The Doll Maker (21 page)

She lied anyway.

‘I’m good,’ she said. ‘I forgot to pick up something for dinner.’

‘It’s okay,’ Vincent replied. ‘I’ll call Santucci’s.’

For the first time in a long time Jessica had no interest in food. She really wasn’t hungry. All she wanted was a five-hour bubble bath, and a twelve-hour nap. A
dreamless
twelve-hour nap.

‘That sounds good,’ she said.

Jessica pushed open the rear door to the Roundhouse, walked down the ramp. She nodded to a pair of young officers, one of whom was cadging a covert cigarette before his tour began. You weren’t supposed to smoke within fifty yards of the building, but nobody paid much attention to that.

If you had a problem with it, what were you supposed to do, call a cop?

‘I’m leaving now,’ Jessica said.

‘What do you want on the pizza?’ Vincent asked.

Ambien
, Jessica thought. ‘Anything’s good.’

‘So, pineapple or agave, right?’

Her husband was trying, bless his heart. He really was trying. ‘See you in a bit.’

Jessica ended the call, put her iPhone in her pocket. She closed her eyes for a few moments, letting the chilled night air revive her.

In her mind’s eye she saw Nicole Solomon’s solitary form on the bench in Shawmont. She tried to imagine the timeline from the moment Nicole was last seen on the street – talking to her friend Naomi Burris – to the moment her killer tightened that stocking around her throat.

What had those moments been like? What had she seen through the kaleidoscope of hallucinations brought on by the magic mushrooms?

What was the connection, the wire that ran from Nicole Solomon to her father to the Gillen boys?

When Jessica opened her eyes she found that she had far more questions than answers. As she retrieved her car keys from her pocket she saw the shadow come up on her right. Fast. It took only a second to approach, but it was a second too long.

Before Jessica could turn around she felt the blow. It connected with a flat thud on the right side of her face.

‘…
knew!
’ was all she heard.

Jessica saw bolts of lightning behind her eyelids, felt the pain come on in a red roar. Because she had once trained as a boxer – had even fought a handful of professional fights, still worked out at Joe Hand’s gym when she could – she anticipated a second blow. It was pure instinct. She didn’t know where it would come from, but she got her hands up just in time to block it.

‘You fucking
knew
!’ her attacker screamed.

The second blow glanced off Jessica’s wrists. Jessica pivoted, put her back to her car, just as she heard yelling in the near distance.

‘
Whoa!
’ someone yelled. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ It was a man’s voice. Jessica then heard footsteps approaching.

In that next second Jessica was able to focus. She saw her attacker standing in front of her. It was a woman, a few inches shorter than she. The woman tried to launch another punch, but Jessica was able to sidestep it.

A moment later the woman was on the ground.

Jessica looked up to see the two young officers who had been standing at the back of the building. One of them had taken the woman down.

Jessica glanced down at the woman and it all began to make sense. It was Mary Gillen. The woman tried to scramble to her feet, but one of the officers grabbed her and held her in a bear hug.

‘You
knew
!’ Mary screamed again. She tried to kick Jessica but she was too far away. ‘You fucking
bitch
! You knew and you didn’t say anything.’

The woman tried to spit in Jessica’s face, but it went wide.

‘You need to calm down, lady,’ one of the officers said.

Mary Gillen would not be placated. She was hyperventilating. ‘You came to my fucking
house
, I answered your questions, and you knew my boys were in danger. And now they’re dead. They’re fucking
dead
!’

Jessica held out a hand, palm out. ‘It’s okay,’ she said to the officer holding Mary Gillen.

The officer wasn’t so sure. He held onto the woman. ‘Are you sure, detective?’

Jessica took a deep breath, tried to clear her head. If she had anticipated the first blow, the way you do in the ring, she might’ve rolled with it. But this was a sucker punch. And, at this moment, Jessica felt she deserved it. She’d had no idea what fate awaited the two Gillen boys when she visited the Gillen house, but still she felt she deserved it.

‘I didn’t know,’ Jessica said. It sounded weak and incomplete. ‘I had no idea that your boys were in danger when I came to your house. I was only there because of that phone call. You’ve got to believe me.’

