The Killing Room

by Richard Montanari

  ‘You know, I’ve never met a woman who ordered an Old Fashioned before,’ Byrne said. ‘It’s so Joan Crawford.’

  Faith smiled. ‘You know, it’s odd. I don’t really have a drink.’

  ‘Then you’re not from Philadelphia, I take it.’

  ‘No. Not originally.’

  ‘See, it’s a city ordinance here.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been working on one since college, but I’m pretty fickle that way. I started watching that show Mad Men, and the main character drinks them. I thought I’d give it a try.’

  ‘Classy drink.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I need all the help I can get.’

  Hardly, Byrne thought. He glanced over Faith’s shoulder, at the door that led to the stairway and the first floor. A few minutes before Faith showed up Byrne thought he had seen someone standing there, and now he could see he wasn’t mistaken. Whoever it was stood in shadow. Byrne always felt safe at Finnigan’s Wake, but he had long ago acquired the habit of never sitting with his back to the door. Any door.

  ‘So, how long have you worked as a paramedic?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘About eight years,’ she said. Margaret delivered the Old Fashioned. Faith sipped, nodded her approval. ‘I can’t believe it’s been that long, but here I am.’

  ‘Is it something you always wanted to do?’

  She ran the swizzle stick around the glass. ‘Not really. I thought about nursing school – I still think about nursing school. But you know how it is. Life intervenes, mortgages happen, car payments are due, your dreams run out of gas.’

  Byrne flicked another glance to the doorway. The shadow was still there. Unmistakably a man, on the tall side. Byrne had the feeling they were being watched, and he was rarely wrong about that feeling.

  ‘What about you?’ Faith asked. ‘Did you always want to be a cop?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t remember ever wanting to be anything else.’

  ‘Not even a fireman?’

  ‘Please. Especially a fireman.’

  The friendly rivalry – and sometimes not so friendly rivalry – between police and firefighters was alive and well in Philly.

  ‘I know a lot of guys at the 10th Battalion,’ Faith said. ‘I’m telling them you said that.’

  ‘Bring it on.’

  Faith smiled, took another sip. They spent the next twenty minutes talking about the city, their jobs, their favorites. Another round of drinks came and went. They finally got around to the important things.

  ‘So, do you have any kids?’ Faith asked.

  Byrne nodded. ‘One daughter. Colleen. She’s away at college. Somehow.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean about two months ago I was putting together a Big Wheel for her third birthday.’

  Byrne went on to tell Faith about Colleen, about what her deafness meant to her, how she had never treated it as a disability, and how that had always been an inspiration to him.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Do you have any kids?’

  Faith seemed to hesitate before answering, but maybe it was Byrne’s imagination. Or maybe it was the Bushmills. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I have a son.’

  Byrne looked at her for a few moments. When she didn’t add anything he got the feeling it was making her uncomfortable. He decided to make light of it.

  ‘So, is your son having trouble in kindergarten or something?’

  Faith laughed, wagged a finger at him. ‘You are good.’

  ‘It’s a gift.’

  ‘He’s a lot older than that, my friend.’ With this she playfully slugged Byrne on the shoulder. It stung. Faith was stronger than she looked, but then again she had to be. She had to lift dead weight every day. ‘I wish he was still in kindergarten.’

  They sipped from their glasses. Byrne glanced back at the door. The shadow was still there. He took out his phone.

  ‘Excuse me one second,’ he said.

  ‘Sure.’

  He sent a text to the bar manager, Mickey. Mickey would send two of the mountainous guys that worked the doors at Finnigan’s Wake to see what was what with the mysterious figure in the shadows of the lower-level landing.

  A minute later Mickey texted him back to tell him that by the time the boys got down there, whoever had been lurking was gone.

  Paranoia, Kevin.

  ‘Everything okay? Faith asked.

  Byrne put his phone away. ‘Never better.’

  ‘You are such a good liar. I like that in a man.’

  Byrne smiled, drained his Bushmills. ‘You know, you keep talking like that, you’re never going to get me into bed.’

