Shutter Man

by Richard Montanari

  Somehow, when he looked at the screen on his phone, framing the victim’s body, it seemed as if he had seen this before. He had, of course, witnessed the same horror at the Rousseau scene, but reduced this way, on a four-inch screen, it was all put into some kind of dark and primordial perspective.

  After Edwin Channing was shot through the heart–as with Laura Rousseau, but not her husband and son–the killer had taken a very sharp instrument and carefully removed his face.

  4

  Byrne sat at the counter at the Oregon Diner. When he had walked into the restaurant just thirty minutes earlier, there were six patrons, mostly night owls at the tail end of a party, or insomniacs such as himself. Now it was starting to fill up with early-morning commuters.

  On his cell phone, Byrne scrolled through the photos he had taken at both crime scenes. He had seen enough ransacking of living spaces in his many years on the force, and knew there to be only two kinds. One was when the perpetrator was trying to make it look like a burglary. The other kind of ransacking was when the thief was looking for something in particular. Although every drawer in the dressers at both scenes, as well as the nightstands, had been pulled open and dumped, contents strewn about the room, there were a few things that didn’t make sense. be only two kinds. One was when the perpetrator was trying to make it look like a burglary. The other kind of ransacking was when the thief was looking for something in particular. Although every drawer in the dressers at both scenes, as well as the nightstands, had been pulled open and dumped, contents strewn about the room, there were a few things that didn’t make sense.

  For one, next to the spilled jewelry case at the Channing scene was what looked to be a modest yet still valuable wedding and engagement ring set. Not expensive by today’s upscale standards, but still gold.

  Why were these items not taken?

  At the Rousseau crime scene, a fairly expensive Canon DSLR camera was left on the top shelf of the closet in the master bedroom. There was also a PlayStation 4 game console found sitting next to the television in the living room.

  While it was well known that experienced burglars knew what to look for, what was easy to get rid of–some going so far as to pass up expensive jewelry if they knew cash or coins were in the house–these were not burglars.

  These victims had been executed. Two of them had been mutilated.

  Why Laura Rousseau and not her husband and son? Why Edwin Channing?

  The task force had already obtained a warrant for the Rousseau family credit-card records. The last charge on their main MasterCard account was Friday at 4.16 p.m. Angelo Rousseau had filled up the tank on his Ford Focus at a Sunoco station on South 17th Street. Two detectives from South had visited the station and watched the surveillance tape. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, no one casing Rousseau or his car. When Rousseau pulled out of the gas station parking lot, the next car to pull out was a full ninety seconds later, going in the other direction. There was no lead there.

  The other thing that was missing was any evidence of a struggle. The only mess at both scenes was from the drawers, closets and cupboards. There were no overturned tables, smashed chairs; no sign of any fight whatsoever.

  A search of Edwin Channing’s desk drawers did not yield a copy of the man’s birth certificate.

  Byrne closed his eyes, trying to envision the Rousseau homicides. If it was one perpetrator, he probably first pointed his weapon at Angelo Rousseau. It wasn’t that Rousseau was a particularly big or fit man, but he was big enough, and any man whose family was put in danger was not only unpredictable, but potentially fierce.

  The perpetrator then almost certainly bound and gagged Angelo Rousseau. But while he was doing that, what was Mark Rousseau doing? Mark was a big kid. Six foot one, one seventy, excellent physical shape. If the perpetrator put the gun down in order to tape up Angelo Rousseau–which would’ve been necessary: peeling off duct tape was a two-handed job–why didn’t Mark Rousseau charge him?

  Perhaps the killer made Mark Rousseau tie up both his father and mother. But if that were the case, why weren’t Mark’s fingerprints on the tape?

  There were two killers. Byrne was sure of it.

  Byrne had investigated many cases of serial murder, and knew that just as often as there was a signature, a cracked prism through which the killer saw the world, a psychological pattern as distinctive as any fingerprint, often there was not. Or, more accurately, there was a signature that lived in its own absence. A method that adhered to the notion that there was no method, only instinct.

