Broken Angels jbakb-3

by Richard Montanari

  "That was one shooter. This is two."

  "I… I don't care. I'll shoot you first."

  "You'll never get the shot off. If I move, it's over. One single millimeter. It's over."

  Byrne watched Clarke in the rearview. He was about to unhinge any second.

  "You've got children, Mr. Clarke," Byrne said. "Think of them. You don't want to leave them this legacy."

  Clarke shook his head, rapidly, side to side. "They're not going to let me go today, are they?"

  "No," Byrne said. "But from the moment you lower the gun, your life will begin to get better. You're not like Anton Krotz, Matt. You're not like him."

  Clarke's shoulders began to shake. "Laura."

  Byrne let it play for a few moments. "Matt?"

  Clarke looked up, his face streaked with tears. Byrne had never seen a man so close to the edge.

  "They're not going to wait much longer," Byrne said. "Help me help you."

  Then, in Clarke's reddened eyes, Byrne saw it. The crack in the man's resolve. Clarke lowered his weapon. Instantly a shadow crossed the left side of the car, obscured by the pall of freezing rain that streaked the windows. Byrne glanced over. It was Nick Palladino. He had a shotgun leveled at Matthew Clarke's head.

  "Put the weapon on the floor, and your hands above your head!" Nick shouted. "Do it now!"

  Clarke didn't move. Nick racked the shotgun.

  "Now!"

  After an agonizingly long second, Matthew Clarke complied. In the next second the door was thrown open and Clarke was pulled from the car, thrown roughly to the street, instantly surrounded by police officers.

  A few moments later, as Matthew Clarke lay face down in the middle of Eighteenth Street in the winter rain, his arms out to his sides, a SWAT officer aimed his rifle at the man's head. A uniformed officer approached, put a knee to Clarke's back, roughly pulled his wrists together and handcuffed him.

  Byrne thought about the overwhelming power of grief, the unyielding grip of madness that must have led Matthew Clarke to this moment.

  The officers yanked Clarke to his feet. Before they stuffed him into the back of a nearby sector car, he looked at Byrne.

  Whoever Clarke had been a few weeks earlier, the person who had presented himself to the world in the guise of Matthew Clarke- husband, father, citizen-no longer existed. When Byrne stared into the man's eyes, he did not detect even a flicker of life. Instead, he saw a man disintegrated, and where a soul should have been there now burned the cold blue flame of madness.

  53

  Jessica found Byrne in the back room at the diner, a towel around his neck, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. The rain had turned everything to ice, and the whole city was moving at a crawl. She had been back at the Roundhouse going through mug books with Roland Hannah when the officer-needs-assistance call had come in. All but a handful of detectives had rushed out the door. Whenever a cop was in distress the entire available force headed in their direction. When Jessica pulled up to the diner there had to have been ten sector cars on Eighteenth Street.

  Jessica crossed the diner, Byrne stood. They embraced. It wasn't something you were supposed to do, but she couldn't care less. When the call went out, she was convinced she would never see him again. If that ever happened, a piece of her would most certainly have died with him.

  They broke the embrace, looked around the diner a little awkwardly. They sat down.

  "You okay?" Jessica asked.

  Byrne nodded. Jessica wasn't so sure.

  "Where did this start?" she asked.

  "Up in Shawmont. At the waterworks."

  "He followed you up there?"

  Byrne nodded. "He must have."

  Jessica thought about it. At any given time, any detective on the force might be the subject of a stalker-current investigations, old investigations, crazy people you put away years ago getting out of prison. She thought about Walt Brigham's body on the side of the road. Anything could happen at any time.

  "He was going to do it right where his wife was killed," Byrne said. "Me first, then himself."

  "Jesus."

  "Yeah, well. There's more."

  Jessica couldn't imagine what he meant. "What do you mean, more?"

  Byrne sipped his coffee. "I saw him."

  "You saw him? You saw who?"

  "Our doer."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  "At the Shawmont site. He was across the river, just watching me."

