The Doll Maker (41 page)

‘Tell me about Martin and Cassandra White, Valerie.’

She just stared, remained silent.

‘Martin and Cassandra. Where are they, Valerie? I need to know.’

‘They are on the shelf now. Or soon will be. There’s nothing you can do.’

‘Okay,’ Byrne said. He felt the anger build. He tried to contain it. ‘This
shelf
. Where would I find this
shelf
?’

‘I wanted so much more for them, but I think they are beyond mending. The others? Nancy and Aaron and Thaddeus and Jason? I’d speak to Mr Lundby.’

‘Who is Mr Lundby?’ Byrne asked. Out of the corner of his eye, Byrne saw Josh Bontrager sit down at a laptop, and begin a search for the name.

Valerie Beckert said nothing.

Before he could stop himself, Byrne shot to his feet.

‘Martin and Cassandra White, Valerie! Where the fuck
are
they?’

‘Language.’

‘You kidnapped them, brought them into your sick fucking world, and now they are murderers, Valerie. Just like you.’

Byrne knew he was blowing it. She had baited him, he’d taken the bait, and now he was blowing it. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and said:

‘Valerie, please listen to me. In these last few moments, you can do the right thing. Help me stop them.’

Precious seconds ticked by.

‘I’ve dreamt about you, Kevin.’

‘
Valerie!
’

‘Tell them I love them.’

‘I will, Valerie. I promise. Just tell me where they are, and I will tell them anything you want me to. You have my word.’

‘They are the last Sauveterres. They are the most beautiful of all.’

Byrne glanced at the clock. He had thirty seconds left. He didn’t know what to say. He knew he would never again have the opportunity to speak to Valerie Beckert. He sat back down.

‘Valerie, I need your help. There isn’t much time. Maybe I can do something for you.’

It was a lie, and Byrne knew that
she
knew it was a lie. He saw a shadow on the wall next to where Valerie sat. It was the corrections officer coming to get her.

With five seconds left, Valerie raised her eyes, looked directly into the lens, directly at Kevin Byrne, and said:

‘Enjoy your new home, detective.’

The six detectives gathered outside the room. For a few long moments, no one said a word.

‘They’re doing it for her,’ Byrne said. ‘She took them in, and they’re punishing the people who put her on death row by taking something most dear to them.’

‘Their children,’ Shepherd said. ‘Christ.’

‘So she’s directing all this from her death row cell?’ Bình asked.

No one had an answer to this. The crimes were so well choreographed, so well timed, it was hard to believe it had been planned in advance. Too many variables, not the least of which was weather, which was starting to turn nasty. The forecast was for rain turning to snow.

‘It’s not like she has a phone,’ Shepherd said. ‘And only family, clergy and counsel can visit.’

‘What about a log of phone calls coming in to her?’ Bình asked.

‘I’ve got a request in on that,’ Byrne said.

He took out his phone, called Barbara Wagner’s cell. She answered after two rings.

‘Kevin,’ she said. ‘I was going to call you tonight.’

He put the call on speaker.

‘Barb, you’re on speaker,’ Byrne said. ‘I’m here with the task force.’

‘It took a little doing, but we’ve got a log of recent calls to Valerie Beckert,’ she said.

‘Since she got to Rockview?’

‘Yeah. She’s only gotten two calls.’

‘Counsel or clergy?’ Byrne asked.

‘Neither. According to the log, it was her children.’

Byrne looked at Jessica.

‘I didn’t know she had children,’ Byrne said.

‘Neither did we,’ Barbara said. ‘But at this late date, the rules can get a little bent. Not broken, but bent.’

‘What can you tell me about the calls?’

‘Not much. One came in at 3:36 p.m. six days ago. And one came in four days ago at 10:22 a.m.’

‘How long did they last?’

‘First one lasted six minutes. Second one lasted five.’

‘Do we have the number from which the calls were placed?’

‘We do.’

Barbara gave him the number. ‘Thanks, Barb,’ Byrne said.

‘You got it.’

Byrne hung up, took out his notebook. Jessica had her notebook out as well. They both found it at the same time.

The number they had gotten from Barbara Wagner, the number from which two phone calls were made to Valerie Beckert, was the same number they had gotten from Denny Wargo.

