Play Dead (39 page)

But it couldn’t be the beach. Something was
burning.
She had to— “Jessica. You okay?”
Jessica slowly opened her eyes. It was Kevin Byrne. The world

came swirling back. She nodded, even though she did not know the answer to this question.
“Can you talk?” he asked.
Another stumper. Jessica nodded.
“Who’s inside the house?” Byrne asked.
Between gulps of oxygen. “An old man,” she said. “A girl.”
“What about our guy? What about the Collector?”
Jessica shrugged. Bright bolts of pain shot through her shoulders, her collarbone. She recalled falling from the window, falling. She didn’t remember hitting the ground. “I don’t know. I think they’re all dead.” She looked down the length of her body. “Broken?”
Byrne glanced at the paramedic, back. “They don’t know. They don’t think so. Your fall was broken by the hedges behind the house.” Byrne patted her hand.
Jessica heard the sirens approaching. Moments later she saw the first ladder company arrive. She breathed more easily. Taking off the mask—over the objections of the paramedic—she slowly sat up. Byrne and Josh Bontrager helped.
“Tell me about Logan Circle,” she said.
Byrne shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
Jessica tried to smile. It hurt her face. “It’s kinda my job.”

Jessica got unsteadily to her feet. Even from across the road, the heat was intense. Faerwood was an inferno, flames shooting fifty feet or more into the sky. Somehow, Josh Bontrager found a cold bottle of spring water. Jessica drank half of it, poured the other half over the back of her neck.

Before she could make her way to the EMS van, she caught a shadow to her left; someone walking up the middle of the smoke- hazed street. Jessica was too shaken, too exhausted to react. It was a good thing she was surrounded by what seemed like the entire police department.

As the figure got closer Jessica saw it was Graciella. Her gown was covered with soot and ash, as was her face, but she was fine.
Kevin Byrne turned and saw the girl. Jessica watched the reaction on his face. It was the same reaction she’d had when she saw the girl in the hallway mirror. Graciella looked exactly like her mother, exactly like a young Eve Galvez. Byrne was speechless.
Graciella walked right up to Byrne. “You must be Kevin. My mom mentioned you.” She stuck out her hand. It was bleeding.
Byrne gently took her hand in his. Sticking out of the young woman’s palm were small shards of glass. The smell of a strong chemical filled the air.
“My name is Graciella,” the girl added. At that moment the girl’s legs gave out. Byrne caught her before she hit the ground. She looked up at him in a daze. “I think I need to lay down.”

ONE HUNDRED SEVEN
L
abor Day weekend was a festive holiday in Philadelphia, including the annual parade along Columbus Boulevard and the Arden Fair just across the Delaware River.

For Detectives Balzano and Byrne there was little festive about it. They stood in the duty room, all but deluged by the paperwork related to the Collector case. They would piece together a preliminary report by the end of the long weekend.

When Eve Galvez learned of the Caitlin O’Riordan case, she became obsessed. She closely followed the investigation, and when she felt that detectives Pistone and Roarke were not doing their job, Eve decided to do it for them. She photocopied their files, going so far as to take the interview notes from the binder, the notes that mentioned Mr. Ludo.

Night after night, for two months, Eve went out on the street, talking to kids, looking for any trace of Mr. Ludo. She tracked Joseph Swann in city parks, bus stations, train stations, to runaway and homeless shelters. She finally caught up to him one night in June. As strong and resourceful as she was, he proved too much for her. He overpowered her and buried her in a shallow grave in Fairmount Park. Her exact cause of death was still undetermined.

On the night she was killed, Eve had called her daughter and told her everything. They had never spoken before. Every birthday and Christmas, Eve had sent her something.

That night Eve took a picture of herself in front of Faerwood with her camera phone, and sent it to her daughter. She had told Graciella of Mr. Ludo, and her quest for the truth about Caitlin O’Riordan, right before she disappeared.

Two months later, when Eve’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in Fairmount Park, Graciella took what little money she had and came to Philadelphia.

Graciella had been adopted when she was eight weeks old, by a couple named Ellis and Catherine Monroe. Graciella had gone by the name Grace Monroe all her life, until the night she talked to her mother.

