Shutter Man

by Richard Montanari

  When they were served, he glanced at the door. He was hot.

  Cops any minute now. The Makarov was heavy in his waistband. His feet were on the floor.

  He looked at the girl.

  White T-shirt. Auburn hair. Silver bracelets.

  ‘What do I look like?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you look like a Malcolm.’

  ‘I once had an uncle named Malcolm.’

  She sipped her drink. ‘See? I’m prescient.’

  She didn’t expect him to know the word. He did, of course. He’d learned it at the library. The thought of Emily’s co-worker Alex brought a fresh shard of anger.

  ‘Actually, my uncle’s name was Desmond.’

  ‘Now you’re trying to confuse me.’

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘It’s all part of my master plan.’

  ‘So where is Uncle Desmond these days?’

  ‘Long below the sod. A victim of low morals and evil intent.’

  She didn’t know what he meant. As the bourbon took hold, he found he didn’t care.

  ‘His middle name was Malcolm,’ he added.

  ‘I get it,’ she said. ‘So. Billy. Billy what?’

  Billy drained his drink, rattled the cubes, got the bartender’s attention. He had a pair of hundreds on the bar. They would not cut him off here.

  He leaned in, whispered: ‘Billy the Wolf.’

  She snorted a laugh into her hand. Billy handed her a napkin. She took it.

  As she finished her drink she asked: ‘Tell me, Billy the Wolf.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have a place nearby?’

  He took her to Sean’s old room in the basement of The Stone, now just a single bed and a nightstand, a few years of dust and mildew on the floor and drapes.

  He found that he had been right. She was a working girl.

  He settled with her before they made love.

  It was the dream of the dream.

  In it he is cold and afraid. His father’s hand is on his shoulder. As always, there are two men–big men in long winter coats–standing nearby. One man is on the sidewalk, one man is just on the street, at the curb, standing between two parked cars.

  Uncle Pat is standing in the middle of the road.

  Snow is falling.

  From somewhere in the distance comes the sound of a reggae version of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’.

  There is an explosion of gunfire. Four blinding white lights come out of the darkness. He is flying, falling. He finds himself in the pitch dark, his face against cold stone. When he sits up, it feels as if the ceiling is very high, almost as high as the sky. But there are no stars. It is a hall of black mirrors, but every time he looks into one, there is no one there.

  He hears voices. Familiar voices. He hears people praying in both English and Irish. He hears music. It seems to be coming down a long metal pipe, has a carnival sound. He hears a hissing noise, like vapor from a teakettle. It seems to surround him.

  And he walks. Mile after mile. Sometimes the walls are closer, and feel like metal: cold and smooth and unblemished. Sometime he feels the presence of other people, perhaps animals, but they dart from shadow to shadow, and he never gets a good look. In the darkest places, the long distances between the mirrors, he hears them keening and crying, mournful sounds that reach the endless night sky, and fall like rain.

  And he walks. River to river. He can hear the gulls, the slap of the water against the piers.

  Beneath it all, beneath the sounds of keening animals and escaping vapor, beneath the sobbing and reciting of prayers, there is always music.

  He hears songs about a white room. He hears songs about blood running cherry red. He hears songs about a woman named Virginia Plain, a song about how the boys are back in town.

  One night he hears a song that speaks to him in a way that no song ever has.

  Take heed, Billy, the wolves come out at night.

  Run with the pack, don’t turn back,

  Hide from the morning light.

  That’s who he is. He is Billy the Wolf.

  One day, as he is walking, he sees a faint light ahead. At first it is burning red; it shimmers to orange and then to gold.

  As the light grows in intensity, drawing him ever nearer, he hears the scream. It is far away, but it begins to grow in volume and urgency—

  Billy opened his eyes.

  A woman was screaming. Billy sat up, disoriented, drenched in sweat.

  White T-shirt. Auburn hair. Silver bracelets.

  He tore off the covers, naked, groping in the darkness. Where was the girl?

