Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (134 page)

“I will.”

Jessica thought about the date. The late 1800s. What was the reason? Was the killer obsessed with that time period? She made notes. She would look up important dates and events in Philadelphia around that time. Perhaps their psycho was fixated on some incident that took place on the river in that era.

BYRNE SPENT THE
late afternoon doing background checks on everyone even remotely connected with Stiletto—bartenders, parking attendants, night cleaners, delivery people. Although they were not the most savory lot, none of them had anything on their records to indicate the kind of violence unleashed in the river killings.

He walked over to Jessica’s desk, sat down.

“Guess who came up blank?” Byrne asked.

“Who?”

“Alasdair Blackburn,” Byrne said. “Unlike his father, he has no record. And the odd thing is that he was born here. Chester County.”

This was a little surprising to Jessica. “He sure gives the impression he’s from the old country. ‘Aye’ and all that.”

“Exactly my point.”

“What do you want to do?” she asked.

“I think we should take a ride to his house. See if we can catch him out of his element.”

“Let’s go.” Before Jessica could grab her coat her phone rang. She answered. It was Ingrid Fanning again.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jessica said. “Did you remember something else?”

It wasn’t something else Ingrid Fanning had remembered. It was something else alto
gether
. Jessica listened for a few moments, a little incredulous, and said, “We’ll be there in ten minutes.” She hung up the phone.

“What’s up?” Byrne asked.

Jessica took a moment. She needed it to process what she’d just heard. “That was Ingrid Fanning,” she said. She gave Byrne a brief recap of her earlier conversation with the woman.

“Does she have something for us?”

“I’m not sure,” Jessica said. “She seems to think someone has her granddaughter.”

“What do you mean?” Byrne asked. He was on his feet now. “Who has her granddaughter?”

Jessica took another moment before responding. It wasn’t nearly enough time. “Somebody named Detective Byrne.”

58

Ingrid Fanning was a tough seventy—thin, wiry, vigorous, dangerous in her youth. Her cloud of white hair was tied into a ponytail. She wore a long blue wool skirt and cream cashmere turtleneck. The store was empty. Jessica noticed that the music had changed to Celtic. She also noticed that Ingrid Fanning’s hands were shaking.

Jessica, Byrne, and Ingrid stood behind the counter. Beneath the counter was an older model Panasonic VHS machine and a small black-and-white monitor.

“After I called you the first time I began to straighten up a bit behind here, and I noticed that the videotape had stopped,” Ingrid said. “It’s an old machine. It’s always doing that. I rewound it some, and I accidentally hit
PLAY
instead of
RECORD
. I saw this.”

Ingrid played the tape. When the high-angle image appeared on the screen it showed an empty hallway leading to the back of the store. Unlike most surveillance systems, this was nothing very sophisticated, just an ordinary VHS cassette machine, set on SLP. It probably provided six hours of real-time coverage. There was also audio. The view of the empty hallway was underscored by the faint sounds of traffic passing on South Street, the occasional car horn, the same music Jessica recalled from her visit.

After a minute or so a figure walked up the hallway, peering briefly through a doorway to the right. Jessica immediately recognized the woman as Sa’mantha Fanning.

“That’s my granddaughter,” Ingrid said. Her voice was trembling. “The room on the right is where Jamie was.”

Byrne glanced at Jessica, shrugged.
Jamie?

Jessica pointed to the baby in the crib behind the counter. The baby was fine, fast asleep. Byrne nodded.

“She would go out back to smoke a cigarette,” Ingrid continued. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Whatever was coming was not good, Jessica thought. “She told me she quit, but I knew.”

On the tape, Sa’mantha continued down the hallway to the door at the end. She opened it, allowing a wedge of gray daylight to spill down the corridor. She closed it behind her. The hallway remained empty, silent. The door stayed closed for forty-five seconds or so. It then opened about a foot. Sa’mantha poked her head in, listening. She closed the door once more.

The image remained static for thirty more seconds. Then the camera shook slightly, and changed positions, as if someone had tilted the lens downward. Now all they could see was the bottom half of the door, and the last few feet of the hallway. A few seconds later they heard footsteps, saw a figure. It appeared to be a man, but it was impossible to tell. The viewpoint showed the back of a dark coat from the waist down. They saw him reach into his pocket, retrieve a light colored rope.

An icy hand grabbed Jessica’s heart.

Was this their killer?

The man put the rope back into his coat pocket. A few moments later the door opened wide. It appeared that Sa’mantha was checking on her son again. She was a step lower than the level of the store, visible only from the neck down. She appeared startled to see someone standing there. She said something that was garbled on the tape. The man spoke in response.

“Could you play that again?” Jessica asked.

Ingrid Fanning hit
REWIND, STOP, PLAY
. Byrne turned up the volume on the monitor. On tape, the door opened again. A few moments later the man said,
“My name is Detective Byrne.”

Jessica saw Kevin Byrne’s fists clench, his jaw tighten.

Shortly after, the man stepped through the doorway, closed the door behind him. There were twenty or thirty seconds of agonizing silence. Just the sound of the passing traffic and the thump of the music.

Then they heard a scream.