  "How do you know it was him?"

  Byrne stared into his coffee for a moment. "The way you know anything in this job. It was him."

  "Did you get a good look at him?"

  Byrne shook his head. "No. He was on the other side of the river. In the rain."

  "What did he do?"

  "He didn't do anything. I think he wanted to come back to the scene, and figured the other side of the river would be safe."

  Jessica considered this. It was common enough, coming back like that.

  "That's why I called Nick to begin with," Byrne said. "If I hadn't…"

  Jessica knew what he meant. If he hadn't called it in he might be laying on the floor in the Crystal Diner, ringed by a pool of blood.

  "Did we hear from the bird breeders in Delaware yet?" Byrne asked, clearly attempting to shift the focus.

  "Nothing yet," Jessica said. "I was thinking we should look into subscription lists to bird breeding magazines. There can't be that many subscribers in-"

  "Tony's already on it," Byrne said.

  Jessica should have known. Even in the middle of all this Byrne was thinking. He sipped his coffee, turned to her, half smiled. "And how was your day?" he asked.

  Jessica smiled back. She hoped it looked genuine. "Far less adventurous, thank God." She related the morning and afternoon at the thrift stores, about meeting Roland Hannah. "I've got him looking at mugs right now. He operates a church thrift store. He might have sold our boy the dresses."

  Byrne drained his coffee, stood. "I've got to get out of here," he said. "I mean, I like this place, but not this much."

  "The boss wants you to go home."

  "I'm fine," Byrne said.

  "You sure?"

  Byrne didn't answer. A few moments later a uniformed officer crossed the diner, handed Byrne his weapon. Byrne could tell from its heft that the magazine had been replaced. When Nick Palladino had listened to Byrne and Matthew Clarke on Byrne's open cell-phone line, he had dispatched a sector car to the Shawmont site to retrieve the weapon. Philly didn't need another gun on the street.

  "Where's our Amish detective?" Byrne asked Jessica.

  "Josh is working the bookstores, seeing if anybody remembers selling books on bird breeding, exotic birds and the like."

  "He's all right," Byrne said.

  Jessica didn't know what to say. Coming from Kevin Byrne, this was high praise.

  "What are you going to do now?" Jessica asked.

  "Well, I am going to go home, but just to take a hot shower and change clothes. Then I'm going to hit the streets. Maybe somebody else saw this guy standing on the other side of the river. Or saw his car pull over."

  "Want some help?" she asked.

  "No, I'm good. You stick with the rope and the bird breeders. I'll call you in an hour."

  54

  Byrne took Hollow Road down to the river. He passed beneath the expressway, parked the car, got out. The hot shower had done him some good, but unless the man for whom they were looking was still standing there, on the bank of the river, hands behind his back, waiting to be cuffed, this was going to be a shitty day. But then every day you had a gun pointed at you was a shitty day.

  The rain had let up, but the ice remained. It all but covered the city. Byrne made his way carefully down the slope to the edge of the river. He stood between two barren trees, directly across from the pump house, the hum of the cars on the expressway behind him. He looked at the pump house. Even from this distance, the structure was imposing.

 
He stood in the exact spot where the man who had been watching him had stood. He thanked God that the man in question was not a sniper. Byrne imagined someone with a scope rifle standing there, leaning on the tree for balance. He could have picked Byrne off with ease.

  He looked at the ground in the immediate area. No cigarette butts, no convenient glossy candy wrappers to dust for prints.

  Byrne crouched down on the riverbank. The flowing water was just inches away. He leaned forward, touched a finger to the freezing current and-

  — saw a man carrying Tara Grendel up to the pump house… a featureless man staring at the moon… a length of blue and white rope in his hands… heard the sound of a small boat slapping against stone… saw two flowers, one white, one red, and-

  — pulled his hand back, as if the water had been on fire. The images were getting stronger, clearer, more unnerving.

  In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes.

  Something was coming.

  Two flowers.

