Текст книги "The Echo Man"

Автор книги: Richard Montanari

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Chapter 79

    In the Loss Prevention office Jessica stood behind John Shepherd. He rewound the video files. The recordings shuttled between different views, so there was a six-second rotation between each of four cameras on the twelfth floor. Even in a hotel as pricey and profitable as Le Jardin, they did not have the resources to devote a hard drive to each of the scores of cameras in and around the property.

    Shepherd rewound the recording to when Jessica and the other detectives came to Room 1208, then kept going. A handful of people backed up to their rooms, as well as the stairwell at the end of the hallways. Shepherd carried on until he saw one of the room attendants exit the room backward, then retreat down the hall. He stopped, played it forward.

    In normal time the view showed the room attendant walking down the hall, toward Room 1208. The attendant was female, petite and slender, with her light-colored hair in a braid. Here the view began its rotation, shifting to the area near the guest elevators.

    'Do you know who this is?' Jessica asked.

    'Hard to tell,' Shepherd said. 'I know a lot of the room attendants – most of them, in fact. But from this angle it's difficult.'

    When the view returned to the eastern hallway, they saw the attendant stop in front of 1208 for a few seconds. She didn't knock, she didn't try the door. She just stood there, perhaps listening. The camera then cut away to another view, again to the elevators, where it stayed for six seconds. No one came or went. It then cut to a view of the other end of the hallway, the western wing. Two women came out of a room there. The next cut was to the service elevators. Empty. Back to the young woman in front of 1208. The recording caught up with her as she knocked on the door. There was no audio, but Jessica could see her lips move. In the split second before the cut-away she lifted her hand, and appeared to swipe a card in the electronic lock.

    The recording moved again to its other locations. No other people were visible.

    They watched the rotation for the next minute and saw no activity. When they returned to the eastern hallway they saw a man heading away from the camera. He was in costume, a wizard's costume. He moved slowly, so that by the time he reached 1208 the camera had rotated. When the camera returned he was gone, and the door to the stairwell was just closing.

    'Shit,' Shepherd said. He rewound the recording with the joystick, and toggled it back and forth. There were no details visible. It was impossible to tell if the man had entered the room or just passed by. With his hat, long coat and what appeared to be gloves on his hands, there were no identifiable details.

    Shepherd pointed to the time code in the lower right-hand corner of the frame.

    'Right around here is when we went up,' he said.

    A minute later Jessica saw herself and Josh Bontrager walking down the hall. A few seconds later Shepherd joined them. They went inside the room.

    'I'm going to interrogate these locks,' Shepherd said. 'I'll be right back.'

    While Shepherd was gone Jessica toggled the video back and forth. She saw nothing new. She looked at the menu down the right side of the screen. She saw that one of the selections was the rear loading dock. She clicked over. It was a static shot from above one of the three docks behind the hotel, showing the loading bay, a pair of Dumpsters, and the hotel's shuttle bus parked in a space. There was no movement. In the upper right-hand corner she could see a sliver of Seventeenth Street.

    She was just about to click back over – she was certain that John Shepherd didn't want her messing around with the computers – when she saw a view that she had not seen before. It was above the side door to the loading dock, the man door, not the huge corrugated steel door. The view cut away, but before it did she saw something. She ran it back.

    There was no mistake. It was Kevin Byrne standing near the mouth of the alley.

    Jessica checked the time code.

    Was this when Byrne dropped off the package with the concierge? If so, what was he doing at the rear of the hotel?

    Jessica heard the door open in the outer office. She clicked back to the paused recording at the beginning of the clip of the twelfth floor. Shepherd reentered the office.

    'I interrogated all four locks along the path,' Shepherd said. 'The lock on 1208, the service elevator, the security door leading out to the loading dock, and the door on the dock itself. All four locks register the same card. It is signed out to one of the room attendants. Lucinda Doucette.'

    Why is that name familiar? Jessica thought. 'Do you know her?'

    'Oh yeah,' Shepherd said. 'Sweet kid. Shy.'

    'Do you have a photograph of her?'

    'Sure,' Shepherd said. He moved to another computer terminal, tapped a few keys. He input Lucinda's name and a few seconds later her ID page came up. He hit print and the color printer began to cycle. Seconds later, Jessica was looking at Lucinda Doucette's young face. Jessica knew her. She was the young woman at the Hosanna House, the one who'd been sitting at the little table with Carlos.

