Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (109 page)

ROLAND HANNAH WAS
tall and lithely muscular, precise in his language, although he’d never been formally educated. He wore no jewelry, kept his hair short, his body clean, his clothes modest and well pressed. He was of Appalachian descent, the child of a Letcher County, Kentucky, mother and a father whose ancestry and criminal past could be traced to the hollows of Helvetia Mountain, no further. When Roland had been four years old his mother had left Jubal Hannah—a brutal, violent man who had on many occasions taken the strap to his wife and child—and moved her son to North Philadelphia. Specifically, to an area known derisively, but quite accurately, as the Badlands.

Within a year Artemisia Hannah married a man far worse than her first husband, a man who controlled every aspect of her life, a man who gave her two damaged children. When Walton Lee Waite was killed in a botched robbery in Northern Liberties, Artemisia—a woman of fragile mental health to begin with, a woman who looked at the world through the prism of burgeoning madness—sank into the bottle, into self-harm of all manners, into the devil’s own caress. By the age of twelve Roland was fending for his family, doing odd jobs of various natures, many of them criminal, dodging the police, the welfare services, the gangs. Somehow, he survived them all.

At fifteen, through no choice of his own, Roland Hannah found a new path.

THE MAN WHOM
Roland and Charles had transported from Philadelphia was named Basil Spencer. He had molested a young girl.

Spencer was forty-four, grossly overweight and equally overeducated, a Bala Cynwyd estate lawyer with a client list comprising mostly elderly and wealthy Main Line widows. His taste for young girls went back many years. Roland had no idea how many times Spencer had done this profane and defiling thing, but it really didn’t matter. On this day, at this time, they were meeting in the name of one particular innocent.

By nine o’clock that morning the sun had breached the tops of the trees. Spencer knelt next to a freshly dug grave, a hole perhaps four feet deep, three feet wide, six feet long. His hands were tied behind his back with strong twine. Despite the chill, his clothes were soaked with sweat.

“Do you know who I am, Mr. Spencer?” Roland asked.

Spencer looked up, around, clearly wary of his own answer. The truth was, he didn’t know
precisely
who Roland was—he had never laid eyes on him until the blindfold had come off half an hour earlier. In the end Spencer said, “No.”

“I am the other shadow,” Roland replied. His voice bore the slightest trace of his mother’s Kentucky idiom, although he had long ago surrendered her accent to the streets of North Philadelphia.

“The … the
what
?” Spencer asked.

“I am the spot on the other man’s X-ray, Mr. Spencer. I am the car that runs the red light just after you pass through the intersection. I am the rudder that fails on the earlier flight. You have never seen my face because, until today, I have been that which happens to everyone else.”

“You don’t under
stand,
” Spencer said.

“Enlighten me,” Roland replied, wondering what elaborate story would be coming his way this time. He glanced at his watch. “You have one minute.”

“She was eighteen,” Spencer said.

“She is not yet
thir
teen.”

“That’s crazy! Have you seen her?”

“I have.”

“She was willing. I didn’t force her to do anything.”

“This is not what I have heard. I heard you took her to the crawlspace in your house. I heard you kept her in the dark, fed her drugs. Was it amyl nitrite? Poppers, as you call them?”

“You can’t
do
this,” Spencer said. “You don’t know who I am.”

“I know precisely who you are. What is more important is
where
you are. Look around. You are in the middle of a field, your hands are tied behind your back, you are begging for your life. Do you feel the choices you have made in this life have served you well?”

No answer. None was expected.

“Tell me about Fairmount Park,” Roland said. “April 1995. The two girls.”

“What?”

“Admit what you did, Mr. Spencer. Confess to what you did back then and you may survive this day.”

Spencer looked from Roland, to Charles, back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Roland nodded at Charles. Charles picked up the shovel. Basil Spencer began to cry.

“What are you going to do with me?” Spencer asked.

Without a word, Roland kicked Basil Spencer in the chest, knocking the man back into the grave. As Roland stepped forward he could smell the feces. Basil Spencer had soiled himself. They all did.

“Here’s what I will do for you,” Roland said. “I will speak to the girl. If indeed she was a willing participant, I’ll come back and get you, and you will take with you from this experience the greatest lesson of your life. If not, well, perhaps you can work your way out. Perhaps not.”

Roland reached into his gym bag, held forth a long hose made of PVC. The plastic tube was corrugated, of the gooseneck variety, one inch in diameter and four feet in length. On one end was a fitted mouthpiece like those used for pulmonary testing. Roland held the tube over Basil Spencer’s face. “Grip it between your teeth.”

Spencer turned his head, the reality of the moment too great to bear.

“Suit yourself,” Roland said. He took the hose away.

“No!” Spencer screamed. “I want it!”

