The Stolen Ones (35 page)

Unlike the first time he had visited the house, Byrne saw no vehicles in front, no activity on the grounds. This time there were burlap cloths over all the hedges, and the construction materials were gone from the partially renovated boathouse.

Byrne slowly worked his way around the perimeter of the building. He glanced through the kitchen window. The table and chairs had been removed. Beyond the kitchen he saw white sheets over the massive dining-room table.

He continued around the structure, looking in all the windows. Empty.

Byrne then walked down the path at the rear of the property, to the small carriage house. The door was ajar. He raised his weapon, toed open the door.

There, in the small kitchen, he saw Jessica sitting at a table. Behind her stood a man with a gun to her head. Byrne recognized the man as the gardener who was clipping the hedges the first time they had visited Martin Léopold’s house.

Byrne had no choice.

He put his weapon on the floor, and his hands above his head.

They sat on the floor in the wine cellar, back to back, their handcuffs circling a steel stanchion support. The man they had seen working on the hedges the first time they visited sat on the narrow steps, a Colt Defender in his hand. Both Jessica and Byrne’s service weapons were on a table across the room, magazines removed.

Before long Jessica heard the muffled sounds of police cars arriving, the faint clamor of a dozen or so detectives and patrol officers fanning out. Byrne had called for backup on the way to Torresdale, but because they had been led to the wine cellar by way of a hidden door, concealed behind a bookcase off the study, Jessica knew it was unlikely they would be found.

Whoever was upstairs in the house would tell the officers that Byrne had come and gone, and would let them search the premises. Jessica surmised that Byrne’s car was probably already at the bottom of the Delaware.

After about twenty minutes Jessica heard the cars pull away.

Some time later the door at the top of the stairs opened, and Jessica saw a pair of highly polished shoes descend. The man who was their captor had cut his hair short, dyed it a deep mahogany. He wore a dark suit and overcoat.

Martin Léopold was the real Eduard Kross.

‘The years between our first and second independence was a terrible time,’ Kross said. ‘Imagine a city like Helsinki – a free city – being just fifty miles away. I fancy it was much like the prisoners in your Alcatraz and San Francisco.’

‘Two hundred years, then freedom,’ Byrne said.

‘Yes,’ Kross said. ‘From Peter the Great until the First World War, then independence until Hitler. By the nineteen nineties the civic archives were in shambles. Birth records, death records, marriage records. To switch an identity, especially on a long passage such as mine, was not all that difficult. The staff at Cold River accepted it without question.’

‘You impersonated Godehard Kirsch?’

‘I
became
Dr Kirsch.’

‘And Kirsch was thought to be you. To be Eduard Kross.’

Kross smiled. ‘Lithium, in higher doses, is quite debilitating. From the time I overpowered him, to the moment of his death, he never spoke another word.’

‘So, at Cold River, you recorded yourself?’ Byrne asked.

‘Yes,’ Kross said. ‘We built a small recording studio with quite expensive acoustics. I was the only one allowed in the room. Except, of course, for our subject.’

‘The real Dr Kirsch.’

Kross nodded. ‘For a while. After him there were many. If Cold River had anything, it had no shortage of test subjects.’

‘Who are all buried in Priory Park.’

‘Not all,’ Kross said. He buttoned his coat, slipped a homburg on his head.

‘Who was it that died in the fire?’ Jessica asked.

Kross shrugged. ‘It was of little consequence. All that mattered was that the two administrators – the only people at Cold River who could identify me as Godehard Kirsch – also perished in the blaze. That day I became Martin Léopold.’

‘What about Luther?’

‘Ah, Luther. He was the perfect subject. A blank slate, if you will.’

‘You implanted your own dreams?’ Byrne asked.

‘A bit simplistic, Detective.’

‘And the little girl,’ Byrne said. ‘She’s your daughter, isn’t she?’ Byrne glanced around the room, nodded toward a door cut into the stone wall on the other side. ‘You were raising her down here. This place leads to the catacombs.’

Kross said nothing.

‘Why Marielle Gray?’ Byrne asked. ‘Why did you select her?’