When Graciella was nine, her adoptive father had left, and her mother Catherine had sleepwalked through life after that. The woman had never been that close to her adopted daughter, leaving her to live in a world of her own. It wasn’t until three days after Graciella had run away to Philadelphia that the woman reported her missing.

Joseph Swann could never have known that he had always been on a collision course with Graciella Galvez.
According to letters and journals found in Laura Somerville’s strongbox, Laura had met Karl Swann, the Great Cygne, when she was only twenty- three. They had met in Baton Rouge and Laura agreed to become his assistant. They toured the southern United States in the sixties and seventies, and for years she had been Odette—playing nurse and mother to young Joseph, playing the occasional lover to Karl Swann, but more important, playing accomplice to young Joseph’s murderous past. According to her diary, there were six young people found dead around the Great Cygne’s traveling show over the years. Laura’s journal detailed where they were buried. The District Attorney’s office passed along this information to the state police departments in Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico.
At least ten pages of Laura Somerville’s diary were a confession. When Jessica and Byrne showed up at her apartment, she apparently believed her past had caught up to her. It was she who had made the calls about Shiloh Street after all, having shadowed Joseph Swann for months, hoping to anonymously tip the police.
When Karl Swann hanged himself in 1988, his son Joseph rescued him just in time, nursing him back to health, but locking the man in a dark, cold wing in Faerwood.
As far as the investigators could determine, Karl Swann never again left Faerwood. He had essentially lived in that room on the third floor for twenty years. It appeared his son had cooked for him and attended to his basic needs. In time, Karl Swann’s mental illness brought him back to 1950 again. He lived through his son’s re-creation of his world. He had watched, via television monitor, everything that happened downstairs on Joseph’s secret stage.
If Eve Galvez had been obsessed with Caitlin O’Riordan, Joseph Swann was obsessed with the prism of his own madness—magic, puzzles, and the dark history of Faerwood.
In the days following the fire, investigators unearthed the remains of six other victims on the grounds of the mansion. All were as yet unidentified. All were buried in brightly colored boxes.
Fire investigators reported that the fire would have spread quickly enough through the old, mostly wood structure, but was accelerated by the explosion of the small oil furnace in the basement.
Joseph Swann’s charred skeleton was found in the east wing of the attic. It appeared he tried to hang himself, but the ME’s office believed the fire had gotten to him first.
His father, Karl Martin Swann, the Great Cygne, was found in his room on the third floor.
In his hand was a beautiful mahogany wand.

ONE HUNDRED EIGHT
T
hey left the cemetery at noon. Eve Galvez’s service had been for family and coworkers only. Her family was small, but nearly a hundred people from the District Attorney’s office had shown up.

Jessica and Graciella stood near the river. It was only early September, but already the air whispered of the coming fall.
“Did you know your mother well?” Graciella asked.
“Not really,” Jessica said. “She died when I was five.”
“Wow. Five. That’s pretty small.”
“It is.”
Graciella looked out over the river. “What do you remember most about her?”
Jessica had to think about this. “I guess it would be her voice. She used to sing all the time. I remember that.”
“What did she sing?”
“All kinds of things. Whatever was popular on the radio, I guess.” The songs came back, found their place in Jessica’s heart. “What do you remember?”
“My mom’s handwriting. She used to send things to my house. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter. I never opened the boxes. I was so mad at her. I didn’t even know her, but I hated her. Until the night she called me and explained everything. She was sixteen when she had me.
I’m
sixteen. Geez, I can’t imagine.”
Jessica recalled the photographs in the photo cube at Eve’s apartment, the high- school shot of Eve in which she looked heavy. She had not been overweight. She had been pregnant.
“When I hung up that night, after talking to my mom, I opened all the boxes she sent me. She sent me this.” Graciella held out a sterling silver pendant on a fine chain. It was an angel.
“It’s very pretty.”
“Thank you.” She slipped the pendant over her head, positioned the angel over her heart. “I wonder if you could take me someplace.”
“Sure,” Jessica said. “Anywhere you want to go.”
“I’d like to go where my mother was found.”
Jessica looked at the young woman. She seemed to have matured in the past few days. Her hair was brushed, her skin impossibly clear. She wore a white cotton dress. She’d told Jessica she’d worn nothing but black for years. She said she’d never wear black again. Graciella had given the police a full statement about the last moments she had spent in Faerwood. She said that after she stepped onto the stage, and saw the Fire Grotto, she didn’t remember anything. All the video equipment had been destroyed in the fire. There was no record of what happened.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Jessica asked. “I mean, there’s not much there. It’s all been smoothed over. They’ve planted grass there.”
Graciella nodded.
“Plus, you’re supposed to meet with your uncle,” Jessica added.
“My
uncle.
It sounds so weird,” Graciella said. “Can he meet us there? In the park?”
“Sure,” Jessica said. “I’ll call.”
They drove to Belmont Plateau in silence. Byrne followed in his own car.