    Jessica had no choice. She called in an all-points bulletin on the girl.

    Shepherd hit a few keys, printing off one hundred copies of Lucinda Doucette's photograph. 'We need to get this to all the sector cars in the area.'

    When John Shepherd grabbed the printed photos and left the office, Jessica's cellphone rang. It was Nicci Malone.

    'Nicci. Why aren't you on channel with this?'

    'I'm not in the hotel anymore.'

    'What do you mean? Where are you?'

    Nicci gave her the location. It was a few blocks away.

    'What's going on?' Jessica asked.

    Detective Malone hesitated. 'You better get over here right away.'

Chapter 80

    Lucy walked up Sansom Street in a fog, stepping from shadow to shadow. Everyone who passed her was a danger. They all knew what she had done. She could see it in their eyes. There was traffic, conversations, street sounds all around her, but she didn't hear the sounds. All she heard was the white noise in her head, raised to an insane volume, the static of her impending madness.

    What had she done?

    All she remembered was the bell. It had rung twice.

    What did it mean?

    She kept walking. Block after block passed. Walk. Don't Walk. Red light. Green light. There were people all around her, but they were ghosts. The only person who lived in her world right now was a dead man. A man lying under the sheets, soaked in blood.

    All that blood.

    At 22nd Street her legs felt as if she could not take another step, but she forced herself, she knew she had to keep moving.

    When she reached the corner of Sansom and 23rd something jolted her out of her dark reverie. There were police cars all up and down the streets, their lights flashing on the walls of the buildings. Groups of people were gathered on the corners, chatting with each other, pointing at the church. Lucy had walked this way many times.

    She was pretty sure that there was a small cemetery next to the church. What was going on?

    It didn't matter. It had nothing to do with her. She knew what she had to do. She knew who she had to call. She crossed 23rd Street. There was a policeman standing in the middle of the street, directing traffic away from the church. Lucy pulled up the collar on her coat, angled her head away from him. As she passed, she chanced a glance. He was looking right at her. She quickened her pace, made it across the street. When she had gone half a block she stepped back into the shadows, glanced back. The cop was still looking in her direction.

    Lucy ran. She tried to get her bearings. The river was just a few blocks to her left. Ahead was Chestnut, Market, Arch, Cherry.

    Cherry.

    There was only one place for her to go.

    Lucy stood in front of Apartment 106, her breath coming in hot, painful waves. She had run nearly six blocks and her sides ached. She tried to calm herself, to catch her breath. She could hear the sound of a television coming from one of the other apartments on this floor. Somewhere a dog was barking. She knocked softly, but there was no response. She tried again. Nothing.

    She tried the doorknob. It turned in her hand. She pushed open the door, and stepped into Mr. Costa's apartment.

    The flat was completely empty. This time, even the Dreamweaver booth was gone. The floor had been swept, the walls were bare. She could smell the cleaning products – Spic 'N Span, Lemon Pledge, Windex, Scrubbing Bubbles.

    Lucy moved slowly through the living room, glanced into the tiny kitchen. The old appliances remained, but that was it. There was no dinette table, no chairs, no dishes in the sink, no strainer. She turned back to the living room. On the right was a door that she figured led to a bedroom. She stepped lightly, but the old wooden floor still creaked under her weight. She stopped, waiting for the light to go on, for Mr. Costa to appear suddenly as he was likely to do. But it didn't happen. Lucy inched open the door to the bedroom. It too was empty. No furniture, no clothing, no personal items of any kind. There was a single window overlooking the street. That was it.

    But it wasn't.

    There was something on the wall. A small picture in a frame. Lucy reached over, flipped the light switch, but it didn't work. She crossed the bedroom, pushed the curtain to the side. A wedge of illumination from the street lights across the road spilled into the room. She took the small picture from the wall, angled it toward the borrowed light. The photograph was old, kind of blurry. It was a picture of a little girl, no more than two years old. She sat on a beach. In front of her was a bright red plastic bucket. In her hand was a small shovel. She squinted at the sunlight. She wore a floppy flowered sun hat. Chubby cheeks, chubby knees.

    Lucy knew the face, the eyes. The last time she had seen those eyes they had been red with crying.

    It was Peggy van Tassel.

    Lucy's hands began to shake. She tried to plug it into everything that had happened in the past few days and she could not. Then she tried to put the picture in the pocket of her coat but it wouldn't fit.