  Faith smiled, put a hand on his leg. ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What makes you so sure?’

  She leaned in, kissed him gently on the lips. ‘I’ve had much tougher cases.’

  ‘Have you now?’

  Their eyes met, and it all came down to that second. You are connecting, or you’re not.

  They did.

  Byrne stood, dropped a pair of twenties on the bar. Margaret, at the other end, knocked the bar twice, smiled.

  As Byrne and Faith walked down Green Street, toward their cars, Byrne couldn’t shake the feeling they were being observed. He was sure of it, but he had no idea why.

  ‘I like your place,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad you’re not wearing your glasses.’

  She looked beautiful in the soft candlelight. The first time they’d made love it had been manic – clothes everywhere, barely making it to the bed. The second time was slower, sweeter, as if they’d known each other for years.

  Byrne pointed at the candle. ‘You always bring your own candles with you?’

  She had reached into her bag when they arrived, taken out a large, scented pillar candle, put it on the nightstand, lighted it.

  ‘I’m getting into aromatherapy. This is clary sage and nectarine. Do you like it?’

  ‘I do.’

  She turned in his bed, pulled the sheet around her, rested her head on his chest. Byrne tried to remember the last time he’d been in this position. It had been a while.

  ‘You know, our jobs are not all that different in a lot of ways,’ she said. ‘What I mean is, we see a lot. Does it ever get to you?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘I mean, do you ever want to just walk away from it. Say enough is enough?’

  Byrne didn’t know any detective with twenty-five years in who didn’t think about retiring, sometimes on a daily basis. ‘I’ve been doing this job a long time,’ he said. ‘Longer than most. At least in homicide. I’ve learned to move on.’

  ‘Always?’

  There was no point in lying, in trying to be the macho cop. ‘Not always. In all this time there have been a few cases that have stuck with me. So, yeah. Sometimes it gets to me.’

  ‘Open cases?’

  ‘Open cases,’ Byrne said. ‘Every so often I pull out the activity sheets, make a few notes. I read over the evidence, check the witness statements, hoping that I’ll see something that I never saw before.’ Byrne wanted to tell her more, much more, about how he sometimes picked up a piece of evidence and got a feeling about the killer. But they’d just met. He didn’t need to scare her off.

  ‘Do you think it’s real?’ she asked.

  ‘Do I think what is real?’

  ‘Evil.’

  ‘That’s a tough one. If you’re asking whether or not I think a person can be born bad, the answer is yes. I didn’t always, but I do now.’

  They fell silent. Byrne drifted in and out of sleep. He’d gotten about four hours a night for the past week. Add the Bushmills, and it was no wonder he was fatigued. He felt himself floating, floating. He opened his eyes, looked at the clock. It wasn’t yet eleven. Somehow he thought it was morning. He felt the bed next to him, but Faith wasn’t there.

  He looked up and saw her standing at the foot of his bed. She wore a red coat. Next to her stood a tall young man in a pointed hood. Byrne
knew it was the same man who had been watching them in Finnigan’s Wake, the same man they had seen in the surveillance video across from St Adelaide’s. Byrne tried to get out of bed, but his hands and feet were tied to the bed posts.

  ‘You were right, detective,’ she said.

  ‘Right?’

  ‘Evil is flesh.’

  Byrne woke in a sweat. He turned, sat up, his heart pounding in his chest. Faith was gone. On the pillow was a note. He flipped on the light, read it. In the note she said she was on midnight to eight. She left her phone number.

  Byrne slipped on a pair of jeans, walked to the kitchen, shaking off the nightmare, still in the grip of broken sleep. He flipped on the TV, poured himself a short one. Then poured the rest of a tall one. He checked the TV screen.

  It was a recap of the day’s news. He found the lead story very interesting. The caption pretty much said it all.

  VIDEO OF PHILLY COP GOES VIRAL

  It was a grainy hand-held video, the kind you saw showing up more and more often these days, a video of him bracing DeRon Wilson.

  ‘This is Shane Adams reporting.’

