Текст книги "Badlands"

Автор книги: Richard Montanari

Соавторы: Richard Montanari
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

FORTY-SIX

THE WHITE TENT sat near the edge of the roof, shielding the murder victim from the sun, and the prying eyes of the media hovering overhead like red-tail hawks. There were no fewer than thirty people on the roof: detectives, supervisors, crime-scene technicians, investigators from the medical examiner’s office. Photographs were taken, measurements recorded, surfaces dusted.

When Jessica and Byrne arrived, the other personnel deferred to them. This could only mean one thing. The homicide that had occurred here was clearly connected to their investigations.

When Jessica opened the flap on the plastic tent, she knew it to be true. She felt the gorge rise in her throat. In front of her was a girl, no more than seventeen, with long dark hair, deep hazel eyes. She wore a thin black sweater and blue jeans, a pair of sandals on her small feet. None of this made her much different from any of the other young murder victims Jessica had seen in her career. What set this girl apart, what tied her irrevocably to the case she and her partner were working on, was the manner in which she was killed.

Protruding from the girl’s chest and abdomen were seven steel swords.

JESSICA STARED at the girl’s pallid face. It was clear that in life she had been exotically pretty, but here, on a blistering rooftop in North Philadelphia, drained of all her blood, she looked almost mummified.

The good news, for the investigators, was that according to the ME’s office this victim had been dead little more than twenty-four hours. It was the closest they had come to the Collector. This was no cold case. This time they could amass evidence unadulterated by time. The very scent and presence of the murderer lingered.

Jessica snapped on a pair of gloves, stepped closer to the body. She gently examined the girl’s hands. Her nails had recently been manicured and painted. The color was a deep red. Jessica looked at her own nails through the latex, and wondered if she and the victim had been sitting in a manicurist’s chair at the same time.

Even though she was seated, Jessica determined that the girl was about five-three, less than a hundred pounds. She sniffed the girl’s hair. It smelled of mint. It had been recently shampooed.

Nicci Malone stepped onto the roof, saw Jessica.

“We’ve got an ID,” Nicci said.

She handed Jessica an FBI printout. The girl’s name was Katja Dovic. She was seventeen. She had last been seen at her house in New Canaan, Connecticut, on June twenty-sixth.

Dr. Tom Weyrich approached.

“I take it this is not the primary scene,” Jessica said.

Weyrich shook his head. “No. Wherever she was killed she bled out, and was cleaned up. The hearts stops, that’s it. The dead don’t bleed.” He paused for a moment. Jessica knew him to be a man not given to hyperbole or arch comment. “And, as bad as that is, it gets worse.” He pointed to one of the slices in the girl’s sweater. “It looks like she was run through with these swords at the primary scene, they were removed, and reinserted here. This guy re-created the murder on this rooftop.”

Jessica tried to wrap her mind around the image of someone stabbing this girl with seven swords, removing them, transporting the body, and doing it all over again.

While Nicci went off to advise the other investigators on the ID, Byrne sidled silently next to Jessica. They stood this way while the mechanics of a murder investigation swirled around them.

“Why is he doing this, Kevin?”

“There’s a reason,” Byrne said. “There’s a pattern. It looks random, but it isn’t. We’ll find it, and we’ll fucking put him down.”

“Now there’s three girls. Three methods. Three different dump sites.”

“All in the Badlands, though. All runaways.”

Jessica shook her head. “How do we warn these kids when they don’t want to be found?”

There was no answer.

FORTY-SEVEN

LILLY HAD STARTED talking and she just couldn’t seem to stop herself. When she stopped, she felt five pounds lighter. She also felt like crying. She probably did. She couldn’t remember. It was kind of a fog.

Lilly had expected one of two reactions from the man. She expected him either to turn on his heels and walk away from her, or call the police.

He did neither. Instead, he was silent for a few moments.