  A few seconds later his cell phone rang. Byrne stood, flipped open the phone, answered. It was Jessica.

  "There's another victim," she said.

  Byrne glanced down, at the dark intractable water of the Schuylkill. He knew, but asked anyway. "On the river?"

  "Yeah, partner," she said. "On the river."

  55

  They met on the bank of the Schuylkill River, near the oil refineries in the Southwest. The crime scene was partially hidden from both the river and the nearby bridge. The acrid smell of effluent from the refineries filled the air, their lungs.

  The primary detectives on the case were Ted Campos and Bobby Lauria. These two had been partners forever. The old cliche about finishing each other's sentences was true, but it went beyond that with Ted and Bobby. One time they had even gone shopping separately and bought the same tie. Once they found out, of course, they never wore the ties. They weren't too crazy about the story being told, for that matter. It was all a little too Brokeback Mountain for the likes of a pair of old- school tough guys like Bobby Lauria and Ted Campos.

  Byrne, Jessica, and Josh Bontrager pulled up to find a pair of sector cars, about fifty yards apart, sealing the road. The scene was far south of the first two victims, nearly at the confluence point where the Schuylkill met the Delaware, in the shadow of the Platt Bridge.

  Ted Campos met the three detectives at the side of the road. Byrne introduced him to Josh Bontrager. A CSU van was on scene, as well as Tom Weyrich from the ME's office.

  "What do we have, Ted?" Byrne asked.

  "We have a female DOA," Campos said.

  "Strangled?" Jessica asked.

  "Looks like it." He pointed toward the river.

  The body was lying on the riverbank, near the base of a dying maple tree. When Jessica saw the body, her heart sank. It was something she had feared might happen, and now it had. "Oh no."

  The corpse was that of a child. No more than thirteen or so years old. Her slight shoulders were twisted at an unnatural angle, her torso was covered with leaves and trash. She too wore a long vintage dress. Around her neck was what looked to be an identical nylon belt.

  Tom Weyrich stood next to the body, dictating notes.

  "Who found her?" Byrne asked.

  "Security guard," Campos said. "Came down for a smoke. Guy's a fucking wreck."

  "When?"

  "About an hour ago. But Tom thinks this woman has been out here a while."

  The word shocked everyone. "Woman?" Jessica asked.

  Campos nodded. "I thought the same thing," he said. "And she's been dead for some time. There's a good deal of decay."

  Tom Weyrich approached them. He pulled off his latex gloves, slipped on his leather ones.

  "That's not a child?" Jessica asked. She was stunned. The victim could not have been much taller than four feet.

  "No," Weyrich said. "She's small, but mature. She was probably about forty."

  "So, how long do you think she's been out here?" Byrne asked.

  "I'm guessing a week or so. No way to tell here."

  "This happened before the Shawmont killing?"

  "Oh, yeah," Weyrich said.

  Two officers from the crime-scene unit emerged from the van and began to make their way to the riverbank. Josh Bontrager followed.

  Jessica and Byrne watched the team set up a crime scene and perimeter. Until further notice this was not their case, nor was it even officially related to the two murders they were investigating.

  "Detectives," Josh Bontrager called out to them.

  Campos, Lauria, Jessica, and Byrne all made their way down to the riverbank. Bontrager was standing in an area about fifteen feet from the body, just slightly upriver.

  "Look." Bontrager pointed to an area behind the scrub of low bushes. In the ground was an item so incongruous in this setting that Jessica had to get right up to it to make sure that what she thought she was looking at was indeed what she was looking at. It was a lily. A red plastic lily stuck into the snow. On the tree next to it, about three feet from the ground, was a painted white moon.

  Jessica took a pair of photographs. She then stood back and let the CSU photographer document the whole scene. Sometimes the context of an item at a crime scene was as important as the item itself. The where of something sometimes superseded the what.

  Л lily.

