Richard Montanari (49 page)

    'You
take him down?' Byrne asked.

    'Guy
hit the Sheraton Society Hill in March, moved over to the Hyatt Penn's Landing
in May. We had him on tape, but he was slick - ball caps, glasses, packing his
waist to look heavier. Wore a suit one time, sweats and sneaks the next. We got
him, though.'

    They
kicked the cop talk around for a while, until Shepherd moved his stool closer
and lowered his voice. 'Now, I know how magnetic and incredibly charming I am,
but I think y'all are here for another reason.'

    Byrne
took a moment. 'There's a convention here. We think we might have a connection
to a case we're working.'

    Shepherd
nodded. 'The serial?'

    'Yeah.'

    'Lay
it out.'

    Byrne
told Shepherd the details.

    'And
his name is George Archer?' Shepherd asked.

    'Yeah.'

    'Hang
on.'

    Shepherd
left the bar, returned a few minutes later. 'No one registered here under that
name. Maybe he's staying somewhere else. Do you have a description on the guy?'

    'Not
yet,' Byrne said. 'We have a request in to the state police. But they may not
even have a picture. The guy was questioned, but he was never arrested or
charged.'

    Shepherd
nodded. He'd been right where Jessica and Byrne were.

    'Can
you reach out to some of the other hotels, see if they have a George Archer?'
Byrne asked.

    'No
problem. I'll make a few calls.' Shepherd pointed to the other side of the
lobby. 'They're setting up in the Crystal Room right now. It's going to be a
big deal tonight, even bigger tomorrow.'

    'Do
you have cameras in there?'

    John
Shepherd chuckled. 'Is the pope .. . what is the pope now, by the way?'

    'German.'

    'Doesn't
sound as good as Polish, does it?'

    'No.'

    'We
have cameras,' Shepherd said. 'Come on.'

    Inside
was a small outer office, which led, through another secure door, to a larger
room in which two people were working.

    Shepherd
spoke to a young woman at one of the desks, wrote something on the pad. While
he was showing Jessica and Byrne the surveillance capabilities of the hotel,
she would be putting in calls to the security directors of the surrounding
hotels, looking for a guest named George Archer.

    Jessica
scanned the monitors. The one on the right had six windows up that showed the
huge atrium, viewed from the mezzanine level. A dozen people or so had
congregated near the center of the room. A man and a woman, middle-aged, stood
at the front desk. An elderly woman chatted with the concierge. A few seconds
later the view shifted to the parking lot and front entrance. A limo idled at
the front door as a pair of young bellmen pulled a number of large suitcases
from the trunk. Another bellman leaned into the passenger window of a waiting
cab.

    The
software rotated the windows, floor after floor, with a view of the elevators
constantly in the upper right-hand section of the screen.

    Shepherd
sat down, clicked a few keys, and more than sixty small windows lined up on the
two monitors. 'We've got two dome cams in every hall, clock cams in all the
personnel spaces, half-zone weatherproof bullet cams in the parking lot, and
four state-of-the-art 360-degree pan-and-tilt domes in the atrium and lobby,
watching the desk and the money room. Not too much goes on here that we don't
see.'

    'This
is a real voyeur's delight,' Byrne said.

    'Wait
until you see the bathroom cams,' Shepherd said, with a wink.

    Jessica
and Byrne had done a lot of work with the Audio-Visual Unit of the PPD, as well
as the communications unit, which monitored the PPD street cams, for which
Philadelphia was getting more and more funding.

    Shepherd
brought up the Crystal Room on a split screen. There was a man at the lectern,
clearly an employee of whatever company was providing the PA and sound systems
for the event. He performed a sound check.

    'So
the people in this society used to be either cops or prosecutors?' Jessica
asked.

    'Not
at all,' Shepherd said. 'Some were in forensics, some worked for medical
examiners' offices, some of them were never on the job at all. There are pretty
tight membership rules and dues, which are kind of steep, so they keep out the lowlifes
and the thrill seekers.'

    'There
goes my shot at membership,' Byrne said.

    'Believe
it.'

    'Are
they any good at what they do?' Jessica asked.

    Shepherd
nodded. 'That's my understanding. Every case they take on has to be formally
presented to them by a bona fide agency. They don't work with the FBI or the
NYPD, but just about everyone else of note has presented something.'

    The
three of them watched the monitors for a while, the constant rotation of views
from within and without the hotel. It was a relentless flow: staff, guests,
visitors, deliveries.

    Was
one of them their killer? Jessica wondered. Would she know him if she saw him?

    Jessica
got onto the
Société Poursuite
website. In addition to a brief history,
its mission statement, and an explanation of what the group was about, there
were lists of its members, officers, past officers, and sub-chapters around the
world. It was clear that the group chose its cases carefully, perhaps with an
eye on choosing only those that had a chance of resolution.

