The Doll Maker

by Richard Montanari

  Barbara Wagner just listened.

  ‘I need to know if she’s confided in someone at Muncy.’

  ‘Okay,’ Barbara said. ‘But you know she has limited contact, right?’

  ‘I know,’ Byrne said. ‘But in three weeks she’s going to have no contact. With anyone. And her secrets are going to hell with her. I need to know. The families need to know.’

  Byrne knew he was hitting this hard, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  ‘Understood,’ Barbara said.

  ‘Do you think they’ll let me see her?’

  ‘Hard to say. If it was up to me, no problem.’

  ‘I know,’ Byrne said. ‘Thanks.’

  As a convicted murderer on death row drew closer to his or her execution date, contact with outside visitors became more and more limited. In the final days it was down to clergy, legal counsel, and immediate family.

  Detective Kevin Byrne was none of the above.

  ‘I can put in the request,’ Barbara said. ‘It’ll have to clear her counsel.’

  ‘Who’s her lawyer now?’

  ‘Hang on.’

  Byrne heard Barbara tapping the keys on a keyboard.

  ‘Her latest is Brandon Altschuld, Esquire.’

  ‘Philly?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s a PD out of Allentown.’

  When Valerie Beckert went on trial for first degree murder she was represented by a rather pricey firm in Philadelphia. Now, when she was no longer news, she had a public defender.

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ Barbara added.

  ‘Thanks, Barb.’

  ‘You know how to thank me.’

  Byrne laughed. ‘I have my cargo shorts and flip-flops already packed.’

  He had never owned either cargo shorts or flip-flops. Barbara probably knew this.

  ‘Flip-flops you might need,’ she said. ‘Leave the cargo shorts at home.’

  They sparred for a little while longer. Barbara Louise Wagner promised to call in a day or two.

  Byrne turned back to the newspaper item. The photograph was the same one the Inquirer ran next to the original news item that chronicled Valerie Beckert’s sentencing. It was a head shot of the woman, her eyes looking slightly left of the camera, appearing nothing like she must’ve looked when she had taken the life from Thomas Rule. In the newspapers she would be forever nineteen.

  In the past ten years Byrne had thought of the woman often. At the time of her arrest he had compiled a list of a dozen missing children, twelve boys and girls who lived within five miles of Valerie’s home in northwest Philadelphia. Every so often, during the last ten years, Byrne took out the list and made inquiries to see if the children had been returned to their families or, worst case scenario, their remains had been found.

  The good news was that, over the past decade, six of the children had been reunited with their parents.

  The bad news was that six of them had not.

  Byrne took out his wallet, opened the much-folded index card with the six remaining names, as he had so many times before.

  He knew that, when it came to finding missing children, investigators spoke in terms of months, sometimes weeks, more often in days. The more time that passed, the less likely it would be that the children would be located alive and well.

  No one spoke in terms of years.

  Byrne thought about asking his captain to once again put in a request with the FBI to reopen these missing persons cases. The cases were not technically closed, but over the past ten years, sadly, thousands more children had gone missing.

  While the profile of men who kidnapped children was defined by a very narrow age and type for the child, the instance of women doing this – while much rarer by far – did not have such a distinct profile.

  Perhaps this was the reason that Valerie Beckert had been able to get away with it for as long as she did. The Special Victims Unit had been looking for a man.

  The children still missing were Nancy Brisbane, Jason Telich, Cassandra and Martin White, Thaddeus Woodman, and Aaron Petroff. Byrne had mapped the homes of the missing children – four of the twelve had been living in foster care – and Valerie’s house was dead-center in the circle.

  Byrne put away the list, made a mental note to run the names through the system again.

  As he prepared to leave the Roundhouse, he thought about how, in his time in the homicide unit, he had interrogated thousands of suspects, hundreds of people who had committed murder. In that time he had become quite adept at rooting out those who were trying to work the system, trying to cop an insanity plea. He had never been wrong. Not once.

  But when he interviewed Valerie Beckert on the night of her arrest he saw an icy tranquility in her eyes, even as she described stalking the little boy, luring him into her car, and strangling him.

  Was she insane? Byrne had no doubt.

  Was it fair or just that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was about to put an insane person to death?

  This was not for him to decide.

  The attempt made by Valerie Beckert’s lawyer to reduce her sentence – or, her lawyer had hoped, to take the death penalty off the table – backfired. Valerie was declared competent, stood trial, and was convicted of first degree murder.

  Byrne gathered his belongings, tried to push all thoughts of Valerie Beckert from his head.

  Easier said.

  In all, it had been a good day. The good guys took a bad guy – and two guns – off the streets.

  Before leaving the duty room Byrne checked the roster, more commonly known as The Wheel. He was near the top. Tomorrow was a new day, and he had no idea where it would lead him.

  When he stepped into the parking lot behind the Roundhouse he glanced in the general direction of Wynnefield, the small northwestern Philadelphia neighborhood where Valerie Beckert’s house stood vacant.