Jessica and Byrne watched the young woman cross the street, step into the shallow woods. When she stepped out, Graciella turned to someone on Belmont Avenue, waved. Jessica and Byrne looked.

Enrique Galvez stood next to his car. He wore a dark suit, his hair was trimmed and combed. He looked as nervous as Jessica felt, as fallen and needy as he had looked at the funeral.

378 R ICHAR D MONTANAR I

When Graciella approached, the two embraced tentatively— strangers, family, blood. They talked a long while.
At noon, with an autumn moon already in the sky, Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano got into their cars, and headed to the city.

“Wow. I’m finally inside Casa di Kevin.” They had stopped by Byrne’s apartment on the way to the Roundhouse. Incredibly, he asked her if she wanted to come in.

“What are you talking about?” Byrne asked.
“I’ve never been here before.”
“Yes, you have.”
“Kevin. Between the two of us, who would you trust on this?” Byrne looked at her, then out the window, onto Second Street.

“You’ve never been here?”
“No.”
“Man.” He began to absently straighten up the place. When he was

done, he got what he came home for—that being his service weapon and holster. “I have a date with Donna this Friday.”
“I know.”
Byrne looked coldcocked. “You
know
?”
“I talk to Donna now and then.”
“You talk to my wife?”
“Well, technically, she’s your ex- wife. But yeah. Now and then. I mean, we don’t coffee klatch, Kevin. We’re not swapping Rachael Ray recipes.”
Byrne drew a long, rhythmic breath.
“What the hell was that?” Jessica asked.
“What was what?”
“That breath. That was yoga breathing.”
“Yoga? I don’t think so.”
“I took yoga classes after Sophie was born. I know yoga breathing.”
Byrne said nothing.
Jessica shook her head. “Kevin Byrne doing yoga.”
Byrne looked at her. “How much do you want?”
“A thousand dollars. Tens and twenties.”
“Okay.”
Jessica’s phone rang. She answered, took down the information. “We’re up,” she said. “We have a job. The boss wants us in.”
Byrne glanced at his watch, back. “You go on ahead. I have a stop to make.”
“Okay,” she said. “See you at the house.”

ONE HUNDRED NINE
T

he man stood next to the ruin. He seemed thinner than the last time Byrne had seen him. All around him were the bulky brick entrails of another urban casualty. The city had taken the wrecking ball to the abandoned building on Eighth Street.

It was certainly no loss for North Philly. For Robert O’Riordan it was another story.
Byrne wondered how long the man would haunt this place, how long it would be until Caitlin said it was okay for him to go home. Everyone said it gets easier with time, Byrne knew. It never gets easier, it just gets later.
Byrne got out of his car, crossed the road. Robert O’Riordan saw him. At first, Byrne didn’t know how O’Riordan was going to react. After a few moments O’Riordan looked at the broken building, then back at Byrne. He nodded.
Byrne walked up next to the man, stood with him, shoulder to shoulder. He didn’t know if Robert O’Riordan was a religious man, but Byrne handed him something, a prayer card from Eve Galvez’s service. O’Riordan took it. He held it in two hands.
Although they had never met in life, Robert O’Riordan and Eve Galvez were bound by something that would forever transcend this place, something that memory and time could erode, but never erase. Something found in the very heart of mercy.
And so Byrne and he stood, in silence, as the winds gathered leaves in vacant lots. Neither man spoke.
Sometimes words were not enough, Kevin Byrne thought. Sometimes they were not even needed.