Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (184 page)

She looked around the room, gauging distances, heights. The two windows were both covered in dark green drapes. There were also two doors. One had locks. The other must be a closet. There was a dresser with a mirror, two nightstands, one lamp. A big painting on the wall. That was it.

She was about to try sitting up once again when she heard quick-moving footsteps outside the door. She pulled the comforter up to her neck, half-closed her eyes.

Keys turned in the locks. Moments later, he entered the room, turned on a lamp. It cast the room in a warm ginger glow. Lilly did not stir. She wanted him to think she was still out of it.

When his back was to her, she risked opening her eyes. She watched him fuss and straighten things—the vase on the dresser, the hem of the down comforter, the pleats of the drapes. He adjusted the painting for what seemed like the dozenth time. She wanted to jump from the bed, claw his fucking eyes out, but she was far too weak to try anything at the moment. She needed a clear head. She needed to think straight. She might only get one shot.

She kept her breathing slow and steady, her eyes almost completely shut. He stood at the foot of the bed for the longest time, just watching her. It was so quiet she could hear her heartbeat in the down pillow.

After a few minutes, he checked his appearance in the mirror, opened the door, stepped through, and closed it. Lilly heard a key turn in a lock, then a second key. Footsteps padding down the hall.

Then, silence.

| SEVENTY |

| 12 : 59 AM |

P
EOPLE LINED THE STREETS OF
N
ORTH
P
HILLY
. R
AIN WAS INTERMITTENT,
mosquitoes swarmed in dense clouds, music played on car stereos, blunts were cupped and hidden. Those gathered on Broad Street, some with binoculars in hand, would every so often point at the bright red clock face on the City Hall tower. What
next,
Philly?

The story had been splashed across all the local television stations, starting with a break-in during the late-night talk shows. Two stations had set up three cameras each, with a live feed to their websites. Every so often there would be a cutaway shot to the red clock on the tower at City Hall. It was like a demented version of New Year’s Eve with Dick Clark.

Jessica was always amazed at how fast the media got the down and dirty on things. She wondered how glib and hip these reporters and announcers would be if it were their daughters out there in the hands of a vicious psychopath, just how willing they would be then to play their stupid and dangerous ratings games.

They drove north on Fifth Street, past Callowhill and Spring Garden, past Fairmount, Poplar, and Girard. Jessica scanned the corners, the faces, the hands.

Was he among them? Was their killer standing on a street corner, blending into the urban canvas, awaiting the precise moment for his next play? Had he already
made
his play, and was simply planning his reveal? And if this was the case, how was he going to let them know?

A representative of the mayor’s office, along with the police commissioner, the chief inspector of the homicide unit, and the district attorney herself had met in an emergency session at the Roundhouse, discussing, first and foremost, the advisability of shutting down power to the clock. A technician was standing by at City Hall, waiting for word.

Until the girls were found, the consensus was to leave the clock alone. If this madman was in North Philadelphia, and he could see the tower, there was no telling what horrors might be triggered if his plan went awry.

However, there had yet to be any indication that he wanted anything—other than an audience. There had been no demands for ransom, no demands for acquiescence of any kind. Until there was, or until he was identified, there could be no avenue of negotiation.

This was certainly not about money. It was about a compulsive murderer plying his terrible craft.

Security at City Hall had been tripled. SWAT had been deployed, the bomb unit was standing by. K-9 officers and their dogs were in the process of walking every square inch of the building. It was a large task. There were more than 700 rooms at City Hall. Traffic was rerouted on both Broad and Market streets. A police helicopter, one of three headquartered at Northeast Philadelphia Airport, was being prepped, manned, and scrambled.

Initial reports stated that it appeared the intruder had gained access to the clock tower by picking a lock on the access door on the forty-fourth floor. His method of deploying the red face on the clock was a series of red acetate panels connected to a small electric motor, triggered by a wireless transmitter. There was no telling how long the mechanism had been in place, although a longtime City Hall employee—a woman named Antoinette Ruolo—had phoned the police when she saw the news story break, offering a description of a man she said might have stayed behind on one of her tours the previous Friday afternoon. Police artists were in the process of putting together a composite based on her description.