  For a brief, shivering moment he felt something pull him in that direction, something dark and foreboding, something he’d felt slither beneath his skin on that steamy August night ten years earlier.

  Six children found.

  Six children still lost.

  What did you do with them, Valerie?

  3

  Jessica Balzano looked at the two documents on her dining room table. They were similar in appearance – eight-and-a-half by eleven inch sheets of white paper, black ink, no staples, no folds.

  As she sipped her first cup of coffee of the day, she looked out the kitchen window at the early morning commuters. It was usually her favorite time of day, so full of promise, the early morning light an armor against all the bad things the world could throw at you. She didn’t feel that way today.

  She glanced back at the documents, thought for a moment about how many life-changing events were chronicled by such benign things: birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, laboratory test results, both good and bad. She had taken these two documents out of the file cabinet they kept in the tiny office off the living room of their South Philly row house. The cabinet held just about every touchstone of their lives, but at this moment, these were the only two that mattered to Jessica Balzano, her husband Vincent, and their children, Sophie and Carlos.

  The document on the right was from Edward Jones, the brokerage firm at which they held their modest investments. A few municipal bonds, a money market account paying next to nothing, and some mutual funds that paid dividends.

  The document on the left was a three page, double sided application form, an application she had read many times, but had yet to find the courage to fill out. At the top of the first page it read:

  Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners Application

  She’d gone to law school at Temple University, taking every available class at every available opportunity – mornings, evenings, weekends – judiciously spending all her accumulated vacation days in classrooms with people who, for the most part, were fifteen years younger than she. She’d gotten her degree in what she understood to
be record time for Temple University, her alma mater where she’d gotten her undergraduate degree in criminal justice.

  Getting through law school was supposed to be the hard part. From the beginning Jessica had her sights set on working in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. Indeed, this had been her goal since she was a young girl who would sometimes watch her father, Peter Giovanni, testify in Municipal Court.

  Each year the DA’s office hired new assistant district attorneys from the same class of graduates from around the country. Weight was obviously given to freshly minted lawyers from the greater Philadelphia area, based on a number of factors, not the least of which was familiarity with the Pennsylvania Penal Code, as well as the knowledge of the people, the streets, and the struggles of the citizens of the City of Brotherly Love.

  Jessica, having graduated top of her class, had inside knowledge that the job was all but hers for the asking.

  She also knew that the salary of a new assistant district attorney was about half the pay of a veteran detective in the homicide unit, who were among the highest paid of all the gold badge detectives in the department. The debt load, in the end, she’d decided, had been simply too great. In addition to her huge student loan, there was their mortgage payment, private school tuition for both Sophie and Carlos, car payments on two vehicles, as well as orthodontics bills and every other bill that came with raising a family in an expensive city like Philadelphia.

  Had she been single, or married without children, she might’ve gone for a period of time on Ramen noodles and tap water, but that wasn’t the case.

  The hard truth was – one at which she had arrived after many a sleepless night – that she couldn’t afford to leave the department, not just yet. The final deadline for submitting the application, for the February taking of the bar exam, was two months away.

  She sensed her husband behind her. He crossed the small kitchen, wrapped his arms around her waist, peered over her shoulder.

  ‘What have I told you about reading this stuff before breakfast?’

  ‘I know,’ Jessica said.

  ‘You should be reading something calming. Like the Bible.’

  Jessica smiled. ‘You mean that part about Jesus tossing the moneychangers out of Temple University?’

  ‘Good one,’ Vincent said.

  They fell silent for a few moments. Vincent knew that his wife had all but made her decision about this, just as he knew how heart-rending it was.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  Jessica wasn’t. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I am.’

  ‘We can do it, you know. We’ll find a way.’

  ‘It’s too much, Vince,’ Jessica said. ‘We can’t carry this load.’

  Vincent spun her around to face him. He put his hands on her hips, pulled her close.

  ‘We can pay this off,’ he said. ‘I’m a narcotics detective, remember? I take down one, two dealers – bam. Car loads of cash. We’re gold.’

  ‘I’m sure the IRS would have nothing to say about that.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Them.’

  Jessica glanced around the kitchen, at the dishes stacked neatly in the sink, the napkins folded on the countertop, ready for dinner. She looked back into her husband’s deep caramel eyes. He still made her heart flutter, even after all this time.

  ‘Thanks for getting the kids off to school,’ she said.

  Vincent clearly knew how hard this day was going to be on her. He’d gotten up early to get Sophie and Carlos clothed, fed, book-bagged, and onto the bus, all while Jessica took a hot shower until the water ran cold.

  ‘All in a day’s work,’ Vincent said.

  ‘You could have done the dishes, though.’

  Vincent laughed. ‘Don’t push your luck.’

  Jessica took a moment, considered their options one last time. There was only one.

  ‘I’m good with this,’ she said. ‘Really I am.’

  Vincent kissed her on the forehead, then on the lips. ‘If you’re good, I’m good.’

