Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (122 page)

Very
bad.

32

From her new world of total darkness, layers of sound and touch peeled away slowly—the echo of moving water, the feel of cold wood against her skin—but it was the sense of smell that beckoned first.

For Tara Lynn Greene, it had always been about smell. The scent of sweet basil, the redolence of diesel fumes, the aroma of a baking fruit pie in her grandmother’s kitchen. All these things held the power to transport her to another place and time in her life. Coppertone was the shore.

This scent was familiar too. Decaying meat. Rotting wood.

Where was she?

Tara knew they had traveled, but she had no idea how far. Or how long it had been. She had dozed off, been rattled awake a few times. She felt wet and cold. She could hear wind whispering through stone. She was indoors, but that was about all she knew.

As her thoughts became clearer, her terror grew. The flat tire. The man with the flowers. The searing pain at the back of her neck.

Suddenly a light came on overhead. The low-watt bulb glowed through a layer of grime. She could now see that she was in a small room. To the right, a wrought-iron daybed. A dresser. A chair. All vintage, all very tidy, the room almost monastic in its precise order. Ahead was a passageway of some sort, an arched stone duct leading into blackness. Her eye was drawn back to the bed. There was something white on it. A dress? No. It looked like a winter coat.

It was
her
coat.

Tara looked down. She was now wearing a long dress. And she was in a boat, a small red boat in a canal that ran through this peculiar room. The boat was brightly colored with glossy enamel paint. Around her waist was a nylon seat belt, holding her snugly into a worn vinyl seat. Her hands were tied to the belt.

She felt something sour rise in her throat. She had read a newspaper story about the woman found murdered in Manayunk. The woman dressed in an old costume. She knew what this was all about. The knowledge squeezed the air from her lungs.

Sounds: metal on metal. Then a new sound. It sounded like … a bird? Yes, a bird was singing. The bird’s song was beautiful, rich and melodic. Tara had never heard anything like it. Within moments she heard footsteps. Someone approached from behind, but Tara dared not try to turn around.

After a long silence, he spoke.

“Sing for me,” he said.

Had she heard correctly?
“I’m … I’m sorry?”

“Sing, nightingale.”

Tara’s throat was parched nearly shut. She tried to swallow. The only chance of getting out of this was with her wits. “What do you want me to sing?” she managed.

“A song about the moon.”

The moon the moon the moon the moon.
What does he mean? What is he talking about? “I don’t think I know any songs about the moon,” she said.

“Sure you do. Everybody knows a song about the moon. ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ ‘Paper Moon,’ ‘How High the Moon,’ ‘Blue Moon,’ ‘Moon River.’ I especially like ‘Moon River.’ Do you know it?”

Tara knew that song.
Everyone
knew that song, right? But right then it would not come to her. “Yes,” she said, buying time. “I know it.”

He stepped in front of her.

Oh my God,
she thought. She averted her eyes.

“Sing, nightingale,” he said.

This time it was a command. She sang “Moon River.” The lyrics came to her, if not the precise melody. Her theatrical training took over. She knew if she stopped, or even hesitated, something terrible would happen.

He sang with her as he untied the boat, walked to the rear, and gave it a shove. He turned off the light.

Tara moved through the darkness now. The small boat tapped and clacked against the sides of the narrow channel. She strained to see, but still her world was almost pitch-black. From time to time she noticed a glistening of icy moisture on shiny rock walls. The walls were closer now. The boat rocked. It was
so
cold.

She could no longer hear him, but Tara continued to sing, her voice rebounding off the walls and low ceiling. It sounded thin and shaky, but she couldn’t stop.

Light ahead—consommé-thin daylight sneaking through cracks in what looked to be old wooden doors.

The boat hit the doors and they sprang open. She was outdoors. It looked to be just after dawn. A soft snow was falling. Above her, dead tree branches blackly fingered a mother-of-pearl sky. She tried to raise her arms, but could not.

The boat drifted into a clearing. Tara was floating down one of a series of narrow canals that snaked through the trees. The water was cluttered with leaves, branches, debris. On either side of the canals were tall, rotting structures, their supporting spines like diseased ribs in a decaying chest. One appeared to be a skewed and ramshackle gingerbread house. Another display looked like a castle. Yet another resembled a giant seashell.

The boat banged around a bend in the river and the view of the trees was now blocked out by a large display, perhaps twenty feet tall, fifteen feet wide. Tara tried to focus on what it might be. It looked like a child’s storybook, open to the center, with a long-faded, paint-flaked red ribbon down the right side. Next to it sat a large rock, like something you might see in a breakwall. Something sat on top of the rock.

The wind kicked up at that moment, rocking the boat, stinging Tara’s face, making her eyes water. The bitterly cold gust brought with it a fetid, animal smell that turned her stomach. A few moments later, when the motion settled and her vision cleared, Tara found herself directly in front of the huge storybook. She read a few words at the upper left.

Far out in the ocean, where the water is as blue as the prettiest cornflower …

Tara looked beyond the book. Her tormentor stood at the end of the canal, near a small building that looked like an old schoolhouse. He held a length of rope in his hands. He was waiting for her.

Her song became a scream.

33

By 6
AM
, Byrne had all but given up on sleep. He drifted in and out of consciousness, the nightmares creeping, the faces accusing.

Kristina Jakos. Walt Brigham. Laura Clarke.

At seven thirty the phone rang. Somehow he had drifted off. The sound jolted him upright.
Not another body,
he thought.
Please. Not another body
.

He answered. “Byrne.”

“Did I wake you up?”

Victoria’s voice brought a burst of sunshine to his heart. “No,” he said. It was marginally true. He had been on the rock-face of sleep.

