Rosary girls jbakb-1

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Rosary girls jbakb-1 Page 18

by Richard Montanari


  Jessica decided on Yertle the Turtle, the Dr. Seuss story. It was one of Sophie's favorites. Jessica's, too.

  Jessica began to read, chronicling the adventures and life lessons of Yertle and the gang on the island of Sala-ma-Sond. After a few pages she looked over at Sophie, expecting to see a big smile.Yertle was a laugh riot, usually. Especially the part where he becomes King of the Mud.

  But Sophie was already fast asleep.

  Lightweight, Jessica thought with a smile.

  She flipped the three-way bulb onto the lowest setting, bunched the covers around Sophie. She put the book back in the box.

  She thought about Tessa Wells and Nicole Taylor. How could she not? She had the feeling that these girls would not be far from her conscious thoughts for a long time.

  Had their mothers sat on the edges of their beds like this, marveling at the perfection of their daughters? Had they watched them sleep, thanking God for every breath in, and every breath out?

  Of course they had.

  Jessica looked at the photo frame on Sophie's nightstand, the Precious Moments frame covered in hearts and bows. There were six photos displayed. Vincent and Sophie at the shore when Sophie was just over a year old. Sophie wore a floppy orange bonnet and sunglasses. Her chubby little legs were caked with wet sand. There was a picture of Jessica and Sophie in the backyard. Sophie was holding the one and only radish they got out of the container garden that year. Sophie had planted the seed, watered the plant, harvested her crop. She had insisted on eating the radish, even though Vincent had warned her she wouldn't like it. Being a trouper, and stubborn as a little mule, Sophie had tasted the radish, trying not to make a face. Eventually her face went cabbage-patch with the bitterness, and she spit it into a paper towel. That marked the end of her agricultural curiosity.

  The picture in the lower right-hand corner was of Jessica's mother, taken when Jessica had been a toddler herself. Maria Giovanni looking spectacular in a yellow sundress, her tiny daughter on her knee. Her mother looked so much like Sophie. Jessica wanted Sophie to know her grandmother, although Maria was barely a lucid memory to Jessica these days, more like an image glimpsed through a glass block.

  She flipped off Sophie's light, sat in the dark.

  Jessica had been on the job two full days, and it already seemed like months. The entire time she had been on the force, she had looked at homicide detectives the way many cops did: They only had one job to do. Divisional detectives handled a much broader range of crimes. As the saying goes, a homicide is just an aggravated assault gone wrong.

  Boy, was she mistaken.

  If this was only one job to do, it was enough.

  Jessica wondered, as she had every day for the past three years, if it was fair to Sophie that she was a cop, that she put her life on the line every day when she left the house. She had no answer.

  Jessica went downstairs, checked the front and the back door to the house for the third time. Or was it the fourth?

  She was off on Wednesday, but she hadn't the slightest idea what to do with herself. How was she supposed to relax? How was she supposed to go about her life when two young girls had been brutally murdered? Right now she didn't care about the wheel, the duty roster. She didn't know a cop who would. At this point, half the force would donate their overtime to take this son of a bitch down.

  Her father always had his yearly Easter get-together on Wednesday of Easter Week. Maybe that would get her mind off things. She would go and try to forget about the job. Her father always had a way of putting things in perspective for her.

  Jessica sat on the couch, ran through the cable channels five or six times. She turned the set off. She was just about to climb into bed with a book when the phone rang. She really hoped it wasn't Vincent. Or maybe hoped it was.

  It wasn't.

  "Is this Detective Balzano?"

  It was a man's voice. Loud music in the background. Disco beat.

  "Who is calling?" Jessica asked.

  The man didn't answer. Laughter and ice cubes in glasses. He was in a bar.

  "Last chance," Jessica said.

  "It's Brian Parkhurst."

  Jessica glanced at the clock, noted the time on a notepad she kept near the phone. She looked at the screen on her caller ID. Private number.

  "Where are you?" Her voice sounded high and nervous. Reedy.

  Calm,Jess.

  "Not important," Parkhurst said.

