The Stolen Ones

by Richard Montanari

  It was the face of a killer.

  FOUR

  59

  In her time as a homicide detective, one thing that Jessica Balzano had learned was that you could not judge a suspect by his appearance.

  The man on the screen, the man responsible for at least four homicides, was ordinary in every way. He looked to be in his late thirties. He had dark hair, dark eyes. He was clean shaven.

  In the duty room, off to the sides, out of range of the cell phone’s camera lens, stood Dana Westbrook, Josh Bontrager, Maria Caruso, John Shepherd, Mateo Fuentes and Ray Torrance.

  ‘Your name is Luther?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘No,’ the man said. ‘Luther is asleep.’

  ‘I see. Who are you, then?’

  ‘My name is Eduard Kross.’

  He is fully gone, Jessica thought. He has become the madman in his dreams.

  ‘How do we meet, Mr Kross?’ Byrne asked.

  Luther stared into the camera. ‘We will meet soon. There is something you must do for me first.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ Byrne said. ‘But I need to know what it is before I commit.’

  ‘I want the little girl.’

  A stunned silence filled the room.

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean,’ Byrne said.

  ‘The little girl. She got away from me by mistake. I left the doors unlocked, she climbed out of her bed and simply walked up the stairs of an old SEPTA maintenance shed, and into the night. You know how the little ones are.’

  ‘Sure,’ Byrne said. ‘You have to watch them every minute.’

  ‘I want you to bring the girl to the Priory Park Station. I want you to put her at the bottom of the steps at the street level, then I want you to walk away. You will come alone. I want her there in exactly one hour.’

  Jessica glanced at the wall clock. The station was less than a thousand feet from the eastern edge of Priory Park. Even if they would consider such a thing – which they never would – it could hardly happen.

  ‘Please look at your watch, Detective.’

  Byrne did.

  ‘What time do you have?’ Luther asked.

  ‘It is 9:01.’

  ‘Very well.’ Onscreen Luther reset his watch. ‘We now have precisely the same time, so there can be no miscalculations. I detest them. Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Byrne said.

  ‘You – and you alone – will bring her to the station. I will be watching.’

  Jessica looked at the wall behind the man. It was gray, a bit scarred, probably painted concrete block. It was as nondescript a marker as you could imagine. He could have been anywhere in the city.

  But if he was going to be at the rendezvous point within an hour, Jessica thought, he could only be so far away. Jessica heard rustling on the other side of the duty room. Maria Caruso was pinning a large map on the wall.

  ‘Sixty minutes is not a lot of time,’ Byrne said.

  ‘If it is something you want to do, it can be done.’

  ‘I know my bosses, and this is not something they ever do. I’m not optimistic about this.’

  Luther stepped away from the camera. A few moments later he returned.

  ‘I’ve known many police over the years, Detective. Most, I would say, were honorable men. Some were driven by power, the kind of power that allowed them, through the authority of the badge, to exert superiority over other men. Many were driven by a sense of duty. I believe you are one of the latter.’

  Byrne said nothing. Everyone in the room was waiting for the shoe to drop. Madmen like Luther did not make demands without an ‘or else’ attached.

  Onscreen Luther held up what looked to be a thick sheaf of computer printouts, old-style pages with the holes on the sides, printed on a dot matrix printer. He riffled the paper.

  ‘Do you know what I have here, Detective?’

  Byrne removed his suit coat, draped it over the back of the chair. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not.’

  ‘This is a printout of the names and addresses of more than twelve hundred former employees of Cold River. The list was printed in the administration offices at the hospital in nineteen ninety-two. That said, being more than twenty years ago, one has to assume that some of these people are dead. I think there is no question of that. You and I both know the tragic inevitability of death. Would you agree with me on this point?’

  ‘Yes,’ Byrne said.

  Luther thumbed the pages again. ‘I think it also safe to assume that some of them moved away from Philadelphia. Again, a surety. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘So, let us be generous in our estimations. Let us say that half the people on this list have either died or moved away from the city in the past twenty years. That would leave six hundred people.’

