One by One

by Sarah Cain

  “Whoever he was, he slipped out before the police came,” Kevin had said. “We’re trying to get a shot of his face, but he was smart. He knew where the cameras were.”

  Kevin had managed to get a rundown on Frank Greer and Len Piscone. Frank had stayed clean since he’d gotten out of jail; Piscone had never done time, but his brother Mark had. He’d been in Graterford with Frank doing time for the sale of narcotics. Small world. Now Mark Piscone worked in the Tioga scrapyard doing maintenance. But there was no evidence that anyone was doing anything illegal over there.

  Danny stopped at the light at the Falls Bridge and half-listened to the traffic report on the radio. So far, traffic westbound on the Schuylkill wasn’t horrific. He might beat Alex home. She’d bitch about coming to his house for a while, but he knew she’d secretly be relieved. It was easier for her to relax while away from Sam’s watchful eye. Sam liked having Alex’s undivided attention when he was home. She seemed less inclined to give it to him these days.

  The light changed, and Danny wrenched his thoughts back to Frank Greer and Greg Moss. The only connection between Frank and Greg beside high school was Cromoca Partners, the land development company that owned a stake in Frank’s scrap business.

  Cromoca had acquired a lot of prime real estate in Philadelphia and South Jersey over the years, and Greg had been the real estate agent who brokered the deals. Greg was tied to the senior week party, and he was also tied to Cromoca. Now he was dead, and both of those factors involved Frank Greer.

  Danny was still trying to piece together what he had learned from Frank and Stan. It wasn’t much, but they’d both gotten texts. Danny was sure that something had gone on at Greg’s shore house all those years ago. Frank had been too defensive about it.

  His phone buzzed. Danny didn’t recognize the number. “Ryan,” he said after he picked up.

  “Danny? It’s been so long.” He didn’t recognize the tentative voice on the phone, but he let her go on. “Mom called me today. She said she spoke to you.”

  He almost drove into oncoming traffic. “Michelle? Michelle Perry?”

  “It’s Michelle Martin now.”

  “Jesus, Michelle. I didn’t really expect to hear from you.” That was an understatement. He would have put the likelihood of connecting with Michelle between zilch and nil. She must be beyond frightened.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bother you. Listen, I can’t really talk right now, but I’m coming down to Philly tomorrow to see my mom. Maybe we could meet? I’d really like to talk to you.”

  “I—yes. Of course. Wherever you’d like.”

  “Maybe at the Ritz Carlton? At ten? I’m picking up Mom at one, so it would give us time to talk and catch up.”

  “That would be fine. I’ll—”

  “It’s a date then. I have to go. Good-bye.”

  She hung up before he could say anything else, and if he’d been home, he might have gone in search of his small cache of memorabilia. It was a silly thing to still feel a pang at the sound of her voice, or maybe you really never did forget the first person who broke your heart.

  Somewhere, buried in the recesses of his boxes of junk, was a picture of Michelle looking like an angel in her sparkling white prom dress. Looking much too good for the likes of him.

  There was no use trying to go back. Whatever small flame burned between Michelle and him had died within weeks of high school graduation. She’d moved to New York; he’d stayed in Philly. The door had closed. He knew well enough that those were the doors best left closed.

  On KYW, the five-day forecast was calling for record-breaking highs of over one hundred for tomorrow. Danny glanced out the window at the other hermetically sealed commuters on the expressway as traffic slowed toward the Conshohocken Curve and the top headlines began to replay. Funny how news had always been the only constant in his life. Right now, he wished he could talk to Andy Cohen about this mess of a story.

  Andy would tell him to look for the why. “You find the why and everything else will come together,” he’d always say.

  He hoped that wherever Andy was, there was an unending supply of Glenfiddich.

  Traffic lurched forward, and Danny tried to put his thoughts in some kind of order. He was meeting Alex in a half hour. There was a story they needed to get. They had autopsy photos to review, notes to check, and he still hadn’t figured out a way to traverse the land mines that now lay between them.