  He heard the sound of breaking glass, a struggle. He reached for the Makarov, found it, chambered a round. The sounds were coming from the next room.

  His room.

  He opened the door, saw her standing by his bed. She had turned on the lights and they hurt his eyes.

  ‘What… what is all this?’ she asked.

  Billy tried to focus. The walls were covered with his photographs. On one wall, the wall devoted to the death songs, there were pictures of people, people with no faces, people with their faces drawn in. Beneath some of them were newspaper clippings.

  Drug dealer found murdered.

  Torresdale lawyer dead at 50.

  Gang leader shot to death.

  ‘These… these people are all dead. You have pictures of them. Real pictures.’

  ‘I can explain.’

  The girl began to back her way out of the door. ‘What did you do to their faces?’

  ‘Wait,’ Billy said.

  The girl turned and ran. Before Billy could take a step, he heard the explosion. The gunshot shook the house.

  He turned off the lights, made his way slowly across his room. He peered around the door jamb.

  A man stood in the dimly lit hallway, his hand stretched out. In it was a picture. Billy flipped on the hallway light. He saw that the man had a semi-automatic pistol in his other hand. At his feet was a woman. The right side of her skull was missing. The walls were streaked with blood and bone fragments.

  Billy aimed the Makarov at the man, stepped forward, his head pounding.

  ‘It’s Sean,’ the man said.

  Billy looked at the man’s eyes. They were his own. It was his brother. It was Sean. He lowered his weapon.

  Billy only remembered brief moments of the afternoon.

  White T-shirt. Auburn hair. Silver bracelets.

  ‘Who the fuck is this?’ Sean asked. He was flying on the meth, pacing like a caged tiger.

  ‘I don’t remember her name. I met her at the Kettle.’

  ‘And you fucking brought her here?’

  Billy told Sean how his day had begun, the story of the man and the library. He had never before told his brother about Emily.

  Sean hit the vial again, screeched like a bird of prey. ‘God-damn it.’

  ‘They were here,’ Billy said.

  Sean stopped. ‘Who was here?’

  ‘The police.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I watched from the attic. They knocked front and back, tried to look in the windows, then left.’

  ‘Have they been back?’

  ‘No,’ Billy said. ‘After that I locked up and went to the Kettle.’

  Sean began to pace once again.

  ‘We have to leave, man,’ he said. ‘You know that, right? We can never come back. We have to get all the money that’s out there. Tonight. We make our pickups tonight. Settle all accounts.’

  Billy said nothing for a moment. ‘But what about the last two lines? We have to draw them.’

  Sean ran a hand across his chin. ‘We get our money first, then we draw them. Then we leave town.’

  Billy returned to the bedroom, put on his clothes. The woman’s clothes were strewn about the room. Sean followed.

  ‘Get the certificates,’ Sean said.

  Billy pulled out the strongbox with the documents they needed. He decided to take the whole box. It also held the cash, nearly thr
ee thousand dollars.

  Sean found a bath towel, wiped the girl’s blood from his face and hands. He dragged the girl’s body onto an old rug and rolled it up. He bound it with strong twine.

  ‘Let’s get her to the back door. I’m going to take her to the river.’

  They labored to get her to the back door. Sean left, and returned a few minutes later with the white van they had jacked in Fishtown. When they took it, the van had been green. They loaded the girl’s body into the back.

  Sean took another hit from his inhaler, slipped behind the wheel, rolled down the window.

  ‘I’ll be back, and we’ll take care of business,’ he said. ‘Wait for me here, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  As Sean drove off, Billy walked back into the house, a lifetime of echoes thunderous in his head.

  Every memory he had, every moment of his past, was gone. There was only time present, and everyone was a stranger.

  There never was a Michael Anthony Farren.

  There was only Billy.

  26

  When Jessica stepped into the duty room at the homicide unit, the feelings all but took her breath away. She’d expected a wave of nostalgia, but had not been prepared for the depth of feeling.

  The first person to run up to her with a big hug was Josh. She’d really missed him.

