Broken Angels jbakb-3

by Richard Montanari

  Vincent and Byrne entered the establishment at just after five o'clock.

  Inside, at the back of a large grimy lobby, a man stood near the counter, reading Hustler. He made no attempt to hide it or put it away in the face of potential customers. He was in his thirties, greasy blond hair, filthy garage overalls. His nametag read KYLE.

  "How ya doin'?" Vincent offered.

  Cool reception. Closer to cold. The man didn't say a word.

  "I'm good, too," Vincent said. "Thanks for asking." He held up his badge. "I was wondering if-"

  "Can't help you."

  Vincent froze, badge high. He glanced at Byrne, back to Kyle. He held this position for a few moments, then continued.

  "I was wondering if two other police officers might have stopped here earlier today. Two female detectives from Philadelphia."

  "Can't help you," the man repeated, going back to his magazine.

  Vincent took a series of short, quick breaths, like someone preparing to lift a great weight. He took a step forward, put his badge away, flipped back the hem of his coat. "You're saying that two police officers from Philadelphia did not stop here earlier in the day. Is that correct?"

  Kyle screwed up his face, as if he were slightly retarded. "I'm dowwy. Do you hab a heawing pwobwem?"

  Vincent flicked a glance at Byrne. He knew that Byrne wasn't too keen on jokes at the expense of the hearing impaired. Byrne kept his cool.

  "One last time, while we're still friends," Vincent said. "Did two female detectives from Philadelphia stop here today, looking for a farmhouse? Yes or no?"

  "Don't know nothin' about it, sport," Kyle said. "Have a nice night."

  Vincent laughed, which at the moment was actually scarier than his growl. He ran a hand through his hair, over his jaw. He looked around the lobby area. His eyes landed on something that caught his interest.

  "Kevin," he said.

  "What?"

  Vincent pointed to a nearby trash can. Byrne looked.

  There, on top of a pair a greasy Mopar boxes, sat a business card with the familiar badge logo-raised black type, white card stock. It belonged to Detective Jessica Balzano, Philadelphia Police Department, Homicide Division.

  Vincent spun on his heels. Kyle was still standing by the counter, watching. But his magazine was now on the floor. When Kyle realized they weren't leaving he made a move to reach beneath the counter.

  At that moment, Kevin Byrne saw something incredible.

  Vincent Balzano ran across the room, leapt over the counter, and grabbed the blond man by the throat, slamming him back into a display rack. Oil filters, air filters, and spark plugs flew.

  All of this seemed to take place in under a second. Vincent was a blur.

  In one smooth move, with his left hand wrapped tightly around Kyle's throat, Vincent drew his weapon and aimed it at a dirt-streaked curtain hanging in the doorway to what was probably a back room. The fabric looked as if it had at one time been a shower curtain, although Byrne doubted that Kyle was too familiar with that concept. The point was, someone was standing behind the curtain. Byrne had seen him too.

  "Step out here," Vincent yelled.

  Nothing. No movement. Vincent pointed his weapon at the ceiling. He fired a round. The blast was ear-shattering. He pointed the gun back at the curtain.

  "Now!"

  A few seconds later a man stepped out of the back room, hands out to his sides. He was Kyle's identical twin. His nametag read KEITH.

  "Detective?" Vincent asked.

  "I'm on him," Byrne replied. He looked at Keith, which was enough. The man was petrified. There was no need for Byrne to draw his weapon. Yet.

  Vincent turned his attention fully to Kyle. "Now, you've got about two fuckin' seconds to start talking, Jethro." He put his weapon to Kyle's forehead. "No. Make that one second."

  "I don't know what you're-"

  "Look into my eyes and tell me I'm not crazy." Vincent tightened his grip on Kyle's throat. The man was turning olive green. "Go ahead."

  All things considered, choking a man while expecting him to talk was probably not the best interrogation technique. But right about now Vincent Balzano was not considering all things. Just one.

  Vincent shifted his weight and brought Kyle down to the concrete, slamming the air from his lungs. He put a knee into the man's groin.

