Play dead jbakb-4

by Richard Montanari

  The Great Cygne is gone.

  Joseph Swann removes his false beard and eyebrows, his cutaway coat, and makes his way to the stairs, through the flaming inferno of the basement.

  ONE HUNDRED FOUR

  5:58 AM

  Fire encircled the first floor of the house, and Jessica was trapped on the third floor. All the secret doors that had stood open were now closed, and she could not find the seams. There was no way out. As her handset crackled with static, a blast rocked the walls. The floor, the ceilings, rained plaster onto her head, and the concussive air sucked her breath from her lungs for a moment. The ornate clock on the wall behind her crashed to the floor, shattering its glass. The chandelier in the center of the room ripped from its plaster medallion.

  She tore at the velvet drapes of one window, then the other. Both were barred.

  She had to calm herself, to concentrate.

  "There are things you should know about this house."

  Jessica looked at the yellowed schematic. Half of it had been ripped away. It took her a few moments to orient the diagram. There were lines and notations all across the surface. She soon realized she had the southern and eastern sections of the house. Was she in the eastern section? She had no idea.

  Smoke drifted under the door. Jessica heard glass shattering elsewhere in the house, popping like small arms' fire.

  Her eyes danced over the yellowed page.

  Where was she?

  She found her location. Eastern wall. It showed three windows, but she only saw two, both of them barred. An arrow pointed to something on the wall, equidistant between the two windows. Jessica looked up. The only thing on the wall was a large wrought-iron sconce. She pulled on it. Nothing. She pushed. Nothing. She felt the heat in the very walls. The room was already thick with smoke up to her knees.

  She twisted the sconce left, right, left, right, nearly tearing it from the wall. She was just about to give up when a panel slid down in front of her. Behind it was a round window. No bars.

  Jessica looked around in the dense smoke. She found a heavy footstool. She lifted it and heaved it through the glass. Cool night air came rushing in. She was nearly knocked to the floor by the backdraft. Behind her, the door to the room slammed open and fire raged inside, devouring the brocade fabrics, the old dry furniture.

  Jessica looked out the window. She could not see the ground. She recalled the sharp iron spikes along the railing. The flames raged ever closer. She could see part of the way down the hall, to the stairs leading up to the attic. The heat was so intense she felt as if her skin was about to peel from her face.

  A figure emerged, clawing its way slowly up stairs. It was almost unrecognizable as human.

  The figure paused for a moment, stared into the room. For a brief moment, through the flames, Jessica saw the man's eyes. And it was in this instant they knew each other. Hunter and hunted.

  Jessica turned back to the window, to the smoke-thickened night air. Lungs fit to burst, she could wait no longer. As she climbed onto the sill she realized what she had seen in the charred and blistered apparition outside the door.

  His eyes were silver.

  She jumped.

  ONE HUNDRED FIVE

  6:00 AM

  He turns to climb the final flight of stairs, just as a pair of oil paintings melt and slide from the walls. On the landing, a burlwood collector's cabinet catches fire, its glass front cracking, its contents-a rare nineteenth century edition of The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin- vaporizing in a burst ofsearing ash, coating his face and arms.

  He glances down the main corridor as doors are flung open. Through the dense smoke he sees each room. He recalls the lovely faces of Monica Renzi and Caitlin O'Riordan, of Katja Dovic and Elise Beausoleil, Patricia Sato and Claire Finneran.

  He sees Lilly. His Odette.

  As he drags himselfup the staircase to the attic, the flesh from his hands is left behind on the white-hot iron railings.

  At the top he finds Molly Proffitt, her delicate watery eyes now open in the Sea Horse tank, the gash in her head rent to expose her brain. Molly holds the door for him, the door leading to the attic and its massive roof beam.

  Moments later Joseph Swann stands on a chair, the rope hanging loosely around his shoulders. He is framed by the large circular window that overlooks the front yard. At his feet, the old reel of film, The Magic Bricks, bubbles and melts.