He said he would help her, but only if this was something she really wanted to do. He told her to sleep on it, but only for one night. He said the best decisions in life are made after waiting twenty-four hours, never longer. He then gave her one hundred dollars and his phone number. She promised to call him one way or another. She never broke a promise.

She went back to the hostel. It was as good a place as any.

Despite the early hour, despite the insanity of her day, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she put her head down on a pillow and fell fast asleep.

FORTY-EIGHT

JESSICA STOOD OUTSIDE Eve Galvez’s apartment. It was a small suite on the third floor of a nondescript, blocky brick building on Bustleton Avenue.

She stepped inside, and almost turned the lights on. But then she thought that doing so might be disrespectful. The last time Eve left these rooms she had every intention of returning.

Jessica danced the beam of the flashlight around the space. There was a card table in the dining area, one folding chair, a loveseat in the living room, a pair of end tables. There were no prints or framed posters on the wall, no houseplants, no area rugs. Black fingerprint powder claimed every surface.

She stepped into the bedroom. There was a double bed on a frame, no footboard or headboard. There was a dresser, but no mirror. Jimmy Valentine was right. Eve was a Spartan. The nightstand next to the bed held a cheap lamp and what looked like a photo cube. Jessica glanced in the closet: a pair of dresses, a pair of skirts. Black and navy blue. A pair of white blouses. They’d all been taken off the hangers, searched, and carelessly replaced. Jessica reached inside, smoothed the clothing, more out of habit than anything else.

The entire apartment was tidy, almost sterile. It seemed that Eve Galvez didn’t so much live here as stay here.

Jessica crossed the bedroom, picked up the photo cube. There were pictures on all six sides. One photo showed a picture of Eve at five or so, standing next to her brother on a beach. There was another that had to be Eve’s mother. They had the same eyes, the same cheekbones. One looked like Eve in, perhaps, eleventh grade. She was heavier in this snapshot than the others. Jessica turned it over, looked again at all sides. There were no photographs of Eve’s father.

Out of habit, or training, or just nosiness that had at least something to do with her becoming a police officer to begin with, Jessica shook the cube. Something inside rattled. She shook it again. The rattle was louder. There was something inside.

It took a few moments, but she found the way to open it. Inside was a ball of tissue and a plastic object, perhaps two inches long by a half inch wide. Jessica put her flashlight beam on it.

It was a USB flash drive, the kind that plugs into a port on a computer. It was not labeled or marked in any way. Jessica saw the print powder on the cube, so she knew someone at CSU had touched this. She looked inside the cube again. The flash drive had been wrapped in the tissue. Jessica understood. Eve had hidden it in there and put in the tissue so it would not rattle. She had done this for the possibility of a moment just such as this.

Against her better judgment—in fact, against all the judgment she had—she slipped the flash drive into her pocket, and clicked off her flashlight.

Five minutes later, leaving the apartment virtually the way she had found it, she headed home.

AN HOUR LATER Jessica sat in the bathtub.

It was Saturday. Vincent had two days off. He had taken Sophie to visit his parents. They would be back Sunday afternoon.

The house had been ghostly quiet, so she had taken her iPod into the tub. When she’d gotten home she’d plugged Eve’s flash drive into her desktop computer, and found that there were a few dozen mp3s on it, mostly songs by artists of whom Jessica had never heard. She added some them to her iTunes library.

Her Glock sat on the edge of the sink, right next to the tumbler containing three inches of Wild Turkey.

Jessica turned the hot water on again. It was already almost scalding in the tub, but she couldn’t seem to get it hot enough. She wanted the memory of Katja Dovic, and Monica Renzi, and Caitlin O’Riordan to wash off. She felt as if she would never be clean again.

EVE GALVEZ’S MUSIC was a mix of pop, salsa, tejano, danzón—a sort of old-time formal Cuban dance music—and something called huayño. Good stuff. New stuff. Different stuff. Jessica listened to a few songs by someone named Marisa Monte. She decided to add the rest of the songs to her iPod.