There was still no word from the FBI’s Computer Crimes Task Force.

T
HEY CONTINUED NORTH
on Fifth Street until they reached Cumberland, where they pulled over. Whereas all of the patrol cars in the PPD were equipped with laptop computers, the detective cars were not. Before leaving the Roundhouse, Jessica ran down to the AV Unit and grabbed their highest-tech laptop. As they began their search of North Philadelphia, she fired up the computer, opening all the programs she thought they might need to use, then minimized them. Thankfully, the battery was fully charged.

Getting online was another story. Philadelphia did not yet have citywide wi-fi, but there were hotspots all over town.

J
ESSICA AND BYRNE
got out of the car. Byrne took off his tie and jacket, rolled up his sleeves. Jessica doffed her blazer. A few calls went out over police radio. One was a domestic disturbance in Juniata. Another a possible carjacking on Third. Crime goes on.

“This is maddening,” Jessica said. “This is absolutely fucking maddening.”

Inside the car, Byrne dug around in the backseat, emerging with a large SEPTA map of Philadelphia. He spread it across the hood of the vehicle.

“Okay. Caitlin O’Riordan was here.” He circled the area on North Eighth Street where Caitlin’s body had been found. “Monica Renzi.” He circled Shiloh Street. “Katja Dovic.” Ninth Street. “Elise Beausoleil.” Cambria. “What’s the relationship between these scenes? Not the killings. But the crime scenes.”

Jessica had been staring at these map locations for days. Nothing clicked. “We need to see this from above,” she said.

“Can we get a wi-fi signal here?”

Jessica took the laptop out of the car, opened it, launched a web browser. She clicked on a bookmark. It was slow, but it came in. “Yeah,” she said. “We’re hot.”

Byrne got on the phone to Hell Rohmer.

“Can you send us a graphic of the overhead map of North Philly?”

“All of North Philly?”

“No,” Byrne said. “Just isolate the areas where the victims were found. I want a good look at all the buildings together.”

“You got it. Two minutes.”

Byrne clicked off. They watched the streets. They scanned the channels. They paced. They waited.

| SEVENTY-ONE |

| 1 : 11 AM |

S
WANN KNEW
L
ILLY HAD BEEN AWAKE
. H
E ALWAYS KNEW
. I
T WAS A GAME
he had often played himself as a child. His father would have his small conclaves at Faerwood, finding himself in need of a foil or an object of ridicule at two and three and four in the morning. Swann had even studied techniques—mostly of Eastern origin—to slow down one’s breath and pulse to further the outward appearance of sleep, coma, or even death.

He fingered the goatee into place, held it, the smell of the spirit gum drawing him back to his childhood. He recalled a small club near Boston, 1978. The dressing room chair had tape on one leg. There were crumpled McDonald’s bags in the corner. His father played to an audience of ten people.

Swann tied his tie, put on an older raincoat. After all, he could not be glimpsed in North Philadelphia looking like the master of ceremonies at a bizarre gathering of aging conjurers.

He flipped off the makeup mirror lights. The lights slowly died, as did the memories.

T
HE VAN SAT
waiting for him in the garage. In the back was Patricia Sato, his lovely Odette. She was the girl in the Sub Trunk. He had built it to exacting specs. There was no air inside.

Moments later, observing all traffic laws, Joseph Swann—also known as the Collector—drove to the Badlands.

| SEVENTY-TWO |

| 1 : 19 AM |

T
HEY RECEIVED THE FILE VIA E-MAIL
. J
ESSICA OPENED THE GRAPHIC PROGRAM
on the laptop. Moments later the screen showed a section of North Philadelphia. It was an aerial photograph of a zone that included all the crime scenes.

What tied these four buildings together? What had made their killer choose these locations?

They were all abandoned properties. Two numbered streets; two named streets. Earlier, Tony Park had run the street addresses. He had tried a hundred permutations. Nothing had leapt out.