  Byrne waited a few seconds before responding. ‘I’m not sure what your point is, Mr Kross. I need some help here.’

  ‘Forgive me. I think you’ll agree that it is quite likely that these six hundred people have family – wives, husbands, sons, daughters, all of them now sitting comfortably and safely in their homes, their futures bright and assured, partly because of the good work, the vigilance, of the Philadelphia Police Department.’

  Jessica noticed that the entire time this man had been speaking he had not once raised his voice, or showed any stress at all.

  ‘I digress,’ Luther continued. ‘Here is my proposal to you, Detective. You now have less than sixty minutes to deliver the girl to me. She is rightly mine, not yours. If you do not deliver the child to me, I will begin to work my way down this list.’

  Byrne said nothing.

  Jessica saw Dana Westbrook step to the far end of the duty room. She picked up a phone, punched in a number. She would begin to scramble the necessary personnel.

  ‘I know exactly where to begin,’ Luther said. ‘I have already visited many of their homes in anticipation of a stalemate such as this. Granted, I did not think the stakes would be quite this high, but we find ourselves on opposite sides of this chasm, and now we must deal with the space between us.’

  Jessica glanced at Byrne. She saw the muscles in his neck cording tightly. She knew that he wanted to jump through the screen and take this guy down. She also knew that he was a detective with more than two decades’ experience. Negotiation was part of the job.

  ‘Mr Kross, as I’m sure you can appreciate, you’ve put me in a difficult position. My job, a job I’ve had for a very long time, is about saving lives, about preventing the sort of thing you’re talking about.’

  ‘I understand. Do you think I’m bluffing?’

  ‘No, I do not. But the scenario with which I have been presented is delicate. I’m only a police officer. The decisions about things like this are made way above my pay grade.’

  Luther looked directly into the lens. ‘Perhaps I afforded you too much credit,’ he said. ‘For a time I thought you a worthy adversary. I was tracked for thirty years through the Estonian and Latvian countryside without success.’

  My God, Jessica thought. This man truly believes he is Eduard Kross. Whatever walls existed in his mind between himself and his engineered dreams had crumbled. His speech had even begun to affect a Baltic accent.

  ‘Let us see who is first on my list.’ He lifted the ream of computer printouts, glanced at the first page. ‘Lillian White. Aged seventy-one years.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Jessica saw Josh Bontrager sit down at a computer terminal. He tapped a few keys. He was looking for a Lillian White.

  ‘She worked at Cold River for nearly fourteen years. She was an administrative assistant. I remember her. She always smelled of ointment and spearmint candy. None of the latter was ever offered to me.’

  Byrne just listened. Jessica glanced at Josh Bontrager. He shook his head. He did not have Lillian White’s address yet. He continued tapping keys on the keyboard.

  Luther stood up, leaned against the wall behind him. He crossed his arms. ‘Lillian Georgette White. I assume this woman i
s unknown to you, Detective. I mean, personally. Am I correct?’

  With this new information, that being the woman’s middle name, Josh Bontrager found her address. He hit the print key on the keyboard, then sprinted from the duty room. From the hallway, out of Luther’s earshot, Bontrager would send out the call. Sector cars would be en route to the address within seconds.

  ‘Yes,’ Byrne said. ‘She is unknown to me.’

  ‘But not, I predict, for long. If you are as efficient as I believe you to be, I am certain that, armed with this woman’s full name, you have determined her address. Do you think you can get there in time to save her life?’

  Byrne hesitated, buying a few seconds. ‘I don’t know. Maybe yes, maybe no. On the other hand, there doesn’t have to be the need to do so. Why don’t we meet somewhere and discuss it?’

  ‘Time is such an intangible précis. What is a moment to you may be an eternity to someone else.’

  Jessica glanced at the door to the duty room. Josh Bontrager gave her the signal that sector cars had been dispatched. Jessica wrote a note to that effect and put it on the desk in front of Byrne.

