Broken Angels jbakb-3

by Richard Montanari

  My God, Byrne thought. She's a woman. She became a woman and I missed it.

  "I'm sorry I'm late," she signed before she was halfway across the room. People stared at her, for any number of reasons. Her elegant sign language, her posture and grace, her stunning looks.

  Colleen Siobhan Byrne had been deaf since birth. It had only been in the past few years that both she and her father had become comfortable with her deafness. Whereas Colleen had never seen it as a handicap, it seemed she now understood that her father once had, and probably still did to a degree. A degree that was lessening by the year.

  Byrne stood, gave his daughter a soul-replenishing hug.

  "Merry Christmas, Dad," she signed.

  "Merry Christmas, honey," he signed back.

  "I couldn't get a cab."

  Byrne waved a hand as if to say: What? You think I was worried?

  She sat down. Within seconds her cell phone vibrated. She gave her father a sheepish grin, pulled out the phone, flipped it open. It was a text message. Byrne watched her read it, smile, blush. The message was clearly from a boy. Colleen sent a quick reply, put her phone away.

  "Sorry," she signed.

  Byrne wanted to ask his daughter two or three million questions. He stopped himself. He watched her delicately place her napkin on her lap, sip her water, peruse the menu. She had a woman's bearing, a woman's poise. There could only one reason for this, Byrne thought, his heart shifting and cracking in his chest. Her childhood was over.

  And life would never be the same.

  When they finished eating, it was that time. They both knew it. Colleen was full of teenage energy, probably had a friend's Christmas party to attend. Plus she had to pack. She and her mother were going out of town for a week, visiting Donna's relatives for New Year's Eve.

  "Did you get my card?" Colleen signed.

  "I did. Thanks."

  Byrne silently chastised himself for not sending out Christmas cards, especially to the one person who mattered. He'd even gotten a card from Jessica, slipped covertly into his briefcase. He saw Colleen sneak a glance at her watch. Before the moment became uncomfortable, Byrne signed, "Can I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  Here goes, Byrne thought. "What are your dreams?"

  A flush, then a look of confusion, then acceptance. At least she didn't roll her eyes. "Is this going to be one of our talks?" she signed.

  She smiled and Byrne's stomach flipped. She didn't have time to talk. She probably wouldn't have time for years to come. "No," he said, feeling his ears get hot. "I was just wondering."

  A few minutes later she kissed him good-bye. She promised that they would have a heart-to-heart soon. He put her in a cab, returned to the table, ordered the bourbon. A double. Before it arrived, his cell phone rang.

  It was Jessica.

  "What's up?" he asked. But he knew that tone.

  In response to his question, his partner uttered the four worst words a homicide detective could hear on Christmas Eve.

  "We've got a body."

  42

  The crime scene was once again on the bank of the Schuylkill River, this time adjacent to the Shawmont train station, near Upper Roxborough. The Shawmont station was one of the oldest stations in the United States. The trains no longer stopped there, and it had fallen into disrepair, but it was a frequent stop for railroad aficionados and purists, much photographed and rendered.

  Just below the station, down a steep incline that angled toward the river, was the enormous derelict Shawmont waterworks, located on one of the last publicly owned riverfront parcels of land in the city.

  The exterior of the mammoth pump house was overgrown with decades of scrub and vines and gnarled branches hanging from dead trees. In daylight it was an imposing relic of a time when the facility had taken water from the pool behind Flat Rock Dam and pumped it up to the Roxborough Reservoir. At night it was all but an urban mausoleum, a dark and forbidding haven for drug deals, clandestine unions of all sorts. The inside was gutted, stripped of anything even remotely of value. There was graffiti around the walls to a height of seven feet or so. A few ambitious taggers had written their sentiments at a height of perhaps fifteen feet on one wall. The floor was an uneven topography of pebbled concrete, rusted iron, and sundry urban rubble.