They looked at the front elevation of the crime scenes. All four were three stories tall; three were brick, one wood. One, the Eighth Street address—where Caitlin O’Riordan had been found—had a corrugated metal roll door. All had boarded up windows on the first floors, all were covered in graffiti.
Different
graffiti. Three had rusted air conditioners lag-bolted next to the front windows.

“Ninth Street and Cambria have panel doors,” Jessica said.

Byrne circled the doors on the digital photographs of the buildings. Two buildings had steps, three had awnings. He circled these, too. Element by architectural element they compared the buildings. None of the structures were exactly alike, none were completely different. Different colors, different materials, different locations, different elevations.

Jessica looked at the support pole in front of the door on Eighth Street. A
support
pole. She looked at the other buildings. All three had at one time had support columns in front of the entrance, but now only had sagging, slanted rooms above the entry. It hit her. “Kevin, they’re all corner buildings.”

Byrne put four photographs on the hood of the car in front of the laptop. Each crime scene was at least part of a corner building in a block of four or more structures. He compared the photographs to the overhead shot on the LCD screen.

Pure geometry.

“Four triangles,” Byrne said. “Four buildings that appear to be triangles from above.”

“It’s the city,” Jessica said.

“It’s the city,” Byrne echoed. “He’s making a tangram puzzle out of the city of Philadelphia.”

| SEVENTY-THREE |

| 1 : 25 AM |

L
ILLY HAD HEARD THE VEHICLE PULL AWAY FROM THE HOUSE, BUT SHE
dared not move. She counted off three minutes. When she heard nothing else she slipped out of bed. Her shoes were neatly arranged at the footboard. She put them on.

Her legs were a little wobbly, but she soon recovered her balance.

She moved to the window, gently pushing aside the velvet curtain. Beyond the iron bars she saw streetlights through the trees, but little else. She wondered what time it was. Outside was pitch-black. It could be 10:00
PM
or 4:00
AM.
It suddenly occurred to her that, for her whole life, she had always known where she was and what time it was. Not knowing these two simple things was as unsettling as any of part of this predicament.

Lilly turned, got a better look at the room. It was small, but nicely decorated. Everything looked like an antique. There were two drawers in the nightstand nearest to her. She pulled on the handle of the top drawer, but the drawer didn’t move. Must be stuck, she thought. She pulled again, a little harder. Nothing. She tried the drawer below, with the same result. She walked around the bed to the other nightstand. The drawers were all nailed or glued shut. She gently shook the table, but she heard nothing inside.

It was as if she were in a zoo, or a museum replica of a bedroom. Everything was fake. Nothing was real, nothing worked. Fear wormed its way up from her stomach. Taking a few deep breaths, she tried to calm herself, then stepped up to the door and pounded on it with the heel of her hand. She put her ear to the surface.

Silence.

She looked at the bed. It was a single with a polished brass headboard. She lifted the down comforter and sheets. The frame was metal. If she could get the frame apart somehow, she could break the windows and start screaming. She didn’t think she was close enough to another house to be heard, but you never knew. Besides, if she could get off one of the slats, she could use it as a weapon. She got down on her knees, felt beneath the bed. It all seemed to be welded together into one solid piece.

Fuck.

She sat on the nightstand and looked at the large painting next to her. It was of some castle on a hillside, surrounded by lush forest and flocking birds. Must be nice, she thought. The painting was crooked again. She must have brushed up against it. Without getting up from the nightstand, she reached out, pushed on the edge of the huge gilded frame.

She heard a noise, a low reverberating sound. She ran to the window. No headlights slicing through the darkness, coming or going. Either he had already pulled into the driveway and garage, or it was not a vehicle. The sound continued, growing a little louder. It was not a car. It was in the
room.

Suddenly it stopped. Lilly glanced back at the wall opposite the door, and saw a passageway. A small door in the middle of the wall.

Lilly rubbed her eyes and looked again. She was not hallucinating.