  ‘Why would you bring harm to this woman?’ Byrne asked. ‘Was she in some manner responsible for what happened to you at Cold River?’

  ‘No,’ Luther said. ‘But she is your game piece, not mine.’

  Game, Jessica thought. This man thinks this is all a game.

  ‘I fear you will not make it to her home in time, Detective.’

  Byrne cleared his throat. Another stall. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because I am already there.’

  At this the man turned the camera. Onscreen now was a thin, white-haired woman, sitting in an upholstered dining-room chair. There was duct tape around her chest. Both her arms were taped to the arms of a chair.

  Next to her, on a TV tray, was a pair of poultry shears.

  Luther stepped behind the woman. ‘Have you ever seen a horticulturalist at work?’

  ‘Wait,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Give me the girl, Detective.’

  Without a word Luther picked up the shears, placed the blades around the thumb of the woman’s left hand, and snapped them shut.

  The woman screamed. A thick spray of blood burst forward, dotting the lens in crimson.

  Luther held the woman by her hair until her body went limp. He wiped the shears on her dress.

  ‘Nine more fingers, ten toes,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she will be a dolphin.’

  He walked up to his camera, looked directly into the lens from just a few inches away. His face filled the screen.

  ‘Life is a ladder of regret, Detective. Up one rung for the things you have done. Down two for the things you have not.’

  ‘Mr Kross,’ Byrne began. ‘Don’t —’

  ‘The thing you did not do is agree to give me what I want. Down two rungs, Detective Byrne.’

  Luther glanced at his watch. ‘If you are thinking about contacting the media and having them broadcast a warning to all former personnel of the Delaware Valley State Hospital, I would advise against it.’ He held up the list of names. ‘Hundreds of people, all in different locations. I will begin to visit them one by one if I see or hear even one mention of this in the media.’

  Luther looked at his cell phone camera, tapped a few buttons. Seconds later, on the screen, there was what looked to be a live web cam shot of a young woman sitting on the floor, a petite young woman with blond hair clipped into a boyish cut. Her eyes were closed, but she appeared to be breathing. Jessica saw no blood or injuries.

  ‘Look at her, and tell me what you see.’

  ‘I see an innocent person,’ Byrne replied.

  ‘Very well. Know this, Detective. If you don’t give me what I ask, this young woman will be the last to die tonight, and you will watch every second of her agony.’

  ‘Wait,’ Byrne said. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  Luther looked at his watch. ‘You now have forty-four minutes. We will meet soon.’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘You know what you have to do.’

  When the screen went black, everyone in the room looked at Mateo. He had been standing behind Byrne, next to Ray Torrance, out of camera range. In his hand was a small HD camcorder. He had recorded the exchange.

  ‘Did we get a capture?’ Westbrook asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Mateo said. ‘Crude, but we’ve got it.’

  ‘Get a freeze-frame of his face, and get it out to every district.’

  Jessica glanced at Byrne, then at the clock.

  Forty-two minutes.

  60

  The eight detectives crowded around a huge map of Philadelphia, posted on the wall in the duty room. Dana Westbrook put four pushpins around the area that included the Priory Park Station. Around them she pulled a length of string, and cordoned off the area.

  ‘We’re going to deploy here, here and here,’ Westbrook said, indicating the northern, eastern, and western ends of the station. ‘Is anyone familiar with the station up there?’

  No one answered.

  Westbrook turned to Maria Caruso. ‘Get someone from SEPTA down here. Tell them to bring maps showing any access tunnels, as well as all the tracks leading to and from that platform.’

  Maria Caruso rolled her chair over to a desk, got on the phone.

  ‘I think I need to go in alone,’ Byrne said. ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that he’s going to carry out these threats.’

  Westbrook thought about this. ‘Obviously we’re not going to give him the girl,’ she said. ‘But we’ve got to make him think we are going to.’

