The Killing Room

by Richard Montanari

  ‘Not sure,’ Byrne said.

  ‘On my way.’

  Through the tinny speaker on the cell phone they could hear Josh Bontrager walking across the small church, up the steps. They heard the creak of the door as he pushed it open. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’m in the bell tower.’

  ‘What do you see?’

  Another pause. ‘There’s really nothing here. There’s some straw and sticks on the floor. I’m thinking it was an old bird’s nest.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Nothing I can see. Sorry.’

  Byrne closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them. ‘Are there any gang tags on the walls, any carvings?’

  ‘No tags,’ Bontrager said. ‘Let me check for carvings.’

  Another minute or so passed.

  ‘No. Nothing I can see anyway. The walls are pretty dirty. Nothing recent. Do you want CSU to take a bunch of photos up here?’

  ‘Not yet. What about loose stones?’ Byrne asked. ‘Are any of the stones loose?’

  ‘Let me check,’ Bontrager said. ‘I’m going to put the phone down for a second.’

  They heard him put it down, heard him moving around the small space. After a full minute he came back on. ‘No loose stones.’

  Byrne walked a few paces, turned back. ‘Check right near the top. Check the stones along the soffit.’

  ‘I’m going to have to climb on the sill,’ Bontrager said. ‘If you hear a scream fading into the distance, that’s me falling out the window.’

  Both Jessica and Byrne smiled at this.

  They once again heard Bontrager put down the phone, heard the sounds of exertion as he climbed on the sill. There was another thirty seconds of virtual silence. Then:

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  Jessica glanced at Byrne. He was transfixed. Bontrager came back on the line.

  ‘Guys? There is a loose stone.’

  ‘Did you pull it out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was there something behind it?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Bontrager said, his voice now alive with the excitement of discovery. ‘You guys better get down here. I think this means something.’

  ‘We’re on the way,’ Byrne said.

  Jessica, wondering what she had just witnessed, picked up the knapsack, walked to the back of the Taurus, put it in the trunk. It hardly took up any room. Everything that Daniel Palumbo had accrued in his life fit in one tiny corner of the trunk of a midsize car.

  As Jessica got behind the wheel, and they headed toward the church, she was suddenly overcome by a debilitating sadness. All she could think about was Loretta Palumbo holding that plastic cup, the cup her son used when his life was new and full of promise.

  The scene outside St Adelaide’s looked nothing like it had four days earlier. If you didn’t recognize the departmental sedans parked out front, and didn’t notice the new doorjamb and padlock installed on the door, you would have no way of knowing anything had recently happened there. Certainly not coldblooded murder.

  When they stepped inside, Josh Bontrager was leaning against the far wall. The room was powdered with the black dust used by CSU for latent prints.

  ‘What do we have, Josh?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Take a look at this.’ Bontrager proffered a small clear evidence bag. Inside the bag was a portion of an old prayer card.

  These were small rectangular cards handed out by Catholics during funeral wakes, visitations, memorial services. Sometimes they were given out as ‘thank you’ cards after the funeral or memorial service, or sent to those unable to attend. The card Bontrager had found was old from the look of it, perhaps a 1950s or 1960s vintage. Jessica had a small boxful in her house from the various family members and friends who had passed. There was very little chance that she would look at her collection of prayer cards again, but there was no chance she could ever throw them out. It just wasn’t done.

  Jessica flipped the bag over. The torn card was from a funeral held on 20 January 1966 at St Damian’s Church.

  Jessica handed the card to Byrne. He examined it closely.

  ‘This was behind the stone?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How was it positioned?’

  ‘It was leaning against the back. Up against the stone façade on the outer wall of the tower.’

  Byrne didn’t have to ask if Bontrager had handled it carefully by the edges. Josh was a pro.

  ‘St Damian’s,’ Byrne said. ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘No,’ both Jessica and Bontrager replied.

  ‘I took some pictures of the area around the stone,’ Bontrager added. ‘It looks to have been recently pried loose. CSU is up there now.’

