Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (144 page)

Seconds later, before she fell unconscious, the man began to sing.

“Here are maidens, young and fair …”

84

The snow was unremitting. At times Byrne and Vincent had to pull over to let a squall pass. What lights they saw—the occasional house, the occasional commercial enterprise—seemed to come and go in the fog of white.

Vincent’s Cutlass was built for the open road, not the snow-covered country lane. At times they drove five miles an hour, wipers on high, headlights illuminating no more than ten feet ahead of them.

They passed through small town after small town. At six o’clock they realized it might be hopeless. Vincent angled to the side of the road, pulled out his cell phone. He tried Jessica again. He got her voice mail.

He glanced at Byrne, Byrne at him.

“What do we do?” Vincent asked.

Byrne pointed out the driver’s side window. Vincent turned, looked.

The sign seemed to appear out of nowhere.

DOUG’S DEN.

THERE WERE ONLY
two couples in the restaurant, along with a pair of middle-aged waitresses. The interior was standard home-style small-town décor—red and white checked tablecloths, vinyl-covered chairs, a ceiling spiderwebbed with white Christmas minilights. A fire burned in a stone fireplace. Vincent showed his ID to one of the waitresses.

“We’re looking for two women,” Vincent said. “Police officers. They may have stopped here today.”

The waitress looked at the two detectives with well-worn country skepticism.

“Can I see that ID again?”

Vincent took a deep breath, handed the wallet to her. She scrutinized it for what seemed like thirty seconds, handed it back.

“Yes. They were here,” she said.

Byrne noticed that Vincent had that look. The impatient look.
The Double K Auto look
. Byrne hoped Vincent wasn’t about to start body-slamming sixty-year-old waitresses.

“About what time?” Byrne asked.

“Maybe one o’clock or so. They spoke to the owner. Mr. Prentiss.”

“Is Mr. Prentiss here now?”

“No,” the waitress said. “I’m afraid he stepped out for a bit.”

Vincent checked his watch. “Do you know where these two women went from here?” he asked.

“Well, I know where they said they were
heading,
” she said. “There’s a small art-supply store at the end of this street. It’s closed now, though.”

Byrne looked at Vincent. Vincent’s eyes said:
No it isn’t.

And then he was out the door, once again a blur.

85

Jessica was cold and damp. Her head felt as if it were full of broken glass. Her temple throbbed.

At first it felt as if she might be in a boxing ring. She’d been knocked down a few times in sparring, and the first sensation had always been one of falling. Not to the canvas—through space. Then the pain.

She was not in the ring. It was too cold.

She opened her eyes, felt the ground around her. Wet earth, pine needles, leaves. She sat up, a little too quickly. The world spun out of balance. She lowered herself onto an elbow. After a minute or so, she looked around.

She was in the forest. There was even an inch or so of snow that had accumulated upon her.

How long have I been out here? How did I get here?

She looked around. There were no footprints. The heavy snow had blanketed everything. Jessica gave herself a quick once over. Nothing broken, nothing seemed fractured.

The temperature was dropping; the snow was falling harder.

Jessica stood up, steadied herself against a tree, did a quick accounting.

No cell phone. No weapon. No partner.

Nicci.

AT SIX-THIRTY IT
stopped snowing. But it had gotten fully dark, and Jessica had no way of knowing direction. She was far from an outdoor expert to begin with, but what little she knew she could not use.

The forest was dense. Every so often she clicked on her dying Maglite, hoping to gain some sort of bearing. She didn’t want to use up what little battery life she had. She didn’t know how long she would be out here.

She lost her footing a few times on icy rocks hidden beneath the snow, repeatedly tumbling to the ground. She decided to walk from barren tree to barren tree, holding on to low branches. It made her progress slower, but she did not need to twist an ankle or worse.

After something like thirty minutes, Jessica stopped. She thought she heard … a stream? Yes, it was the sound of water trickling. But where was it coming from? She determined that it was coming from over a slight rise to her right. She slowly negotiated the incline, saw it. A narrow brook snaked its way through the woods. She was no expert on waterways, but the fact that it was moving meant something. Didn’t it?

She would follow it. She didn’t know if it was leading her deeper into the forest, or closer to civilization. Either way, she was certain of one thing. She had to move. If she stayed in one place, dressed as she was, she would not survive the night. She flashed on the image of Kristina Jakos’s frozen skin.

She pulled her coat close to her body, and followed the stream.

86

The gallery was called the Art Ark. There were no lights on in the store, but there was a light in the window on the second floor. Vincent pounded hard on the door. After a while a woman’s voice, coming from behind the drawn curtain on the door, said, “We’re closed.”

“We’re the police,” Vincent said. “We need to talk to you.”

The curtain pulled to the side a few inches. “You don’t work for Sheriff Toomey,” the woman said. “I’m going to call him.”

“We’re with the Philadelphia PD, ma’am,” Byrne said, stepping between Vincent and the door. They were about a second or two away from Vincent knocking the door down, along with what sounded like an elderly woman behind it. Byrne held up his badge. A flashlight shone through the glass. A few seconds later, lights came on inside the store.