“Merry Christmas,” she said.

“Merry Christmas, Tori. How’s your mom?”

Her slight hesitation told him a lot. Marta Lindstrom was only sixty-six, but she suffered from early-stage dementia.

“Good days and bad days,” Victoria said. A long pause. Byrne read it. “I think I have to move back home,” she added.

There it was. While both had wanted to deny it, they knew it was coming. Victoria had already taken an extended leave from her job at the Passage House, a runaway shelter on Lombard Street.

“Hey. Meadville isn’t all that far away,” she said. “It’s kind of nice here. Kind of quaint. You could look at it is a vacation. We could do a B and B.”

“I’ve never actually been in a bed and breakfast,” Byrne said.

“We probably wouldn’t get to the breakfast part. We could have an illicit assignation.”

Victoria could turn her mood on a dime. It was one of the many things Byrne loved about her. No matter how down she was, she could make him feel better.

Byrne glanced around his apartment. Although they had never officially moved in together—neither was ready for that step, each for their own reasons—in the time Byrne had been seeing Victoria she had transformed his apartment from the prototype bachelor pizza box into something resembling a home. He hadn’t been ready for lace curtains, but she had talked him into honeycomb window blinds, their pastel gold color amplifying the morning sunlight.

There was an area rug on the floor, end tables where they were supposed to be: at the end of the couch. Victoria had even managed to sneak in two houseplants that, miraculously, had not only survived, but grown.

Meadville, Byrne thought. Meadville was only 285 miles from Philadelphia.

It seemed like the other side of the world.

BECAUSE IT WAS
Christmas Eve, Jessica and Byrne were both on duty for only half a day. They probably could have fudged it out on the street, but there was always something to wrap up, some report to read or file.

By the time Byrne entered the duty room, Josh Bontrager was already there. He had gotten three pastries and three coffees for them. Two creams, two sugars, a napkin, and a stirrer each—all laid out on the desk with geometric precision.

“Good morning, Detective,” Bontrager said, smiling. His brow narrowed when he saw Byrne’s swollen face. “Are you all right, sir?”

“I’m fine.” Byrne slipped off his coat. He was bone weary. “And it’s Kevin,” he said. “Please.” Byrne uncapped his coffee. He held it up. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Bontrager said. All business now. He flipped open his notebook. “I’m afraid I struck out with the Savage Garden CDs. The big stores carry it, but no one remembers anyone specifically asking for it in the last few months.”

“It was worth a shot,” Byrne said. He took a bite of the pastry Josh Bontrager had bought. It was a nut roll. Very fresh.

Bontrager nodded. “I’m not done yet. There are still the independent stores.”

At that moment Jessica stormed into the duty room, sparks in her wake. Her eyes were blazing, her color was high. It wasn’t from the weather. She was not a happy detective.

“What’s up?” Byrne asked.

Jessica paced back and forth, the Italian invectives just beneath her breath. She finally slammed down her purse. Heads popped up over partitions around the duty room. “Channel Six caught me in the
fucking
parking lot.”

“What did they ask?”

“The usual fucking bullshit.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The usual fucking bullshit.”

Jessica related how they had cornered her before she could even get out of her car. Cameras shouldered, lights on, questions flying. The department really didn’t like detectives getting on camera unscheduled, but it always looked much worse seeing footage of a detective shielding their eyes and yelling “No comment.” It didn’t really inspire confidence. So she’d stopped and done her bit.

“How does my hair look?” Jessica asked.

Byrne took a step back. “Um, good.”

Jessica threw both hands out. “
God,
what a silver-tongued devil you are! I swear I’m going to faint.”

“What’d I say?” Byrne looked at Bontrager. Both men shrugged.

“However my hair looks, I’ll bet it looks better than your face,” Jessica said. “Gonna tell me about it?”

Byrne had iced his face down, cleaned it up. Nothing broken. It was slightly swollen, but the swelling was already starting to go down. He related the story of Matthew Clarke and their confrontation.

“How far do you think he might take this?” Jessica asked.

“I have no idea. Donna and Colleen are heading out of town for a week. At least that will be off my mind.”

“Anything I can do?” Jessica and Bontrager said simultaneously.

“I don’t think so,” Byrne said, looking at both of them, “but thanks.”

Jessica picked up her messages, moved toward the door.

“Where are you headed?” Byrne asked.

“I’m off to the library,” Jessica said. “See if I can find this moon drawing.”

“I’ll finish the list of secondhand clothes stores,” Byrne said. “Maybe we can find where he bought that dress.”

Jessica held up her cell phone. “I’m mobile.”

“Detective Balzano?” Bontrager asked.

Jessica turned around, her face a twist of impatience. “
What?
”

“Your hair looks very nice.”

Jessica’s anger slid away. She smiled. “Thank you, Josh.”

34

The Free Library had a great number of books on the subject of the moon. Far too many to make any immediate sense of in a way that might help with the investigation.

Before leaving the Roundhouse Jessica ran “moon” through NCIC, VICAP, and the other national law-enforcement databases. The bad news was that perps who used the moon as the basis for their MO tended to be compulsive killers. She had teamed the word with others—specifically “blood” and “semen”—and gotten nothing of use.

With the help of a librarian Jessica selected a sampling of moon-related books from each section.

Jessica sat behind two stacks in a private room on the first floor. First she browsed through the books that dealt with the moon in a scientific sense. There were books about how to observe the moon, books about exploring the moon, books about the physical characteristics of the moon, amateur astronomy, the Apollo missions, maps and atlases of the moon. Jessica had never been all that good with the sciences. She felt her attention waning, her eyes glazing over.