  ‘Besides, there’s no way we would be able to keep this from the kids,’ Jessica said. ‘They’d find out about the money problems eventually.’

  ‘They know.’

  Jessica felt punched. She took a step back, the moment gone. ‘What the hell do you mean, they know? How do they know? Did you tell them?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘How do kids know anything, Jess? They sense it. They know when we’re fighting, they know when we’re happy, they know when we have money problems. They just know. They always do.’

  Jessica took a few deep breaths, tried to calm herself. ‘Well, we’ve never had money problems like this.’

  Vincent had no reply to this. There was none. It was true.

  Jessica glanced at the clock. She was due at the Roundhouse.

  ‘I’ve got to go. I’m meeting with the captain in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Ross is a good man,’ Vincent said. ‘He’ll be ecstatic. They didn’t want to lose you in the first place. You know that, right?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It will be seamless and painless,’ Vincent said. ‘You’ll see.’

  Jessica felt her feelings close in on her. She wiped a tear from her eye. She promised herself she would not get emotional about this.

  Where was the tough South Philly girl now that she needed her?

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You’re right. I’ll be fine.’

  Jessica picked up one of the folded napkins on the counter, probably for the cry she wasn’t going to have on the way in. She saw something underneath.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked.

  Vincent said nothing.

  Jessica lifted the edge of the napkin. Underneath was a thin leather wallet. A five-year-old boy’s wallet. Her five-year-old son’s wallet. Jessica knew the precise contents. Four dollars and sixty-six cents.

  It was all the money Carlos had in the world.

  He was giving her his nest egg.

  Jessica’s heart broke into a thousand pieces.

  She stood in the front plaza of the Roundhouse, just as she knew she would on this day. She thought about the building’s legacy, its history. She thought about the nearly three-hundred officers who had given their lives to the city and the people of Philadelphia since the department was formed.

  She glanced up at the huge statue that looked out over Franklin Park, the police officer holding a young child. She’d seen the statue thousands of times, but mostly as she drove by it, not affording it any significance, any weight in her life.

  Until now.

  On this day, the sight of that anonymous officer suddenly meant everything.

  4

  Twenty minutes later, having finished her meeting with Captain John Ross and her day work supervisor, Dana Westbrook, Jessica emerged from Ross’s office. She felt as if an enormous weight had been lifted from her shoulders, but at the same time she wanted to gather her belongings and walk out of the building. She’d never felt this way before.

  Jessica looked around for an open desk. Detectives in the homicide unit of the Philadelphia Police Department did not get their own desks. Each desk, and each computer terminal, were shared by the ninety detectives who worked seven days a week, all three tours. What you did get was a drawer in a file cabinet where you were supposed to put your service weapon while on the floor in the duty room. This made a great deal of sense, seeing as how many less than savory characters passed through the room, many of whom were not yet wearing handcuffs. Very few detectives adhered to the rule.

  When she turned the corner into the center of the room she knew immediately which desk was hers for the day. Attached to either side of the desk were two huge Mylar balloons. On the desk was a white paper plate bearing a Danish pastry with one small candle burning. Jessica looked at the sayings on the huge, bright red balloons:

  Break a leg!

  Knock ‘em dead!

  Behind the desk,
with two large cups of coffee in his hands, stood her partner for these past eight years, Kevin Byrne.

  They found a quiet corner of the duty room, which was never easy, not the least of which was that the room – as was the design of almost every room in the Roundhouse – was semicircular. This had never struck anyone as a bright idea in a world of rectangular desks and square file cabinets.

  Jessica told Byrne about her decision to postpone taking the bar exam, happily keeping her emotions in check.

  ‘When did you decide this?’ Byrne asked.

  Jessica looked at her watch. ‘About a half-hour ago.’

  ‘You talked to the captain already?’

  Jessica nodded. ‘Everyone’s good with it.’

  Byrne looked out the window, at the bright autumn day, at the leaves changing in the park across the street. He looked back. ‘How come?’ he asked. ‘I thought it was all set.’

  So did I, Jessica thought. Just about everyone on day work was expecting her to come in today to gather her few belongings and say her goodbyes.

  As Jessica was about to explain all this to her partner, she saw Dana Westbrook crossing the duty room, a look of grim determination on her face, a document in hand. Both Jessica and Byrne knew what was coming.

  ‘We’ll talk,’ Jessica said.

  Westbrook handed Byrne the document.

  There was a fresh homicide in the city of Philadelphia, and Detectives Byrne and Balzano were up on the wheel.

  ‘This is a bad one,’ Westbrook said. ‘Grab a couple of warm bodies. I want a status report within the hour.’

  As Jessica and Byrne put on their coats, Jessica looked longingly at her pastry, on which the tiny candle had already burned down. She hoped this wasn’t an omen. She pointed at the paper plate. ‘Can I get that to go?’

  Byrne reached over to the roll of paper towels bolted to the side of one of the steel desks, pulled off a few sheets, removed the candle from the pastry and wrapped it up. ‘We’re a full-service unit here.’