She got out of the tub, threw on her big fluffy robe and went into the small room off the kitchen they used as a computer room. And it was small. Room enough for a table, chair, and a G5 computer. She poured herself another inch, sat down, selected the flash drive. It was then that she noticed a folder she hadn’t seen, a folder labeled vademecum. She double-clicked it.

A few moments later, the screen displayed more than two hundred files. These were not system files, nor were they music files. They were Eve Galvez’s personal files. Jessica looked at the extensions. All of them were .jpg files. Graphics.

None of the files were named, just numbered, starting with one hundred.

Jessica clicked on the first file. She found that she was holding her breath as the hard drive turned, launching Preview, the default graphic display program she used on her computer. This was, after all, a picture of some kind, and she wasn’t all that sure it was something she wanted to see. Or should see.

A moment later, when the graphic showed up the screen, it was probably the last thing Jessica expected. It was the scanned image of a piece of paper, a yellowed, three-holed piece of notebook paper with blue lines, something akin to a leaf from a child’s school composition book. On it was a young woman’s back-slanted, loopy handwriting.

Jessica scrolled to the top of the file. When she saw the handwritten date, her heart began to race.

SEPTEMBER 3, 1988.

It was Eve Galvez’s diary.

FORTY-NINE

SEPTEMBER 3, 1988

I hide.

I hide because I know his anger. I hide because it took more than six months to heal the last time I saw this much rage in his eyes. The bones in my right arm, even now, tell me of a coming rainstorm. I hide because my mother cannot help me, not with her pills and her lovers; nor can my brother, my sweet brother who once stood up to him and paid so dearly. I hide because, not to hide, could very easily mean the end of me, the final punctuation of my short story.

I hear him in the foyer of the house, now, his huge boots on the quarry tile. He does not know about this secret place, this rabbit hole which has been my salvation so many times, this dusty sanctuary beneath the stairs. He does not know about this diary. If he ever found these words, I don’t know what he would do.

The drink has taken over his mind, and made it a house of red mirrors where he cannot see me. He can only see himself, his own monstrous face in the glass, reflected a thousand times over like some uncontrollable army.

I hear him walking up the stairs, just above me, calling my name. It won’t be long until he finds me. No secret can remain so forever.

I am afraid. I am afraid of Arturo Emmanuel Galvez. My father.

I may never make another entry in this journal.

And, dearest diary, if I do not, if I never speak to you again, I just wanted you to know why I do what I do.

I hide.

AUGUST 1, 1990

There is a place I go, a place that exists only behind my eyes. It all started when I was ten years old. A light in the heavens. More like a yellow moon, perhaps, a soft yellow moon in an aluminum sky. Heaven’s porch light.

Soon the moon becomes a face. A devil’s face.

JANUARY 22, 1992

I left yesterday. I hitchhiked along Frankford Avenue for awhile, caught a few good rides. One guy wanted to take me to Florida with him. If he hadn’t looked like Freddy Krueger I might have considered it. Even still I considered it. Anything to get away from Dad.

I am sitting on the steps at the art museum. It is hard to believe that I have lived in Philadelphia most of my life, and I have never been here. It is another world.

Enrique will be in this place one day. He will paint pictures that will make the world laugh and think and cry. He will be famous.

JULY 23, 1995

I still hide. I hide from my life, my obligations. I watch from afar.

    Those tiny fingers. Those dark eyes.

    These are my days of grace.

MAY 3, 2006

Nobody who is truly happy is an alcoholic or a drug addict. These things are mutually exclusive. Drugs are what you do instead of loving someone.

JUNE 2, 2008

I walk the Badlands. The nights here are made of broken glass, broken people. I carry two firearms now—one is my service weapon, a Glock 17. Full mag, plus a round in the chamber. There is no safety. I carry it in a holster on my hip.

The other weapon is a .25-caliber Beretta. I have an ankle rig for it, but it fits nicely into the palm of my hand. I do not enter a convenience store without it palmed. I do not walk the streets without my finger on the trigger. When I drive, even through Center City, its weight is familiar on my right thigh. It is always within reach. It is part of me now.