  "I see your lips moving, but I'm not hearing anything." Vincent eased off on the man's throat. Slightly. "Talk. Now."

  "They… they were here," Kyle said.

  "When?"

  "About noon."

  "Where did they go?"

  "I… I don't know."

  Vincent pressed the barrel of his weapon into Kyle's left eye.

  "Wait! I really don't know I don't know I don't know!"

  Vincent took a deep calming breath. It didn't seem to help. "When they left, which way did they go?"

  "South," Kyle managed.

  "What's down there?"

  "Doug's. Maybe they went there."

  "What the fuck is Doug's?"

  "Duh-diner."

  Vincent withdrew his weapon. "Thuh-thanks, Kyle."

  Five minutes later the two detectives drove south. But not before they had searched every square inch of Double K Auto. There were no other signs that Jessica and Nicci had spent time there.

  82

  Roland could wait no longer. He pulled on his gloves, his knit cap. He did not look forward to walking blindly through the woods in a snowstorm, but he had no choice. He glanced at the fuel gauge. The van had been running, heater on, since they had stopped. They were down to less than one-eighth of a tank.

  "Wait here," Roland said. "I'm going to look for Sean. I won't be long."

  Charles studied him with deep fear in his eyes. Roland had seen it many times before. He took his hand.

  "I will be back," he said. "I promise."

  Roland stepped out of the van, shut the door. A sheet of snow slid from the top of the vehicle, dusting his shoulders. He brushed himself off, glanced through the window, waved to Charles. Charles waved back.

  Roland made his way down the lane.

  The trees seemed to close ranks. Roland had been walking for nearly five minutes. He did not find the bridge Sean had spoken of, or much else. He turned around a few times, adrift in the miasma of snow. He'd lost his bearings.

  "Sean?" he said.

  Silence. Just the empty white forest.

  "Sean!"

  There was no reply. The sound was muffled by the falling snow, deadened by the trees, swallowed by the dusk. Roland decided to head back. He was not dressed properly for this, and this was not his world. He would return to the van, and wait there for Sean. He glanced down. The blowing snow had all but obscured his own footprints. He turned, walked as quickly as he could in the direction from which he had come. Or so he believed.

  As he trudged back, the wind suddenly picked up. Roland turned his back to the gust, covered his face with his scarf, waited out the blast. When it ebbed, he looked up and saw through a narrow clearing in the trees. There was a stone farmhouse, and in the distance, perhaps a quarter mile beyond, a large trellis and what looked like a tableau of amusement-park displays.

  My eyes must be playing tricks, he thought.

  Roland turned toward the house and suddenly sensed noise and movement to his left-a snapping sound, soft, unlike branches underfoot, more like fabric rippling in the wind. Roland wheeled around. He saw nothing. Then he heard another sound, this time closer. He shone his light through the trees and caught a dark silhouette shifting side to side in the illumination, something partially obscured by the pines twenty yards ahead. In the falling snow it was impossible to tell what it was.

  Was it an animal? A sign of some sort?

  A person?

  As Roland slowly approached, the object came into focus. It was not a person, or a sign. It was Sean's coat. Sean's coat was hanging from a tree, powdered with fresh snow. His scarf and gloves lay at the base.

&nbs
p; Sean was nowhere to be seen.

  "Oh my," Roland said. "Oh Lord, no."

  Roland hesitated for a few moments, then picked up Sean's coat, shook off the snow. At first he thought the coat had been hanging from a broken branch. It had not. Roland looked more closely. The coat was hanging from a small pocketknife stabbed into the bark of the tree. Beneath the coat, there was something carved-something round, about six inches in diameter. Roland trained his flashlight on the carving.

  It was the face of the moon. It was freshly cut.

  Roland began to shiver. And it had nothing to do with the frigid weather.

  "It is so delightfully cold," a voice whispered, riding on the wind.

  A shadow moved in the near dark, then it was gone, dissolved into the insistent flurry. "Who's there?" Roland asked.