  *

  Danny watched Alex spread copies of photos, reports, and news articles across his kitchen table as he tapped the manila folder in his hand and tried to come up with a way to bring up the previous night’s folly. Except it hadn’t felt like a folly. Everything had seemed to click into place like a Chinese puzzle box just before it snapped open. Or maybe everything had snapped shut. She was doing her best to pretend everything was normal.

  They stepped around each other with extreme deliberation, taking care not to get too close. She crackled with a shivering energy that made his heart thump against his chest and his muscles ache with tension. Dangerous energy.

  “Okay, here’s everything I could dig up about the fire plus Jenna’s autopsy,” she said without looking at him. “Do you have anything alcoholic in this house? Why are we here instead of my house where there’s food?”

  Danny pointed to the refrigerator. “Beer and wine in the fridge. Booze in the wet bar. And we’re here because I beat you home. Plus, I have police reports on the fire.”

  “Not really fair. You had your asshole brother get them for you.”

  “He regrets his temper tantrum,” Danny said. “He was having a shitty afternoon.”

  “Yeah. My heart bleeds.” She leaned into his open refrigerator. “Jesus God, Daniel. What do you eat?”

  He blinked. He never thought about it. If there was nothing in the house, he ordered out. Sometimes he went to the store and bought food, but it didn’t occupy his thoughts. He’d let go of so many things after Beth and Conor died.

  She turned on him, hands on hips. “And what the hell is that mournful man singing?”

  “Whoa, that’s Clapton. ‘River of Tears.’”

  “Well, of course it is. Don’t you have some Beyoncé? I worry about you, Daniel. Once a week, you and I are going food shopping. Normal people don’t live this way.” Alex shut the refrigerator. “Jeez. ‘River of Tears.’ No food. I’m ready to cry.” She opened cupboards until she found a bag of pretzels.

  “See, pretzels and beer,” he said. “There’s stuff in the pantry.”

  She gave him a baleful look and stalked into the pantry. “What the hell do you use this space for?” she said, and he laughed. Alex’s way of coping with tension was getting angry. That was fine. Angry he could handle.

  “I don’t need the space. It was just there.”

  “When you renovated, did you put the wet bar in here?”

  “No. The wet bar was always in there,” Danny said, half-listening.

  He heard her rooting around inside the pantry. “Damn. Is this like a butler’s pantry? You could have a conference in here. The walls are decorated too. So what’s with the writing on the wall? What is this? S T in E P? I don’t—Oh, wait, I get it. Instep. It’s a—what do they call them? Rebus puzzle? They’re all over. Look, the word ‘Push’ slants up. Push up. An exploding pie in oven? What the hell? I don’t get that one. Oh, hell, you probably didn’t even notice. Hey, I found chips and salsa.”

  “Oh, the decorations? Yeah. They’re rebus puzzles. The owner’s name was Rebus. Get it? I guess he was being sly. I sat in there and solved most of them one afternoon. I didn’t get the pie either. Except I think it’s a mushroom.” He still half-believed Mr. Rebus had hidden something in this house. Danny returned to the articles. “You know, I used to write obits when I was in college.”

  Alex stuck her head out. “What?”

  “I used to write obits.”

  “I guess we can order out.” Alex set the chips and salsa down on the table
with the pretzels. “Jenna wouldn’t have been your standard obit. She was front page. Rebus puzzles. Damn. Why would he leave all those puzzles in there? That’s weird.”

  “I used to think they spelled out a clue of some kind, but they don’t.” Danny studied the photograph of Rachel Jeffords. “The originals of these photos are still down at the paper, right? Who took them?” He squinted at the photo credit. “Al Frederick. I remember Al Frederick. He retired in 2006.”

  Alex peered over his shoulder. “He’d be shooting film in 1992, right? What kind of clue?”

  “Oh, yeah, he’d be using film.”

  “Why do you want to see the originals?” Alex asked.

  “Of the photos? I’d like to get a clearer look at the shot.”

  “Obviously, but why?”