    The
menu at the bottom offered links to other sites and to message boards.

    'Check
the message boards,' Byrne said. Jessica clicked over. There were a few dozen
ongoing topics. One was a discussion of current trends in forensics. Another
was a discussion of the disposition of homicide cases around the world. There
was a discussion of ideas for cases for the group to tackle. This board had
more than four thousand entries. Jessica clicked over, and as she scrolled
through the posts her skin began to crawl.

    One
by one the entries appeared. They were all there. All the original homicides
had been suggested as cases in which the group might be interested. Melina
Laskaris, Marcellus Palmer, Antoinette Chan, Margaret Van Tassel. And they were
all suggested by one user. The user name was
cssl835.

    Jessica
got on the phone to John Shepherd, asking him to talk to someone from the group
about the criteria for posting. A few minutes later, Shepherd called back.

    'I
talked to the president of the group,' Shepherd said. 'He says you don't have
to log in or be a member to post something on that board. He says that it would
discourage people from coming forward.'

    'So
they have no record of who this "cssl835" might be?'

    'No,'
Shepherd said. 'Sorry.'

    Jessica
thanked him, hung up. She looked back at the screen. Whoever was doing this was
connected to, or had an interest in,
Société Poursuite.
Was it George
Archer? Was George Archer
css1835
?

    Jessica
looked at the material she had received from Frederic Duchesne.

    Camille
Saint-Saens -
css -
had been born in 1835.

    Byrne
turned to look at her. 'Yeah?'

    'Could
I see you for a minute?'

    Byrne
crossed the room, dropped his weapon in his file drawer, and walked into Dana
Westbrook's office.

    When Byrne
walked into the office he was more than a little surprised to see that, in
addition to Sergeant Westbrook, there were Michael Drummond from the DA's
office and Inspector Ted Mostow. In the corner, arms crossed, smug look in
place, was Dennis Stansfield. Russell Diaz held down the other chair.

    'Inspector,'
Byrne said. 'Good to see you, sir.'

    'How've
you been, Kevin?'

    'Better
days.'

    'How's
the baby?'

    Byrne
shrugged, more or less on cue. 'Ten fingers, ten toes.'

    It
was an old expression, one that meant all was well with whatever case you were
working on. In homicide you responded that way whether the case was going well
or not.

    Byrne
nodded at Michael Drummond. 'Mike.' Drummond smiled, but there was no warmth in
it. Something was wrong.

    'Please,
have a seat,' Westbrook said. Byrne took a chair near the windows.

    'As
you know, Detective Stansfield is working the Eduardo Robles homicide,'
Drummond began.

    Byrne
just listened. Drummond continued.

    'In
the course of his investigation he discovered the existence of a surveillance
camera on the opposite side of the street, just across

    from
the Chinese restaurant. After watching footage from the time frame in question,
and running the plates on the six vehicles parked on the street, he contacted
and interviewed the owners. All but one checked out, and had solid alibis for
where they were that night at that time.'

    Byrne
said nothing.

    'The
sixth vehicle, a black Kia Sedona, belongs to a man named Patrick Connolly.'
Drummond fixed him with a stare. 'Do you know a Patrick Connolly?'

    Byrne
knew that Drummond, along with everyone else in the room, knew the answer to
that question, along with most of the questions he had not yet heard. Byrne had
been on the other side of the table too many times not to know the game. 'Yes,'
he said. 'He's my cousin.'

    'When
Detective Stansfield interviewed Mr. Connolly, Connolly told him that he had
loaned the minivan out, that he had loaned the vehicle to you. Is that true?'

    'Yes,'
Byrne said. 'I borrowed the van six days ago.'

    'Were
you driving it the night in question?'

    'I
was.'

    'Were
you in Fishtown that night?'

    Again,
Byrne knew that everyone knew the answer to this question. No doubt they had
spoken to patrons of The Well, people who had put him in the bar that night.
'Yes.'

    'Do
you recall seeing Mr. Robles that night?'

    'Yes.'

    'Did
you have a conversation or interact in any way with Mr. Robles on that night?'

    Byrne
had begun to answer the question when Inspector Mostow interrupted. 'Kevin, do
you want your PBA representative in here?'

    The
Police Benevolent Association provided legal advice and representation for
police officers.

    'Is this
on the record?' Byrne knew the answer to that question - there was no court
reporter, he had not been sworn in, and no one was writing anything down. He
could confess to the Lindbergh kidnapping in this room, and it could not be
used against him.

    'No,'
Drummond said.

    Byrne
looked over at Stansfield. He knew what the man was trying to do. This was
payback. The two men locked eyes, matching wills. Stansfield looked away 'Then
let's put it on the record,' Byrne said.