    She knew what she had to do. She would get to the nearest phone and call Detective Byrne. The longer she waited, the worse it was going to get for her.

    Before she could take a single step, she heard the floorboards creak, felt the warm breath on her neck. Someone stood right behind her.

    'Police,' the man said. 'Get down on the floor and put your hands behind your back. Do it now.'

    Lucy felt her legs go soft. The photograph slipped from her grasp. It crashed to the floor.

    'Now,' he repeated.

    Lucy got down on the floor, next to the shattered glass, put her hands behind her back. She felt the man take her arms by the wrists, then slip a plastic band around them, tighten it.

    He left her there like that for a full minute. She dared not turn to look at him. She heard him pace around the room. Then he spoke.

    'Can you hear them?' he asked softly.

    Lucy didn't know what he was talking about. She tried to listen hard, to figure out what he meant, but there was only the roar of terror in her head.

    'The dead are all over the city,' the man continued. 'Tonight it belongs to them. It always has.'

    A few moments later the man shone a flashlight on the broken photograph on the floor, spotlighting the little girl's face. He held it there for a long time.

    'You could have saved her,' the man said. 'You could have saved her and you did nothing.'

    Lucy's mind began to spin. This man was not the police.

    She was pulled roughly to her feet. She felt the man's breath right near her ear.

    'You're as guilty as George Archer.'

Chapter 81

    The St Demetrios Orthodox Church was a long rectangular building with a single cupola. Behind it was a graveyard, a small neighborhood cemetery, easily a hundred years old. There was a waist-high brick wall surrounding the courtyard, which was accessible by a double wrought-iron gate. In the light thrown from the headlights of the sector cars and departmental sedans, the headstones cast long shadows over the grounds, as well as onto the walls of the row homes on either side. The flashing lights projected images nearly ten feet tall, giant specters overseeing the dead.

    As Jessica approached the scene, Nicci Malone came jogging up to her side. Nicci pointed to a young couple standing near one of the sector cars. They looked terribly frightened.

    'These two were walking up the street about a half-hour ago. They said they were not really paying attention but when they got here to the edge of the block they saw someone walking in the shadows to the center of the cemetery. They said it was a man carrying something heavy over his shoulders.'

    'Did they get a good look at the guy?' Jessica asked. Nicci shook her head. 'Too dark on that side. But they still watched what he was doing. They said he dropped the parcel to the ground, unwrapped it. When they saw that it was a body, they froze. Then they saw the man position the leg, propping it up on one of the low headstones.'

    Jessica knew what came next. She remained silent.

    'Then, according to our witnesses, the man jumped high into the air and came down on the leg. The woman said she heard the sound of the breaking bone all the way on the other side of the cemetery.'

    A news helicopter roared overhead. Jessica wondered what this grotesque display might look like from above.

    'What about the vehicle? Did they get a look?'

    Again Nicci shook her head. 'They were both pretty much over the edge at this point. We were lucky they had the wherewithal to call us.'

    Jessica glanced at the street corners. She did not see any police cameras. This was not a high-crime or high-drug-traffic area. She looked at the walls of the stone church. She did not see any surveillance cameras there, either.

    When she stepped into the gated graveyard, Jessica saw the corpse, the now-familiar signature. The body was nude, a white middle-aged male, shaved clean. There was a band of paper around his forehead. The left foot rested on the headstone. Jessica crossed over to the plot, aimed her Maglite at the dead body, and saw the sharp bone protruding from the skin, just above the left knee. She thought about the line from Danse Macabre.

Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking,

You can hear the cracking of the bones of the dancers.

    Then Jessica leaned in, moved the victim's left leg a few inches, directed the beam of her flashlight at the headstone. At the top she saw:

O THEOS NA TIN ANAPAFSI

    The name of the person in the grave was Melina Laskaris.

    She angled the light to the victim's right hand, which was on the ground, palm up. On the ring finger she saw a small tattoo of a donkey. It was the seventh animal, which meant there was one more to go.

    Before Jessica could stop her – and she didn't really want to stop her – Nicci Malone stepped forward, knelt down, pulled off the bloodied white headband. When Jessica saw the victim's face, the triangle was complete.

    The dead woman was Lina Laskaris.

    Her killer was Eduardo Robles.

    The accomplice, the harmony in this horror show – the broken body sprawled before them in this crumbling graveyard – was Detective Dennis Stansfield.

