The Killing Room

by Richard Montanari

  The carousel began to turn; the throaty old calliope played its song. Ruby looked at her boy, imagined him years from then, saw in her mind’s eye a time when he would be powerful, unstoppable.

  The Preacher, just a few feet away, had no premonition, even though the signs were clear and unambiguous.

  Weren’t they?

  Or maybe the signs would have been clear if the Preacher had truly been anointed. For Ruby, the moment was preordained, and spoken of in the Word.

  And I saw, and behold, a white horse.

  Peter began to laugh as the carousel picked up speed, his white horse moving up and down to the rhythm.

  I heard the second living creature say, ‘Come!’ And out came another horse, bright red.

  Little Abigail, so much like her brother, began to laugh, too. She held tight to her red horse.

  I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come!’ And I saw, and behold, a black horse.

  The boy on the black horse was scared. The Preacher held him with his free hand.

  Faster and faster they went, the sound of the pipe organ filling Ruby’s mind like a sermon. She looked at her boy. He seemed to know where he was, what it all meant. Ruby clutched the money close to her, and knew they would leave this night, never to return, just as she knew they would all meet again, in the city of two rivers. In Philadelphia.

  And there would be a reckoning.

  As Ruby held tight to the pole, she ran her hands over the smooth, unpainted surface of the carousel horse. She imagined, as she always had, that this horse had at one time been a lustrous roan. Now it seemed to be translucent. She could almost hear its heartbeat within.

  I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, ‘Come!’ And I saw a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him.

  In the months following that day the boy became very ill with tuberculosis, almost unknown in the modern world, but all too common among Ruby’s kind. She sat with him, night after night, a cloth over her mouth, the boy’s terrible rasping filling her nights.

  One night, just outside the clinic in Doylestown, in the third month of the boy’s affliction, the two black dogs came and sat next to her. All night she patted their heads. In that night she had terrible dreams, dreams of men wrapped in barb wire, old men filled with stones. When she awoke to a white, healing light, the dogs were gone.

  She went rushing into the clinic, mad with worry. They told her that, somehow, her boy had been healed.

  They said it was a miracle.

  *

  Ruby grew to become a slender, beautiful young woman, and her charms were not lost on any man. She learned to use her wiles, borrowing many of the techniques of persuasion she had learned from the Preacher himself. She invested the money Carson Tatum had given her wisely, saving every penny she could, reading every book she could borrow.

  One day she read in the newspapers of how the Preacher had proven himself to be the devil’s minion, how he had become a man who took souls unto himself, a man who did murder to avenge the loss of his stepsister Charlotte.

  When Ruby learned of these dark deeds she knew the end days had begun.

  On the day of the third church, Ruby – who had long since been known by another name, who had long ago forsaken her red hair – went to a street in North Philadelphia.

  And Hades followed him.

  They stood on the corner, across from the cathedral, watching. The people of the city milled around them, each parson to his tabernacle, each sinner to his deeds.

  Mother and child, Ruby thought.

  There are seven churches in all.

  FIFTEEN

  Jessica stared at the phone, willing it to ring. This had never worked in the past, but that did not stop her from the practice.

  Long after the baby’s body had been removed from the basement and the church had been sealed as a crime scene, long after the CSU officers had collected their evidence, Jessica and Byrne had stayed behind, not a single word passing between them for what seemed an eternity.

  The two detectives ‘walked the scene,’ recreating, in their view, what might have happened. They examined the point of entry, envisioned the route the killer had taken. Jessica knew this was a different exercise for her partner than it was for her. She had never known anyone more compassionate than Kevin Byrne, but she knew that he knew what the experience of finding a dead – murdered was the right word – newborn baby must mean to her, to any mother.

  After thirty minutes of silence, the solitude of the old stone church became oppressive.

  ‘Talk me out of thinking this is a homicide,’ Jessica finally said.

  ‘I wish I could, Jess.’

  ‘Tell me a story about how some mother was giving her little baby girl a bath, something terrible happened to the mother, and the baby just accidentally drowned in that tub.’

  Byrne said nothing.

  ‘Tell me it was just an accident, and the mother – let’s assume she’s some religious nut job, just for the sake of argument – took the baby, her beloved baby, down to this church and tried to baptize the child, and something went terribly wrong.’

  Jessica walked the aisle, up the three steps to where the altar once was, back down, over to the steps leading to the basement.

  ‘I need to think this was not a deliberate act, Kevin. I need to think this is not part of some plan, and that we’re never going to see this again. Ever.’

  Byrne didn’t say anything. Jessica hadn’t really expected him to.

  In front of the church, on the lamppost, they found another X.

  Eventually they went off duty that day, Byrne to his life, Jessica to hers. Jessica hugged her children a dozen times that night, sat up all night in the hallway between their two rooms, checking on them every ten minutes, finally falling asleep a half-hour before the alarm clock rang.

  Two days later the hot rage that had burned inside became something else, a feeling she’d had only a few times as a police officer. She had taken every case she’d ever been assigned as a homicide detective seriously, and had the utmost respect for the dead, even if the victim was a despicable person. Every detective Jessica knew felt the same way. But there were cases that put you to bed, woke you up, ate with you, and walked with you. There were cases that took showers with you, went shopping with you, and sat with you in a movie theater. You never escaped their scrutiny, until they were closed.