  Someone was walking the streets of Philadelphia who had entered two homes, put a gun to the chests of four people and pulled the trigger.

  Without conscience.

  Byrne believed that most people who committed murder, whether from passion or greed or vengeance, found it almost unbearable to carry with them the guilt of what they’d done. If they were never apprehended and bound over to justice for their crime, they lived the rest of their lives inside the prison of their minds, and often enough ended up taking their own life as penance.

  Byrne was just about to call for his check when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen. It was his ex-wife, Donna.

  ‘Hey,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Hey yourself, detective,’ she said. ‘You sound exhausted.’

  ‘You could tell from one word that I’m exhausted?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Byrne smiled. She’d always been able to read him. It was one of the reasons they fell in love. It was one of the reasons they parted.

  Divorced for over a decade, he and Donna had begun seeing each other again, having come together over a property Donna had help Byrne purchase, a house that was no longer standing. Donna Sullivan Byrne was one of the top real-estate agents in Philadelphia.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Byrne said. ‘It’s just been a long night.’

  Since they had rekindled their affair, Byrne had wrestled with the wisdom of putting Donna through the same fears and rigors of his job all over again. He didn’t say more.

  ‘How’s the trip going?’ he asked, hoping he was changing his tone.

  ‘What can I say? It’s New York.’

  Donna was attending a conference of realtors. She was also interviewing with three of the bigger real-estate firms in the city. Byrne had known about this trip for months, but had chosen not to think about it.

  ‘How did the interviews go?’

  ‘Two out of three down. I think I aced them. You know I give good interview.’

  Byrne closed his eyes for a moment and asked, ‘Are you thinking of taking a job there if it’s offered?’

  ‘You know I love my hometown,’ Donna said. ‘But New York is the center of the real-estate universe. If I got the opportunity to work here and turned it down, I might regret it for the rest of my life.’

  It was Donna’s idea of a soft sell. She had weeks earlier floated the notion of moving to New York, and it made Byrne’s heart ache.

  ‘It’s only ninety minutes by train,’ she added as a closer. ‘Step into the Thirtieth Street station, read a newspaper, and an hour and a half later step into Penn Station.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You might even like it enough to move here.’

  Byrne nearly choked on his coffee. ‘Me? Live in New York?’

  He looked around, saw people glancing over at him. He’d said that much louder than he’d thought.

  ‘Is that such a crazy idea?’ Donna asked.

  Second only to naked skydiving in the Arctic, Byrne thought. ‘I guess it isn’t.’

  ‘I’m sure the NYPD would love to get you.’

  Since he’d been a kid, Byrne had never thought about working anywhere other than the PPD, or living anywhere in the world other than Philly. He never would.

  ‘Like you said, it’s ninety minutes by train,’ he replied.

  Donna laughed. ‘I’ve got to get going.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Will you think about it?�
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  The dilemma was wrenching. He knew if they lived ninety minutes and worlds away from each other they would drift apart, and he would lose the last chance to be with the only woman he’d ever truly loved. Donna didn’t say they would move in together if he came to New York, but she didn’t say they wouldn’t.

  Byrne hated lying to his ex-wife.

  He did it anyway.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  Ten minutes later, while he was paying his check, Byrne’s phone rang again. He was certain it would be Donna, telling him that moving to New York would indeed be crazy and she was on the first train back to Philly.

  It wasn’t Donna. It was Josh Bontrager, a fellow detective in the homicide unit.

  ‘Hey, Josh,’ Byrne said. ‘You haven’t been up all night, have you?’

  ‘No,’ Bontrager said. ‘I got the call about an hour ago.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m across from the Channing scene,’ Bontrager said. ‘Detective Caruso and I have been trying to conduct the neighborhood interview before people leave for work.’