  As Jessica and Byrne approached the building, they could see the bright temporary lights illuminating the front of the building, the facade facing the river. A dozen officers, CSU techs, and detectives waited for them.

  The dead woman sat in the window, legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap. Unlike Kristina Jakos, this victim did not appear to be mutilated in any way. At first, it looked as if she were praying, but closer inspection showed that her hands were cupped around an object.

  Jessica stepped into the building. It was almost medieval in scale. Since the facility's closing, it had fallen into decay. A number of ideas had been floated regarding its future, not the least of which had been the possibility of turning it into a training facility for the Philadelphia Eagles. The cost of renovation would be enormous, though, and so far nothing had been done.

  Jessica approached the victim, careful not to disturb any possible footprints, although there was no snow inside the building and collecting any thing usable was unlikely. She shone her light on the victim. This woman was in her late twenties or early thirties. She wore a long dress. It, too, seemed to be from another time, with its elasticized velvet bodice and fully shirred skirt. There was a nylon belt around her neck, knotted at the back. It appeared to be an exact duplicate of the one found around the neck of Kristina Jakos.

  Jessica hugged the wall as she scanned the interior. The CSU techs would soon be setting up a grid. Before leaving, she took her Maglite, made a slow careful sweep of the walls. And saw it. About twenty feet to the right of the window, buried in a jumble of gang tags, was the graffiti of the white moon.

  "Kevin."

  Byrne stepped inside, followed the beam of light. He turned, found Jessica's eyes in the gloom. They had stood there before, as partners, at the threshold of a burgeoning evil, at a moment when something they thought they'd understood had become something bigger, something far more sinister, something that had redefined everything they'd believed about a case.

  Standing outside, their breath formed vapor clouds in the night air. "ME's office won't be here for an hour or so," Byrne said.

  "An hour?"

  "Christmas in Philly," Byrne said. "Two other homicides already. They're stretched."

  Byrne pointed to the victim's hands. "She's holding something."

  Jessica looked closely. Something was in the woman's grasp. Jessica took a number of close-up pictures.

  If they were to follow procedure to the letter, they would have to wait for the ME's office to pronounce the woman dead, and for a full set of photographs and perhaps video to be taken of the victim and the scene. But Philadelphia was not exactly following procedure this night-that bit about love thy neighbor came to mind, followed closely by that peace-on- earth business-and the detectives knew that the longer they waited, the more likely it was that precious information would be lost to the elements.

  Byrne stepped closer, tried to gently pry apart the woman's fingers. Her fingertips responded to his touch. Full rigor had not set in.

  At first glance it appeared that the victim had a ball of leaves or twigs in her cupped hands. In the harsh light it looked to be a dark brown material, definitely organic. Byrne stepped closer, set himself. He spread a large evidence bag on the woman's lap. Jessica tried to hold her Maglite steady. Byrne continued to pry apart the victim's grasp, slowly, one finger at a time. If the woman had scooped a ball of earth or compost from the ground during a struggle, it was possible that she had gotten important evidence from her killer lodged beneath her nails. There could even have been a piece of direct evidence in her hands-a button, a clasp, a piece of fabric. If something could immediately point to an individual of interest, such as hair or
fiber or DNA evidence, the sooner they could begin looking for him the better.

  Little by little, Byrne pulled back the woman's dead fingers. When he finally had four fingers back on her right hand, they saw something they did not expect to see. In death this woman was not holding a fistful of earth or leaves or twigs. In death she held a small brown bird. In the light thrown by the emergency lamps it appeared to be a sparrow, or perhaps a wren.

  Byrne gently closed the victim's fingers. They would place a clear plastic evidence bag around them to preserve every trace of evidence. This was far beyond their ability to assess or analyze in situ.

  Then something totally unexpected happened. The bird wiggled out of the dead woman's grip and flew away. It darted around inside the huge, shadowed space of the waterworks, the beat of its flitting wings resonating off the icy stone walls, chirping either in protest or relief. Then it was gone.