  Byrne thought for a few more moments. ‘What exactly did the caller say again?’ he asked Jessica.

  ‘One God, seven churches.’

  ‘Churches.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Byrne held up the prayer card. ‘I think we should take a ride over to St Damian’s,’ he said. ‘Just to say we did.’

  As Byrne got on his cell phone to get the location of the church, Jessica put the evidence bag containing the card on the floor, knelt down, took out the camera, took a close-up photograph of the new find. She handed the evidence bag to Bontrager. ‘Let’s see if we can get the lab to hump this.’

  ‘You got it,’ Bontrager said.

  As Jessica and Byrne returned to the car, Jessica had to wonder what, if anything, they were going to find at the second church.

  THIRTEEN

  St Damian’s was a small church on Eighteenth Street near Diamond. The church proper was constructed of soot-blackened sandstone, with a tall Palladian entrance arch. Above the door was a carved pediment. A small stone cross jutted from the peaked gable.

  On either side of the church were narrow, three-story, redbrick structures, most likely containing the rectory, as well as administrative offices.

  A low wrought-iron fence guarded the entrance, but it appeared the gate had long ago been stolen. Jessica could only imagine that it now graced the entrance to someone’s home in North Philly. She had always imagined that the surest route to hell was to steal something from a church. Once, when she was about seven or eight, she had taken an umbrella from the vestibule at St Paul’s. She brought it back the next day, and after somewhere around 400 Hail Marys was certain she would dwell in fire for all eternity.

  In all, St Damian’s looked to be a typical, struggling Philly neighborhood parish. Except for one glaring fact.

  ‘It’s closed,’ Jessica said.

  A small sign next to the door confirmed what seemed apparent. The parish had merged with another, larger parish, located three blocks away.

  Jessica and Byrne walked around to the back of the rectory, peered into the windows. The glass was grimy and nearly opaque with soot and exhaust.

  At the rear entrance was a gate that led to a square courtyard. Jessica pushed open the gate. In the small area were a few trash bags, a pair of bald tires.

  ‘Kevin.’

  Jessica pointed to the broken window in one panel of the door. She looked more closely. There was no glass on the outside, so it had the signs of a break in. She shone her Maglite in the window. The glazing had been puttied and reputtied many times, so this did not appear to be the first time someone had broken into the property.

  Jessica looked inside. The shattered glass on the floor did not have dust on it. The break-in was recent.

  The narrow passageway led to the rear of the nave, the main part of the church. On the right was the sacristy, long ago defiled by trespassers. As they stepped into the church, Jessica instinctively reached to the side, expecting to dip her fingers into the holy water font. There was none there.

  Ahead, the nave was virtually empty. There was black plastic taped over the windows. The stained-glass panes had either been transferred elsewhere, stolen, or broken. Some daylight leaked in, but the interior was dark. Jessica and Byrne both used their Maglites.

&nb
sp; As she moved toward the front of the church Jessica saw that most of the pews had been removed, as had most of the statuary. One small statue of the Virgin Mary lay on its side to the right of the altar.

  A few pigeons, frightened by their presence, took wing into the eaves.

  There was dust and grime and bird droppings on every surface. The air was suffused with dry rot and the sickly sweet smell of long dead flowers.

  ‘I’m going to check downstairs,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Okay.’

  When Jessica reached the vestibule, which let in a little bit of light from the street, she saw that the ambry – the niche used to house the three oils – was intact.

  Jessica turned, looked down the aisle that had once led to the altar. She thought for a moment what it must have been like when this church was new, about families in the neighborhood coming here on Saturday afternoon for confession, on Sunday mornings for mass. She thought about the baptisms, marriages, and funerals. She thought about how small churches were truly the pillars of a neighborhood, and how sad that this once proud place of worship now stood abandoned.

  Mostly she thought about her own childhood, how St Paul’s was the center of her life. She had attended kindergarten through eighth grade there, had made her first Holy Communion and confirmation there. She had gotten married by the same priest who had baptized her, Father Rocco Basconi.