The man who purchased the accessories to grow magic mushroom, the man Wargo called
Mercy
, was Martin White.

Jessica was just about to contact West Detectives to see what was happening with the surveillance on that pay phone when Byrne’s phone rang again.

He answered, listened for a few seconds, then hung up. He grabbed his coat.

‘What’s up?’ Jessica asked.

‘We found the other girl who worked at Miss Emmaline’s shop.’

The Kilroy home was a white brick row house on Sixth Street near Washington.

Bridget Kilroy was a tall, skittish girl of about seventeen. She wore an oversized Swarthmore College sweatshirt and plaid flannel pajama bottoms. Jessica recognized her immediately as the other girl who had been in The Secret World that day.

With Bridget’s mother sitting in, they met in the cramped eating area of the kitchen. Placed between them, untouched, sat a plate of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies.

‘What can you tell us about Cassandra?’ Jessica asked.

The girl looked confused. ‘Who’s Cassandra?’

‘The girl you worked with at The Secret World,’ Jessica said. ‘Her real name is Cassandra White.’

‘I only knew her as Anabelle,’ Bridget replied.

Jessica held up the photograph of Miss Emmaline and the two girls, the picture taken in the parlor at the rear of the shop. The girl to Miss Emmaline’s right was Bridget Kilroy.

‘Is this other girl the one you’re calling Anabelle?’

The girl just nodded.

‘Okay,’ Jessica said. ‘What can you tell us about her?’

Bridget coiled a strand of hair behind her left ear. ‘I don’t really know her that well.’

‘Let’s start with how you two met,’ Jessica said.

‘Okay,’ she began. ‘I think it was in June or July.’

‘Of this year?’

Bridget nodded. ‘Yeah. I needed to find a job, and I was walking down Lancaster and I saw the sign in the window.’

‘At Miss Emmaline’s shop?’

‘Yeah. I’d never been in there, but I always thought it was really cool.’

‘Are you a doll collector?’

‘Not really,’ Bridget said. ‘I mean, I have
some
dolls, but I was never a real fan girl or anything. Not like some of the people who come in the shop.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, some of the people seem a little …’

‘Obsessed?’ Jessica asked.

‘
Oh
yeah. Like
really
obsessed.’

‘Would you put Anabelle in that category?’

She thought for a few moments. ‘I guess so. She seemed to know a lot about them. But maybe that’s because she worked there, and hung around Miss Emmaline.’

‘So you met Anabelle that day?’

‘Yeah. She was working behind the counter when I went in.’

‘Did you two ever socialize?’

‘Not sure what you mean by that.’

‘Did you ever go to the movies together, go to the mall, hang out?’ Jessica asked.

‘No.’

‘So, you’ve never been to her house?’

The girl shook her head. ‘No. We were never really friends like that.’

‘Did she ever tell you where she lives?’

‘No, but I always thought it was nearby.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I mean, I never saw her drive up in a car or anything. I just assumed she walked to the shop.’

‘What about other things? Did she ever talk about her friends or family? Where she liked to eat?’

Bridget chewed on a nail for a few moments, considered all this. ‘She never mentioned any family. I think I asked her once and she changed the subject. She was kind of a secretive person.’

‘So, no one ever stopped by the store that she knew? No one ever showed up to give her a ride home?’

‘No.’

‘Did she ever mention someone named Mercy, or someone named Valerie Beckert?’

‘Sorry. I don’t know those people.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘Wait. I do remember something. I know that she likes to sew,’ Bridget said. ‘She would really perk up when she talked about sewing.’

Jessica thought about what Miss Emmaline had said about the stitching on the doll dressed as Nicole Solomon.

‘What kind of sewing?’ Jessica asked.

‘Well, sometimes she would come in to work with a new dress or a skirt or something, and I would ask her where she bought it. Most of the time she said she made it herself. She’s really good.’

‘Why do you think that this is important?’

‘Well, she once told me that she bought all her fabric and stuff at this store on East Fourth.’

‘Do you remember the name of the store?’

‘It has a funny name. Something with “Johnny” in it.’