  "I am Moon," came the whisper, now behind him.

  "Who?" Roland's voice sounded thin and scared. It shamed him.

  "And you are the Snow Man."

  Roland heard the rush of footsteps. It was too late. He began to pray.

  In a blizzard of white, Roland Hannah's world went black.

  83

  Jessica hugged the wall, her weapon held out in front of her. She was in a short hallway between the kitchen and living room of the farmhouse. Adrenaline raced through her system.

  She had cleared the kitchen in short order. The room had a single wooden table, two chairs. Stained floral wallpaper over white chair rails. The cabinets were empty. There was an old cast-iron stove, probably idle for years. A thick layer of dust covered everything. It was like being in a museum that time had forgotten.

  As she moved down the hall toward the front room, Jessica listened for any indication of another human presence. All she heard was the thud of her own pulse in her ears. She wished she had worn a Kevlar vest, wished she had backup. She had neither. Someone had deliberately trapped her in the basement. She had to assume that Nicci was hurt, or being held against her will.

  Jessica sidled up to the corner, silently counted to three, then peered into the front room.

  The ceiling was more than ten feet, and there was a large stone fireplace against the far wall. The floors were old plank. The walls, long given over to mold, had at one time been painted with a calcimine wash. There was a single medallion-back sofa in the center of the room, a sun- bleached green velvet, Victorian in style. Next to it sat a round tabouret table. On it was a leather book. This room was not dusty. This room was still being used.

  Drawing closer, she saw a slight depression at the right side of the sofa, the end near the table. Whoever came here sat at that end, perhaps reading the book. Jessica glanced up. There were no ceiling fixtures, either electrical or candled.

  Jessica scanned the corners of the space; sweat lacing her back despite the cold. She made her way over to the fireplace, put a hand to the stone. Cold. But in the grate were remnants of a partially burned newspaper. She fished out a corner, looked at it. It was dated three days earlier. Someone had been here recently.

  Off the living room was a small bedroom. She peeked inside. There was a double-bed frame with a mattress, sheets and blanket pulled taut. A small table for a nightstand; on it was an antique man's comb and a delicate woman's hairbrush. She looked beneath the bed, then edged over to the closet, took a deep breath, and threw open the door.

  Inside were two items. A man's dark suit, and a long cream-colored dress, both looking to be from another time. They hung on red velvet hangers.

  Jessica holstered her weapon, stepped back into the living room, tried the front door. Locked. She could see scrapings along the keyhole, bright metal amid the rusted iron. A key was needed. She could also see why she had been unable to see through the windows from the outside. They were covered with old butcher paper. A closer look showed her that the windows were secured with dozens of rusted screws. They had not been opened in years.

  Jessica crossed the plank floor to the couch, her footsteps creaking in the wide-open space. She picked up the book on the end table. Her breath caught.

  The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen.

  Time slowed, stopped.

  It was all related. All of it.

  Annemarie and Charlotte. Walt Brigham. The river killings-Lisette Simon, Kristina Jakos, Tara Grendel. There was one person responsible for it all, and she was in his house.

  Jessica opened the book. Each story had an illustration, and each illustration was rendered in the same style as the painting found on the victims' bodies, the moon paintings of semen and blood.

  Throughout the book were news articles, bookmarking various stories. One of the articles was dated a year earlier, the story of two men found dead in a barn in Mohrsville, Pennsylvania. The police said they had been drowned, then tied into burlap bags. The illustration was of a man holding a large boy and a small boy in his outstretched hands.

  The next article was from eight months ago, the account of an elderly woman who had been strangled and found stuffed into an oak barrel on her property in Shoemakersville. The illustration was of a kindly woman holding cakes and pies and cookies. The words Aunt Millie were scrawled across the illustration in an innocent hand.

  The next pages were articles about missing people-men, women, children-each accompanied by a delicate drawing, each depicting the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. "Little Claus and Big Claus." "Auntie Toothache." "The Flying Trunk." "The Snow Queen."