I am drinking too much. I am not sleeping. The alarm sounds at six. A shot before I can face the shower, the coffee, the mirror. No breakfast. Remember breakfast? Bagels and juice with Jimmy Valentine? Remember laughter?

All I want is one good night’s sleep. I would trade everything I have for one night’s sleep. I would trade my life for the sanctity of slumber, the sanction of rest.

Graciella mi amor. I have nothing. Not anymore.

I walk the Badlands, searching, dying, asking.

I am asking to be found.

Find me.

FIFTY

THE RAIN CAME at midnight. At first it was an unrepentant downpour, thick bulbs of water smashing against the pavement, the buildings, the grateful city. In time, it relented. It was now a thin drizzle. The asphalt steamed. With the pitted road, the rusted and abandoned hulks of old vehicles, the flickering neon, it looked like an alien landscape. Traffic was light on Kensington, the few cars taking advantage of the free car wash, the removal of the dust of a hot, dry August. Five styles of rap pounded in the distance.

Jessica had read more than twenty of Eve Galvez’s diary entries. She discovered early on in her reading that the files were not in any order. Eve as a child, Eve as an adult, Eve as a teenager. Jessica read them in the order in which they were scanned. There were still at least a hundred more.

Jessica’s tears had come after reading just a few. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. Eve was abused. Her father was monstrous. Eve was a runaway.

It was all a continuum of death—Monica Renzi, Caitlin O’Riordan, Katja Dovic, Eve Galvez.

Jessica stood in a doorway, surveyed the area. It was one of the worst parts of the city. Eve Galvez had walked these streets at night. Had she paid the price for it?

Jessica put the earbuds in her ears. She looked at the backlighted LCD screen, scrolled down, selected a song. The beat began to build. She felt the comforting weight of the Tomcat 32 in her pancake holster. Eve Galvez had carried two weapons. It was probably not a bad idea.

Jessica pulled up the hood on her rain slicker. She looked left, right. She was alone. For the moment.

Sophie, my love. Graciella, mi amor.

The music matched her heartbeat. She stepped out onto the sidewalk, and began to run.

Into the Badlands.

FIFTY-ONE

THE TENTH FLOOR of the Denison smelled like wet smoke, wet lumber, wet dog. Byrne was six bourbons into his plot, and should be home. He should be sleeping.

But here he was. At Laura Somerville’s apartment. The walls in the hallway were still warm. The wallpaper was peeled and cracked, some of it charred.

He pulled out his knife, slit the seal on the door, picked the lock, and entered the apartment.

The odor of burned upholstery and paper was overwhelming. Byrne put his tie over his mouth and nose. He had an old friend, Bobby Dotrice, who had retired from the PFD fifteen years earlier, and Byrne would swear under oath that man still smelled like smoke. Bobby had all new clothes, a new car, a new wife, even a new house. It never left you.

Byrne wondered if he smelled like the dead.

Even though the tenants of the building had been reassured there was no structural damage, Byrne stepped lightly through the space, his Maglite bouncing on overturned tables, chairs, bookcases. He wondered what had done more damage, the fire or the fire brigade.

He stood before the partially opened bedroom door. It seemed a lifetime ago he had been there. He pushed into the bedroom.

The window had been boarded up. The mattress and box spring were gone, as was the dresser. He saw blackened Scrabble tiles all over the room.

He opened the closet. It was mostly untouched, except for the water damage. On one side was a canvas garment bag. Byrne unzipped it, peered inside. Old dresses. Very old, very theatrical. She—

—sees the countryside from a cracked and taped truck window… she knows…

Byrne shut his eyes to the pain in his head.

She knows…

HE LOOKED at the top shelf. The strongbox was still there. He put his flashlight under his arm, took down the box. It was warm. There was no latch. The box was perfectly smooth. He shook it. Something shifted inside. It sounded like paper.