Chapter 82

    He stood in shadows, just a block from the Le Jardin hotel, the sounds of his city all around him, the flashing police lights a few blocks away. He felt the hand on his arm.

    'Kevin.'

    Christa-Marie looked fragile, sculpted from moonlight. She raised a hand to his cheek, a warm finger tracing the lines in his face. She slipped her hand around the back of his head, leaned forward and kissed him, gently at first, then with a growing passion.

    A moment later she leaned back, looked into his eyes.

    'It's time, isn't it?' she asked.

    'Yes,' Byrne said. 'Are you ready?'

    'Yes.' She took his hand in hers. 'Take me home.'

Chapter 83

    'Jess?'

    It was Russell Diaz. The city block had been taken over by law enforcement. Residents had begun to drift out of their houses. Endlessly, the helicopter flew back and forth, hovering overhead. Jessica looked around. David Albrecht was not to be found.

    'You have a minute?' Diaz asked.

    She did not. But she knew that this was coming, just as she knew what it was about. 'Sure.'

    Diaz looked at his two men. 'Give us a second.'

    The two officers walked a few feet away, leaned against Jessica's car. When Diaz felt they were out of earshot, he spoke.

    'You know what I have to ask, don't you?' he said, lowering his voice.

    Jessica remained silent. It was a rhetorical question. Diaz plowed ahead. Niceties were over.

    'I need to talk to Kevin,' Diaz said. 'Have you heard from him?'

    'Not since earlier this evening.'

    'About what time was that?'

    Jessica had to think about this. She had to be accurate. This was all going on the record. 'Maybe an hour ago.'

    'He called you?'

    'Yes.'

    'Did he mention where he was going?'

    Now she had to be careful. Byrne had not said anything specific. 'No.'

    'Is he still driving that van?'

    'I don't know.'

    Diaz looked out over the gathering crowd, back.

    'I want to show you something.'

    They walked over to the unmarked police van. Diaz opened the sliding side door. Inside was a rack of electronic equipment, surveillance monitors, three locked gun racks. Diaz grabbed a laptop off the front seat, opened it, put it on the floor of the van. The screen instantly displayed a flow chart. On it were six different squares. Diaz clicked the first one.

    Seconds later three separate documents cascaded across the screen. Jessica recognized them as PPD witness statements, presented in .pdf format.

    'We have statements from three people who live on West Tioga Street,' Diaz said. 'Neighbors of Sharon and Kenneth Beckman. They all stated that they saw Detective Byrne at the Beckman house an hour before her son reported her missing.'

    'She was next of kin, Russell. Both Kevin and I were there that morning. We made notification.'

    'As you know, he returned a short time later. Did you accompany Detective Byrne back to the premises?'

    'No,' Jessica said. 'He returned to follow up. We had received additional information.'

    'What was the information?'

    Diaz knew the answer to his question. He was testing her. 'That Kenneth Beckman was questioned in the murder of Antoinette Chan.'

    'When did Detective Byrne return to the Roundhouse?'

    'It had to be around three.'

    'What did he say about the interview?'

    'He said that Sharon Beckman didn't answer the door.'

    Diaz took a moment, then tapped another square on the chart. This was the ME's preliminary report on Joseph Novak. 'The coroner puts the time of death for Joseph Novak at between eight p.m. and six a.m. Do you know where Detective Byrne was during those hours?'

    This was getting so bad, so fast. Was Diaz making an attempt to establish some sort of conspiracy here?

    'I do not.'

    'Did Detective Byrne mention anything about seeing Mr. Novak again that day?'

    'No.'

    Diaz hit yet another button on the laptop. A grainy video began to play. It was the stationary image of a city street at night.

    'This is PPD surveillance footage near the corner of Frankford and York.'

    At the thirty-four-second mark on the video a man crosses the top of the frame, hesitates for a moment, walks off frame. A few seconds later, a second man walks across the frame, right to left. He continues off. Diaz rewound the recording. He pointed to the lower right of the image, at a van parked on the street. 'This tag is registered to a man named Patrick Connolly. He is Detective Byrne's cousin. Connolly stated that he lent this vehicle to Detective Byrne last week.'

    Jessica looked closely. It was clearly the Sedona minivan. She looked closely at the whole image. 'I believe Kevin already acknowledged that he was there that night. This is not new information.'