Roland hesitated, then dangled the hose over Spencer’s face again. This time Spencer gripped the mouthpiece tightly between his teeth.

Roland nodded at Charles, who placed the lavender gloves on the man’s chest, then began to shovel the dirt into the hole. When he was finished, the conduit was sticking out of the ground about five or six inches. Roland could hear the frantic, wet inhale and exhale of air through the narrow pipe, the sound not unlike that of a suction tube at a dentist’s office. Charles tamped the dirt. He and Roland walked over to the van.

A few minutes later, Roland backed the vehicle over to the grave and left the motor running. He got out, retrieved a long rubber hose from the back, this one of a greater diameter than the gooseneck plastic tube. He walked around to the back of the van and fitted one end over the exhaust. He put the other end over the pipe sticking out of the ground.

Roland listened, waited until the sucking sounds began to fade, his mind traveling, for the moment, to a place where two young girls had skipped along the banks of the Wissahickon, many years ago, the eye of God a golden sun above them.

THE CONGREGATION WAS
dressed in its finest: eighty-one people sardined into the small storefront church on Allegheny Avenue. The air was thick with the smells of floral perfume, tobacco, and no small amount of boardinghouse whiskey.

The pastor came out of the back room to the strains of “This Is the Day That the Lord Hath Made” from the five-member choir. His deacon soon followed. Wilma Goodloe took the lead vocal; her big voice a true blessing from above.

At the sight of the pastor, the congregation leapt to its feet. The good Lord reigned.

After a few moments the pastor stepped to the rostrum, held up a hand. He waited until the music subsided, until his flock was seated, until the spirit moved him. As always, it did. He began slowly. He constructed his message as a builder might erect a house—an excavation of sin, a foundation of scripture, rigid walls of praise, topped by a crowning roof of glorious tribute. After twenty minutes, he brought it home.

“But make no mistake about it, there is much darkness in the world,” the pastor said.

“Darkness,”
someone echoed.

“Oh yes,” the pastor continued. “Oh my, yes. This is a dark and
terrible
time.”

“Yes sir.”

“But the darkness is not darkness to the Lord.”

“No sir.”

“Not darkness at all.”

“No.”

The pastor came around the pulpit. He clasped his hands in prayer. Some of the congregation stood. “Ephesians 5:11 sayeth: ‘Do not participate in the fruitless doings of darkness but rather
expose
them.’ ”

“Yes sir.”

“Paul sayeth: ‘Everything that is exposed by the light is made visible, and where everything is visible there
is
light.’ ”

“Light.”

Moments later, by the time the sermon was over, the congregation had worked itself into a tumult. Tambourines sang.

Pastor Roland Hannah and Deacon Charles Waite were on fire. News was made in heaven this day, and the New Page Church of the Divine Flame was the story.

The pastor considered his assembly. He thought about Basil Spencer, about how he had learned of Spencer’s terrible deeds. People will tell their pastor many things. Including children. He had heard many truths from the mouths of children. And he would address them all. In time. But there was a matter that had been a stagnant black water in his soul for more than a decade, something that consumed every ounce of joy in his life, something that woke with him, walked with him, slept with him, and prayed with him. There was a man out there who had stolen his spirit. Roland was getting close to him. He could feel it. Soon he would find the right one. Until then, as he had in the past, he would do God’s work.

The voices of the choir rose in united praise. The rafters shook with homage. Brimstone
would
spark and flash on this day, Roland Hannah thought.

Oh my, yes.

A day that the Lord indeed hath made.

12

St. Seraphim was a tall, narrow structure on Sixth Street in North Philadelphia. With its cream stucco front, tall turrets, and golden onion domes above, the church—founded in 1897—was an imposing edifice, one of the oldest Russian Orthodox churches in Philadelphia. Jessica, having been raised Roman Catholic, didn’t know much about the Orthodox Christian religions. She knew there were similarities in the practices of confession and communion, but that was about it.

Byrne was attending a review board and press conference regarding the incident in the diner. The review board was mandatory; the press conference was not. But Jessica had never known Byrne to shy away from his actions. He would be there, front and center, badge polished, shoes shined. It seemed that the families of both Laura Clarke and Anton Krotz felt the police should have handled the fraught situation differently. The press was all over it. Jessica had wanted to be there as a show of support, but her orders were to continue the investigation. Kristina Jakos deserved a timely inquiry. To say nothing of the very real concern that her killer was still on the loose.

Jessica and Byrne would meet up later in the day and she would brief him on any developments. If it got late they would meet at Finnigan’s Wake. There was going to be a retirement party for a detective that night. Cops never miss a retirement party.

Jessica had called the church and made an appointment with Father Gregory Panov. While Jessica conducted the interview, Josh Bontrager canvassed the immediate area surrounding the church.