When Byrne left the apartment, just a few minutes later, he took the box with him. Out in the hallway he closed the door, reached into his pocket, took out a fresh police seal. He peeled off the back, smoothed it over the doorjamb, and pocketed the backing.

He drove back to South Philly.

AS HE STEPPED onto the sidewalk in front of his apartment building his phone beeped. It was a text message. Before reading the message, Byrne looked at his watch. It was 2:45 AM. Just about the only person who sent him text messages was Colleen. But not in the middle of the night.

He retrieved the message, looked at the LCD screen.

It read: 910 JHOME.

Byrne knew what it meant. It was a little-used code he had established a long time ago with Jessica. jhome meant she was at her house; 910 meant that she needed him, but it was not an emergency.

That would be 911.

Byrne got back into his car and headed to the Northeast.

FIFTY-TWO

SWANN AWOKE AT 3 AM. he could not sleep. It had been the same since he was a child. On the night before he and his father were to go on a tour, or even move between venues on a sunrise train, he found the anticipation to be overwhelming. Sleep would not find him.

This would be such a day.

He showered and shaved, dressed casually—perhaps an engineer preparing a survey in some wooded expanse, perhaps a junior high school principal about to give a holiday speech.

He parked near Tacony Creek Park, in a small lot off Wyoming Avenue. They would be arriving at first light. Some may have even spent the night in the park.

He looked at the screen of his cell phone. It was dark. Lilly would call. He was sure of it. But still, he had to be prepared if she did not.

FIFTY-THREE

JESSICA SAT ON her porch. Behind her, every light in the house was blazing. The stereo inside blasted the Go-Gos.

“Hey, partner!” she yelled.

Oh, boy, Byrne thought. She’s hammered. The Go-Gos proved it. “Hey.”

“You got my text message? That is so cool. God, I love technology.”

“You okay?”

Jessica butterflied a hand. “Pain-free.”

“I can see that. Family okay?”

“Vincent and Sophie are up at Vincent’s father’s house. I talked to them earlier. They went swimming. Sophie went off the low diving board. Her first time.” Jessica’s eyes misted. “I missed it.”

There was a pint bottle of bourbon between her feet. It was two-thirds full. Byrne knew she hadn’t gotten this plastered on two drinks.

“There’s got to be another casualty around here somewhere,” he said.

Jessica hesitated for a moment, then pointed at the hedges to the left of the porch. A glint of moonlight shimmered off an empty bottle of Wild Turkey. Byrne plucked it from the shadows, stood it on the porch.

“You know… you know how people say ‘life sucks,’ and how someone always says, right after that, ‘No one ever said life is supposed to be fair’?”

“Yeah,” Byrne said. “I think I’ve heard that one.”

“Well it’s fucking bullshit.”

Byrne agreed, but he had to ask. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, people say life is fair all the time. Right? When you’re a kid they tell you that you can be anything you want to be. They tell you that if you work hard, the world is your oyster. You can overcome anything. Buckle down! Hang in there! Stay with it!”

Byrne didn’t have much of an argument for this. “Well, yeah. They do say that.”

Jessica went south, her mind veering into some new area. She took another slow sip. “What did these girls do to deserve this, Kevin?”

“I don’t know.” Byrne wasn’t used to this dynamic. He was the melancholy drunk. She was the sane one. More than once—actually, more times than he could count—Jessica had listened to his inebriated ramblings, standing on some freezing street corner, standing on the banks of the river, standing in some steaming parking lot in Northern Liberties. He owed her. In many more ways than this. He listened.

“I mean, they ran away from home? Is that what this is all about? That was their crime? Shit, I ran away once.”

Byrne was shocked. Little Jessica Giovanni had run away from home? Strict Catholic, straight-A student, daughter of one of the most decorated cops in PPD history Jessica? “You did?”

“Oh you bet I did, buddy. You fucking bet I did.” She took another dramatic, Days of Wine and Roses swig from the bottle, wiped off her mouth with her wrist. “I only got as far as Tenth and Washington,” she added. “But I did it.”