  At the back of the book was a Daily News article about the murder of Detective Walter Brigham. Next to it was an illustration of a tin soldier.

  Jessica felt the nausea rise. She held a death book, an anthology of murder.

  Also inserted in the book's pages was a faded color brochure that showed a pair of happy-looking children in a small, brightly colored boat. The pamphlet looked to be from the 1940s. In front of the children was a large display set into a hillside. It was a twenty-foot tall book. In the center of the display was a young woman dressed as the Little Mermaid. At the top of the page, in cheerful red letters, it read:

  Welcome to StoryBook River: A World of Enchantment!

  At the very end of the book, Jessica found a short news article. It was dated fourteen years earlier. Odense, Pennsylvania (AP)-After nearly six decades, a small theme park in southeast Pennsylvania will close for good when its summer season ends. The family that owns StoryBook River says it does not plan to redevelop the property. Proprietor Elise Damgaard says her husband Frederik, who immigrated to the United States from Denmark as a young man, opened StoryBook River as a park for children. The park itself was patterned after the Danish city of Odense, birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, whose stories and fables were the basis for many of the attractions.

  Beneath the article was the clipped headline from an obituary:

  ELISE M. DAMGAARD, RAN AMUSEMENT PARK.

  Jessica looked around for something with which she could break the windows. She picked up the end table. It had a marble top, some heft. Before she could cross the room she heard paper rustling. No. Something softer. She felt a breeze, making the cold air even colder for a second. Then she saw it: the small brown bird landed on the couch next to her. She had no doubt in her mind. It was a nightingale.

  "You are my Ice Maiden."

  It was a man's voice, a voice she knew, but could not immediately place. Before Jessica could turn and draw her weapon, the man yanked the table from her grasp. He swung it at her head, slamming it into her temple with a force that brought with it a universe of stars.

  The next thing Jessica knew she was on the living room's wet, cold floor. She felt icy water against her face. It was melting snow. A man's hiking boots stood inches from her face. She rolled onto her side, the light fading. Her attacker grabbed her by the feet and pulled her across the floor.

  Seconds later, before she fell unconscious, the man began to sing.

  "Here are maidens, young and fair…"

  84

  The snow was unremitting. At times Byrne and Vincent h
ad to pull over to let a squall pass. What lights they saw-the occasional house, the occasional commercial enterprise-seemed to come and go in the fog of white.

  Vincent's Cutlass was built for the open road, not the snow-covered country lane. At times they drove five miles an hour, wipers on high, headlights illuminating no more than ten feet ahead of them.

  They passed through small town after small town. At six o'clock they realized it might be hopeless. Vincent angled to the side of the road, pulled out his cell phone. He tried Jessica again. He got her voice mail.

  He glanced at Byrne, Byrne at him.

  "What do we do?" Vincent asked.

  Byrne pointed out the driver's side window. Vincent turned, looked.

  The sign seemed to appear out of nowhere.

  DOUG'S DEN.

  There were only two couples in the restaurant, along with a pair of middle-aged waitresses. The interior was standard home-style small-town decor-red and white checked tablecloths, vinyl-covered chairs, a ceiling spiderwebbed with white Christmas minilights. A fire burned in a stone fireplace. Vincent showed his ID to one of the waitresses.

  "We're looking for two women," Vincent said. "Police officers. They may have stopped here today."

  The waitress looked at the two detectives with well-worn country skepticism.

  "Can I see that ID again?"

  Vincent took a deep breath, handed the wallet to her. She scrutinized it for what seemed like thirty seconds, handed it back.

  "Yes. They were here," she said.

  Byrne noticed that Vincent had that look. The impatient look. The Double K Auto look. Byrne hoped Vincent wasn't about to start body- slamming sixty-year-old waitresses.

  "About what time?" Byrne asked.

  "Maybe one o'clock or so. They spoke to the owner. Mr. Prentiss."

  "Is Mr. Prentiss here now?"

  "No," the waitress said. "I'm afraid he stepped out for a bit."

  Vincent checked his watch. "Do you know where these two women went from here?" he asked.