  This was one of those cases.

  She knew that there was a process – not to mention a backlog – that was in place when it came to forensics. Blood typing, fingerprint identification, hair and fiber, DNA testing. These things took time.

  Jessica knew all this and it still didn’t stop her from calling the lab every hour on the hour. She had not slept twenty minutes straight since leaving that church.

  Those tiny fingers and toes. Every time the image crossed her mind she felt the anger and fury begin to surge.

  It was far from the first dead body she had ever seen, of course. It was far from the first dead infant she had ever seen. You work homicide in a place like Philadelphia and there is no confirmation of man’s inhumanity that shocks or surprises.

  It was the way they had found the baby. The flawless preservation in that frozen block of ice. It was as if the baby would remain a child eternally, forever stalled mid-breath, eyes open. Perfect, crystal blue eyes.

  The media had gotten hold of the case and was running a headline constantly:

  WHO IS BABY GIRL DOE?

  Both the broadcast and print outlets were running a silhouette of a Gerber baby style cut-out with the standard question mark over the face.

  Preliminary forensics had come in from the two crime scenes. The evidence on the lampposts in front of the two churches was not blood. It was, instead, a composite of substances including a starchy compound, soil, and tannin.

  Beneath the body, frozen into the ice, was another copy of My Missal, identical to the book found at St Adelaide’s. The book was c
urrently being processed, although the possibility of collecting forensic evidence from something that long in water was slight.

  The ME’s office had told them that it would be three or four days before an autopsy could be performed on the infant, or physical evidence could be gathered from the small body. When Jessica protested, she was told that any attempt to warm the body by other means would simply destroy the evidence. The infant’s body was currently in a chilled room at the medical examiner’s office on University Avenue.

  Jessica thought about Daniel Palumbo’s dying words.

  He lives.

  Who lives?

  So far, no one had come forth to claim the baby, despite the story being splashed all over the newspapers and television. For Jessica, this was as horrifying as anything connected to the case.

  Was it possible that there was a mother somewhere in the city of Philadelphia who didn’t know that her infant child was missing?

  Soon the lab results would start to roll in, and they could begin to piece this all together. So Jessica watched the phone. And waited.

  Byrne had the afternoon off, and by one o’clock Jessica was crawling out of her skin. She had to hit the streets and make something happen.

  She went through the pamphlets and papers they had found in Danny Palumbo’s backpack, courtesy of Thomas Boyce. A few of the papers were torn from legal pads. One had a series of times of the day, along with what might have been street addresses.

  She input some of the addresses onto major thoroughfares, came up with nothing. None were long enough to be phone numbers.

  Were these meal times at shelters?

  She got a list of shelters, and none of the addresses matched. Then it hit her. AA or NA meetings. She looked up Philadelphia AA chapters, and the locations and times matched perfectly. They could start attending these meetings, but the whole point of AA was anonymity, and even in the course of a homicide investigation, it was unlikely they would find anyone who would go on the record about one of their attendees. If, indeed, Danny had even attended these meetings. They’d do this if they had to, but it probably would be a waste of time.

  On the back of that page was a series of numbers, seven lines deep. This made even less sense. Jessica filed the paper away, chalking it up to a man with a disturbed mind, sadly at the end of his life.

  Jessica turned her attention to the as yet unidentified baby. She could not imagine a mother not coming forward. It either meant the woman could not do so, or was unaware that the baby was gone. But that would mean the baby was left in the care of someone else who didn’t know or care that it was missing.

  Jessica moved forward with the premise that the baby’s mother was poor and/or on drugs. If that were the case, the woman probably wouldn’t have a personal physician. It meant she would have sought out prenatal and postnatal care either at emergency rooms, or free clinics.

  Jessica decided to start with free clinics. There weren’t that many in Philadelphia. She would begin in North Philadelphia, then West Philadelphia. Hopefully, Byrne would be back to help her with South Philly. She printed off a list, and got on the road. Anything was better than staring at a phone.

  By mid-afternoon she had visited four community clinics, spoken to a half-dozen doctors and administrators, all of whom were aware of the Baby Doe story. None of them had treated a white female infant, aged two months, in or around the timeline that surrounded the murder. More than ninety percent of the children at these North Philadelphia clinics were Hispanic or African-American.

  The last North Philly free clinic was the St Julius Clinic on Lehigh near Twelfth, run by the parish. By the time Jessica walked in she was bone weary, hungry, and starting to feel that all of this was a very long shot. But it was a shot she had to take.

  The St Julius Free Clinic was a three-story converted rowhouse. On one side was a second hand store, on the other was a funeral home. Jessica stepped inside. The waiting room was small and cramped, with warped vinyl tiles on the floor, posters of Philadelphia landmarks on the wall. Two young Hispanic women, very pregnant, sat next to each other. Jessica pegged them at no more than seventeen. Across from them sat a young black kid holding a blood-soaked kitchen towel to his forehead.