  Byrne turned off the TV, walked over to the fridge, opened it. The feeling of dread that had been building inside him since the moment he had walked into St Adelaide’s was growing by the minute. He opened a beer, swallowed most of it.

  He looked out the window, at the glow of Center City and beyond. He then sat at his small dinette table, turned on his phone. He looked at the screen. There were thirty-nine messages. He turned it off, walked back to the bedroom, smoothed the sheets and blanket, wondering if he’d get back to sleep this night. He doubted it. The room still smelled of sex, of Faith Christian, of sage and nectarine. He sat on the edge of the bed, picked up the candle, blew it out.

  I will come to thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick.

  The words were almost shouted in his head.

  *

  There were no sector cars deployed at St Damian’s any longer; the yellow tape had been removed. It was no longer an active crime scene. The window pane that had been broken to gain entry had been covered over by plywood.

  Byrne had anticipated this. He brought with him a large iron crow bar. The plywood square came off with ease, and within seconds he was inside.

  Like St Adelaide’s, the interior was covered in black fingerprint dust which, at this hour, served to make the space even darker, seemed to absorb the beam of Byrne’s flashlight.

  I will come to thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick.

  He moved to a section to the right of where the altar once stood. It was an area devoted to the lighting of memorial votive candles. Although the three-tiered table was still there, the glass candleholders were boxed up beneath. Byrne pulled the boxes out. Most of the candleholders were broken. Byrne could see that a number of the glasses were imprinted with a cross. Some of the larger shards of glass had been dusted for prints, but not bagged.

  Byrne snapped on a glove, aligned the glass holders on the old oaken table. They were identical. Some still had paraffin clinging to the sides. Even with the flashlight and naked eye, Byrne could see dozens of fingerprints. A glass surface – a glass surface coated with wax residue – was just about the perfect surface to leave a textbook exemplar of a fingerprint.

  Byrne looked at the three dozen glasses, examined them, then saw something he had not noticed before. One of the glasses was a deep amber color, not red. He picked up the amber glass. The cross on the front was slightly different as well.

  He turned it over. There, on the bottom, was a small metal plate that read:

  Property of St Regina

  It sounded as if he had awakened her. Entirely likely, seeing as it was 1.30 in the morning.

  ‘Jess. Have you ever heard of St Regina’s?’

  ‘St Regina’s?’

  ‘Yeah. The church.’

  Byrne heard a liquid rustling of sheets, the flick of a lamp. ‘I hope you don’t think I have every church in Philly memorized,’ Jessica said. ‘Hang on.’

  It seemed like minutes before she picked up the phone again.

  ‘I found it,’ she said. ‘It’s in Rhawnhurst.’

  ‘Get it onto radio,’ Byrne said. ‘I want everybody and his mother down there now.’

  Byrne didn’t wait for a reply.

  TWENTY-SIX

  St Regina’s was a small neighborhood church in the Rhawnhurst section of the city, a mostly residential area in the northeast. The area was bordered by Pennypack Creek to the north, and Roosevelt Boulevard to the east.

  The church, a freestanding structure set back from the street, had a central tower with a domed cupola, topped by a gilded cross. The chain that ran between two posts, blocking entrance to the parking lot at the church’s north side, had been cut to allow the investigators in. On the way up to the scene Jessica learned St Regina’s had only been closed for two years.

  In front of the church was a rusted lamppost. It was marked with an X.

  Even though the hour was late, there was a small crowd of people gathering across the street. News stories of the murders happening in churches were breaking wider and wider, and now that there were three sector cars and four PPD departmental sedans in and around this small neighborhood church, the word had spread.

  There was also a team from one of the TV stations.

  When Jessica arrived, coffee in hand, she saw Byrne talking to Maria Caruso across the street from the church. Maria looked pale and drawn. This was understandable, seeing as it was the middle of the night. Maria Caruso would be lead detective on this case.

  ‘Hey,’ Jessica said.

  ‘Sorry to get you up and out,’ Byrne said. ‘I figured you wanted to be called.’

