Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (150 page)

With deepest gratitude to Meg Ruley, Jane Berkey, Peggy Gordijn, Don Cleary, Mike McCormack, Christina Hogrebe, and everyone at the Jane Rotrosen Agency—magicians all; to Linda Marrow, Dana Isaacson, Rachel Kind, Junessa Viloria, and the brilliant team at Ballantine Books; to Kate Elton, Nikola Scott, Chrissy Schwartz, and all my mates at Random House UK; to Detective Michele Kelly, Marco Marangon, and Tom Ewing; to George Snyder of Snyder’s Magic Shop, for never showing me how it was done; to my father, Dominic Montanari, for being there when the words were not; and to the city of Philadelphia, for letting me write about its neighborhoods, streets, heroes, and monsters, both real and imagined.

| PROLOGUE |

In the darkness, in the deep violet folds of night, he hears whispers: low, plaintive sounds that dart and shudder and scratch behind the wainscoting, the cornice, the parched and wormy wood lath. At first the words seem foreign, as if uttered in another language, but as dusk inches toward dawn he comes to recognize every voice—every pitch, tone, and timbre—as a mother would her child on a crowded playground.

Some nights he hears a solitary scream rage beneath the floorboards, stalking him from room to room, down the grand staircase, across the foyer, through the kitchen and pantry, into the consecrated silence of the cellar. There, below ground, entombed by a thousand centuries of bone and fur, he accepts the gravity of his sins. Perhaps it is the dampness itself that accuses, icy droplets on stone shimmering like tears on a brocade bodice.

As memories flower, he recalls Elise Beausoleil, the girl from Chicago. He recalls her proud manner and capable hands, the way she bargained in those final seconds, as if she were still the prettiest girl at the prom. A Dickensian waif in her high boots and belted coat, Elise Beausoleil liked to read. Jane Austen was her favorite, she said, although she considered Charlotte Brontë a close second. He found a yellowed copy of
Villette
in her purse. He kept Elise in the library.

In time he recalls Monica Renzi, her thick limbs and body hair, the frisson of exhilaration as he enthusiastically raised his hand like one of her contemptuous classmates when she asked why. The daughter of a Scranton shopkeeper, Monica liked to dress in red; shy and wordstruck and virginal. Monica once told him that he reminded her of a young banker in one of those old movies she watched with her grandmother on Saturday nights. Monica’s room was the solarium.

He recalls the thrill of the chase, the bitter coffees consumed in rail stations and bus terminals, the heat and noise and dust of amusement parks and Home Days and county fairs, the frigid mornings in the car. He recalls the excitement of driving through the city, his quarry so delicately in hand, the puzzle enticingly engaged.

In time, in that gauzy cleave between shade and light, in that gray confessional of dawn, he remembers it all.

Each morning the house falls silent. Dust settles, shadows depart, voices still.

On this morning he showers and dresses and breakfasts, steps through the front door onto the porch. Daffodils near the sidewalk fence greet him, brazen blonds spiriting through the cold sod. A breeze carries the first breath of spring.

Behind him looms a sprawling Victorian house, a lady of long-faded finery. Her back gardens and side yards are overgrown, her stone paths tufted, her gutters dense with verdigris. She is the very museum of his existence, a house crafted at a time when dwellings of such distinction and character were given names, names that would enter the consciousness of the landscape, the soul of the city, the lore of the region.

In this mad place where walls move and stairways lead nowhere, where closets give onto clandestine workshops and portraits solemnly observe each other in the midday silence, he knows every corridor, every hinge, every sill, sash, and dentil.

This place is called Faerwood. In each of its rooms there dwells a restive soul. In each soul, a secret.

He stands in the center of the crowded shopping mall, taking in the aromas: the food court and its myriad riches; the department store with its lotions and powders and cloying scents; the salt of young women. He surveys the overweight couples in their twenties, urging the laden pram. He laments the invisible elderly.

At ten minutes to nine he slips into a narrow store. It is garishly lit, stocked floor to ceiling with ceramic figurines and rayon roses. Small, shiny balloons dance in the overheated air. An entire wall is devoted to greeting cards.

There is only one other patron in the store. He has been following her all evening, has seen the sadness in her eyes, the weight on her shoulders, the fatigue in her stride.

She is the Drowning Girl.

He eases next to her, selects a few cards from the glittering array, chuckles softly at each, returns them to the rack. He glances around. No one is watching.

It is time.

“You look a little confused,” he says.

She glances up. She is tall and thin, magnificently pale. Her ash blond hair is pinned in a messy fashion, held in place by white plastic barrettes. Her neck is carven ivory. She is wears a lilac backpack.

She doesn’t respond. He has scared her.

Walk away.