  To a lot of the people in this neighborhood, and this part of the city, this was health care.

  While Catholic hospitals were run by religious orders – St Mary was run by the Franciscans – the archdiocese itself did not run or operate any hospitals or clinics in Philadelphia. The few that were in existence were run by local parishes.

  Jessica approached the young woman at the front counter, showed her ID, and asked to speak to someone in charge. She was told that that would be a man named Ted Cochrane, but he had three patients that were in triage, the worst of which was probably a rupturing appendix, and they were waiting for EMS. It might be a while.

  After ten minutes or so, during which the appendectomy candidate was picked up and transported to nearby Temple University Hospital, a man emerged from the back room, spoke to the young woman behind the desk. The woman gestured to Jessica. The man signed a few papers, came around the desk.

  ‘I’m Ted Cochrane,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’

  Jessica made him to be about twenty-two. Tall and well-built, dark hair and eyes. It didn’t seem likely, based on his youthful appearance, but Jessica asked anyway. ‘Are you a doctor?’

  Cochrane smiled. ‘Not yet. I’m an LPN. I’m heading to med school this fall.’

  ‘Is there somewhere we can talk privately?’

  ‘Sure.’ He got the young woman’s attention, pointed to a back room. The receptionist nodded. Cochrane led Jessica to a small examination room off the main hallway. It looked like every other examination room she had ever been in, but shabbier, more exhausted. On the wall was the ever-present hand sanitizer tube. Cochrane pulled a small ball of disinfectant foam, ran it over his hands, partially closed the door behind them.

  ‘What can I do for you, detective?’

  ‘Well, maybe you can start with what you do here at the clinic.’

  ‘We patch and repair, mostly. Lots of bumps and bruises, ’flu shots, sore throats. We’re pretty much first line. There is usually a doctor here six hours a day, but the MD on today’s sheet got called into Temple for an emergency surgery.’

  Jessica noted the crucifix on the wall. ‘How much religion do people get here?’

  ‘As much or as little as they want. None at all, if that’s what they want. We are partially funded by the parish, but belief in Christ is by no means a prerequisite to medical care.’

  ‘Like AA?’

  ‘Like AA,’ Cochrane said. ‘Our evangelism is really just that wall of pamphlets in the waiting room. We don’t proselytize.’

  ‘Are you a Catholic?’

  Cochrane smiled. ‘No, born and raised Methodist.’

  ‘Do you do pediatrics here?’

  ‘We do just about everything here. Pre-natal, post-natal, pediatrics, all the way up to and including geriatric medicine.’

  ‘What about mental-health services?’

  ‘Absolutely. Family counseling, substance abuse counseling, group therapy, some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.’

  ‘You have the staff for this?’

  He smiled again. ‘No, far from it. We are blessed to get a lot of pro bono work through the Catholic hospitals. The Archdiocese has been very good about turning the emotional and professional screws on its faithful.’

  ‘Have you treated any young infants in the past few weeks?’

  ‘Oh, my, yes. At least five or six.’

  ‘Any white female babies?’

  Cochrane considered the question. ‘Is this about the baby on the news? Baby Doe?’

  ‘I need you to keep this inquiry confidential, but yes.’

  Cochrane nodded. ‘I had some down time yesterday, and I started going through records from the last few weeks. As you might expect, most of the children we treat here are minorities. But we did se
e a Caucasian female infant recently. Her information will be in the database.’

  ‘Why do you think this is related?’

  Now it was Cochrane’s turn. ‘I need this to be confidential, as well.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The mother of this baby, Adria Rollins is her name, has some mental health issues. When she visited she came with her great-grandfather, who is pretty frail. That’s why the flag went up when I saw the news story. I thought the child might be at risk.’

  ‘Do you have contact information for the mother?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. We do our best here, but half the time the addresses we get are fake.’

  ‘Could you take a look?’

  Cochrane hesitated. Jessica was losing him.

  ‘I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t very important,’ she said. ‘I know how crucial it is to keep medical records confidential, but this may well be related to a homicide – perhaps two homicides – and I promise I will treat the information with discretion.’

  It was touch and go for a second, but Cochrane soon relented. He sat down at the terminal, hit a few keys, then a few more.

  ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘The address on her record is of her great-grandfather’s apartment. It looks like he is her legal guardian.’

  Jessica wrote down the address. It wasn’t that far away.

  The woman from the front desk poked her head in the room. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but we need the room.’

  Jessica and Cochrane stepped into the narrow hallway. The woman led in a man who appeared to have scraped half the skin off the back of his left hand. The nurse closed the curtain.

  ‘If I recall correctly, we have a few pictures of the Rollins baby,’ Cochrane said. ‘We sometimes take photographs of children when we suspect abuse.’

  ‘Are you saying this baby was abused?’

  ‘It’s possible. I can show you the pictures.’

  ‘I would appreciate it.’

  Cochrane went into the back room for what seemed like fifteen long minutes. In that time four more people came into the clinic. Nobody made eye contact with anybody else, perhaps out of some sense of shame. They all seemed to wait patiently, reading coverless five-year-old copies of Sports Illustrated or Essence.