Jessica took out her iPhone, tapped her browser icon. She put in a search string for Philadelphia fabric stores plus the name Johnny. In short order she had a hit.

‘There’s a fabric shop on Fourth called Johnny B. Dry Goods,’ Jessica said. ‘Does that sound right?’

‘Yeah,’ Bridget said. ‘That’s the one.’

I have always been happy to indulge Anabelle her interests and passions.

I don’t know much about the art and craft of sewing , but I have a keen interest in fashion. Whenever I see older films, I feel a sense of nostalgia – if indeed that is possible to feel for a time and place that predates, by many decades, the time of your birth – for stories that depict life in the 1940s and 1950s.

In these stories people dressed for an occasion in their finest. Attending a church service, enjoying a meal, even shopping. Indeed, in many of these stories, the father in a family would wear a suit and tie at the dinner table with his family.

Now, sadly, those practices are all but unheard of. Whenever I see a teenager walking down the street, wearing flannel pajama bottoms, I fear for the world.

It is for this reason and others that I have never minded at all coming to this shop with its bolts of fine gabardines, its rainbow of bright silk threads, its reams of fine lace.

While I find it enjoyable, Anabelle is in heaven here, and that is enough for me.

On the day of our final tea, I found myself at the back of the shop, daydreaming about the things to come, when I heard it. The two words made the blood freeze in my veins.

‘Miss White?’

It was spoken by the woman behind the counter. I had not been paying her any mind because my attention was on other things, that being the preparations for our tea later today. The woman had dark eyes, long dark hair managed into a ponytail. She was very pretty, and had about her an air of competence.

If I’m not mistaken, when we entered the shop, this woman had been sorting through a pile of old buttons on the countertop, separating them as to material and style. Old buttons and lace were one of the reasons Anabelle had chosen this shop.

‘Anabelle?’ the woman said.

I quickly stepped through the curtains into the back of shop. Once there, hidden from sight, I peered through the opening. Anabelle did not look my way, nor did the man and woman now standing on either side of her.

A few moments later they all left the shop together. I did not move for the longest time, the dark reality of what had just happened descending upon me.

It had been many years since Anabelle and I had spent more than just a few hours apart, and the thought of it made me feel sick inside.

They had my Anabelle.

They had my life.

The girl sat quietly in Interview A, her feet crossed beneath the table, her hands clasped above, fingers interlaced. The door was propped open.

She wore a navy blue skirt, a navy pullover in an argyle pattern, a white blouse.

In her time in the homicide unit Jessica had probably seen every criminal type sitting in that chair. She had seen dead-eyed gangbangers; men who had come home to find their wives in flagrante, and picked up the nearest blunt object; drunk drivers who had no idea that they had taken someone’s life.

This girl, if she was culpable in the deaths of Nicole Solomon, Robert and Edward Gillen, and Andrea Skolnik, was a cipher.

She just sat there, her expression blank.

The old police adage of knowing whether or not someone was guilty of a crime by how relaxed they were in the box was true.

If you did the crime, and you knew you were caught, you got some rest. The next day or so were going to be taxing to say the least.

The girl in the room now – a girl whose identity and connection to a series of homicides, if she was connected at all, was still a mystery – was as calm as Jessica had ever seen anyone in that claustrophobic, windowless, six by eight foot room. A space that was, not by accident, the same size as a prison cell.

Jessica had never seen anything like it.

Jessica and Byrne reentered the room. Jessica sat to the girl’s left; Byrne sat across the small table from her.

‘Are you comfortable?’ Byrne asked.

‘Quite comfortable,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘As I said earlier, we just need to ask you a few questions.’

‘We have to wait for Mr Marseille, of course.’

Mr Marseille
, Jessica thought. This is the man named ‘Mercy’ that the drug dealer, Denny Wargo, had mentioned.

‘I’m sorry?’ Byrne asked.

‘We must wait for Mr Marseille.’

‘Mr Marseille?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know who that is.’

The girl looked up at Byrne. She smiled. When she did this her eyes brightened and her face seemed to light up. Jessica had initially thought the girl was very pretty. But when she smiled she was beautiful. She had delicate features, flawless skin. Her eyes were a midnight blue. She looked like—