“There are too many choices!” she says animatedly, but not without caution. He expects this. He is, after all, an unknown piece on her game board of strangers. She giggles, chews on a fingernail. Adorable. She is about seventeen. The best age.

“Tell me the occasion,” he says. “Maybe I can help.”

A flash of distrust now—cat paws on an oven door. She peers around the room, at the publicness of it all. “Well,” she begins, “my boyfriend is …”

Silence.

He begs the conversation forward. “He’s what?”

She doesn’t want to say, then she does. “Okay … he’s not exactly my boyfriend, right? But he’s cheating on me.” She tucks a filament of hair behind an ear. “Well, not exactly cheating. Not yet.” She turns to leave, turns back. “Okay, he asked out my best friend, Courtney. The slut.” She reddens, a sheer crimson pall on her flawless skin. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

He is dressed casually this evening: faded jeans, black linen blazer, loafers, a little extra gel in his hair, a silver ankh around his neck, eyeglasses of a modern style. He looks young enough. Besides, he has the sort of bearing that invites faith. It always has. “The cad,” he says.

Wrong word? No. She smiles. Seventeen going on thirty.

“More like a jerk,” she says. “A total jerk.” Another nervous giggle.

He leans away from her, increasing the distance by mere inches. Important inches. She relaxes. She has decided he is no threat. Like one of her cool teachers.

“Do you think dark humor is appropriate for the occasion?”

She considers this. “Probably,” she says. “Maybe. I don’t know. I guess.”

“Does he make you laugh?”

Boyfriends—boys who become boyfriends—usually do. Even the ones who cheat on achingly beautiful seventeen-year-old girls.

“Yeah,” she says. “He’s kinda funny. Sometimes.” She looks up, making deep eye contact. This moment all but splinters his heart. “But not lately.”

“I was looking at this one,” he says. “I think it might be just the right sentiment.” He lifts a card from the rack, considers it for a moment, hands it over. It is a bit risqué. His hesitation speaks of his respect for the age difference, the fact that they’ve just met.

She takes the card, opens it, reads the greeting. A moment later she laughs, covering her mouth. A tiny snort escapes. She blushes, embarrassed.

In this instant her image blurs, as it always has, like a face obscured by rain on a shattered windshield.

“This is, like, totally perfect,” she says. “Totally. Thanks.”

He watches as she glances at the vacant cashier, then at the video camera. She turns her back to the camera, stuffs the card into her bag, looks at him, a smile on her face. If there was a purer love, he could not imagine it.

“I need another card, too,” she says. “But I’m not sure you can help me with that one.”

“You’d be surprised what I can do.”

“It’s for my parents.” She cocks a hip. Another blush veils her pretty face, then quickly disappears. “It’s because I’ve—”

He holds up a hand, stopping her. It is better this way. “I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiles. “I was once your age.”

She parts her lips to answer, but instead remains silent.

“It all works out in the end,” he adds. “You’ll see. It always does.”

She looks away for a second. It is as if she has made some sort of decision in this moment, as though a great weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She glances back at him, smiles sadly, and says, “Thanks.”

Instead of responding, he just gazes at her with great fondness. The overhead lights cast golden highlights in her hair. In an instant, it comes to him.

He will keep her in the pantry.

Ten minutes later he follows her, unseen, into the parking lot, conscious of the shadow, the light, the carbon blue chiaroscuro of the evening. It has begun to rain, a light drizzle that does not threaten a downpour.

He watches as she crosses the avenue, steps into a shelter. Soon after, she boards the bus, a shuttle to the train station.

He slips a CD into the player. In seconds the sounds of “Vedrai, Carino” fill the car. It regales his soul—once again, exalting this moment, as only Mozart can.

He follows the bus into the city, his heart ablaze, the hunt renewed.

She is Emma Bovary. She is Elizabeth Bennet. She is Cassiopeia and Cosette.

She is his.

SHADOW
HOUSE

An echoing, garnish’d house
—but dead, dead, dead.

—WALT WHITMAN

| ONE |

T
HE DEAD GIRL SAT INSIDE THE GLASS DISPLAY CASE, A PALE AND DELICATE
curio placed on a shelf by a madman. In life she had been beautiful, with fine blond hair and cobalt blue eyes. In death her eyes pleaded for benediction, for the cold symmetry of justice.

The last thing they had seen was a monster.

Her tomb was a stifling basement in an abandoned building in the Badlands, a five-square-mile area of desolate terrain and destroyed lives in North Philadelphia, running approximately from Erie Avenue south to Girard, from Broad Street east to the river.

Her name was Caitlin Alice O’Riordan. On the day of her murder, the day her brief story came to a close, she was seventeen.

For Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Unit, Caitlin’s story was just beginning.

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