  ‘Jess.’

  Jessica looked toward the stairs leading to the basement. She saw the beam of Byrne’s flashlight playing against the door-jamb. She crossed the church, stood at the top of the stairs, looked toward the cellar.

  Byrne stood there, his tall frame silhouetted against the stone backdrop. As Jessica descended the steps she felt a new chill, even deeper than the cold of the unheated church.

  When she reached the last step Jessica pointed her flashlight at the opposite wall. The basement was entirely empty, save for an object on the floor, perhaps directly underneath where the altar was on the main floor.

  ‘What is it, Kevin?’

  Byrne didn’t answer. Jessica saw the muscles cord on his neck. She had seen it happen many times before, and it never bode well. Byrne took out his cell phone, stepped toward the stairway.

  Her flesh rising in goose bumps, Jessica glanced at the box on the floor. It was not a box after all. It was, instead, an old washing tub, oval in shape, about twenty inches across. It reminded her of the brushed aluminum tubs in which her grandmother would let her and her brother Michael sit on the hottest days of August, the South Philly equivalent of an above-ground pool.

  This tub was covered with a worn and laundered burlap cloth. Jessica snapped on a latex glove, gently peeled back the burlap.

  What she saw took her legs from under her.

  There, inside the tub, suspended in a crystalline block of ice, was a newborn baby.

  TWO

  IN NOMINE PATRIS

  His eyes were as a flame of fire,

  and on his head were many crowns.

  – REVELATION, 19:12

  FOURTEEN

  Along the cornice of a hill overlooking a deep green valley, three miles south of Bruceton, West Virginia, sat a golden pavilion, a beacon of light in the sweltering summer evening. Mosquitoes and fireflies danced and swirled around the structure in a graceful ballet, making the large, luminous tent look as if it were itself moving to the rhythm of the joyous music coming from within.

  But it wasn’t the music that drew the girl near.

  It was the cross.

  The back-lighted cross inside the tent painted a soft cruciform on the ceiling of canvas so that anyone seated inside could look above their heads and know that their souls were rising toward salvation.

  For twelve-year-old Mary Elizabeth Longstreet it was magic. She knew that the revival – the Holy Thunder Caravan it was called – was going to be in town for only three more days. In that time she knew she had to work up the nerve to cross this field and enter the tent, or she would never forgive herself.

  Although she had been baptized Mary – named for the Blessed Mother herself – everyone called her Ruby, due to her beautiful auburn hair, hair that would seem to catch fire in the late-summer months, turning a rich and vibrant red.

  Ruby Longstreet was the middle child of five, a waif-like girl with inquisitive blue eyes and a shy smile. She had two brothers and two sisters. They lived in Jefferson County, West Virginia, not far from the Maryland line.

  From the time she could talk Ruby could recite the Word. At two she said grace at her family table, a rough plank slab which rarely bore anything more than boiled potatoes or, on Sunday, a piece of boiled lamb shank.

  For most of her childhood she kept a dog-eared copy of the King James Bible on a cloth on the floor next to the bed she shared with her sisters Esther and Ruth. In the night, when she could not sleep, she would read the Word by moonlight, and it would give her comfort, easing the hunger she had in her belly, the longing of her spirit.

  As she and her sisters grew toward adolescence, their father would come into their room and sit at the edge of the bed, smelling of motor oil and sour mash, each night drawing closer. Elijah Longstreet was a coarse man, ill-mannered and quick to anger.

  On the night he came for Esther, Ruby pretended to be asleep. She kept her eyes open, watching the shadows rise and fall on the wall, her ears filled with her sister’s muffled pleas, the smell of liquor and body odor filling her world.

  A month later Esther went away. For days Ruby would walk to the end of their long, dusty driveway and watch for her sister. Esther did not return.

  Has she gone to the Lord? Ruby wondered. She had no idea, and she dared not ask.