  "It kinda is," Jessica said. Better. Conversational.

  "I'm doing the talking."

  "That's good, Dr. Parkhurst. Really. Because we'd really like to talk to you."

  "I know."

  "Why don't you come to the Roundhouse? I'll meet you there. We can talk."

  "I'd rather not."

  "Why?"

  "I'm not a stupid man, Detective. I know you were at my house."

  He was slurring his words.

  "Where are you?" Jessica asked a second time.

  No answer. Jessica heard the music morph into a Latin disco beat. She made another note. Salsa club.

  "Meet me," Parkhurst said. "There are things you need to know about these girls."

  "Where and when?"

  "Meet me at The Clothespin. Fifteen minutes."

  Next to salsa club she wrote: within 15 min. of city hall.

  The Clothespin was the huge, Claes Oldenburg sculpture at the Center Square Plaza, right next to city hall. In the old days, people in Philly would say Meet me at the eagle at Wanamaker, the late, great department store with the mosaic of the eagle in the floor. Everyone knew the eagle at Wanamaker's. Now, it was The Clothespin.

  Parkhurst added: "And come alone."

  "Not gonna happen, Dr. Parkhurst."

  "If I see anyone else there, I'm leaving," he said. "I'm not talking to your partner."

  Jessica didn't blame Parkhurst for not wanting to be in the same room as Kevin Byrne at this point. "Give me twenty minutes," she said.

  The line went dead.

  Jessica called Paula Farinacci who, once again came through for her. There was certainly a special place in Babysitter Heaven for Paula. Jessica bundled a drowsy Sophie into her favorite blanket and shuttled her three doors down. When she got back home, she called Kevin Byrne on his cell phone, got his voice mail. She called him at home. Ditto.

  Come on, partner, she thought.

  I need you.

  She put on jeans and running shoes, her rain slicker. She grabbed her cell phone, popped a fresh mag into her Glock, snapped on her holster, and headed into Center City.

  Jessica waited near the corner of Fifteenth and Market Streets in the pouring rain. She decided not to stand directly beneath The Clothespin sculpture for all the obvious reasons. She didn't need to be a sitting target.

  She glanced around the square. Few pedestrians were out, due to the storm. The lights on Market Street formed a shimmering red-and-yellow watercolor on the pavement.

  When she was small, her father used to take her and Michael to Center City and the Reading Terminal Market for cannoli from Termini's. Granted, the original Termini's in South Philly was only a few blocks from their house, but there was something about riding SEPTA downtown and walking to the market that made the cannoli taste better. It still did.

  In those days they used to saunter up Walnut Street after Thanksgiving, window-shopping at all the exclusive shops. They could never afford anything they saw in the windows, but the beautiful displays had sent her little-girl fantasies adrift.

  So long ago, Jessica thought.

  The rain was relentless.

  A man approached the sculpture, snapping Jessica out of her reverie. He wore a green rain slicker, hood up, hands in pocket. He seemed to linger near the foot of the giant art piece, scanning the area. From where Jessica stood, he looked to be Brian Parkhurst's height. As to weight and hair color, it was impossible to tell.

  Jessica drew her weapon, kept it behind her back. She was just about to head over when the man suddenly walked down
into the subway stop.

  Jessica drew a deep breath, holstered her weapon.

  She watched the cars circle the square, headlights cutting the rain like cat's eyes.

  She called Brian Parkhurst's cell phone number.

  Voice mail.

  She tried Kevin Byrne's cell phone.

  Ditto.

  She pulled the hood of her rain slicker tighter.

  And waited.

  30

  TUESDAY, 8:55 PM

  He is drunk.

  That will make my job easier. Slower reflexes, diminished capacity, poor depth perception. I could wait for him outside the bar, walk up to him, announce my intentions, then cut him in half.

  He wouldn't know what hit him.

  But where's the fun in that?

  Where is the lesson?

  No, I think it is best for people to know. I realize that there is a good chance I will be stopped before I can complete this passion play. And if I am, one day, walked down that long corridor, and into an antiseptic room, and strapped to a gurney, I will accept my fate.