    Diaz hit play. The image scrolled by in slow motion this time. He freeze-framed it as the first man walked into the frame. 'This is Eduardo Robles.' He hit play again. Robles disappears off frame, walking down the alley, the alley in which his body was found. The second man enters the frame. Diaz froze the image again.

    'Do you recognize this person, detective?' he asked.

    Jessica noted that she had gone from Jess to detective. To another person it might have gone unnoticed. Not to anyone in law enforcement. 'No. Sorry. It could be anyone.'

    'Not exactly.' Diaz hit a few keys, zoomed in. It increased the size of the pixels, but some things were obvious. Like the man's left hand. 'It can only be a white male, so it can't be "just anyone".' He pointed to something next to the figure. 'We took measurements on this stand– pipe. This person is over six feet tall. He is wearing a dark overcoat and a dark watch cap.' Diaz reached onto a shelf. He produced a photograph of Kevin Byrne, a picture that Jessica recognized instantly.

    It had been taken a year ago at a benefit in the Poconos. It was of Kevin and her standing with a bunch of kids. Kevin wore a dark overcoat and navy blue watch cap.

    Jessica said nothing.

    Diaz directed her gaze to the body on the ground across the cemetery from where they stood. 'Everyone was well aware of the friction between Detective Byrne and Detective Stansfield. Add to that the incident between them at the Roundhouse and you can see what I'm faced with, right?' Diaz closed the laptop, squared himself in front of her. 'I now have a dead cop, and Kevin Byrne is missing again.'

    Diaz opened a second laptop. There on the screen were two microscope photographs of hair shafts. Diaz pointed to the one on the left. 'This is a sample taken from a brush belonging to Sharon Beckman.' He pointed to the example on the right. Jessica was far from an expert, but to her eye the samples were identical. 'This was found on the driver's seat of Kevin Byrne's van. They match.'

    Jessica recalled the hair on Byrne's shoulder.

    'Did you get a haircut?'

    'Yeah. I popped in and got a trim.'

    Jessica began to feel nauseated. She remained silent, which was just as well because she had no idea what to say. Diaz closed the side door of the van, signaled to his two men. They approached, stopped a few feet away.

    'Look, Jess. If you were looking at this from the outside, you would see why we need to talk to Detective Byrne.'

    Jessica knew that Diaz was right. In her career she had brought people in for questioning based on far less.

    'I don't know where he is, Russ. I've left five voicemails for him in the past half-hour.'

    'When was the last time you called?'

    'Five minutes ago.'

    'Want to try again?'

    Jessica took out her phone. She put it on speaker, hit Byrne's speed– dial number. It rang twice, and his voicemail greeting came on. There was no point leaving a sixth message. Jessica closed her phone.

    Diaz nodded. 'Detective Byrne carries a 17?'

    He was referring to a Glock 17, the standard-issue service weapon for PPD detectives. 'Yeah.'

    'Does he carry a second piece?'

    My God, Jessica thought, her heart in free fall. She was betraying one of the most important people in her life. She wondered how Kevin would handle the same situation if someone was asking these questions about her. 'Sometimes.'

    'Today?'

    Jessica told the truth. 'I don't know.'

    'Does he pack anything else?'

    Diaz meant knives, spray, knuckles, batons. 'No.'

    Diaz processed it all. He looked out over the burgeoning mass of people, then back at Jessica. 'You know him better than anyone. I know you are close. I know this has to be hard for you.'

    Jessica said nothing.

    Diaz handed her a card. 'That's my cell on the back. If you talk to Kevin, have him call me.'

    Jessica took the card, said nothing.

    'You know this is going to move forward, right?'

    'I know.'

    'It's better for everyone if he walks in the front door.'

    Diaz hesitated a few moments, then turned and walked away.

    Jessica looked out over the cemetery. In all, there were probably thirty or forty people on scene. Jessica knew most of them by name, yet she had never felt so completely alone in her life.

    A few minutes later Josh Bontrager emerged from the crowd.

    'You okay, Josh?'

    'No,' he said. 'I am not.'

    'What's wrong?'

    Bontrager bowed his head for moment. 'He was my partner, and now he's dead.'

    'Josh, he wasn't really your partner. You were paired with him for one case.'

    'Doesn't matter. Today he was my partner. Today I let him down.'

    Jessica knew what he meant. She had certainly let Kevin Byrne down today.

    'And I didn't even like the guy.'

    Jessica left Josh to his thoughts for a few moments. She then filled him in on everything that Diaz had said.

    'That's ridiculous,' Bontrager said.