Jessica and Byrne both looked at Ingrid Fanning. “Is there anything else on the tape?” Jessica asked.

Ingrid shook her head, dabbed at her eyes. “They never came back in.”

Jessica and Byrne walked down the hallway. Jessica looked at the camera. It was still pointed downward. They opened the door, stepped through. Behind the shop was a small area, perhaps eight by ten feet, bordered by a wooden fence at the back. The fence had a gate that opened onto an alley that cut behind the buildings. Byrne called in a request for officers to begin a canvass of the area. They would dust the camera and the door, but neither detective believed they would find fingerprints belonging to anyone other than an employee of TrueSew.

Jessica tried to construct a scenario in her mind in which Sa’mantha had not been drawn into this madness. She could not.

The killer had visited the store, perhaps looking for a Victorian dress.

The killer knew the name of the detective who was chasing him.

And now he had Sa’mantha Fanning.

59

Anne Lisbeth sits in the boat, wearing her dress—a midnight blue. She has stopped struggling against the ropes.

It is time.

Moon pushes the boat down the tunnel that leads to the main canal—the
Ø
STTUNNELEN
,
as his grandmother used to call it. He dashes out of the boathouse, past the Elfin Hill, past the Old Church Bell, all the way to the schoolhouse. He loves to watch the boats.

Soon he sees Anne Lisbeth’s boat come into view, floating past the Tinder Box, then beneath the Great Belt Bridge. He recalls the days when the boats passed by all day—yellow and red and green and blue.

The Snow Man’s house is empty now.

It will soon be occupied.

Moon stands with the rope in his hands. He waits at the end of the last canal, by the little schoolhouse, surveying the village. So much to do, so many repairs to make. He wishes his grandfather were there. He recalls those cold mornings, the smell of the old wooden toolbox, the damp sawdust, the way his grandfather would hum “I Danmark er jeg fodt
,”
the glorious aroma of his pipe.

Anne Lisbeth will now take her place on the river, and they all will come. Soon. But not before the last two stories.

First, Moon will bring the Snow Man.

Then he will meet his princess.

60

The crime-scene unit had fingerprinted the third victim at the scene and was rushing the prints through processing. So far the tiny woman found in the Southwest had not been identified. Josh Bontrager worked the missing-person angle. Tony Park was walking the plastic lily through the lab.

The woman also had the same “moon” drawing on her stomach. The DNA reports on the semen and blood found on the first two victims had concluded that the samples were identical. No one expected a different result this time. It was being fast-tracked nonetheless.

A pair of techs at the document section of the crime lab had now been exclusively assigned to the case to track down the origin of the moon drawing.

The Philadelphia field office of the FBI had been contacted regarding the abduction of Sa’mantha Fanning. They were analyzing the tape and processing the scene. For the time being, the case was out of the hands of the PPD. Everyone expected the case to become a homicide. As always, everyone hoped they were wrong.

“Where are we on the fairy-tale angle?” Buchanan asked. It was just after six o’clock. Everyone was exhausted, hungry, ill-tempered. Lives were being put on hold, plans cancelled. Some holiday season. They were waiting on the preliminary report from the medical examiner’s office. Jessica and Byrne were among the handful of detectives in the duty room. “Working on it,” Jessica said.

“You might want to look into this,” Buchanan said.

He handed Jessica a section of a page from that morning’s
Inquirer
. It was a brief article about a man named Trevor Bridgwood. Bridgwood was a traveling storyteller and troubadour, the article said. Whatever that was.

Buchanan had given them more than a suggestion, it seemed. He had dug up the lead, and they
would
follow up.

“We’re on it, Sarge,” Byrne said.

THEY MET IN
a hotel room at the Sofitel on Seventeenth Street. Later that evening, Trevor Bridgwood was doing a reading and signing at Joseph Fox Bookshop, an independent bookstore on Sansom Street.

There must be money in the fairy-tale business,
Jessica thought. The Sofitel was far from cheap.

Trevor Bridgwood was in his early thirties, slender and graceful, decorous. He had a sharp nose and a receding hairline, a theatrical manner.

“This is all rather new to me,” he said. “More than a little unnerving, I might add.”

“We’re just looking for some information,” Jessica said. “We appreciate you meeting with us on such short notice.

“I hope I can assist.”

“Can I ask what it is you do exactly?” Jessica asked.

“I am a storyteller,” Bridgwood replied. “I spend nine or ten months of the year on the road. I appear all over the world, performing in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada. Anywhere English is spoken.”

“In front of live audiences?”

“Mostly. But I also perform on radio and television.”

“And your main focus is fairy tales?”

“Fairy tales, folk tales, fables.”

“What can you tell us about them?” Byrne asked.

Bridgwood stood, walked to the window. He moved like a dancer. “There’s an awful lot to know,” he said. “It’s an old form of storytelling, encompassing many different styles and traditions.”

“Just the primer then, I guess,” Byrne said.

“We can begin with ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ if you wish, which was written around
A.D.
150 or so.”

“Maybe something a little more recent,” Byrne said.

“Of course.” Bridgwood smiled. “There are many touchstones in between Apuleius and
Edward Scissorhands
.”