Byrne expected her to continue. She did not. Her eyes suddenly misted with tears. She walked slowly back, reached into her bag, retrieved a piece of paper, handed it to Byrne. It was a letter, addressed to Christa-Marie and copied to her attorney, Benjamin Curtin. It was from the Department of Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. Byrne read the letter.
A few moments later he took her hands in his. 'Will you play for me tonight?'
Christa-Marie moved closer. She put her arms around him, her head on his chest. They stood that way for a long time, not moving, not speaking. She broke the silence first.
'I'm dying, Kevin.'
Byrne stroked her hair. It was silken to his touch. 'I know.'
She nestled closer. 'I can hear your heart. It is steady and strong.'
Byrne looked out the window, at the fogbound forest surrounding Convent Hill. He remained silent. There was nothing to say.
Chapter 74
Jessica could not find her partner. she had stopped by Byrne's apartment, visited all his familiar breakfast and coffee haunts, checked his favorite watering holes, hoping not to find him. She had not.
Byrne had not called into the unit nor, more importantly, shown up for his deposition, his on-the-record statement about his whereabouts on the night Eduardo Robles had been killed. Jessica knew that the inspector had smoothed it over with the DAs office, but it was unlike Byrne in any number of ways, not the least of which was his commitment to keeping his word.
Jessica spent the remainder of the morning reading through the material on Carnival of The Animals. There were indeed fourteen movements, not all of them devoted to animals. One was called Fossils; another, Pianists; yet another, Finale. For some reason the killer had chosen eight of the movements. But they were all there, and it was all making slow sense.
Beyond this, all these victims were related to cold cases. They were all suspects in homicides. Or suspected of complicity in homicides.
The connection to a group like Societe Poursuite and a man named George Archer could not be overlooked.
All these people were in some way culpable. In the eyes of their killer, they were all guilty of something. But why these people? What linked them? Why the cases of Antoinette Chan, Marcellus Palmer, Marcia Kimmelman and Melina Laskaris? Why not any of the other hundreds of unsolved cases sitting in the dusty books on the shelf?
At one o'clock Jessica put a call into the Department of Motor Vehicles. If George Archer had a driver's license in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, they would be able to get a photograph.
She skipped lunch and spent the early afternoon on the phone with the lab and the DAs office. Michael Drummond was in court, but his secretary promised Jessica that he would get back to her.
By four o'clock she learned that there was no one named George Archer registered at any hotel in the greater Philadelphia area.
She also put in a call to Chief Rogers Logan in Garrett Corners. At her request Logan paid a visit to Archer Farms. George Archer had not returned to his house.
As the first half of Jessica long day wound down, there were no new leads. The three other lead detectives - Josh Bontrager, Nicci Malone, and Dennis Stansfield - were all on the street, chasing down their leads. Josh had interviewed members of the Chan family. All had concrete alibis. Nicci Malone had taken the morning to drive to Weirton, West Virginia to speak to Marcellus Palmer's son and daughter-in-law. She learned nothing of value. God only knew what Stansfield - obsessed now more than ever with Kevin Byrne - was doing.
It seemed the Byrne/Stansfield conflict had settled for the time being. There would probably be some kind of fallout from the incident, but it wouldn't be tonight. The homicide unit had a few other things with which to be concerned.
Jessica arrived home around five-thirty, made a quick dinner for her and Sophie. After dinner Sophie modeled her Snow Fairy costume. She looked adorable.
Outside, the wind picked up, swirling leaves in the street. Perfect Philly Halloween weather. And there was never a shortage of atmosphere or things to do in Philly on Halloween.
There was the Ghost Tour, which took participants on a candlelight excursion to Society Hill and Independence Park. There was the tour of Eastern State Penitentiary, once voted the number one haunted house in America. Then there was the Mutter Museum, and the home of Edgar Allan Poe.
But if Philadelphia was attached to its horrific past, it was nothing if not creative. Jessica had already seen news footage of people trick- or-treating in pink body suits, with a band of paper wrapped around their heads. The new favorite costume in Philly, it seemed, was the victim of a serial murderer.
Jessica took Sophie out for trick-or-treating early. This year was different from previous years. Trick-or-treating among row houses was a frontal assault. Within an hour, they hit a hundred or so houses. Sophie returned with a pair of bulging pillowcases.
While Sophie divvied up her swag on the living-room floor, Jessica showered and prepared for her undercover assignment at the hotel.
Before she left the house, she caught her reflection in the hallway mirror. Not bad, she thought. The simple black dress was okay, if a little tight. Time to ease up on the cannoli from Termini's.
The hard part, of course, was the gun. Though in many ways the perfect accessory, most designers did not allow for the bulk of a weapon when creating a line. It was never the Smith & Wesson collection for Dior, or Vivienne Westwood presents Frocks with Clocks.
Just to be on the safe side, she packed a small duffel with jeans and a hoodie, stowed it in the car. She had no idea where this night would take her.
The team met in Le Jardin's Loss Prevention office. There were ten detectives in all, including Josh Bontrager, Dennis Stansfield, Nicci Malone, and Nick Palladino. Most were in plain clothes, the remaining few had on PPD windbreakers.
They were briefed by John Shepherd on the layout of the floors, the location of surveillance cameras, the hotel protocol for emergencies. They went briefly over the program for the evening, which included a lavish dinner, a number of speakers, along with a keynote address by the attorney general for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In addition, in the smaller meeting rooms there were various panels and demonstrations. According to Shepherd, excluding front- and back-of-the-house staff and personnel, there were close to one thousand people in the building.
Every so often Jessica glanced at the door. Byrne had not shown.
After John Shepherd had completed his briefing, Dana Westbrook addressed the task force. They had received more than seventy DMV photographs of men named George Archer. None were registered to the m
an at the Archer Farms. The sheriffs office, in addition to detectives from the Pennsylvania State Police, were showing the photographs to neighbors and vendors in the area, trying to match the photo with the man who ran Archer Farms.
For the first hour Jessica worked the reception table, just outside the Crystal Room. The double-length conference table was draped with white bunting, and carried a few hundred name tags, programs, and pins bearing the slogan He escapes who is not pursued.
As people filed by, Jessica watched their movements, their behaviors. Overall, it was a rather staid-looking group. Conservatively dressed, quiet in demeanor, polite in manner. In the course of an hour she handed out more than fifty name tags.
At eight o'clock three men approached from across the lobby, one of them quite inebriated. They were in their forties, white, casually dressed. As they got closer, the shortest one - the drunk one - did his best to focus on the table, on the name tags, and finally on Jessica.
'Whoa!' he said, reeling a little.
'Welcome,' Jessica said.
'My name is Jukka Tolonen,' the tall blond man said, introducing himself.
'Jay Bowman,' said the other. Jessica scanned the table, found the name tags she was looking for, handed them both a tag and a program.
'Thanks,' the two men said in tandem, both sounding a little embarrassed for their friend.
'You know,' the drunk one said, 'I've been coming to this convention for, I don't know, five years? Most of the women look like Mrs. Marble.'
Jessica was pretty sure the man meant Miss Marple. 'What's your name?' she asked.
The man looked at his friends. 'You hear that? She asked my name, dude. She's hitting on me!'
