The Doll Maker (48 page)

‘It was
thé dansant
,’ she said. ‘Valerie told him she’d see him at the
thé dansant
.’

Byrne said nothing.

Before leaving the Roundhouse, Jessica learned that the straight razor they had recovered in the secret rooms upstairs was matched to a wound inflicted on a homicide victim found in the Lemon Hill section of Fairmount Park, a teenager named Latrelle Hopwood. One of Hopwood’s wounds – a cut to the back of the neck – was consistent with a wound found on the body of Ezekiel Moss.

When brought in for questioning on an unrelated matter, Hopwood’s cousin George identified Martin White as someone he and Latrelle tried to rob in the park.

Jessica looked at the other papers scattered around the room. She noticed a stack of drawings near the hearth. On top was a drawing of a black sky and a tiny crescent moon. She pointed at it.

‘I take it those aren’t your memoirs.’

Byrne offered a sad smile.

‘May I?’

‘Sure.’

Byrne handed her the drawings.

Valerie Sauveterre’s drawings.

They sat in the parlor.
 

‘We’ve done terrible things,’ Valerie said. ‘I’m going to leave now. I should be back soon, but if I am not, you know what to do. You will be all right. You know where everything is. I’ve signed all the necessary papers.’
 

‘What terrible things have we done?’ the girl asked.
 

Valerie just looked at the girl, her beautiful blue eyes, her flawless skin, a priceless Bru.
 

Valerie closed her eyes for a moment, hoping the image would last. It would not, of course. They were children, not dolls.
 

Only dolls remained children forever.
 

Valerie stood, paused in the doorway, considered the question. She wondered what they would understand, then remembered that they were far more worldly than she in many ways. In other ways, they lived in a world of counterweighted eyes, bright colors, and pretty bows.
 

‘You are our
maîtresse des marionnettes
,’ the boy said. ‘We can’t lose you.’

‘The big people will try to hurt you, but first they must find you. You know where to hide.’
 

Valerie knew that the
children
knew what could be seen, and what must remain unseen. The groceries would come every two weeks, delivered to the back door. Aunt Josephine had arranged for the real estate taxes, as well as the utilities, to be paid monthly, for many years.

By the time this was all discovered the children would be old enough to strike out on their own.
 

Valerie just hoped that the authorities would blame her for what went on here, not the children.
 

She touched the girl’s cheek. ‘You will be Anabelle.’ She touched the boy’s cheek with her other hand. ‘You will be Mr Marseille. I want you to be strong, little man.’
 

‘I will,’ the boy said.
 

‘You must always look after Anabelle.’
 

The boy took the girl’s hand in his. ‘I promise.’
 

‘The big people will not understand what went on here. They will put you on the shelf.’
 

‘Just like Vista House,’ the boy said.
 

‘Just like that.’
 

Valerie opened her bag. From it she retrieved a pair of photographs. One of the boy, one of the girl.
 

She held up their pictures.
 

‘
Ces petites choses
,’ she added, ‘
me parlent de vous
.’

She reached into her pocket, took out the cameo brooch.
 

‘This belonged to my mother,’ she said. ‘Keep it always as a remembrance of me.’
 

She handed it to the boy.
 

‘We will,’ he said.
 

Valerie glanced at the door, at the small form of Thomas Rule, wrapped in the shower curtain liner, then back at Anabelle and Mr Marseille.
 

They really didn’t know it was wrong.
 

She kissed them each on the forehead, turned, and walked out the door, closing it behind her.
 

She never came back.
 

One by one Byrne explained what he had learned from Dr Allen about Valerie Sauveterre’s childhood drawings.

‘She didn’t do it, did she?’ Jessica said. ‘She didn’t kill the children.’

‘No,’ Byrne replied. ‘It was the boy and girl. Martin and Cassandra White. Valerie may have brought the children here, but she only wanted friends. All she had growing up were the imperfect dolls. That’s why she went after the kids she saw as damaged. She wanted to fix them.’

