Richard Montanari (22 page)
Authors: The Echo Man
. . .
the man walks across the cemetery in darkness... he is strong. . . the dead
weight of Sharon Beckman's body is nothing to him ... he does not search for
the grave site, he knows where it is. He is familiar with this cemetery, all
cemeteries. He places her on the ground, steels himself. He is not quite
finished. He leaps into the air, and bears down with great force, breaking the
dead woman's leg, positioning it back because it means something to him and
. . .
Byrne
opened his eyes, got his bearings. He had forgotten where he was, what he was
doing. This was getting bad.
The
crime scene swarmed with people. Byrne glanced at his watch. It had only been
ten seconds. It felt like an hour.
He
walked back to the grave site. Information had trickled in about the second
body. This had been found in a Dumpster behind a building at Second and Poplar.
According to the initial report the victim, a middle-aged male, had been found
nude, his forehead wrapped in white paper, his body clean of all hair.
Three
bodies in two days. This case was about to break wide open. Wall-to-wall TV and
print news, perhaps even national attention. There was a ghoul on the streets
of Philadelphia, a monster who was strangling people, shaving their bodies and
marking their flesh. When they had found Kenneth Beckman's body they had all
hoped that it was an isolated incident, that it was some sort of personal
vendetta. It was not. It was bigger than that. There were now three corpses,
and everyone had the nasty feeling that there would be more.
Byrne
approached Jessica. 'I have that MRI. I have to go.'
'We've
got this covered,' Jessica said. 'Don't worry.'
Byrne
did not want to leave. The first two hours were the most critical time of a
homicide investigation. After that, memories faded, people thought better of
getting involved, forensic evidence had a way of giving itself back to nature.
Although neither he nor Jessica were the lead investigator on this case, every
warm body was critical.
'Kevin,'
Jessica said. 'Go to your appointment.'
'I
want to stop by the other scene first. This is out of control.'
'I'll
go,' Jessica said. 'You don't have to—'
But
Byrne was already on his way. He held his cellphone up as he walked back to the
car. 'Call me,' he said.
Leaving
the cemetery, Byrne saw the names of the dead carved in time-weathered stone,
dates marking fleeting lives, parentheses of birth and death. Out of respect,
out of the disquieting knowledge that one day someone would be walking on his
final resting place, he did his best to avoid stepping on the graves.
At
first it is a muffled sound, like that of a wounded animal. I hear it the
moment I step inside the room. It soon becomes crystal clear.
I will
not be here long. I have much to do. I may be a poor cartwright, but my
marchioness awaits
.
I
am not alone in this room. There are others here. We are all part of something,
fractions of a whole. They talk to me, to each other, but I don't hear them. I
hear what happened here years ago.
I
stand in the corner, close my eyes. The scene unfolds, like a stage play viewed
through frosted glass, two figures forever mired in a dark and terrible
vignette
.
She
is a shy girl, no more than eleven. She has long blonde hair, woven into a
braid.
'Who
are you? Are you a friend of my mom's?'
'Yes.
We are old friends.'
'You
shouldn't be here.'
'It's
okay. I like your dress. It is very pretty.'
'Thank
you.'
'I
have a prettier dress. One made especially for you.'
'For
me?'
'Oh
yes. It is your favorite color.'
'Blue?'
'A
very pretty blue.'
'Can
I see it?'
'In
time.''
'Where
do you know my mom from?'
'We
work together.'
'My
mom doesn't work anymore.'
'This
was from before. From a long time ago.'
'Okay.'
'Do
you know the story of Eve?'
'Eve?'
'Yes.
Eve in the Garden of Eden. Eve who was tempted by an apple.'
The
blade removed from its sheath the creak of worn leather the sound of a little
heart beating in fear—
'I
don't want you here anymore.'
'I
won't hurt you.'
'I
want you to leave, mister.'
'Don't
you want your pretty new dress?'
'No.'
The
blade shimmers in the bright afternoon sunlight
—
'I'm
going to get my sister. I want you to leave now.'
The
blade flutters and darts soaring high into the air
—
'Eve.'
The
neighbors say they
heard one scream that day, an unearthly wail that
cooled the blood in their veins
.
I
hear it, too.
It
is a sound that began a thousand millennia ago, a red wind that has blown
through the ages, finding cracks in the world, a breeze that became a howling
sirocco here, in the soul of a killer, in the festering heart of Room 1208
.
Lucy
walked down Eighteenth Street in what she had once heard, from one therapist or
another, was a fugue state.
She
couldn't get that photograph out of her mind.