  ‘Josh,’ she said. ‘You look great.’

  ‘Not as great as you.’

  Jessica recalled the day she’d met Josh Bontrager, fresh-faced and clad in mismatched clothes. He’d hit the ground running on an investigation of serial murder that took them to the source of the Schuylkill River.

  She made the rounds, talking to the secretaries up front, spent a few minutes with Captain Ross. When she got back to the duty room, she saw John Shepherd. They hugged. John was a rock, and further reminded Jessica how much time she had spent in this room, and how much she missed everyone.

  ‘You were right about the handkerchief,’ Shepherd said to Byrne.

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘At the far end of the property, tied to an apple tree. There’s that small fence back there, so I originally thought maybe that was where the Rousseau property stopped. I looked at a plot plan, and it continues to the other side of the trees.’ He took out his phone, swiped a few photos, turned the screen to face Jessica, Byrne and Josh Bontrager.

  It looked to be an identical handkerchief to the one found behind Edwin Channing’s house.

  The word this time was:

  OPERA.

  ‘Has this been processed?’ Byrne asked.

  Shepherd nodded. ‘It’s at the lab. They’ve had it since yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Do we have any prelim?’

  ‘We do,’ he said. ‘Presumptively, they are the same handkerchiefs, part of a set. Chandi said they’re linen. Hand-made.’

  ‘New?’

  Shepherd shook his head. ‘She didn’t think so, but she hadn’t yet run any tests.’

  ‘Can you print that?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ Shepherd said.

  A few moments later, they were all staring at an 8x10 print of the handkerchief, sitting next to a photograph of the first specimen, the one bearing the word TENET.

  Byrne glanced at his watch. ‘I need to stop at the lab,’ he said. He turned to Jessica. ‘If you want, I can—’

  ‘I miss the lab,’ Jessica said.

  Byrne smiled. ‘Still Miss Subtle. You can come.’

  On the way to the lab, Byrne filled Jessica in on the details of the cases. She knew he was not telling her everything, and she understood. While they were ostensibly on the same side, the side of justice for the citizens of their county who had been wronged, writ large or small, they had different sets of rules now.

  When they parked the car in the lot at FSC, Jessica reached into her bag, retrieved an envelope, handed it to Byrne. He opened it.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said.

  It was a 4x6 print of the photo Jessica had taken of him for Sophie.

  ‘Cool, huh? Sophie printed it off for you.’

  ‘Do I really look like this?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Do you want the opening statement or the closing argument?’

  ‘Which one is the bigger lie?’

  Jessica didn’t have to think too long about this one. ‘Opening statement. Evidence gets in the way of total fabrication in the closing argument.’

  ‘Okay,’ Byrne said. ‘Opening statement.’

  ‘You look good, partner. And that’s the truth.’ She tapped the photo. ‘Exhibit A.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Byrne said. ‘I should have worn my jacket.’

  In the picture, which was a close-up, Byrne wore a crisp white shirt, a navy tie.

  ‘It’s a good picture of you, and I’m not just saying so because I took it,’ Jessica said. ‘Your hair is a little messy, which is adorable. You have fashionable stubble.’

  ‘So, a kind of Gerard Butler meets Brad Pitt thing?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jessica said, keeping the laugh inside. ‘Like that.’

  ‘Tell Sophie thanks,’ Byrne said. He put the picture in his inside suit coat pocket.

  ‘I will,’ Jessica said. ‘But I should tell you something else about this picture.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s now the official screen saver on Sophie’s smartphone.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Nope,’ Jessica said. ‘You replaced Nick Jonas.’

  Of all the divisions of the Forensic Science Center, criminalistics was the most varied. Its purview was the analysis of hair, fiber and blood evidence, as well as DNA.

  The chief examiner was Chandi Dhawan.

  Born into extreme poverty in the Basanti slum of Calcutta, Chandi, now in her early forties, had fought her way to England, where she got her degree in biochemistry at Oxford, married a man who worked in international finance, then took a position with the US Department of Agriculture before moving over to the field of forensics in law enforcement.

