Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (106 page)

BACK AT THE
Roundhouse—the police administration building at Eighth and Race streets, where the homicide unit occupied part of the first floor—Jessica ran an NCIC and PDCH check on David Hornstrom. Clean as an operating room. Not even a moving violation in the past ten years. Hard to believe, considering his taste in fast cars.

She then entered the victim’s information into the Missing Person database. She didn’t expect much.

Unlike television cop shows, there was no twenty-four-to-forty-eight-hour waiting period when it came to missing persons. Usually, in Philadelphia, a person called 911 and an officer went to the house to take the report. If the missing person was ten years old or under, police immediately began what was called a “tender age search.” The officer directly searched the residence and any other residence at which the child lived, in the event of shared custody. Then each sector patrol car would be given the description of the child and began a grid method search for him or her.

If the missing child was eleven to seventeen years old, a report with description and photo was taken by the first officer, and that report was taken back to the district to be put into the computer and sent to a national registry. If a missing adult was mentally challenged, the report was also quickly put into the computer, and sector searches were done.

If the person was a regular Joe or Jane and just didn’t come home—as was probably the case with the young woman found on the riverbank—the report was taken, given to the detective division and the case was looked at again in five days, then again in seven days.

And sometimes you got lucky. Before Jessica could pour herself a cup of coffee, there was a hit.

“Kevin.”

Byrne hadn’t even gotten his coat off yet. Jessica held the digital camera’s LCD screen next to the computer screen. On the computer screen was a missing person report with a photograph of a pretty blond woman. The picture was a little fuzzy, a driver’s license or state ID photo. On Jessica’s camera was a close-up of the victim’s face. “Is that her?”

Byrne looked closely, from the computer screen to the camera, back. “Yeah,” he said. He pointed to the small beauty mark above the right side of the young woman’s upper lip. “That’s her.”

Jessica scanned the report. The woman’s name was Kristina Jakos.

8

Natalya Jakos was a tall, athletic woman in her early thirties. She had dove gray eyes, smooth skin, and long, elegant fingers. Her dark hair was tipped with silver, cut into a pageboy style. She wore pale tangerine sweats and new Nikes. She had just returned from a run.

Natalya lived in an older, well-kept brick twin row house on Bustleton Avenue in the Northeast.

Kristina and Natalya were sisters, born eight years apart in Odessa, the coastal city in the Ukraine.

Natalya had filed the missing person report.

THEY MET IN
the living room. On the mantel over the bricked-in fireplace was a number of small, framed pictures, mostly slightly out of focus, black-and-white snapshots of a family, posed in snow, on a sad-looking beach, around a dining table. One was of a pretty blond girl in a black-and-white checked sunsuit and white sandals. The girl was clearly Kristina Jakos.

Byrne showed Natalya a close-up photograph of the victim’s face. The ligature was not visible. Natalya calmly identified her as her sister.

“Again, we are terribly sorry for your loss,” Byrne said.

“She was killed.”

“Yes,” Byrne said.

Natalya nodded, as if she had been expecting the news. The lack of passion in her reaction was not lost on either detective. They had given her a bare minimum of information on the phone. They had not told her about the mutilation.

“When was the last time you saw your sister?” Byrne asked.

Natalya thought for a few moments. “It was four days ago.”

“Where did you see her?”

“Right where you are standing. We argued. As we often did.”

“May I ask what about?” Byrne asked.

Natalya shrugged. “Money. I had lent her five hundred dollars as part of what she needed for security deposits with the utility companies for her new apartment. I think she may have spent it on clothes. She always bought clothes. I got mad. We argued.”

“She was moving out?”

Natalya nodded. “We were not getting along. She moved out weeks ago.” She reached for a tissue from the box on the end table. She was not as tough as she wanted them to believe she was. No tears, but it was clear that the dam was about to burst.

Jessica began to amend her timeline. “You saw her four days ago?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“It was late. She was here to pick up a few things, then she said she was going to do laundry.”

“How late?”

“Ten or ten thirty. Perhaps later.”

“Where did she do laundry?”

“I don’t know. Near her new apartment.”

“Have you been to her new place?” Byrne asked.

“No,” Natalya said. “She never asked me.”

“Did Kristina have a car?”

“No. Her friend would drive her usually. Or she would take SEPTA.”

“What is her friend’s name?”

“Sonja.”

“Do you know Sonja’s last name?”

Natalya shook her head.

“And you didn’t see Kristina again that night?”

“No. I went to sleep. It was late.”

“Can you remember anything else about that day? Where else she might have been? Who she saw?”

“I’m sorry. She did not share these things with me.”

“Did she call you the next day? Maybe leave a message on the answering machine or voice mail?”

