by The Echo Man
It was Michael Drummond who had supplied the forged visitor's pass and clothing to Lucas Anthony Thompson.
Real-estate tax records traced back to Drummond led to a small commercial building in South Philly. Police found his killing room full of recording equipment, as well as a cache of nearly two hundred CDs and audiocassettes - all meticulously dated - of street and human sounds, some of them of people in their death throes. It would be months, maybe years, before police forensic audiologists would be able to make sense of the recordings, if ever. Michael Drummond had been building to this dark denouement for a long time.
At Josh Bontrager's direction K-9 officers from PPD found an unconsious David Albrecht at the bottom of the ravine on Sawmill Road. Albrecht had lost a lot of blood, but paramedics reached him in time. Investigators were certain that he had been attacked and left for dead by Michael Drummond, but Drummond would escape this charge posthumously.
None of this explained the murder of George Archer.
Lucy Doucette, in her statement, told police about the man she had met. The man who called himself Adrian Costa. The Dreamweaver. Police checked with the management of the apartment building off Cherry Street. The landlord said that a man had rented Apartment 106 for six months, paying cash in advance. He gave police a vague description.
They had showed Lucy the video recordings made on Halloween Night at the hotel, recordings of the hallway on the twelfth floor. Jessica had freeze-framed the image of the man in the wizard's costume and mask passing by the camera.
Lucy said she couldn't remember.
Jessica had also visited Garrett Corners again, researched the name Adrian Costa. No one with that name had ever been registered as a voter or resident of the area. The people knew the reclusive van Tassels to be travelers, carny people. The only photograph of the family was nearly fifteen years old. When Jessica revisited Peggy van Tassel's grave, she looked at the two plots next to it. One was the grave of a man named Ellis Adrian. The other was the last resting place of an Evangeline Costa.
Was the Dreamweaver Peggy van Tassel's father?
From what the investigators could gather, it appeared that Florian van Tassel had tracked Archer for years but had not known for sure that it was Archer who had kidnapped both Peggy van Tassel and Lucy Doucette back in September 2001. As the Dreamweaver, van Tassel enticed Lucy to submit to hypnosis sessions during which van Tassel determined that he had been right. George Archer had killed Peggy. It seemed that van Tassel also gave Lucy a post-hypnotic suggestion to leave a note for Archer in his room, drawing him up there at 9:30p.m., then instructed her to open the door to Room 1208 at the right moment.
The enhanced video taken from the twelfth-floor hallway that night showed the man dressed as a wizard - believed to be Florian van Tassel - with an old-style school bell in his hand.
While all of this was circumstantial, it wasn't until forensic results started to come in that police issued an arrest warrant for Florian van Tassel, aka The Dreamweaver. Blood belonging to George Archer was found on the old photograph left behind in the room where the Dreamweaver had met with Lucy Doucette.
The George Archer file sat in a file cabinet at the Roundhouse.
The case remains open.
Chapter 103
Monday, November 8
Byrne sat in the small lunch-room at the back of the Roundhouse. The four-to-twelve shift had already come and gone and were out on the street. Byrne, who had been on administrative leave since the shooting, sat by himself, a cold cup of untouched coffee in front of him.
When Jessica entered the room and approached him she saw something else on the table. It was Byrne's fifty-cent piece.
'Hey, partner.'
'Hey,' Byrne replied. 'You finish that FAS?'
A Firearms Analysis System form was a trace request sent to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
'All done.' Jessica slid into the booth across from Byrne. 'You heading home?'
'In a while.'
They sat in silence. Byrne looked tired, but not nearly as tired as he had looked recently. He'd gotten the results from all his follow-up tests. There was no tumor, nothing serious. They said it was a combination of fatigue, poor diet, insomnia, with a Bushmills chaser. Jessica glanced at the menu displayed over the counter in the corner, and thought about how eating in this place might be part of the problem.
Byrne looked up, at the scarred booths, the plastic flowers, the line of vending machines against the wall, at the place to which he had come to work for more than twenty years. 'I didn't do my job, Jess.'
She'd known this was coming, and here it was. Everything she planned to say vaporized from her mind. She decided to just speak from her heart. 'It wasn't your fault.'
'I was so young,' Byrne said. 'So arrogant.'
'Christa-Marie confessed to the crime, Kevin. I wouldn't have handled it any differently. I don't know any cop who would.'
'She confessed because she was ill,' Byrne said. 'I didn't dig any deeper. I should have, but I didn't. I turned in my report, it went to the DA. Just like always. Boss says move on, you move on.'
'Exactly.'
Byrne spun the coffee cup a few times.
'I wonder what her life would have been like,' he said. 'I wonder where she would have gone, what she would have done.'
Jessica knew there was no answer to this, none that would help. She waited awhile, then slipped out of the booth.
'How about I buy you a drink?' she said. 'It's fifty-cent Miller Lite night at Finnigan's Wake. We can get hammered, drive around, pull people over, do some traffic stops. Be like old times.'