  ‘I’m not sure how we’re going to do that,’ Byrne said. ‘I think he’s a little too smart for any tricks.’

  ‘If Luther calls again, can we track him?’ Westbrook asked.

  ‘If he calls using Joan Delacroix’s iPhone, we can locate him with the Find My iPhone app.’

  Westbrook looks at Mateo. ‘Are we set up to do that here?’

  ‘We can do it from any computer terminal, but we need to know the Apple ID and password.’

  ‘Do we have that?’ Westbrook asked.

  Jessica shook her head. ‘James Delacroix is the only one who has it. I’ll call him.’ Jessica walked across the duty room, took out her phone. She scrolled down to James Delacroix’s number, called him. She got his voicemail, left a message, stating only that it was very important that he give her a call back. She clicked off, waited a few moments, tried again. She got the same result.

  Jessica crossed the duty room. ‘No answer,’ she said.

  ‘If we don’t get that information, is there a way to pinpoint his location?’ Westbrook asked.

  ‘We might be able to,’ Jessica said. ‘If he stays on for a while, I think we can track him.’

  Westbrook thought for a few moments.

  ‘Jess, I want you to get over to RCFL,’ Westbrook said. ‘They are a lot better equipped to handle things like this than we are here.’

  The Regional Computer Forensic Lab was near Villanova University.

  ‘I’ll get on the phone and talk to the commander of the unit,’ Westbrook said. ‘I’ll see if we can scramble their best tracker. In the meantime, keep trying James Delacroix’s number.’

  ‘I think Kevin should have my iPhone and his, plus a TracFone,’ Jessica said. ‘If Kevin takes my iPhone we’ll be able to track him through GPS. If our guy calls Kevin again, he can talk to him on his phone.’

  ‘Write down all these numbers before you leave,’ Westbrook said. She turned to all her detectives. ‘Are we clear on our assignments here?’

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘We’re going to have SWAT deployed at four vantage points. Jessica, you’re at the computer lab. Josh, you will be point man here. Maria, I need you to monitor radio. There’s going to be a lot of chatter in the next hour or so. I need you to hear everything I don’t.’

  Westbrook turned to John Shepherd. ‘John, I think you should get down to the little girl’s
foster home. We don’t know what this guy knows, or what he might find out. Go pick up the girl, and bring her here.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Once again Byrne went through his notes. He scribbled the address of the emergency foster home on a blank page, tore it off, handed it to John Shepherd. Shepherd grabbed it, and left the duty room.

  Westbrook looked at her detectives.

  ‘We don’t negotiate,’ Westbrook said. ‘We take this man down, and we come back safe.’

  As Jessica grabbed her coat, and one of the two-way radios from the charging rack, she glanced at the clock over the door leading out of the duty room. It was 9:22. If they were to take this killer at his word, someone was going to die in thirty-eight minutes.

  Byrne put on a Kevlar vest. As he was pulling the Velcro tabs tight he thought about Luther’s victims. Robert Freitag, Joan Delacroix, Edward Richmond. They were three of the four people who made up the Dream Merchants, a research group that had implanted evil from one man to another.

  When the leader of the group died in that fire, and the man who now calls himself Eduard Kross had been loosed into the world, Byrne wondered if Godehard Kirsch’s dying thoughts had reconciled what he had done with what was to come.

  Had he known? Was Luther the first? Have there been other patients along the way who did not have the potential, or were not as receptive as Luther?

  And why now?

  Life is a ladder of regret.

  As Byrne checked the action on his Glock 17 and replaced it in his holster, it came to him. The answer was in that dusty shoebox in the ceiling of Robert Freitag’s row house. That’s what that page from the Inquirer was all about. The only article that mattered was the one about the condominium construction in the Northeast.

  It was on the site where Cold River once stood.

  They were going to dig up the bodies.

  Luther, or whatever his name really was, was getting rid of people who knew the secrets buried in that park. And that meant not only the people who were members of the research team – Die Traumkaufleute – but perhaps any other members of the administration staff at Cold River.