“No,” Natalya said, “but we were supposed to meet the next afternoon. When she did not come, I called the police. The police said there was not much they could do, but they would put it in the system. My sister and I may not have been getting along, but she was always punctual. And she was not the type to just …”

The tears came. Jessica and Byrne gave the woman a moment. When she began to compose herself they continued.

“Where did Kristina work?” Byrne asked.

“I’m not sure exactly where. It was a new job. A
receptionist
job.”

The way Natalya said the word
receptionist
was curious, Jessica thought. That was not lost on Byrne, either.

“Did Kristina have a boyfriend? Someone she was seeing?”

Natalya shook her head. “No one steady that I know of. But there were always men around her. Even when we were small. In school, at church. Always.”

“Is there an ex-boyfriend? Someone who might be carrying a torch?”

“There is one, but he no longer lives here.”

“Where does he live?”

“He went back to the Ukraine.”

“Did Kristina have any outside interests? Hobbies?”

“She had it in her mind to be a dancer. It was her dream. Kristina had many dreams.”

A dancer
, Jessica thought. She flashed on the woman and her amputated feet. She moved on. “What about your parents?”

“They are long in their graves.”

“Any other brothers or sisters?”

“One brother. Kostya.”

“Where is he?”

Natalya grimaced, waved a hand, as if swatting away a bad memory. “He is
tvaryna.
”

Jessica waited for a translation. Nothing. “Ma’am?”

“An animal. Kostya is a wild animal. He is where he belongs. In prison.”

Byrne and Jessica exchanged a glance. This news opened a whole new set of possibilities. Maybe someone wanted to get to Kostya Jakos through his sister.

“May I ask where he is incarcerated?” Jessica asked.

“Graterford.”

Jessica was going to ask why the man was in jail, but all of that information would be on the record. No need to open that wound now, so soon after another tragedy. She made a note to look it up.

“Do you know of anyone who might want to do your brother harm?” Jessica asked.

Natalya laughed, but it was without humor. “I don’t know anyone who
doesn’t
.”

“Do you have a recent picture of Kristina?”

Natalya reached onto the top shelf of a bookcase. She retrieved a wooden box. She shuffled the contents, produced a photograph, a shot of Kristina that looked to be a head shot from a modeling agency—slightly soft focus, provocatively posed, lips parted. Jessica again thought the young woman was very pretty. Perhaps not model-gorgeous, but striking.

“Can we borrow this photograph?” Jessica asked. “We will return it.”

“No need to return,” Natalya said.

Jessica made a mental note to return the picture anyway. She knew from personal experience that as time passed the tectonic plates of grief, however thin, tended to shift.

Natalya stood, reached into a desk drawer. “As I said, Kristina was moving into a new place. Here is the extra key to her new apartment. Maybe this will help.”

There was a white tag attached to the key. Jessica glanced at it. It bore an address on North Lawrence.

Byrne took out his card case. “If you think of anything else that might help us, please give me a call.” He handed a card to Natalya.

Natalya took the card, then handed Byrne a card of her own. It seemed to come from nowhere, as if she already had it palmed and ready to produce. As it turned out, “palmed” was probably the right word. Jessica glanced at the card. It read: Madame Natalya—Cartomancy, Fortune-Telling, Tarot.

“I think you have a great deal of sadness within you,” she said to Byrne. “A great many unresolved issues.”

Jessica glanced at Byrne. He looked a little rattled, a rare state for him. She sensed her partner wanted to continue the interview alone.

“I’ll get the car,” Jessica said.

THEY STOOD IN
the too-warm front room, silent for a few moments. Byrne glanced inside a small space off the parlor—round mahogany table, two chairs, a credenza, tapestries on the walls. There were candles burning in all four corners. He looked back at Natalya. She was studying him.

“Have you ever had a reading?” Natalya asked.

“A reading?”

“A palm reading.”

“I’m not exactly sure what that is.”

“The art is called chiromancy,” she said. “It is an ancient practice in which the lines and markings of your hand are studied.”

“Uh, no,” Byrne said. “Never.”

Natalya reached out, took his hand in hers. Immediately Byrne felt a slight electrical charge. Not necessarily a sexual charge, although he could not deny that was a component.

She closed her eyes briefly, opened them. “You have a sense,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Sometimes you know things you should not know. Things that are not seen by others. Things that turn out to be true.”

Byrne wanted to take his hand back and run out of there as fast as he could, but for some reason he couldn’t seem to move. “Sometimes.”

“You were born with a veil?”

“A veil? I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that.”

“You came very close to dying?”

Byrne was a little spooked by this, but he didn’t let on. “Yes.”

“Twice.”

“Yes.”