Byrne smiled, but there was sadness in it. 'Maybe tomorrow.'
'Sure.'
Jessica put a hand on Byrne's shoulder. When she got to the door she turned, looked at the big man sitting in the last booth, surrounded by all the whispering ghosts of his past. She wondered if they would ever be silent.
Chapter 104
He found her behind the hotel. She was sitting alone on a stone bench, on her dinner break, an untouched salad next to her. When she saw Byrne she stood up, hugged him. He held on as long as she wanted.
She pulled away and turned, brushing off the bench for him. Ever considerate, Byrne thought. He sat down.
They were silent for a few moments. Finally Byrne asked, 'You doing okay?'
Lucy Doucette shrugged. 'Just another day in the big city.'
'Did you have any problems giving your statement?' He had put out the word that she was to be treated with kid gloves. The report back was that she had been. Byrne wanted to hear it from her.
'Yeah,' she said. 'But if I never go back to a police station for the rest of my life, that will be okay with me.'
'About that other matter,' Byrne said, referring back to Lucy's detainment for shoplifting. 'I talked to the DAs office, and to the owner of the store on South. It's all smoothed over. Just a big misunderstanding.' Because Byrne had intervened before Lucy was charged there would not be a record.
'Thanks,' she said. She looked at Byrne, at the bench, at the surrounding area. 'Where's your man bag?'
'I'm not carrying it anymore.'
Lucy smiled. 'Were you getting grief from your fellow officers?'
Byrne laughed. 'Something like that.'
A wink of silver caught Byrne's eye. It was a small heart-shaped pendant around Lucy's neck.
'Nice necklace,' he said.
Lucy lifted the heart, ran it along the chain. 'Thanks. I got it from David.'
'David?'
'David Albrecht. I went and saw him in the hospital.'
Byrne said nothing.
'We're kind of in this thing together, you know?' Lucy said, perhaps feeling the need to explain. 'I guess he's going to be okay?'
'The doctors say it looks good.'
Lucy dropped the pendant, smoothed it against her uniform. 'He's got some offers on his movie, you know.'
'I heard that,' Byrne said. 'So, are you g
uys an item?'
Lucy blushed. 'Oh please. We're just friends. We just met.''
'Okay, okay,' Byrne said.
'Gosh.'
Two young women walked by, no more than eighteen or nineteen, smartly dressed in their crisp new Le Jardin uniforms. They eyed Lucy with something akin to awe.
When they passed, Lucy looked at Byrne. 'Rookies.'
They sat in thoughtful silence. The autumn sun warmed their faces.
'What are you going to do, Lucy?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'Maybe go home for the holidays. Maybe go home for good.'
'Where's home?'
Lucy Doucette looked up at the hotel, down Sansom Street, then over at Byrne. In that moment, for the first time since he'd met her, she looked a lot more like a woman than a little girl.
She said: 'A long way from here.'
Chapter 105
Friday, November 12
The women sat around the small table, a game of gin rummy in progress in front of them. Between the ashtrays, Styrofoam cups, cans of Diet Pepsi and Diet Mountain Dew, the bags of pork rinds and barbecued chips, there was hardly room for the cards.
When the petite young woman in the oversized blue parka walked into the room, Dottie Doucette stood up. Dottie was terribly thin. She looked older than her forty years, but a light had come back to her eyes, her friends all said. It was faint, they averred, but it was there.
When Lucy hugged her mother, Dottie felt as if she might break.
Lucy wanted to ask her mother about George Archer. She had talked to some of the women who had known her mother when they were younger, and she'd learned that Dorothy Doucette had gone out with George Archer a few times. That was probably when the man had put his eye on Lucy. Lucy knew that her mother felt guilty for so many things. Dottie Doucette did not need this burden now.
Dottie let go, wiped her eyes, reached into her pocket. She showed Lucy her chip. Six months sober.
'I'm proud of you, Mama.'
Dottie turned toward the women at the table.
'This is Lucy, my baby girl.'
The women all fussed over Lucy for a while, and Lucy let them. She'd stay on for a month or so, taking a room at a boarding house in town, in exchange for housekeeping duties. From the moment she got off the bus, she knew that she would not be staying forever, just as she knew that in many ways she had never left. Not really.
Her mother slipped on the pilled sweater that was draped over the back of the folding chair. Lucy recognized it as one she had stolen from the JC Penney's a long time ago. The sweater was getting on in years. Her mother needed a new one. Lucy promised herself she would buy it this time.
'Take me for a walk?' Dottie asked.
'Sure, Mama.'
Out in the lobby, Lucy helped her mother on with her boots. As Lucy was tying the laces, she glanced up. Her mother was smiling.
'What?' Lucy asked.
'I used to do the same thing for you when you were small. Funny how life comes full circle.'
Yeah, Lucy thought. Life's hilarious.
They walked, arm in arm, down the path that led to the town park. The temperature was falling. Lucy bunched the sweater around her mother's neck.