  ‘No problem,’ Jessica said, only half-meaning it. She gestured to the activity around them. ‘I take it we have another victim.’

  ‘Yes,’ Maria said. ‘Unfortunately we do.’

  ‘In the basement?’

  Maria nodded. ‘Male white, sixties, DOA.’

  ‘ME notified?’

  ‘On the way.’

  Jessica looked at the front of the church. It was another old neighborhood parish, a church with the capacity for maybe 200 people. ‘How did they gain entry?’

  ‘There’s a back door to the priest’s house. Broken window.’

  ‘Any blood?’

  Maria shook her head. ‘None visible.’

  Jessica looked at Maria. This was only her third or fourth case as a lead homicide detective, and by far the highest profile. Jessica wondered how she was holding up. She recalled her own experience as a lead detective early on. You work with other, more seasoned detectives, telling them what to do, not to mention a coterie of professionals – CSU officers, EMS personnel, lab technicians – many of whom are older, and have a great deal more experience. The potential for second guessing yourself, and making the wrong call, was always on your mind.

  ‘Is this our guy?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘This is our guy,’ Maria said.

  ‘Is the victim holding a missal?’ Byrne asked.

  Maria swallowed hard. ‘He is.’

  The investigator from the medical examiner’s office arrived with his photographer in tow. They signed the crime-scene log, entered the building. They emerged fifteen minutes later. The investigator briefed Maria Caruso, who made a few notes. They crossed the street to where Jessica and Byrne stood. It was Maria’s show, and neither Jessica nor Byrne would make a move until she said so.

  ‘Ready?’ Detective Maria Caruso asked.

  No one was.

  No one wanted to be.

  They passed through the priest’s house, a two-story brick structure attached to the church proper. It was spotless, save for years of dust, and the soot that shakes loose from constant road traffic passing by. The myriad footprints in the dust were made by investigators.

  And the killer and victim, Jessica thought. She scanned the floor, but CSU had not flagged any area as evidenc
e. No blood splatter, no shell casings.

  Before the entrance to the main part of the church, there was a door on the left, leading to the basement. Maria directed Jessica and Byrne. This was the crime scene.

  Jessica stood at the top of the stairs, began to descend. The basement, she thought for the third time in the past few weeks.

  You never get used to the basement.

  This time the cellar was brightly lit, courtesy of the two field lighting units brought in by CSU. The lights were the only bright things in the space. Everything had a grim look of time and neglect. The concrete block walls were damp with condensation. There were small patches of ice.

  ‘The victim is in the small room to the right, next to the oil furnace,’ Maria said.

  Jessica slipped on a pair of latex gloves, braced herself. She went in first. ‘Oh, God,’ she said before she could stop herself. Her stomach clenched.

  On the floor, sitting against the wall, was the victim, a man in his sixties, perhaps his early seventies. He was nude, and next to him sat a pile of neatly folded clothing. Next to the clothing was a pair of running shoes, with socks balled up inside. Next to all of this was a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

  Around him, on the floor, was a half-circle of small white stones.

  There were no open wounds, no obvious signs of physical trauma, save for a thin trickle of blood running from the left corner of the man’s mouth, which was slightly open. One thing struck Jessica immediately, something that did not make immediate sense. The man’s throat bulged in an unnatural manner.

  Jessica and Byrne did a quick look around the basement, which was three rooms; one large, two smaller. One small room held an oil furnace. The other small room had what looked to be a pile of vestments, mildewed and molded by time. In one corner leaned a pair of old wicker baskets, once used to make collections during mass, their tines thinned by mice and other vermin to use as nesting material.

  The investigator from the medical examiner’s office stood by. Maria asked him if he had forceps of any kind. He ran out to his car, returned with a bag of instruments.

  As Byrne angled one of the field lights closer, focusing the light on the man’s face, Maria put on a pair of latex gloves, knelt down. She gently prodded the area surrounding the man’s jawline. It seemed unnaturally solid, even though rigor had not yet set in.