  "Son of a bitch," Byrne yelled. "Fuck."

  This was not good news for the team. They should have immediately bagged the corpse's hands and waited. The bird might have provided a host of forensic details, but even in its departure it yielded some information. It meant that the body could not have been there that long. The fact that the bird was still alive-perhaps preserved by the warmth of the cadaver-meant that the killer had posed this victim within the last few hours.

  Jessica aimed her Maglite at the ground beneath the window. A few of the bird's feathers remained. Byrne pointed them out to a CSU officer, who picked them up with a pair of forceps and placed them in an evidence bag.

  They would now wait for the ME's office.

  Jessica walked to the bank of the river, looked out, then back at the body. The figure was perched in the window, high above the gentle slope that ran to the road, then more steeply to the soft bank of the river.

  Another doll on a shelf, Jessica thought.

  Like Kristina Jakos, this victim faced the river. Like Kristina Jakos, she had a painting of the moon nearby. There was little doubt that there would be another painting on her body, an image of the moon rendered in semen and blood.

  The media showed up just before midnight. They clustered at the top of the cutoff, near the train station, behind the crime-scene tape. It always amazed Jessica how fast they could get to a crime scene. The story would make the morning editions of the paper.

  43

  The crime scene was locked down, sealed off from the city. The media had gone off to file their stories. CSU would process the evidence through the night, and far into the next day.

  Jessica and Byrne stood near the river's edge. Neither could bring themselves to leave.

  "You gonna be okay?" Jessica asked.

  "Yeah." Byrne took a pint of bourbon out of his coat pocket. He toyed with the cap. Jessica saw it, said nothing. They were off duty.

  After a full minute of silence, Byrne glanced over. "What?"

  "You," she said. "You've got that look in your eye."

  "What look?"

  "The Andy Griffith look. The look that says you're thinking about turning in your papers and getting a sheriff 's job in Mayberry."

  "Meadville."

  "See?"

  "You cold?"

  Freezing my ass off, Jessica thought. "Nah."

  Byrne hit the bourbon, held it out. Jessica shook her head. He capped the bottle, held it.

  "Years ago we used to drive out to my uncle's place in Jersey," he said. "I always knew when we were getting close because we would come upon this old cemetery. And by old I mean Civil War old. Maybe older. There was this small stone house by the gate, probably the caretaker's house, and in the front window was this sign that read:

  'FREE FILL DIRT.'

  Ever see signs like that?"

  Jessica had. She told him so. Byrne continued.

  "When you're a kid, you never give stuff like that a second thought, you know? Year after year I saw that sign. It never moved, just faded in the sunlight. Every year, those blocky red letters got lighter and lighter. Then my uncle passed, my aunt moved back to the city, we stopped going out there.

  "Years later, after my mother died, I went to her grave one day. Perfect summer afternoon. Blue sky, cloudless. I'm sitting there, telling her how things are going. A few plots down there was a fresh gravesite, right? And it suddenly hit me. I suddenly knew why that cemetery had free fill dirt. Why all cemeteries have free fill dirt. I thought about all those people who took them up on that offer over the years, filling their gardens, their potted plants, their window boxes. The cemeteries make space in the earth for the dead, and people take that dirt and grow things in it."

  Jessica just looked at Byrne. The longer she knew the man, the more layers she saw. "That's, well, beautiful," she said, getting a little emotional, battling it. "I never would have thought of it that way."

  "Yeah, well," Byrne said. "We Irish are all poets, you know." He uncapped the pint, took a swallow, capped it again. "And drinkers."

  Jessica eased the bottle out of his hands. He didn't resist.

  "Get some sleep, Kevin."

  "I will. I just hate it when we're getting played and I can't put my finger on it."

  "Me, too," Jessica said. She fished her keys out of her pocket, snuck another peek at her watch, then immediately chided herself about it. "You know, you ought to go running with me sometime."