  Byrne silently berated himself for not getting back to organize this. Maybe he had taken on too much with the new task force. Still, Josh Bontrager was as good as any cop he’d ever worked with. He didn’t really need direction.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘I think so,’ Bontrager said. ‘We have something we don’t yet have on the Rousseau job.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Byrne asked.

  Byrne heard the lilt in Josh Bontrager’s voice when he said:

  ‘The man across the street from Edwin Channing’s house saw something.’

  The man standing across the street from the Edwin Channing crime scene was in his late twenties. He was tall and angular, seemed to have about him a nervous energy that did not permit him to stand still for too long. As Byrne approached the man he scanned his eyes. They were clear. Whatever made him fidgety was probably not drug-related.

  Josh Bontrager made the introduction. The man’s name was Perry Kershaw.

  As a detective, Joshua Bontrager, still only in his thirties, brought to the job an uncanny ability to gain people’s trust almost instantly. Raised Amish in rural Pennsylvania, he had the knack of starting a conversation with almost anyone and having that person believe that they were the most interesting person on the planet. But beneath that affability was a dogged investigator, with a keen eye for detail. In his time in the unit, Bontrager had steadily risen in the ranks, and the estimation, of the brass.

  ‘This is a terrible thing,’ Kershaw said. ‘I can’t believe it. This is… this is a good block.’

  Byrne knew that in his city–as in any densely populated urban environment–people tended to think of where they lived in terms of blocks, often indicated by a line of demarcation that served as the unofficial boundary of a neighborhood. SoHo in New York was south of Houston; TriBeCa was the triangle below Canal Street. Mostly this was an invention of the realestate industry as a way of stating where the gentrification began and ended.

  Josh Bontrager took out his notebook. Byrne would conduct the interview.

  ‘Tell me what you remember from last night,’ he said. ‘Well, I was getting ready for bed–I didn’t have to work today, so I was going to try to sleep in.’

  ‘Where do you work?’

  ‘I tend bar at Tria Café on Eighteenth.’

  ‘What time was this last night?’

  Kershaw thought for a moment. ‘Let’s see. I watched the news, then some of a movie on TCM.’

  Bontrager made the note.

  ‘During the commercials I got up, put away the dinner dishes from the dishwasher, went over to my front window.’ Kershaw turned, pointed to the second story of his row house, the window overlooking the street. The window that faced Edwin Channing’s home. ‘It was pretty warm last night, so I opened the window, caught a little bit of a breeze. That’s when I saw it.’

  ‘What did you see?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Not sure,’ he said. ‘It looked like Edwin turned his living room light on and off really quickly.’

  ‘Are you referring to an overhead light? A lamp, perhaps?’ Byrne knew that there was no overhead light in the parlor. He wanted to know if Perry Kershaw knew this.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem bright enough to be an overhead light. More like a lamp. I remember thinking at the time that he was going to need a new bulb for the lamp.’

  ‘How so?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Well, you know how when you turn on a lamp and the bulb has one last lighting in it? You turn it on and bam, the bulb burns out. It was like that.’

  Byrne knew what the man was talking about. Edwin Channing did not burn out the bulb last night, or if he did, his killer or killers replaced it. Byrne had tried every lamp in the living room. They all worked fine. What this man was referring to was the muzzle flash of the gunshot that ended Edwin Channing’s life.

  ‘And what time was this again?’ he asked.

  Kershaw thought for a few seconds. ‘Just after midnight, I think. Yeah. Right around there.’

  ‘Do you remember anything about the color of the light?’

  ‘The color of the light?’

  ‘You know how light bulbs come in different types? Bright light, daylight, soft white, LED, things like that?’

  ‘I guess I didn’t think about it,’ he said. ‘My first thought was that it was odd that Edwin was up at such an hour. I kind of keep an eye on him because he doesn’t really have any family anymore.’

  At this, Kershaw took a second, his emotions reaching him. He had just spoken out loud about taking care of Edwin Channing, and now, perhaps, it seemed he had failed at this.