She offered the pint to Byrne. He took it. For two reasons. One was that he didn’t mind having a drink. Two, it was probably a good idea to get the bottle away from Jessica. They fell silent for a while.

“Why the hell do we do this?” Jessica finally asked, loud and clear.

And there it was, Byrne thought. The question. Every homicide cop on the face of the earth asked it at one time or another. Some asked every day.

“I don’t know,” Byrne said. “I guess it’s because we’re no good for anything else.”

“Okay. Okay. Okay. I’ll buy that. But how do you know when it’s time to quit? That’s what I want to know. Huh? Is that in the handbook?”

Byrne looked off into the night. He took a healthy quaff. He needed it for what he was about to say. “Last story of the night. Okay?”

Jessica sat up straight, mimicking a five-year-old. A story.

“Do you know a cop named Tommy Delgado?” Byrne asked.

Jessica shook her head. “Never met him. I’ve heard the name, though. Vincent has brought him up a few times. Homicide?”

Byrne nodded. “In the blood. One of the best ever. Remember the Manny Utrillo case?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Tommy cracked it. Walked into the unit one day with the piece of shit killer in irons. Walked him in like a prom date. Eight detectives were working the phones, tracking down leads on the case, Tommy Delgado walks the fucker in. Brought Danish for everyone in the other hand.”

Byrne hit the Wild Turkey again, capped it.

“So, anyway, we get called to a scene in Frankford. We weren’t the primaries, we were there to back up Tommy and his partner Mitch Driscoll. I was working with Jimmy then. I was in the unit for maybe three years. Still wet. I was still calling the scumbags ‘sir.’ ”

Jessica laughed. She had only given up that practice recently.

“Okay.”

“This place was ugly. Job was even worse. The victim was an eighteen-month-old baby. Her so-called father had strangled her with a lamp cord.”

“Jesus.”

“Jesus wasn’t there that day, partner.” Byrne sat down next to Jessica. “Two hours in we’re wrapping it up. I mean, the guy copped to it on the scene. Not too much intrigue. Now, Jimmy and I are keeping a close eye on Tommy, because he’s looking a little shaky, right? Like he’s going to burn down the whole block, like he’s going to cap the first addict he sees on the street, just for drawing air. We’re standing on the porch, and I see Tommy staring at something on the ground. Mesmerized. I look down and I see what he’s looking at. Know what it was?”

Jessica tried to imagine. Based on what Byrne had told her about the job, it couldn’t be a crucial piece of evidence—a shell casing, a bloody footprint. “What?”

“A Cheerio.”

At first Jessica thought she hadn’t heard him right, then soon realized she had. She nodded. She knew what he meant, knew where this was going. Cheerios were the universal toddler pacifiers. Cheerios were baby crack.

“One Cheerio was sitting on this shitty, Astroturf porch, and Tommy Delgado can’t take his eyes off it. Now, keep in mind, here was a man who had seen it all. Two tours in Nam, twenty-five plus on the job. A few minutes later he walks to the back of the building, crying his eyes out. I checked on him, just to make sure he didn’t have his piece out, but there he was, just sitting on this bench, sobbing. Broke my heart, but I didn’t approach him.

“That one thing snapped him in half, Jess. One Cheerio. He was never the same after that.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

Byrne took a few moments, shrugged. “He worked another few years, took his thirty. But he was just sleepwalking the job, you know? Bringing up the rear, hauling water.”

They fell silent for a full minute.

“When did it all go to crap, Kevin?”

Byrne had his ideas on this. “I think it was when boxes of pasta went from sixteen ounces to twelve ounces and nobody told us.”

Jessica looked fallen. “They did?”

Byrne nodded.

“Son of a bitch. No wonder I’m always hungry.”

Byrne glanced at his watch. “Want to get some breakfast?”

Jessica looked at the black, star-dotted sky. “At night?”

“Coffee first.” He helped Jessica to her feet, and marched her into the kitchen.