The officer still held the woman tightly. The woman kept hyperventilating, but she had stopped struggling for the moment. There was spittle dribbling from her chin. Her eyes were red with rage.

‘I
don’t
fucking believe you,’ she said. ‘My boys are
dead
. My life is
over
.’

Jessica made eye contact with the officer. She nodded again. Reluctantly the officer eased his grip on the woman. Mary Gillen sprang forward and try to rain blows on Jessica again, but Jessica stepped in close and got hold of the woman, and held her until the woman’s volcanic anger began to subside.

‘It’s okay,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s okay.’

At this moment, standing in the parking lot of the Roundhouse, holding onto this woman who was as much a victim as the three victims of homicide were, she knew two things.

One. It was never going to be okay for Mary Gillen, ever again.

Two. Jessica would do everything and anything she could to catch the person who took this woman’s life away.

After icing her face, and calming down her husband – he felt deeply for the woman’s terrible loss, but his sense of protection for his wife took over when he saw Jessica’s swollen eye – she poked at some food, poured herself a rare double-shot of Jameson, stared past some inane sitcom.

All she could think about was the terrible cocoon of loss and grief in which Mary Gillen must be trapped, and how it would forever be connected to Jessica’s life. Every homicide she had ever investigated had, in some way, taken up residence in her heart and mind. She remembered something about each of them.

Four dead.

Nicole Solomon. David Solomon. Robert and Edward Gillen.

There was something that connected all of them to each other, just as they were forever connected to Jessica Balzano.

She would find it.

‘Sorry,’ Donna said.

‘It’s okay,’ Byrne said. ‘I was just kind of lost in thought.’

‘I remember it well.’

Byrne took a step back, drank in his ex-wife’s nearness. He thought he had prepared himself for her proximity. He had not.

‘You cut your hair,’ was all he could muster.

Donna raised her hand, smoothed the back of her long, elegant neck. ‘I did,’ she said. ‘Do you like it?’

Byrne hesitated for a second. No, it wasn’t a second. It wasn’t even
close
to a second. It was that nearly infinitesimal length of time measured by people – mostly women – who either are or were in an intimate relationship, the span of time coming right after a loaded question, but before the man can answer.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘I like it a lot.’

‘No you don’t. You hate it.’

‘I don’t hate it. It looks good on you.’

‘What you really mean to say is, it looks good on a woman my age.’

Since the day Kevin Byrne met the seventeen-year-old Donna Sullivan, next to a 7-Eleven in South Philly, he had yet to meet a woman he found more beautiful. She still managed to loose the butterflies in his stomach every time he saw her.

‘I’m going to go on the record here,’ Byrne said. ‘Your new hairstyle is very flattering. It makes you look prettier than ever. Younger.’

Donna smiled. It was the smile he remembered well, the one that all but said she knew that he was slinging the Irish charm, but that, for the moment, she would let him get away with it.

They were now inside the dimly lit parlor of Valerie Beckert’s house. ‘Well, to put it mildly, and for so many reasons, I was surprised to get your call.’

Since their divorce, Donna had worked as a realtor. Over the years she moved through some of the smaller, mom-and-pop neighborhood agencies, but four years ago landed a job with the largest realtor in the city of Philadelphia, handling mostly Center City properties.

She was also licensed to show any multiple listing. If she made the sale, she would split the commission with the agent of record.

‘Well, I haven’t made any decisions,’ Byrne said. ‘I just wanted to get the details on this house.’

Donna looked at him skeptically for a few seconds. She had always been able to read him well, far more accurately than he had been able to read her. Near the end of their marriage it was his job – the long irregular hours, the anger, the way the detectives of the homicide unit bonded even more closely with each other than they did with their families – that brought their relationship to a close. Donna had probably shut off her feelings two years before Byrne noticed the first touch of frost.

Some detective.

Donna walked over to the front window, which was caked with a decade of soot and grime. She looked for a clean spot to put down her briefcase and, not finding one, held it out to Byrne. Byrne held it aloft while she opened it, took out a folder. She snapped it shut, put the strap over her shoulder.