  He tightens the noose around his neck, the hemp rope pulling off the remaining flesh ofhis palms.

  It is in this position that the flames find him, drawing him into their fiery embrace, into Hell, into the diseased heart ofFaerwood.

  ONE HUNDRED SIX

  6:10 AM

  It was a familiar voice, but one she couldn't quite place. WAs IT her father? Her brother Michael? It seemed to be filtered through a thick wad of wet cotton, like someone trying to shout through a mattress. For the moment she was underwater at Wildwood, her father yelling at her from the beach to watch out for the undertow.

  But it couldn't be the beach. Something was burning. She had to "Jessica. You okay?"

  Jessica slowly opened her eyes. It was Kevin Byrne. The world came swirling back. She nodded, even though she did not know the answer to this question.

  "Can you talk?" he asked.

  Another stumper. Jessica nodded.

  "Who's inside the house?" Byrne asked.

  Between gulps of oxygen. "An old man," she said. "A girl."

  "What about our guy? What about the Collector?"

  Jessica shrugged. Bright bolts of pain shot through her shoulders, her collarbone. She recalled falling from the window, falling. She didn't remember hitting the ground. "I don't know. I think they're all dead." She looked down the length of her body. "Broken?"

  Byrne glanced at the paramedic, back. "They don't know. They don't think so. Your fall was broken by the hedges behind the house." Byrne patted her hand.

  Jessica heard the sirens approaching. Moments later she saw the first ladder company arrive. She breathed more easily. Taking off the mask-over the objections of the paramedic-she slowly sat up. Byrne and Josh Bontrager helped.

  "Tell me about Logan Circle," she said.

  Byrne shook his head. "You don't want to know."

  Jessica tried to smile. It hurt her face. "It's kinda my job."

  Jessica got unsteadily to her feet. Even from across the road, the heat was intense. Faerwood was an inferno, flames shooting fifty feet or more into the sky. Somehow, Josh Bontrager found a cold bottle of spring water. Jessica drank half of it, poured the other half over the back of her neck.

  Before she could make her way to the EMS van, she caught a shadow to her left; someone walking up the middle of the smoke-hazed street. Jessica was too shaken, too exhausted to react. It was a good thing she was surrounded by what seemed like the entire police department.

  As the figure got closer Jessica saw it was Graciella. Her gown was covered with soot and ash, as was her face, but she was fine.

  Kevin Byrne turned and saw the girl. Jessica watched the reaction on his face. It was the same reaction she'd had when she saw the girl in the hallway mirror. Graciella looked exactly like her mother, exactly like a young Eve Galvez. Byrne was speechless.

  Graciella walked right up to Byrne. "You must be Kevin. My mom mentioned you." She stuck out her hand. It was bleeding.

  Byrne gently took her hand in his. Sticking out of the young woman's palm were small shards of glass. The smell of a strong chemical filled the air.

  "My name is Graciella," the girl added. At that moment the girl's legs gave out. Byrne caught her before she hit the ground. She looked up at him in a daze. "I think I need to lay down."

  ONE HUNDRED SEVEN

  Labor day weekend was a festive holiday in Philadelphia, in cluding the annual parade along Columbus Boulevard and the Arden Fair just across the Delaware River.

  For Detectives Balzano and Byrne there was little festive about it. They stood in the duty room, a
ll but deluged by the paperwork related to the Collector case. They would piece together a preliminary report by the end of the long weekend.

  When Eve Galvez learned of the Caitlin O'Riordan case, she became obsessed. She closely followed the investigation, and when she felt that detectives Pistone and Roarke were not doing their job, Eve decided to do it for them. She photocopied their files, going so far as to take the interview notes from the binder, the notes that mentioned Mr. Ludo.

  Night after night, for two months, Eve went out on the street, talking to kids, looking for any trace of Mr. Ludo. She tracked Joseph Swann in city parks, bus stations, train stations, to runaway and homeless shelters. She finally caught up to him one night in June. As strong and resourceful as she was, he proved too much for her. He overpowered her and buried her in a shallow grave in Fairmount Park. Her exact cause of death was still undetermined.