  Byrne moved on. ‘Would you say the light appeared to be more yellow, or more blue?’

  Kershaw shrugged. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Byrne said.

  ‘You just don’t think things are going to be important, you know?’

  ‘It’s perfectly all right. When that light went on and off, did you hear anything?’

  ‘Not sure what you mean,’ he said. ‘Anything like what?’

  ‘Anything at all. Anything coming from Mr Channing’s house.’

  Kershaw shook his head. ‘No, sorry.’

  Byrne was just asking this to corroborate what he already believed to be true. Although not yet confirmed by the firearms identification unit, or the medical examiner, Byrne presumed that whoever murdered Edwin Channing, as well as the entire Rousseau family, had used a suppressor. They were not just looking for a killer. They were looking for an assassin.

  Suddenly it dawned on Perry Kershaw. ‘Oh my God. You’re talking about a gunshot. The flash was a gunshot.’

  ‘We don’t know that yet,’ Byrne said. ‘We’re still putting things together.’

  The man rubbed his hands together, waited. Byrne could see a slight tremble in his shoulders. He was about to go south. Byrne had to step up the interview, or he was going to lose Perry Kershaw.

  ‘What did you do next?’ he asked.

  ‘I watched the street a little while longer. I was just about to close the window, then the blind, when I saw two more flashes of light.’

  ‘From Mr Channing’s house?’

  He nodded. ‘These were different from the first one.’

  ‘Same window? The front room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How were they different?’

  ‘They were not nearly as bright. In fact at first I thought it might have been the television. But I know that Edwin doesn’t watch late night TV. Unless he has insomnia.’

  ‘So you would characterize these lights as flashes?’

  ‘Yeah. Like that.’

  ‘Flashes as in camera flashes?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, yes. Exactly like that.’

  ‘And what time was this?’

  ‘This had to be ten after twelve. Right around there.’
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  Byrne thought about this. The medical examiner’s investigator put time of death at between midnight and 1 a.m. This new evidence–if evidentiary it turned out to be–indicated that the killer pulled the trigger at about five after midnight. And then took two photographs.

  ‘Can you show me exactly where you were standing when you saw these flashes of light?’

  Kershaw turned and looked at his row house, as if he’d never seen it before. It was clear that he did not expect the police to be entering his home on a day such as this. Or any day. Most people didn’t.

  ‘Um, sure, come on inside.’

  Perry Kershaw’s house was decorated in the style of a dorm room–rock posters, IKEA furniture, hastily arranged. Upstairs, in what was clearly a guest bedroom, Kershaw crossed over to the windows and lifted both sets of horizontal blinds.

  The view down to the Channing living room was unobstructed. Unfortunately, Channing’s front-room windows had honeycomb-style window blinds, not Venetian-style slats. Had they been horizontal slats, there may have existed the possibility, however slight, of seeing into the room through the gaps.

  Because of the bright sunlight, it was impossible to recreate what Perry Kershaw had seen the night before. But there was no doubt that a bright flash of light–indeed, three bright flashes of light–would be visible on the canvas of Edwin Channing’s window blinds at or around midnight.

  Byrne pointed to the second floor of the victim’s house.

  ‘Did you see any activity up there last night?’ he asked.

  Again Kershaw considered his answer. ‘No, nothing. As you might imagine, Edwin didn’t do a lot of trundling up and down the stairs. I only see lights come on on the second floor once in a while. I didn’t see anything last night.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw Mr Channing?’

  ‘It was early yesterday evening. Just as it was getting dark.’

  ‘Where did you see him?’

  ‘I can show you.’

  They descended the stairs, crossed the small living room and exited the house. They walked across the street, to the southeast corner. Like many South Philadelphia streets, Morris Street was a pastiche of residential and commercial buildings. While the lot next to the Channing house was vacant, the corner held a recently rehabbed row house that was now a professional building for three attorneys. Directly diagonal from it was a Cambodian restaurant, closed for renovations.