For a few moments Kross was silent. He then reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a pair of photographs. He crossed the room, held them in front of the two detectives. One photograph was quite old, sepia-toned, creased. The other was newer. Both were pictures of girls around the age of five. The resemblance between the two was uncanny.

‘That is your sister,’ Byrne said, nodding at the old photograph. ‘The one the Tallinn detective told us was murdered.’

‘Yes,’ Kross said. ‘Kaisa.’

‘What happened to Marielle?’

Kross did not answer. He didn’t have to. Jessica saw the tell. It was a momentary flick from the man’s cold eyes, but it was there, a glance at the white flower in his coat lapel, the same flower found at the crime scenes.

Jessica did not know how much time had passed after Kross left. More than once she found herself being jarred awake. There were no windows in the wine cellar, but Jessica calculated they had been down there more than five hours. Her arms and legs were numb.

The man sitting on the steps watched them in silence, weapon in hand. When his cell phone vibrated, he glanced at the text message, then stood up, holstered his weapon, walked up the steps, and through the door.

Before long Jessica heard a car take off, the sound of the engine growing fainter and fainter.

Twenty minutes later Byrne managed to work the phone from his pocket.

The manhunt for Martin Léopold – the man they now knew to be a serial killer named Eduard Olev Kross – included personnel on the state, city, county and federal levels.

Homeland Security was also alerted. In the six or so hours it was conceivable that Kross had made it to Canada. If he had been able to mask his real identity in the US for more than two decades, there was a good chance that he had credentials that might get him across the border without too much trouble.

As of ten days later, no one answering Kross’s description, or Violet’s, had left the country through any international port.

They had simply vanished.

As to files – personal records, medical records, even utility bills – all that was left in the Torresdale mansion was a pile of ashes in the massive fireplace in the great room.

Forensic accountants for the FBI, in examining the dozens of accounts closed in the weeks before Kross’s departure, speculated that Kross had slowly drained Godehard Kirsch’s Swiss accounts for more than twenty years.

Jane Wickstrom, the DHS worker at whose house Jessica had gone to drop off Violet, was found bound and gagged in the basement of her row house. She had made a full recovery. Investigators believe it was Eduard Kross’s housekeeper, Astrid, who made the call to Jessica.

When he first saw her in the catacombs he’d thought she was a teenager. Now she looked her age. Still a young woman, but no child.

The U-Haul truck idled a few yards away.

‘Where are you headed?’ Byrne asked.

‘Center City,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s time. There are only ghosts here.’

She took a few seconds, glanced back at her house. Byrne knew that she’d recently sold it for just under market value. The offer she’d gotten – the call to her agency – had come from Luther, at the behest of Eduard Kross. When Rachel dropped the price, on the open market, she received an offer in days.

‘It was not knowing, you know?’ she said. ‘That was the hardest part.’

It did not take the FBI investigators long to determine where the Pearly Everlasting perennials were planted on the estate grounds in Torresdale, and that it was Marielle Gray’s remains buried beneath them. The preliminary reports indicated the young woman had probably died in childbirth. Byrne recalled the small makeshift surgery he’d found among the catacombs, the room where Violet was probably born. He tried to banish the image of the dried blood on the floor.

Although they would never know for certain, it was likely that Luther had been leaving the white flowers at the crime scenes in tribute to Marielle.

‘For years I didn’t understand the feelings,’ Rachel said. ‘When Marielle disappeared, I knew she wouldn’t just leave without telling me.’

Rachel Gray buttoned her coat, slipped on a pair of gloves. ‘I haven’t really slept for the past three years,’ she added. ‘I’m not sure that I ever will.’

‘You will,’ Byrne said.

She fixed him with a look of determination, far older than her years. ‘I’m not giving up looking for my niece.’

Byrne understood. ‘Nor will I.’

He opened his arms. Rachel stepped forward, fell into his embrace.

When she pulled away Byrne reached into his bag, removed a large padded envelope. He handed it to her.

‘What’s this?’ she asked.

‘A lullaby.’

As she drove away, Byrne turned to the house, a house he’d first heard about from Ray Torrance. He thought about the videotape he had just given the young woman, the tape Ray played for him, the video recording made in the kitchen of this house, many years ago.

The testament of a little girl named Bean.

The fog misted along the Delaware River like a ghost.