  “Because there’s a crowd. If it was arson, Al might have caught a face in the crowd. Arsonists like to watch their work. If we can get the original, maybe someone will stand out.”

  “Poor Jenna. It’s kind of sad really.”

  “She wanted to be a writer.”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “Really? Like a reporter?”

  “Like a romance writer. She wrote a novel senior year. Jenny’s First Love. It was pretty awful.”

  “Are you being a snobby literary person?”

  He shook his head, remembering. “No. I felt sorry for her. She gave me a copy.”

  “I hope you were kind.” Alex sighed. “Poor Jenna. I can see her giving her precious manuscript to the one boy in the class who could write, the one boy she hoped wouldn’t laugh at her.”

  Danny winced slightly. “It was awkward.”

  Alex crossed her arms and gave him a knowing look. “Oh. You weren’t kind. I can tell.”

  “I tried to be nice to Jenna, but do you know how bizarre it is to discover you’re some deluded girl’s fantasy? She wrote the book about the two of us. It was beyond creepy. They don’t teach you how to handle that when you’re seventeen.”

  Alex stared at him for a moment and nodded, and he realized she was conceding the point. He wasn’t about to admit that he’d spent years trying to forget Jenna and her awful literary effort.

  “What was Jenna doing at Greg Moss’s party? She didn’t seem like a party type of girl.” Alex picked up a photograph and frowned as she examined it. “Certainly not with the football crowd.”

  Danny shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe someone invited her. She could have come with Ollie Deacon.”

  “So she had a boyfriend?”

  “I guess. She and Ollie went to prom together.” He thought of Ollie’s wide-eyed face in the yearbook, in the photograph hanging over the bar at the Shamrock. “Jesus Christ.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ollie Deacon.” He paced the room, trying to pull the strings of the story together in his mind. “He became a cop and got killed in the first year out of the academy.”

  “And this means?” Alex watched him, her face expressionless, but her eyes filled with questions.

  “Ollie was shot in the chest. I don’t think they ever caught the perp.”

  Alex’s eyes widened a little, and she blew out a breath.

  Danny paced to the refrigerator and back. “I’d like to know if he was shot in the heart.” He walked into the pantry and turned back to Alex. “I’d like to find out if the ballistics match on the gun that killed Greg and the others. Then we can see if there’s a match to the gun that killed Ollie.” Danny stopped pacing and watched Alex latch onto his idea.

  “You think he’s the first victim.”

  “Weird, right?”

  “No. Not necessarily.” Alex set down the photograph of Jenna. She was trying to make the pieces fit just like he was. “So connection? No connection?”

  “I think everything’s connected, but I’m not sure how,” Danny said. “First thing I have to find out about is Ollie. The next thing is to find out about this Cromoca Partners and if it fits in. Something is off there.”

  “You find out about Ollie Deacon, and I’ll hit the Sentinel morgue in the morning. They’ll have Al’s shot. It made the front page. If not, I’ll see if I can track him down.” She frowned. “Crap. I have to do a city council meeting and turn in a piece.”

  “Resurrecting Al’s photo from the dead files? Fitting, but unnecessary. I have his address. I’ll check him out. He knows me. I have to be in town tomorrow anyway.”

  Danny knew Al well. A double Pulitzer winner, Al was nicknamed the Spook because of his ability to slip into any situation and emerge with a perfect shot. He’d provided the pictures for some of Danny’s best stories.

  “You aren’t trying to cut me out, are you?”

  “We’re in this together. You know that.” He wasn’t ready to tell her about meeting Michelle, but in everything else, they were partners.

  “I guess I can try to dig up something on Cromoca.” Alex stood watching him while she played with a loose strand of hair. Buying time. “Danny, I, about last night . . .” She looked away, and he knew she was going to tell him that it couldn’t happen again. It wasn’t a huge surprise. What had caught him off guard was the depth of his feelings for her. He’d always liked her and respected her as a journalist. It never had occurred to him that something more lay buried there. Dope brought strange things to the surface. As long as he didn’t indulge, he’d be fine. He wasn’t going to be the asshole who broke up her marriage.