Winter was coming, but that was all right. In the end, Lucy Doucette thought, the sunshine was inside. And now that she remembered everything, she could begin to forget.
Chapter 106
Thursday, November 25
She had cooked for twenty. like many Italian thanksgiving gatherings, the meal began with a full pasta course. This time, Jessica and her father made Jessica's grandmother's fresh ravioli, the filling a delicate and savory balance of beef, pork, and veal.
For the first time, Sophie helped serve.
By six o'clock the men were sprawled around the living room, snoring away. Tradition called for them to be awake by six-thirty and ready to take part in Round Two.
At ten after six, Jessica opened the front door. South Philly was alive with the holiday. She looked left and right, didn't see Byrne's car. She wanted to call him, but she stopped herself. He had a standing invitation every year, and this year he'd said maybe. With Kevin Byrne, when it concerned events like this, 'maybe' usually meant no. But still.
Jessica was just about to close the door when she looked down. There, on the front steps, was a small white package. She picked it up, closed the door, walked over to the kitchen. She slit open the Scotch tape with a knife. Inside was a ball of yarn. Green yarn. When Jessica brought it into the light she saw that the yarn was the same shade as the oddly constructed cable knit sweater that Kevin Byrne had been wearing around the Roundhouse of late, a sweater, he told her, that had been knitted for him by Lina Laskaris's grandmother, Anna.
Jessica checked on her family. The men were still in a turkey-and- Chianti-induced coma; the women were doing the dishes and sneaking cigarettes out back. Then Jessica walked upstairs into the bedroom, closed the door behind her.
She unspooled the yarn, brushed back her hair, gathered it. She took the yarn, tied her hair into a ponytail, checked herself in the dresser mirror. The autumn had long since taken back the highlights bestowed by summer. She turned to the side, and for a moment had a memory of her mother tying back her hair with green yarn on her first day of school. How much youthfulness the world had then, how full of energy it had been.
She could use some of each.
As the new mother to a rocketing little two-year-old-boy, Jessica was going to need all the vitality and vigor she could muster. The papers had come through a week earlier, and Carlos Balzano was at that moment downstairs charming the entire family.
Jessica looked one final time at the yarn in her hair. In some ways, it was just as good as the original.
No, she thought as she turned out the light and descended the steps. In some ways it was even better.
Epilogue
For every light there is shadow. For every sound, silence. In this massive room the silence was complete. Considering that there were nearly twenty-five hundred people in the Verizon Center, it was all the more profound.
The last note of Sinfonia Concertante sifted through the hall, and the applause began.
As the conductor turned to the audience, Byrne saw people noticing Christa-Marie, heard their whispers. The story had broken wide a few weeks earlier, the account of Christa-Marie's innocence in the murder of Gabriel Thorne. Byrne could not imagine the courage it had taken for Christa-Marie to come to this place on this night.
Soon the applause turned from the stage and was offered to the woman in the tenth row. A soft spotlight found them. The conductor walked to the footlights and bowed. The orchestra rose to its feet.
Byrne didn't know how much time together they had left, but he knew that he would be with Christa-Marie until the end. More than that, he wondered how it sounded to her. He wondered if it sounded the same, if it meant what it had meant twenty years ago when she had been the brightest star in the heavens.
Kevin Byrne took Christa-Marie's hand and held it as the applause grew, the sound echoing across the deep chasms of memory, the vast and merciful landscape of time.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to:
Meg Ruley, Peggy Gordijn, Jane Berkey, Christina Hogrebe, Don Cleary, Mike McCormack, Kristen Pini, and the great team at the Jane Rotrosen Agency.
Kate Elton, Susan Sandon, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, Jason Arthur, Rob Waddington, Emma Finnigan, Claire Round, Glenn O'Neill, and everyone at Random House UK.
Darin Brannon, Tara Klein, Francis Gross, Jane Sembric, Ray Villani, Douglas Bunker, Diana Richardson, Sandra Brancaleone, and Tacy Dooley.
Jennifer Kallend at the Curtis Institute of Music; Evan Evans at Le Meridien Philadelphia; Emily McCarthy at Ritz Carlton Philadelphia; Frank Thompson at Sheraton Society Hill.
Gino Rafaelli for his kindness and time, and the librarians at the CH-UH libraries for putting up with my many requests.
Detective Eddie Rocks, Sgt. Joe Rosowski, L
t. Edward Monaghan, and the brave men and women of the Philadelphia Police Department.
Mike Driscoll and the staff at Finnigan's Wake; Patrick Ghegan, Dom Aspite, Joe Sickman, Bob Mulgrew, A1 Kurtz, John Dougherty, Vita and Adjani DeBellis, and the rest of the Philly crew.
My father, Dominic Montanari. Nine and change, Pop.
The city of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for letting me create hotels, institutions, and townships, and for letting me move streets, buildings, and neighborhoods. I promise to put everything back where I found it.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