That
couldn't
have been her house on Melbourne Road. It wasn't possible. It was
just a picture of one of a million bungalows. They all looked alike, didn't
they? Especially the crappy ones.
But
what about that flag, Luce? Did they all have that raggedy flag hanging off the
porch by a rusted nail, that stupid pennant that was supposed to mean Spring?
The one you were supposed to change every three months but no one ever did, not
once in all the time they lived there? They had all of them - Spring, Summer,
Fall, Winter, all four seasons, each looking more tattered than the other - but
they never changed Spring
.
What
about
that,
Luce?
What
about the Spring flag
?
She
didn't have an answer, just as she had no idea what had happened during those
twenty minutes she couldn't recall. Somehow she must have talked about the day
she disappeared. What did she say? And why didn't Mr. Costa
tell
her
what she'd said? Wasn't that why she went to see him?
It
was all part of the process, she guessed. And she had two more visits to go.
From
the time she was six or seven years old, Lucy had been an ace mechanic. Not
with cars, necessarily, although she could now do basic maintenance on most cars
- changing oil, replacing plugs and belts, the occasional brake job if it
didn't involve turning the drums or rotors. No, her forte was small appliances.
Bring her a stopped tape player, a cold toaster oven, a dimmed lamp - and a lot
of the staff of Le Jardin often did - and she would have it up and running by
the end of lunchtime.
She
had not gone to a vocational training school, or taken any classes,
correspondence or otherwise. It was a natural ability, combined with a
necessity of life.
When
she was small, on the night forays during which she and her mother picked
through trash they would often find all kinds of discarded items - toaster
ovens, blenders, tape players. Lucy's mother would haul them back to their
apartment, giddy with swag, then pretty much forget about them. Weeks later she
would throw them out, and Lucy would rescue them a second time. She started
with the easy ones, but eventually got better at repair.
Although
she didn't know it, she was practicing reverse engineering.
By
the time she was ten, Lucy would go out to dumps, finding her own things to
repair. She knew every second-hand dealer in their small towns. Where most kids
were reading
Dick and Jane,
Lucy pored over
Sam's Photofact.
In
addition, on her jaunts into the stores Lucy always stole the same color
clothes - sweaters, sweatshirts, skirts. She even replaced some of her mother's
clothes. Her mother was always falling down, ripping her clothes. Lucy got it
down to a science. She could steal a brand new dress and worry the material
just enough so that her mother never knew she was wearing a different garment.
Her mother was a proud woman in many ways, and it broke Lucy's heart to see her
going around in ratty clothes.
On
this day, Lucy found herself in the Macy's near City Hall. She made her way
over to the children's section, found a sweater that looked to be the right
size. She picked up two of them, carried them around for a while. When she got
to the women's section she selected a dress, brought it into the dressing room.
Inside
she got out her small toolkit and, with her back to the mirrors - she knew all
the tricks - removed the electronic tags from one sweater and the dress,
affixing them to the second sweater. She slipped the first sweater and the
dress into her bag, left the dressing room, replaced the other sweater on the
display rack, tarried a bit to make sure that she wasn't being watched, then
walked out of the store.
When
she arrived back at Le Jardin, with just a few minutes to spare, Lucy could see
that the convention guests - the members of
Société Poursuite -
were
milling about the lobby. They weren't all guests, of course. It was a
convention that attracted a lot of locals, as well as people from all over the
tri-state area who drove in for the three days of seminars, lectures and
dinners.
In
all, over the next few hours there would be ninety-two new guests, and all of
them had to be quickly and efficiently processed, greeted with smiles and
pleasant repartee, their concerns listened to with rapt attention, their every
need anticipated and met, their next three days in the city of Philadelphia -
and specifically in Le Jardin - a promised and delivered haven.
Lucy
stopped by the Loss Prevention office, picked up her room key.
A
door to your subconscious, Mr. Costa had called it. A portal to what happened
to you nine years ago
.
Lucy
finished her last room, room 1214, at 3:45.
She
stepped into the closet, closed the door, sat down. In moments, the darkness
embraced her. When she closed her eyes she saw the town of Shanksville,
Pennsylvania from above, saw the school on Cornerstone Road, Lake Stonycreek,
and the church on Main Street.
The
Dreamweaver had asked her questions, his silken voice floating above her,
behind her, around her, like a warm breeze. Her own voice belonged to a little
girl.
What
day is it, Lucy?
Tuesday.
Is
it morning, afternoon, evening
?
It's
morning. Tuesday morning.
What
time
?
Around
ten. I didn't go to school.
Why
not?
Mama
was out the night before, and she didn't get up in time.