  On the night she was killed, Eve had called her daughter and told her everything. They had never spoken before. Every birthday and Christmas, Eve had sent her something.

  That night Eve took a picture of herself in front of Faerwood with her camera phone, and sent it to her daughter. She had told Graciella of Mr. Ludo, and her quest for the truth about Caitlin O'Riordan, right before she disappeared.

  Two months later, when Eve's body was discovered in a shallow grave in Fairmount Park, Graciella took what little money she had and came to Philadelphia.

  Graciella had been adopted when she was eight weeks old, by a couple named Ellis and Catherine Monroe. Graciella had gone by the name Grace Monroe all her life, until the night she talked to her mother.

  When Graciella was nine, her adoptive father had left, and her mother Catherine had sleepwalked through life after that. The woman had never been that close to her adopted daughter, leaving her to live in a world of her own. It wasn't until three days after Graciella had run away to Philadelphia that the woman reported her missing.

  Joseph Swann could never have known that he had always been on a collision course with Graciella Galvez.

  According to letters and journals found in Laura Somerville's strongbox, Laura had met Karl Swann, the Great Cygne, when she was only twenty-three. They had met in Baton Rouge and Laura agreed to become his assistant. They toured the southern United States in the sixties and seventies, and for years she had been Odette-playing nurse and mother to young Joseph, playing the occasional lover to Karl Swann, but more important, playing accomplice to young Joseph's murderous past. According to her diary, there were six young people found dead around the Great Cygne's traveling show over the years. Laura's journal detailed where they were buried. The District Attorney's office passed along this information to the state police departments in Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico.

  At least ten pages of Laura Somerville's diary were a confession. When Jessica and Byrne showed up at her apartment, she apparently believed her past had caught up to her. It was she who had made the calls about Shiloh Street after all, having shadowed Joseph Swann for months, hoping to anonymously tip the police.

  When Karl Swann hanged himself in 1988, his son Joseph rescued him just in time, nursing him back to health, but locking the man in a dark, cold wing in Faerwood.

  As far as the investigators could determine, Karl Swann never again left Faerwood. He had essentially lived in that room on the third floor for twenty years. It appeared his son had cooked for him and attended to his basic needs. In time, Karl Swann's mental illness brought him back to 1950 again. He lived through his son's re-creation of his world. He had watched, via television monitor, everything that happened downstairs on Joseph's secret stage.

  If Eve Galvez had been obsessed with Caitlin O'Riordan, Joseph Swann was obsessed with the prism of his own madness-magic, puzzles, and the dark history of Faerwood.

  In the days following the fire, investigators unearthed the remains of six other victims on the grounds of the mansion. All were as yet unidentified. All were buried in brightly colored boxes.

  Fire investigators reported that the fire would have spread quickly enough through the old, mostly wood structure, but was accelerated by the explosion of the small oil furnace in the basement.

  Joseph Swann's charred skeleton was found in the east wing of the attic. It appeared he tried to hang himself, but the ME's office believed the fire had gotten to him first.

  His father, Karl Martin Swann, the Great Cygne, was found in his room on the third floor.

  In his hand was a beautiful mahogany wand.

  ONE HUNDRED EIGHT

  They left the cemetery at noon. Eve Galvez'sservice had been for family and coworkers only. Her family was small, but nearly a hundred people from the District Attorney's office had shown up.

  Jessica and Graciella stood near the river. It was only early September, but already the air whispered of the coming fall. "Did you know your mother well?" Graciella asked. "Not really," Jessica said. "She died when I was five." "Wow. Five. That's pretty small." "It is."

  Graciella looked out over the river. "What do you remember most about her?"

  Jessica had to think about this. "I guess it would be her voice. She used to sing all the time. I remember that." "What did she sing?"

  "All kinds of things. Whatever was popular on the radio, I guess." The songs came back, found their place in Jessica's heart. "What do you remember?"