  And she’d accomplished it all from the confines of a wheel-chair. Jessica didn’t know the reason she was in a chair, and never felt comfortable asking about it.

  As they caught up with their recent lives, Jessica was once again struck by the woman’s flawless beauty and effortless grace.

  ‘How are things at the DA’s office?’ Chandi asked.

  ‘Better hours, but the coffee is much worse, believe it or not.’

  ‘I can remedy this,’ Chandi said, with her delightful melange of urban Indian and posh English accents. She gestured to a Chemex beaker on the work table, set up with a conical filter. Next to it was the most elaborate coffee grinder Jessica had ever seen, something called a Gaggia MDF. At the other side of the room a kettle had just begun to steam.

  ‘Can I interest you in a cup of Ojo De Aqua Geisha?’ Chandi asked.

  ‘That is coffee, right?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘One of the best.’

  ‘We’re in,’ Jessica said, answering for both of them.

  They made more shop talk and small talk until the coffee was ready. Chandi even used a timer. She poured coffee into a trio of beautiful blue porcelain cups, then, like all serious practitioners of the culinary arts, quietly observed as her guests sampled her offering.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Jessica said. It was about the best she’d ever had.

  ‘Coffee is not cooking,’ Chandi said. ‘Coffee is science.’ She took her last sip, closed her eyes to the taste and aroma. When she opened her eyes, she was back in the lab.

  ‘And now to work.’

  She rolled over to the examining table. She clicked on the overhead light, swung out the magnifying lamp. On the table was the evidence collected at Edwin Channing’s house and the Rousseau house, the two handkerchiefs, on which were written OPERA and TENET.

  ‘What can you tell us about these?’ Byrne asked. ‘

  I believe I can tell you more than a few things.’

  As Jessica looked at the exempla
rs, she was reminded of her days as a detective, and how, at this moment when the pieces started to snap together, it was such a rush. She found she got the same feeling when a witness began to get caught in their web of lies on the stand.

  Not better, not worse, just different.

  ‘These handkerchiefs are Irish linen,’ Chandi said. ‘Very high-quality. They measure eleven and one half inches square, including the lace edging.’

  ‘Irish linen as in Made in Ireland Irish linen?’ Byrne asked. ‘I am not yet certain of this,’ Chandi said. ‘But I believe so. And they are most definitely vintage.’

  ‘How vintage?’

  Chandi shrugged. ‘Presumptively 1940s. Perhaps older. If it was paper, I’d have that for you. Actually, I would rely on Hell Rohmer for that. But I’m working on this.’

  Helmut Rohmer was the garrulous head of the PPD’s document examination unit. Jessica and Byrne had worked with him many times.

  ‘And it’s definitely a handkerchief?’ Byrne asked.

  Chandi glared.

  ‘Okay,’ Byrne said. ‘Just a question.’

  Chandi continued. ‘It is hand-made, very beautiful.’ She angled the magnifying lamp over the cloth. ‘As you can see, there are slight flaws–as with all hand-woven items–and signs of use commensurate with its age.’

  ‘So it’s been used?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Chandi said. ‘But handled.’ She took a small laser pointer out of a drawer, turned it on. She ran the narrow beam along the edge of the handkerchief bearing the word OPERA.

  ‘Do you see how, on this sample, the color of the lace on the lower right quadrant is a lighter shade of blue than the lace on the other handkerchief? Indeed, lighter than the other three quadrants on the same handkerchief?’

  Jessica hadn’t noticed it at first, but Chandi was right.

  ‘Why is that?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Again, this is merely a presumption, but I would say that while these handkerchiefs were stored–and I believe that they were, for a very long time–they were folded into quarters, and this quadrant was uppermost in the box. As such, it was exposed to sunlight. Therefore it is lighter in color.’

  Jessica couldn’t wait to take the testimony of Chandi Dhawan one day. She was a DA’s dream.