‘Let’s see,’ she began. She opened the folder, pulled out a thin sheaf of documents. ‘The property is four thousand square feet, with six bedrooms, four full plus one half-bath, three-car garage, eat-in kitchen, full basement.’ Donna flipped the page, continued. ‘The lot size is 8049 square feet, house built in 1928, shows as colonial style but as you probably noticed it is more Tudor. Stucco walls, hardwood floors.’

Byrne looked down. The worn and stained carpeting beneath his feet was probably a deep burgundy at one time. ‘There’s a floor under here?’

‘That’s the prevailing theory,’ Donna said. She glanced again at the document. ‘Public water, public sewer, hot water is natural gas, nice backyard, and the ultimate in luxury, a marble fireplace, which, unfortunately, is bricked in.’

‘Who needs heat in Philadelphia?’ Byrne asked.

Donna flipped a few more pages, found nothing of interest, put everything back into the folder. ‘You probably know this, but I’ll say it out loud anyway. There’s a rule of thumb in real estate, and that is, if you’re moving into a halfway decent neighborhood, and you’re looking to rehabilitate a property, you want the worst house on the block.’ She handed Byrne the folder. ‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘You definitely found it.’

Byrne took the folder. ‘So, what do you
really
think of the place?’

‘I think you should lace up your Nikes and run from this place as fast and as far as you can.’

‘Now, see, you’re just trying to get me to raise my offer so you can get a bigger commission.’

Donna gave him a sideways glance, and a half smile, the one that demolished his heart so many years ago. ‘You haven’t made an offer, detective.’

‘What do you think I could get it for?’

‘I think you can do a lot better than even the foreclosure price.’

Byrne looked around, as if he might be thinking about it. It was just a stall, and he knew it. He’d made up his mind the minute he walked through the door. There was no choice.

‘Let’s do it.’

Jessica and Byrne spent the morning – wasted the morning was more accurate, if Jessica were asked – by visiting toy stores in an attempt to find a doll similar to the one found at the Gillen crime scene, or someone with some knowledge who might point them in the right direction.

They had done a few Internet searches, found similar dolls and figurines, but that did not give them a direction as to where the doll was purchased. Sometimes shoe-leather police work trumped anything that computers could offer.

As they caught a quick coffee in Center City, Jessica told Byrne about the Nutshell studies. When she showed him the pictures on her iPhone, he was as impressed as she had been when she’d first seen them.

The double homicide of the two Gillen boys was being led by Josh Bontrager and Maria Caruso. While Jessica and Byrne followed up on the doll, the other two detectives interviewed students at the boys’ school.

They would meet with command later in the day and compare notes. There was no doubt that the homicides were related.

The fifth store of the morning, a place called The Toy Chest, was located in a converted row house on Germantown Avenue in the Chestnut Hill section of the city. The storefront offered a bright array of the store’s wares: Games, puzzles, dolls, action figures, models.

Byrne put the car in park, cut the engine. As he walked around the car, and waited for traffic to cross the road, he said:

‘Kevin, I’d like you to meet the thousand-pound gorilla in the room. Gorilla, this is Kevin.’

Jessica closed her car door. ‘So, what you’re saying is, you want to know about the black eye.’

‘Not really,’ Byrne said. ‘My partner shows up looking like she went two rounds in a cage match, and it doesn’t really cross my mind.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I told myself I’d give it until noon. It’s ten after. You should be proud of me.’

‘Always,’ Jessica said.

‘Dish.’

Jessica told him about the encounter with Mary Gillen. Byrne knew her well enough to know that she had not made a decision about what, if anything, she was going to do in response. He didn’t press her.

The man stocking the shelves was in his late twenties. He was tall and rail thin, had sandy brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a red flannel shirt, black Levi’s, black Doc Martens.

The man looked up from his task. ‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ Jessica replied. ‘I’m—’

Before she could continue, the young man interrupted her.

‘
Wow
. That’s one heck of a shiner. I hope the other guy looks worse.’