“
THEY WERE HERE
this afternoon,” Nadine Palmer said. In her sixties, she wore a red terry cloth robe and Birkenstocks. She had offered them both coffee, which they declined. The TV was on in the corner of the store, another showing of
It’s a Wonderful Life.

“They had a picture of a farmhouse,” Nadine said. “Said they were looking for it. My nephew Ben took them up there.”

“Is this the house?” Byrne asked, showing her the picture.

“That’s the one.”

“Is your nephew here now?”

“No. It’s New Year’s
Eve,
young man. He’s with his friends.”

“Can you tell us how to get there?” Vincent asked. He was pacing, tapping his fingers on the counter, all but vibrating.

The woman looked at them both a little skeptically. “Lots of interest in that old farmhouse of late. Is there something going on I should know about?”

“Ma’am, it’s extremely important we get up to that house right now,” Byrne said.

The woman took another few seconds, just for country effect. Then she pulled out a sketchpad and uncapped a pen.

While she drew the map, Byrne glanced at the television in the corner. The movie had been interrupted by a news bulletin on WFMZ, Channel 69. When Byrne saw the subject of the report his heart sank. It was about a murdered woman. A murdered woman who’d just been found on the bank of the Schuylkill River.

“Could you turn that up, please?” Byrne asked.

Nadine turned up the volume.

“—the young woman has been identified as Sa’mantha Fanning of Philadelphia. She had been the subject of an intensive search by local and federal authorities. Her body was found on the eastern bank of the Schuylkill River, near Leesport. More details as we have them.”

Byrne knew they were not far from the crime scene, but there was nothing they could do from here. They were way out of their jurisdiction. He called Ike Buchanan at home. Ike would contact the district attorney of Berks County.

Byrne took the map from Nadine Palmer. “We appreciate this. Thank you very much.”

“Hope it helps,” Nadine said.

Vincent was already out the door. As Byrne turned to leave, a rack of postcards caught his eye, postcards depicting displays of fairy-tale characters—life-size exhibits with what looked like real people in costumes.

Thumbelina. The Little Mermaid. The Princess and the Pea.

“What are these?” Byrne asked.

“Those are vintage postcards,” Nadine said.

“This was a real place?”

“Oh, sure. It used to be a sort of theme park. Kinda big in the 1940s and 1950s. Pennsylvania had a lot of them in those days.”

“Is it still open?”

“No, sorry to say. In fact, they’re tearing it down in a few weeks. It hasn’t been open in years. I thought you knew about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The farmhouse you’re looking for?”

“What about it?”

“StoryBook River is about a quarter mile away. It’s been in the Damgaard family for years.”

The name slammed into his brain. Byrne ran out of the store, jumped into the car.

As Vincent sped off, Byrne took out the computer printout Tony Park had compiled, the list of patients from the county mental-health clinic. In seconds, he found what he was looking for.

One of Lisette Simon’s patients was a man named Marius Damgaard.

Detective Kevin Byrne understood. It was all part of the same evil, an evil that had begun on a bright spring day in April 1995. A day when two little girls had wandered into the forest.

And now Jessica Balzano and Nicci Malone were caught in the fable.

87

There’s a darkness that lived in southeastern Pennsylvania’s woods, a pitch-blackness that seemed to consume every trace of light around it.

Jessica edged along the bank of the running stream, the only sound the flow of the black water. The going was excruciatingly slow. She used her Maglite sparingly. The thin beam illuminated the plump snowflakes falling around her.

She had picked up a branch earlier, and was using it to probe ahead of herself in the darkness, not unlike a blind person on a city sidewalk.

She continued onward, flicking the branch, toeing the frozen ground with each step. She came to a huge obstacle in her path.

Directly ahead was an enormous deadfall of trees. If she were to continue along the stream, she would have to make it over the top. She was wearing leather-soled shoes. Not exactly designed for hiking or climbing.

She found the shortest route, began to scale the tangle of roots and branches. It was covered with snow, with ice beneath that. More than once Jessica slipped, falling backward, scraping her knees and elbows. Her hands felt like they were frozen solid.

After three more attempts, she managed to hold her footing. She made her way to the top, then tumbled down the other side, crashing onto a pile of broken branches and pine needles.

She sat there for a few moments, exhausted, fighting tears. She clicked on the Maglite. It was almost dead. Her muscles ached, her head was throbbing. She frisked herself again, looking for something, anything—gum, mint, breath freshener. She found something in her inside pocket. She was sure it was a Tic Tac. Some dinner. When she maneuvered it out, she found it was far better than a Tic Tac. It was a Tylenol caplet. She sometimes took a few of the pain relievers with her on the job, and this one must have been a leftover from a previous headache, or hangover. Regardless, she popped it in her mouth, wiggled it down her throat. It probably wouldn’t do much for the freight train roaring through her head, but it was a small bead of sanity, a touchstone of a life that seemed a million miles away.