  Jessica glanced at Byrne. He seemed to be riveted by the red flower. She then looked at the body. The woman was so petite that it was easy to see how she could have been mistaken for a child. Jessica could see that the victim's dress was too large, and had been unevenly hemmed. The woman's arms and legs were intact. No amputations visible. Her hands were open. She held no bird.

  "Does this sync with your boy?" Campos asked.

  "Yeah," Byrne said.

  "Same MO with the belt?"

  Byrne nodded.

  "Want the case?" Campos half smiled, but was also half serious.

  Byrne didn't answer. It wasn't up to him. There was a good chance that these cases were going to be grouped into a much larger task force soon, one that involved the FBI and other federal agencies. There was a compulsive killer on a rampage, and this woman may have been his first victim. For some reason this freak was obsessed with vintage costumes and the Schuylkill, and they hadn't the slightest clue who he was, or where he was going to strike next. Or if he already had. There could be ten bodies between where they were standing and the Manayunk crime scene.

  "This guy is not going to stop until he makes his point, is he?" Byrne asked.

  "Doesn't look like it," Campos said.

  "The river is a hundred fucking miles long."

  "One hundred twenty-eight fucking miles long," Campos replied. "Give or take."

  One hundred twenty-eight miles, Jessica thought. Much of it shielded from roads and expressways, bounded by trees and shrubs, a river that snaked through maybe a half dozen counties into the heart of southeast Pennsylvania.

  One hundred twenty-eight miles of killing ground.

  56

  It was her third cigarette of the day. Her third. Three wasn't bad. Three was like not smoking at all, right? Back when she was using she'd been up to two packs. Three was like she had already quit. Or whatever.

  Who was she kidding? She knew she wasn't going to quit for real until her life was in order. Sometime around her seventieth birthday.

  Sa'mantha Fanning opened the back door, peeked into the store. Empty. She listened. Baby Jamie was quiet. She closed the door, pulled her coat tightly around her. Man, it was cold. She hated having to come outside to smoke, but at least she wasn't one of those gargoyles you saw on Broad Street, standing in front of their buildings, hunched against the wall, sucking away on a butt. That was the reason she never smoked in front of the store, even though it was a lot easier to keep an eye on things from there. She refused to look like some criminal. Still, it was colder than a pocketful of penguin shit out here.

&n
bsp; She thought about her plans for New Year's Eve, or rather her non- plans. It would just be her and Jamie, maybe a bottle of wine. Such was the life of a single mother. A single broke mother. A single barely employed broke mother whose ex-boyfriend and father of her child was a lazy-ass pipehead who had yet to give her one friggin' dime in child support. She was nineteen and her life story was already written.

  She opened the door again, just to give a listen, and almost jumped out of her skin. A man stood right in the doorway. He had been alone in the store, all by himself. He could have stolen anything. She was definitely going to get fired, family or no.

  "Man," she said. "You scared the crap outta me."

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  He was well dressed, had a nice face. He was not her typical customer.

  "My name is Detective Byrne," he said. "I'm with the Philadelphia Police Department. The homicide division."

  "Oh, okay," she said.

  "I was wondering if you might have a few minutes to talk."

  "Sure. No problem," she said. "But I did already speak with a…"

  "Detective Balzano?"

  "Right. Detective Balzano. She had on this great leather coat."

  "That's her." He gestured to the inside of the store. "Would you like to go inside where it's a little warmer?"

  She held up her cigarette. "I can't smoke in there. Ironic, huh?"

  "I'm not sure what you mean."

  "I mean half the stuff in there already smells pretty funky," she said. "Is it okay if we talk out here?"

  "Sure," the man replied. He stepped through the doorway, closed the door. "I just have a few more questions. I promise not to keep you too long."

  She almost laughed. Keep me from what? "I've got nowhere to be," she said. "Fire away."

  "Actually, I have only one question."

  "Okay."

  "I was wondering about your son."

  The word caught her off guard. What did Jamie have to do with anything? "My son?"

  "Yes. I was wondering why you are going to put him out. Is it because he isn't pretty?"