Jessica shuddered at the thought of young children, no more than eight years old at the time, causing the death of other children. She wondered what, if anything, they would find in and around the grounds of this house.

Byrne went on to explain the secret rooms. When the house was built for one of Philadelphia’s railroad barons, the man had included in the design three small rooms in which he kept and consumed his liquor during Prohibition. The deliveries were through a trapdoor in the garage ceiling, the same door by which Martin and Cassandra White made their entrances and exits.

‘I didn’t like the color in here anyway,’ Byrne said.

Jessica laughed. She wanted to cry, but she laughed.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ she said.

Byrne held up the bottle. There were a few inches left.

‘Not just yet,’ he said.

As Jessica took the bottle, the cat came around the corner, considered them.

‘Who is this guy, anyway?’ Jessica asked.

Byrne looked over. ‘His name is Tuck.’

Byrne told her about how he and Tuck met, about the bricks tumbling from the roof that had almost killed the cat.

Jessica then told Byrne how it was the cat who had alerted her to the hidden door in the closet, maybe saving his life.

‘He did that?’ Byrne asked.

‘Yeah.’

Byrne thought for a moment. ‘I guess we really are even, then.’

Tuck, perhaps sensing the balancing of the books, jumped onto Jessica’s lap, curled around once, and lay down.

Within moments, he was fast asleep.

Byrne stood on the porch, rang the doorbell. He smoothed his tie, ran a quick hand through his hair, Father Tom Corey’s words caroming in his mind:

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
 

It had been a month since the disappearance of Martin and Cassandra White. In the weeks that followed, the remains of four small bodies had been found buried within a few hundred yards of each other in Fairmount Park.

Somehow it had taken this long to complete the paperwork, clearing a path for Byrne to do what he was about to do. It took only a second to end someone’s life, but it took a month to complete the paperwork.

Over the past two days he had met with the other families. Aaron Petroff’s, Jason Telich’s, Thomas Rule’s, and Nancy Brisbane’s.

Thaddeus Woodman had been the first of the victims.

Theresa Woodman had poured coffee. It sat cooling between them.

‘Do you have children?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Boys?’

‘No,’ Byrne said. ‘One daughter.’

‘I always wanted one of each. God said no.’

Byrne wanted to say that she was young enough to try again, but it was not his place. ‘I always thought I would have more,’ he said. ‘We’re blessed to have them in our lives, even if it’s not for very long.’

Byrne reached into his bag, handed Theresa the drawing he’d found in his house. The big green yard with the skinny squirrels in the trees. The drawing was signed
Thad W
.

Theresa Woodman touched a hand to her heart.

‘His grandfather’s house in Berks County,’ she said. ‘He loved to go to the farm. He loved to watch the squirrels.’

She began to softly cry. Byrne reached over, pulled a few tissues from the box on the counter, handed them to her.

‘He would be sixteen now,’ she said.

Byrne just listened.

‘I’m not even sure I would know what to do as the mother of a sixteen-year-old boy.’

‘You would have figured it out,’ Byrne said.

He thought about all the drawings he’d found in the house, and how he had, for a moment, contemplated keeping them, perhaps one day taking them out as a talisman against some as yet unimagined evil, the innocence of each scribbled line an armor around him.

In the end he burned them all, except for five, sending the ashes aloft over the city he loved.

Theresa held up the drawing. ‘Thank you.’

From the moment he’d found the map, he knew he would do this. The Woodman home was the fifth out of five. This was a good thing because Byrne did not have one more ounce of energy – neither physical nor spiritual – left to spend.

As Byrne stood in the driveway he considered the wire, the malleable but unbreakable filament that began with a monster named Ezekiel Moss, and ended with a boy and girl who inherited his legacy of evil and committed these terrible crimes. He wanted to lash out, to assign blame, but he had no idea where to begin.

He looked through the kitchen window, at Theresa Woodman putting the drawing he’d given her on the refrigerator.