  "Running."

  "Yeah," she said. "That's like walking, but faster."

  "Ah, okay. It kind of rings a bell. I think I did it once when I was a kid."

  "I may have a boxing match set up for the end of March, so I better start doing roadwork. We could run together. It does wonders, believe me. Clears the mind completely."

  Byrne tried to suppress the laughter. "Jess. The only time I plan on running is when someone is chasing me. And I mean a big guy. With a knife."

  The wind picked up. Jessica shivered, turned up her collar. "I'm gonna go." There was a lot more she wanted to say, but there would be time. "You sure you're okay?"

  "Never better."

  Right, partner, she thought. She walked back to her car, slipped in, started it. As she pulled away she glanced at her rearview mirror, saw Byrne silhouetted against the lights on the other side of the river, now just another shadow in the night.

  She looked at her watch. It was 1:15 AM.

  It was Christmas Day.

  44

  Christmas morning broke clear and cold, bright with promise.

  Pastor Roland Hannah and Deacon Charles Waite offered service at 7:00 AM. Roland's sermon was one of hope, of renewal. He spoke of The Cross and The Cradle. He quoted Matthew 2:1-12. The baskets overflowed.

  Later, Roland and Charles sat at the table in the basement beneath the church, a pot of cooling coffee between them. In an hour they would begin to prepare a Christmas ham dinner for upwards of one hundred homeless people. It would be served at their new facility on Second Street.

  "Look at this," Charles said. He handed Roland the morning's Inquirer. There had been another murder. Nothing special in Philadelphia, but this one had resonance. Deep resonance. This one had an echo that reverberated over the years.

  A woman had been found in Shawmont. She had been discovered at the old waterworks near the train station, just on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill.

  Roland's pulse raced. Two bodies found on the banks of the Schuylkill River in one week. Then there was the story in the previous day's paper, an article reporting that Detective Walter Brigham had been murdered. Roland and Charles knew all about Walter Brigham.

  There was no denying the truth of it.

  Charlotte and her friend had been found on the bank of the Wis- sahickon. They had been posed, just like these two women. Maybe, after all these years, it was not about girls. Maybe it was about the water.

  Maybe this was a sign.

  Charles dropped to his knees and prayed. His big shoulders shook. In moments he was whispering in tongues. Charles was a glossolalic, a true believer who, when overtaken by the
spirit, would speak in what he believed to be God's idiom, an edification of one's self. To the casual observer, it might have sounded like so much gibberish. To the believer, to one moved to tongues, it was the language of Heaven.

  Roland glanced back at the newspaper, closed his eyes. Soon, a divine calm descended upon him, and a voice inside gave query to his thoughts.

  Is it him?

  Roland touched the crucifix around his neck.

  And knew the answer.

  PART THREE

  The River Darkness

  45

  "Why are we in here with the door closed, Sarge?" Park asked.

  Tony Park was one of the few Korean-American detectives on the force. A family man in his late forties, a wizard on the computer, a skilled interrogator in the room, there was not a more practical, streetwise detective on the force than Anthony Kim Park. This time, his question was on the mind of everyone in the room.

  The task force was four detectives strong. Kevin Byrne, Jessica Balzano, Joshua Bontrager, and Tony Park. Considering the enormous job of coordinating the forensic sections, collecting witness statements, conducting interviews, and all the other minutiae that made up a homicide investigation-a pair of related homicide investigations-the task force was meager. There simply was not enough manpower available.

  "The door's closed for two reasons," Ike Buchanan said, "and I think you know the first one."

  They all did. Task forces were played close to the vest these days, especially those given the challenge of hunting a compulsive killer. Mostly because a small group of men and women tasked with tracking down an individual had a way of drawing that individual to them, putting wives, children, friends, and family in jeopardy. It had happened to both Jessica and Byrne. It happened more than the general public knew.