    'I know.'

    'What are we going to do?'

    'I'm going to try to find him before they do.'

    'I'll go with you.'

    'No, Josh. I can't ask you to do that.'

    'Well, with all due respect, I don't remember you asking. It's something I'm volunteering for. Okay?'

    Jessica lowered her voice as a pair of CSU officers walked by. 'Josh, there's a good chance I'm going off the reservation here. There's a very good chance I'm going to lose my job tonight. Maybe worse.'

    Bontrager took a few steps away, looked out over the scene. The medical examiner's blue and white van came rolling up slowly. They would soon be loading Dennis Stansfield's body into the back for transport. Bontrager turned back. 'Remember my first days on the job?'

    Jessica remembered them well. They'd been investigating a case that eventually took them up the Schuylkill River into Berks County. Josh Bontrager had been on temporary assignment. 'I remember.'

    'Kevin wasn't too crazy about me at first, you know.'

    'It just takes a little time for him to warm up to people.'

    Bontrager looked at her, offered a smile. 'Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania may not be a hotbed of intellectuals, but we do know people,' he said. 'I knew right away what a closed group this is. I was the new guy, and a really inexperienced guy at that.'

    Jessica just listened. She had gone through a brutal initiation period herself.

    'In those first few months I made a lot of mistakes.'

    'You did fine, Josh.'

    'No, it only looked that way. I can't tell you how many times Kevin took me aside and showed me the ropes. How many times he covered for me.' Bontrager put his hands in his pockets. He looked across the cemetery. 'Nobody wanted me to have this job. Not really. I heard all the jokes, you know. All the stuff said behind my back. People thought I didn't, but I did.'

    Jessica remembered well the hard time Josh had gotten. It was always bad enough for the new guy in the unit, but doubly so for Josh Bontrager, considering his background.

    'You toughed it out, Josh,' Jessica said. 'You've earned the right to be here. You're a damned good detective.'

    Bontrager shrugged. 'Well, it was you and Kevin who went to bat for me back then. I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for you guys. If I lose it all tonight, I can live with that.'

    'It might get worse than that, you know. Much worse.'

    Josh Bontrager looked at her. Sometimes, with his clear eyes, open smile, and seemingly untamable cowlick, he looked like a kid, some country boy who'd got off 1-95 at the wrong exit and wandered into the city. Other times, like right at this moment, he looked like a homicide detective with the Philadelphia Police Department.

    'The Amish have an old saying,' Bontrager said. "'Courage is fear that has said its prayers."' He drew his Glock, checked the action, holstered it, snapped it in. 'I've said my prayers, Jess.'

    Jessica glanced at the crime scene, then back. 'Thanks, Josh.'

    'I'm going to lock my car,' Bontrager said. 'I'll be right back.'

    As Josh walked across the street, Jessica thought about what Byrne had said.

    It's always been about the music.

    Before she could make a mental list of their options her phone rang. It was David Albrecht. She answered.

    'David, now is not really a good—'

    There was static on the line. 'What's going on?' he asked.

    'What do you mean?'

    'I heard the call go out. Is there another victim?'

    'What do you mean, you heard the call go out?'

    'I heard it on the police radio.'

    'You have a scanner?'

    'Well, yeah,' he said. 'Of course.'

    Jessica hadn't considered this. It made sense. 'Where are you, David?'

    'I'm following Detective Byrne.'

    Jessica's pulse spiked. She waved Bontrager over. 'You're with Kevin?'

    'I'm right behind him. He was parked near the hotel. I saw a woman in the van. I thought you guys were together. I followed.'

    'Where are you?'

    'Hang on,' Albrecht said. 'Let me check my GPS.'

    A few agonizing seconds passed.

    'We're on Bells Mill Road.'

    Bells Mill Road cut through the northeast section of Fairmount Park, traversing the Wissahickon Creek just west of Chestnut Hill.

    'Do you know where he's going?' Jessica asked.

    'Not a clue,' Albrecht said. 'But I kind of like it that way. This is so—'

    'Which way are you heading?'

    'We're going east. Northeast, technically. My GPS says we're coming up on something called Forbidden Drive. Is that the coolest name of all time or what? I think I'm changing the name of my movie to Forbidden Drive.'

    'David, I want you to—'

    'Hang on.' A loud blast of static. The coming storm was playing havoc with the signal. 'He's slowing down. I'll call you right back.'

    'David, wait.'