  On the night her father came for Ruby he sat on the edge of the bed for the longest time. That previous winter Elijah Longstreet had lost half his weight, so much of it that by the time he came for Ruby he was skin and bones. But still he came. The need the devil had planted in his soul was powerful.

  Before he could mount Ruby he began to cough so violently that not only the bed, but the entire room seemed to shake. Ruby had never forgotten that sound, that sodden animal grating.

  By dawn, his daughter untaken, Elijah Longstreet was dead at the foot of the bed, Ruby’s Bible clutched in his hands, the index finger of his right hand stuck between the pages of Revelation, a pool of foul blood and bile around his head.

  Everyone knew what Elijah Longstreet had been doing in Ruby’s room, but it was never spoken of. On the day he was buried, in the small family plot behind the outbuilding, Ruby’s mother watched from the parlor window, but did not set foot on the gravesite.

  That day was six months before the caravan came to the valley, and in the intervening months Ruby Longstreet had sprung up, if not out. She was tall for her age, and had begun to bud, but she still had about her a little girl’s awkwardness, all elbows and knees and shoulder blades.

  Finally, on the last night of the revival, Ruby crossed the field, toward the tent, the sound of ‘Give Me Oil in My Lamp’ – a song Ruby knew by heart – filling the summer night, echoing off the surrounding hills.

  As she approached the tent she was noticed by two men leaning against an old, fender-wired pickup. One of them looked at Ruby the way she had seen her daddy look at her, all wet-lipped and fake smiley. The other one, the older man, just nodded toward the opening. Ruby could smell the roadhouse whiskey all the way across the road.

  Ruby gathered her courage, her heart fit to burst with fear and excitement. The sound of joyous singing was thunderous. She parted the flaps, stepped inside, and saw the Preacher for the very first time.

  The Preacher stood before the crowd of a hundred, divine and young and handsome in his white linen suit and lemon yellow shirt. He was willow-slender and graceful, and moved minklike around the area at the front of the church, just below the cross. He projected a lightning force, an energy that came across even when he was just standing still. Ruby imagined it was the Holy Ghost that filled him, pure and simpl
e. Behind the Preacher’s head the bright light over the makeshift pulpit created a golden aurora.

  Ruby knew all about the Preacher, knew of his hardscrabble past, not that different from her own. She knew these things because the Preacher had written a book about his life – I Am the Spirit – and Ruby read it so many times that the words were now starting to fade from the page. She once dropped the book into a rain puddle and ran home, drying it before the fire, ironing each page flat with her aunt Hazel’s dry iron.

  In his life, in the days before the light, even the Preacher knew darkness. A backwoods boy, a son of Appalachia born in Letcher County, Kentucky, he had survived the devil in two fathers, and a mother whose mind was taken by Satan himself.

  When the Preacher was still a boy his stepsister Charlotte was murdered. Many believed it was this terrible tragedy that put him on the path to salvation.

  The Holy Thunder Caravan traveled all over, passing through northern Kentucky, southern Ohio, southwestern Pennsylvania. The Preacher also appeared on the radio. When Ruby knew that his program was going to be on she would park herself at the table and listen, letting his beautiful voice fill her with the Spirit.

  This night Ruby took a chair at the back of the gathering, and listened to the congregation raise their voice in praise, heard the music soar to the heavens. She did not have the courage to join in, but just being this close to the Preacher filled her with a happiness she had never known.

  The next day the caravan moved on. Ruby cried for days. She walked six miles to the small library every Saturday looking for news in out-of-town papers. Once she was rewarded with a notice that the Preacher and his Holy Thunder Caravan would be stopping in nearby Brandonville.

  Ruby went to work taking in washing, sweeping out stalls, anything she could to make money. In the end she saved eleven dollars, enough for a round trip on the Greyhound.

  This time the Preacher spoke about the evils of the flesh. When he called those who had not been saved by the Word to come forward, Ruby found herself on her feet, hands raised in testimony.