It fit perfectly in the space that had only moments ago held the calendar, the calendar Theresa Woodman would no longer have to tend, crossing off the days and weeks and months until either her son returned, or his remains were found.

Byrne got into the car. He felt as if a veil had been lifted from his heart.

‘You okay?’

Byrne turned to look at her. He didn’t know what the future would hold for them – or what their past together had wrought – but, at this moment, he knew he didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world than sitting next to her.

‘I’m good,’ he said.

Donna Sullivan Byrne leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, then thumbed off her lipstick. It had always been her way.

She started the car, buckled her seatbelt.

‘Where to?’ she asked.

Byrne said: ‘I need to stop somewhere.’

The crime scene unit had found the doll that was made to look like Andrea Skolnik at the base of the spiral staircase leading to the deck of the SS
Clermont-Ferrand
. On its head was scratched the number 13, matching the number etched into the scalp of the victim.

On either side were two other dolls, faithful replicas of Martin and Cassandra White, who called themselves Anabelle and Mr Marseille. These dolls were numbered 14 and 15.

It wasn’t until a week later, while Byrne considered the presence and placement of these dolls, that he began to further tear out the interior walls of the secret rooms.

He knew the other doll had to be there.

He was right.

Standing in a grove of trees, in Fairmount Park, just a few feet from where Thaddeus Woodman’s body had been found, Byrne took out the small garden trowel, made a hole deep enough for what he had to bury.

He had lost two nights’ sleep wrestling with what he should do with the doll, and everything he’d come up with did not seem right. Everything seemed to have the potential to backfire, to one day be discovered or, worst of all, hurt someone he loved.

When he looked down, at the just-turned earth, he realized that this, too, was wrong. He firmly believed that, in this life, energy echoed across time, and that the spirit of Thaddeus Woodman – a boy who loved the outdoors, a boy who loved to laugh – would watch over this small figurine for all eternity, keeping it safe.

Still, he could not do it.

He knelt, smoothed the dirt, put the small garden trowel back into his bag, along with the doll marked 16, the last doll ever made by Jean Marie Sauveterre.

The doll that looked like Sophie Balzano.

It seemed like just a few days since she had stood in front of the Roundhouse that morning in November, her future uncertain. Somehow, five months had passed.

She thought about that horrible night on Pier 82.

In the days that followed, Sophie had not slept. For two nights Jessica sat up with her daughter, holding her close. On the third day, exhausted, Sophie had slept for a few hours. Each successive night it got a little easier. At least on the outside.

Jessica recalled looking at little Miranda Stovicek, the two-year-old daughter of the woman who had found Nicole Solomon’s body at the Shawmont train station. She recalled wondering whether children had these terrible things imprinted in their memory. Jessica was all but certain the memory of falling from the bow of the SS
Clermont-Ferrand
would live in Sophie’s mind for the rest of her life.

Because Sophie was a far more forgiving person than Jessica could ever hope to be – and the fact that the man and woman who called themselves Anabelle and Mr Marseille had not yet been found – Sophie one day told Jessica that she forgave them, and wished them well.

And, because she was a Balzano, Sophie added that she wished them well, as long as they spent the rest of their lives in a penitentiary.

Jessica glanced up, at the tall building at Three South Penn Square, then at the plaque over the entrance.

Office of the District Attorney
.

Come Monday morning she would walk into this building, and begin a whole new set of challenges. Because of her experience on the street, and her time working homicides, she knew she would be fast-tracked to the criminal division. She wasn’t supposed to know this, but she did. She just hoped she wouldn’t step on too many toes in the process.

Had they paid off her loans? Not even close. But they would. They would find a way. Based on his stellar work holding the car-wash sponge for his father, Carlos Balzano had his stash up into the low two-figures. It was only a matter of time until they were flush.

As she stood in the shadow of this massive structure she thought about her late brother Michael, and how he was always walking next to her. She thought about her late mother, about how she would always sing when she made dinner, how those songs would always live in her heart. She thought about her father, his legacy, his reputation in the department and the city.