  I know that I will be judged by a much greater power than the commonwealth of Pennsylvania when my time comes.

  Until then, I will be the one sitting next to you in church, the one who offers you a seat on the bus, the one who holds the door for you on a windy day, the one who bandages your daughter's scraped knee. That is the grace of living in God's long shadow. Sometime the shadow turns out to be nothing more than a coat tree. Sometimes the shadow is everything you fear.

  31

  TUESDAY, 9:00 PM

  Byrne sat at the bar, oblivious to the music, the din of the pool table.All he heard, for the moment, was the roar in his head.

  He was at a run-down corner tavern in Gray's Ferry called Shotz, the farthest thing from a cop bar he could imagine. He could've hit the hotel bars downtown, but he didn't like paying ten dollars a drink.

  What he really wanted was a few more minutes with Brian Parkhurst. If only he could take another run at him, he would know for sure. He downed his bourbon, ordered one more.

  Byrne had turned off his cell phone earlier, but he had left his pager on. He checked it, seeing the number of Mercy Hospital. Jimmy had called for the second time that day. Byrne checked his watch. He'd stop by Mercy and charm the cardiac nurses into a brief visit. There are never any visiting hours when a cop is in the hospital.

  The other calls were from Jessica. He'd call her in a little while. He just needed a few minutes to himself.

  For now, he just wanted the peace of the noisiest bar in Gray's Ferry.

  Tessa Wells.

  Nicole Taylor.

  The public thinks that when a person is murdered, cops show up at the scene, make a few notes, then go home to their lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because the unavenged dead never stay dead. The unavenged dead watch you. They watch you when you go to the movies or have dinner with your family, or lift a few pints with the boys at the corner tavern. They watch you when you make love. They watch and they wait and they question. What are you doing for me? they whisper in your ear, softly, as your life unfolds, as your kids grow and prosper, as you laugh and cry and feel and believe. Why are you out having a good time? they ask. Why are you living it up while I'm laying here on the cold marble?

  What are you doing for me?

  Byrne's solve rate was one of the highest in the unit, partially, he knew, because of the synergy he'd had with Jimmy Purify, partially due to the waking dreams he'd begun having, courtesy of four slugs from Luther White's pistol and a trip beneath the surface of the Delaware.

  The organized killer, by nature, believed himself superior to most people, but especially superior to the people tasked with finding him. It was this egotism that drove Kevin Byrne, and in this case, the Rosary Girl case, it was becoming an obsession. He knew that. He had probably known that the moment he had walked down those rotted steps on North Eighth Street and seen the brutal humiliation that had befallen Tessa Wells.

  But he knew it was as much a sense of duty as it was the horror of Morris Blanchard. He had been wrong many times earlier in his career, but it had never led to the death of an innocent. Byrne wasn't sure if the arrest and conviction of the Rosary Girl killer would expiate the guilt, or if it would square him once again with the city of Philadelphia, but he hoped it would fill an emptiness inside.

  And then he could retire with his head held high.

  Some detectives follow the money. Some follow the science. Some follow the motive. Kevin Byrne trusted the door at the end of his mind. No, he couldn't predict the future, nor divine the identity of a killer just by laying hands. But sometimes it felt like he could, and maybe that was what made the difference. The nuance detected, the intention discovered, the path chosen, the thread followed. In the past fifteen years, ever since he had drowned, he had only been wrong once.

  He needed sleep. He paid his tab, said goodbye to a few of the regulars, stepped out into the endless rain. Gray's Ferry smelled clean.

  Byrne buttoned his raincoat, assessed his driving ability, considering the five bourbons. He pronounced himself fit. More or less. When he approached his car, he knew that something didn't look right, but the image didn't register immediately.

  Then it did.

  The driver's window was smashed in, broken glass shimmering on the front seat. He looked inside. His CD player and CD wallet were gone.

  "Motherfucker," he said. "This fucking city."