  “I know, Alex.”

  “And we’re okay? I mean, we’re friends. Still friends.”

  He caught her hand and squeezed it. “We’ll always be friends. Is that good enough?” He heard her soft intake of breath even as he fought to ignore the quick flood of warmth that spread from her fingers to his. This was going to be a whole lot harder than he anticipated.

  She nodded without speaking and withdrew her hand from his swiftly. “What happened to your face?”

  “I walked into a fist.”

  She started to touch the bruise on his cheekbone but pulled her hand away. “You need ice,” she said.

  “I’m fine. I’ve had worse.” Frank Greer was a relative weakling compared to Tommy Ryan.

  “You’re an idiot. You should have waited for me.”

  “No. Frank Greer is a guy you definitely didn’t need to meet.”

  They stood for a moment in silence until she said, “Maybe we should look at these files. I know you’re thinking Ollie Deacon was the first victim, but what if it all started with Jenna Jeffords?”

  He could still feel the warmth where her hand had been. “I guess it’s possible, though she’s the one person who died in an accident.”

  “I know, but anomalies bother me.” She put space between them, and he smiled. Tonight she was dressed in her version of conservative: a black sleeveless turtleneck and white jeans, big white-and-black button earrings. It did nothing to make her look conservative.

  “I have your earring,” he said. “Your hoop.” He went over to the counter. Where had he put the damn thing? “I thought I put it on the counter.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’ll turn up. Let’s order pizza.”

  “Fine.”

  She went to the refrigerator, pulled out two beers, and handed him one. He took it and clinked his bottle against hers. Being a little numb could be a good thing.

  “You and your old ‘River of Tears.’ You need to lighten up, Ryan, but for now, I guess it’s appropriate to the subject at hand.”

  “Let’s get to it,” he said.

  *

  From his special place, the watcher had a clear and unobstructed view into the kitchen. Ryan sat with the woman—Alex Burton—at the neat round table, their heads close together while they looked at files, as if files would tell a proper story.

  Ryan should know that every story has many facets.

  He should know it, but he wouldn’t accept it. For a man who loved to dig beneath the surface of life, Ryan was born with a huge blind spot about his own. It was funny, really. Ryan was a
horror story steeped in romance and wrapped in tragedy. That was his fortune and misfortune. That was his story.

  The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me.

  He repeated the words to himself. Maybe he’d send the words in a text to Ryan, but it was too soon. Everything in proper order.

  This silly reporter woman was a problem. She had to go.

  And the dogs shall eat Jezebel.

  Ryan had experience with that as well. At least that’s what he’d heard. Once the reporter woman was gone, everything could proceed.

  The players were in motion now, and it would be fun to watch the drama play out. He slipped the gold hoop into his pocket. Pieces of Alex.

  They found no more of her than the skull, the feet and the palms of the hands.

  30

  George Crossman left his office in the Rayburn Congressional Office Building and set off down Independence Avenue toward the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial. It was a pleasant enough place to meet. The memorial faced west, overlooking the Capitol Reflecting Pool. Today had been another DC scorcher, with the temperature hovering in the high nineties and the humidity set to jungle levels, and the congressman would have preferred the air-conditioned comfort of his office. But when Senator Robert Harlan demanded a meeting, one didn’t question the time or place.

  Only a few tourists milled about the memorial, and he walked to the front where the tall, white-haired senator stood between the two bronze lions on their marble pedestals flanking the memorial. He wore a dark suit with a crisp white shirt and red tie. Mirrored sunglasses shielded his eyes.

  “George, how are you?” Robert Harlan held out his hand, and the congressman wondered if he was expected to kiss it. He resisted the urge and shook it instead.

  “I guess you’re wondering why I wanted to meet out here instead of in your office.”

  “I was a little curious.” More than a little curious.

  “You’re wondering what this is about.”

  Sweat was pooling at the back of the congressman’s neck, and he shifted. “A little. I was under the impression that you wanted to avoid public scrutiny.”