Jessica knew they would one day talk about Violet, but not for a while. They both knew that in this life they’d chosen there would be great victories, and heartbreaking losses.

They stood in silence on the Race Street pier for a long time, watching a barge troll slowly upriver. It was Byrne who spoke first.

‘I’m going to miss you,’ he said.

And there it was. Jessica knew it was coming. She knew it was coming and it was still a roundhouse to her heart.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said.

‘Yes you are.’

Jessica had nearly promised herself that she would not cry when this moment came, but she hated making promises she knew she could not keep. Especially to herself.

‘Look, I’m not even sure I’m going to take the bar exam yet,’ she said. ‘And even if I do, I still have to pass it. There’s no guarantee of that.’

Byrne gave her a look, the ‘Remember Who You’re Talking To’ look. This time it was about how she had maintained a 4.0 grade average her entire academic life, and how, in all that time – kindergarten through high school through undergraduate studies through law school – she had never gotten lower than a B on a test. Not once. And, in her mind, that B – received on an American History essay test in eighth grade – was still in dispute. She intended to one day track down Sister Mary Assumpta and confront her.

‘Okay,’ Jessica said. ‘I probably
will
pass it. But, if you think about it, this is even better.’

Byrne smiled. ‘Is it now?’

‘Absolutely. You bring them in, I’ll put them away.’

‘That easy, huh?’

‘Who’s going to stop us?’

‘Let them try,’ Byrne said.

‘Besides, you’ll move a lot faster without having to carry me all the time.’

Byrne leaned forward, kissed her on the cheek. ‘See you in court, Counselor.’

As she watched him walk down the pier, and disappear into the neon of the Philadelphia night, she thought about his words.

See you in court, Counselor
.

Jessica Balzano liked the sound of that.

The first thing the hunter heard was the whisper of the Maxima Crossbolt, followed by the soft rustle of nylon fabric against the bark of a birch tree.

The man fell without another sound.

When the man had spotted him, and fired his weapon three times, the report of the 9mm Colt Defender echoed across the valley.

The hunter waited a few moments, crept forward. He crouched down, felt the man’s neck for a pulse. There was none. He took out his cell phone, snapped pictures of the body, the area.

The hunter kept a low profile as he moved along the ridge.

The letter from the lawyer’s office had come in the mail almost six weeks after the funeral. He hadn’t expected it; the deed to the cabin, along with its contents. He had not yet become proficient with the crossbow, though he suspected he would, in time.

As he neared the house, he saw the little girl sitting in the window of what looked to be a study. She turned the pages of a picture book. Even in this short amount of time she looked to have grown. He’d forgotten this about children.

The hunter glanced at the large room on the right. Martin Léopold – Eduard Kross – sat near a fireplace. The woman called Astrid served him tea out of a sterling pot.

The hunter turned to the vista behind him. The painting he had seen in Eduard Kross’s library was a beautiful, realistic depiction of this valley, with the unmistakable image of St Catherine’s in the distance.

It took him a while, but eventually he recognized the view.

As he prepared to wait for the cover of night, Kevin Byrne looked down at the crossbow. Two arrows remained.

He would not need more.

With heartfelt thanks to:

Jane Berkey, Meg Ruley, Peggy Gordijn, Christina Hogrebe, Danielle Sickles, Rebecca Scherer, Christina Prestia, Donald Cleary, and everyone at the Jane Rotrosen Agency;

David Shelley, Catherine Burke, Thalia Proctor, Emma Williams, Kirsteen Astor, Felice Howden, and my new family at Little, Brown;

Chuck McGroarty, Capri D’Amario, Frank Jacovini, Bob Dellavella, Pamela Bernzweig Kiner, John Rybas, Kathleen Franco MD, Lt. Edward Monaghan, Kathleen Heraghty, Heike Haddenbrock and Joe Ruggiero;

Carole Wallencheck, Raidene Hebert, Rebecca Katzenmeyer, Jo Ann Vicarel, and Greg Fisher;

Mike Driscoll, Pat Ghegan, Dom Aspite, and the men and women of the Philadelphia Police Department;

Daniel Mallory;

And, as always, Dominic Montanari – my most steadfast champion, my greatest friend.