  "My mom's handwriting. She used to send things to my house. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter. I never opened the boxes. I was so mad at her. I didn't even know her, but I hated her. Until the night she called me and explained everything. She was sixteen when she had me. I'm sixteen. Geez, I can't imagine."

  Jessica recalled the photographs in the photo cube at Eve's apartment, the high-school shot of Eve in which she looked heavy. She had not been overweight. She had been pregnant.

  "When I hung up that night, after talking to my mom, I opened all the boxes she sent me. She sent me this." Graciella held out a sterling silver pendant on a fine chain. It was an angel.

  "It's very pretty."

  "Thank you." She slipped the pendant over her head, positioned the angel over her heart. "I wonder if you could take me someplace."

  "Sure," Jessica said. "Anywhere you want to go."

  "I'd like to go where my mother was found."

  Jessica looked at the young woman. She seemed to have matured in the past few days. Her hair was brushed, her skin impossibly clear. She wore a white cotton dress. She'd told Jessica she'd worn nothing but black for years. She said she'd never wear black again. Graciella had given the police a full statement about the last moments she had spent in Faerwood. She said that after she stepped onto the stage, and saw the Fire Grotto, she didn't remember anything. All the video equipment had been destroyed in the fire. There was no record of what happened.

  "You sure that's a good idea?" Jessica asked. "I mean, there's not much there. It's all been smoothed over. They've planted grass there."

  Graciella nodded.

  "Plus, you're supposed to meet with your uncle," Jessica added.

  "My uncle. It sounds so weird," Graciella said. "Can he meet us there? In the park?"

  "Sure," Jessica said. "I'll call."

  They drove to Belmont Plateau in silence. Byrne followed in his own car.

  Jessica and Byrne watched the young woman cross the street, step into the shallow woods. When she stepped out, Graciella turned to someone on Belmont Avenue, waved. Jessica and Byrne looked.

  Enrique Galvez stood next to his car. He wore a dark suit, his hair was trimmed and combed. He looked as nervous as Jessica felt, as fallen and needy as he had looked at the funeral.

  When Graciella approached, the two embraced tentatively- strangers, family, blood. They talked a long while.

  At noon, with an autumn moon already in the sky, Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano got into their cars, and headed to the city. "Wow. I'm finally inside Casa di Kevin." They had stopped by Byrne's apartment on the way to the Roundhouse. Incredibly, he asked her if s
he wanted to come in.

  "What are you talking about?" Byrne asked.

  "I've never been here before."

  "Yes, you have."

  "Kevin. Between the two of us, who would you trust on this?"

  Byrne looked at her, then out the window, onto Second Street. "You've never been here?"

  "No."

  "Man." He began to absently straighten up the place. When he was done, he got what he came home for-that being his service weapon and holster. "I have a date with Donna this Friday."

  "I know."

  Byrne looked coldcocked. "You know?"

  "I talk to Donna now and then."

  "You talk to my wife?"

  "Well, technically, she's your ex-wife. But yeah. Now and then. I mean, we don't coffee klatch, Kevin. We're not swapping Rachael Ray recipes."

  Byrne drew a long, rhythmic breath.

  "What the hell was that?" Jessica asked.

  "What was what?"

  "That breath. That was yoga breathing."

  "Yoga? I don't think so."

  "I tookyoga classes after Sophie was born. I knowyoga breathing."

  Byrne said nothing.

  Jessica shook her head. "Kevin Byrne doing yoga."

  Byrne looked at her. "How much do you want?"

  "A thousand dollars. Tens and twenties."

  "Okay."

  Jessica's phone rang. She answered, took down the information. "We're up," she said. "We have a job. The boss wants us in."

  Byrne glanced at his watch, back. "You go on ahead. I have a stop to make."

  "Okay," she said. "See you at the house."

  ONE HUNDRED NINE

  The man stood next to the ruin. He seemed thinner than the last time Byrne had seen him. All around him were the bulky brick entrails of another urban casualty. The city had taken the wrecking ball to the abandoned building on Eighth Street.