  He walked around the car a few times, a rabid dog chasing his tail in the rain. He sat down on the hood, actually considering the folly of calling this in. He knew better.You'd have as much chance of recovering a stolen radio in Gray's Ferry as Michael Jackson had of getting a job at a day care center.

  The stolen CD player didn't bother him as much as the stolen CDs. He had a choice collection of classic blues in there. Three years in the making.

  He was just about to leave when he noticed someone watching him from the vacant lot across the street. Byrne couldn't see who it was, but there was something about the posture that told him all he needed to know.

  "Hey!" Byrne yelled.

  The man took off, rabbiting behind the buildings on the other side of the street.

  Byrne took off after him.

  The clock felt heavy in his hand, like a deadweight.

  By the time Byrne got across the street, the man was lost in the miasma of pouring rain. Byrne still-hunted through the debris-strewn lot, then up to the alley that ran behind the row houses that spanned the length of the block.

  He did not see the thief.

  Where the hell did he go?

  Byrne holstered his Glock, sidled up to the alleyway, peered to the left.

  Dead end. A Dumpster, a pile of garbage bags, broken wooden crates. He eased into the alley. Was someone standing behind the Dump- ster? A crack of thunder made Byrne spin, his heart trip-hammering in his chest.

  Alone.

  He continued, minding every night-shadow. The machine gun of raindrops on the plastic garbage bags obscured every other sound for a moment.

  Then, beneath the rain, he heard a whimper, a rustling of plastic.

  Byrne looked behind the Dumpster. It was a black kid, maybe eighteen or so. In the moonlight Byrne could see the nylon cap, Flyers jersey, a gang tat on his right arm that identified him as a member of JBM: Junior Black Mafia. He had tats of prison sparrows on his left arm. He was kneeling, bound, and gagged. There were bruises on his face from a recent beating. His eyes were ablaze with fear.

  What the hell is going on here?

  Byrne sensed movement to his left. Before he could turn, a huge arm reached around him from behind. Byrne felt the ice of a razor-sharp knife blade at his throat.

  Then, in his ear: "Don't fuckin' move."

  32

  TUESDAY, 9:10 PM

  Jessica waited. People came and went, hurrying through the rain, hailing cabs, running to the subway stop.

  None of them wa
s Brian Parkhurst.

  Jessica reached under her rain slicker, keyed her rover twice.

  At the entrance to Center Square Plaza, less than fifty feet away, a disheveled man came out of the shadows.

  Jessica looked at him, hands out, palms up.

  Nick Palladino shrugged back. Before leaving the Northeast, Jessica had tried Byrne twice more, then called Nick on her way into the city; Nick had instantly agreed to back her play. Nick's vast experience working undercover in Narcotics made him a natural for covert surveillance. He wore a ratty hooded sweatshirt and stained chinos. For Nick Pal- ladino, this was the true sacrifice to the job.

  John Shepherd was under the scaffolding on the side of city hall, directly across the street, binoculars in hand. A pair of uniformed officers were stationed at the Market Street subway stop, both carrying the yearbook faculty photo of Brian Parkhurst, in case he showed up via that route.

  He had not showed. And it looked as if he wasn't going to.

  Jessica called the station house. The team sitting on Parkhurst's house reported no activity.

  Jessica ambled over to where Palladino stood.

  "Still can't reach Kevin?" he asked.

  "No," Jessica said.

  "He's probably crashed. He could use the rest."

  Jessica hesitated, not knowing how to ask. She was new to this club and didn't want to step on any toes. "He seem okay to you?"

  "Kevin's tough to read, Jess."

  "He seems completely exhausted."

  Palladino nodded, lit a cigarette. They were all tired. "He tell you about his… experience?"

  "You mean about Luther White?"

  From what Jessica could glean, Kevin Byrne had been involved in an arrest gone bad fifteen years earlier, a bloody confrontation with a rape suspect named Luther White. White had been killed; Byrne had nearly died himself.

  It was the nearly part that confused Jessica.

  "Yeah," Palladino said.

  "No, he hasn't," Jessica said. "I haven't had the guts to ask him about it."

 

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