Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (75 page)

When he arrived in South Philly, he found a parking spot about a block from his apartment. The walk seemed endless. He stopped, tried calling Victoria’s number again. He got her voice mail. He didn’t leave a message. He struggled up the stairs, feeling every moment of his age, each facet of his fear. He’d grab a few hours’ sleep and then start looking for Victoria again.

He fell into bed at just after two. Within minutes he was asleep, and the nightmares began.

32

T
HE WOMAN WAS
tied to the bed, facedown. She was naked, her skin streaked with shallow scarlet welts from the whipping. The light from the camera highlighted the smooth planes of her back, the sweat-slicked curves of her hips.

The man entered from the bathroom. He was not imposing in a physical sense, but rather carried about him a cinematic villainy. He wore a leather mask. His eyes were dark and menacing behind the slits; his hands held an electric prod.

As the camera rolled, he stepped forward slowly, fully erect. At the foot of the bed he hesitated, the hammer of a heart between strikes.

Then took her again.

33

T
HE
P
ASSAGE
H
OUSE
was a safe haven and shelter on Lombard Street. It provided counsel and protection to teenaged runaways; since its founding nearly a decade earlier, more than two thousand girls had passed through its doors.

The storefront building was whitewashed and clean, recently painted. The insides of the windows were webbed with ivy and flowering clematis and other climbing plants, woven through white wooden latticework. Byrne imagined that the purpose of the greenery was twofold. To mask the street—where all the temptations and dangers lurk—and to indicate to the girls who were considering just passing by that inside there was life.

As he approached the front doors, Byrne knew it might be a mistake to identify himself as a police officer—this was anything but an official visit—but if he came in like a civilian, asking questions, he could be someone’s father, boyfriend, dirty uncle. At a place like the Passage House, he could be the problem.

Out front, a woman was washing the windows. Her name was Shakti Reynolds. Victoria had mentioned her many times, always in glowing terms. Shakti Reynolds was one of the founders of the center. She had devoted her life to the cause after losing a daughter to street violence years earlier. Byrne badged her, hoping the move would not come back to haunt him.

“What can I do for you, Detective?”

“I’m looking for Victoria Lindstrom.”

“She’s not here, I’m afraid.”

“Was she supposed to be in today?”

Shakti nodded. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman of about forty-five, with close-cropped gray hair. Her toffee skin was smooth and wan. Byrne noticed the patches of scalp showing through the woman’s hair and wondered if she had recently gone through chemotherapy. He was once again reminded that the city was made up of people who fought their own dragons each day, and it wasn’t always about him.

“Yes, she’s usually here by now,” Shakti said.

“She hasn’t called?”

“No.”

“Are you at all concerned about that?”

At this, Byrne saw the woman’s jawline tighten slightly, as if she thought he was challenging her personal commitment to her employees. In a moment she relaxed. “No, Detective. Victoria is very dedicated to the center, but she is also a woman. And a single woman at that. We’re fairly loose here.”

Byrne continued, relieved he hadn’t insulted or alienated her. “Has anyone been asking for her lately?”

“Well, she’s quite popular with the girls. They see her more as an older sister than an adult.”

“I mean someone from outside the group.”

She dropped her squeegee into the bucket, thought for a few moments. “Well, now that you mention it a guy stopped by the other day asking for her.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to see her, but she was on a sandwich run.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I didn’t tell him anything. Just that she wasn’t in. He asked a few more questions. Nosy-type questions. I called Mitch over and the guy took one look at him and left.”

Shakti gestured to a man sitting at a table inside, playing solitaire.
Man
was a relative term.
Mountain
was more accurate. Mitch went about 350.

“What did this guy look like?”

“White, average height. Snaky looking, I thought. Didn’t like him from the get-go.”

If anyone’s antennae were tuned to snaky men, it was Shakti Reynolds, Byrne thought. “If Victoria stops by, or this guy comes back, please give me a call.” He handed her a card. “My cell phone number is on the back. That’s the best way to get hold of me in the next few days.”

“Sure,” she said. She slipped the card into the pocket of her worn flannel shirt. “Can I ask you something?”

“Please.”

“Should I be worried about Tori?”

Absolutely,
Byrne thought. About as worried as a person could or should be for another. He looked into the woman’s shrewd eyes, wanted to tell her
no,
but she was probably as attuned to street bullshit as he was. Probably more so. Instead of crafting a story for her, he simply said: “I don’t know.”

She held up the card. “I’ll call if I hear anything.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“And if there’s anything I can do on this end, please let me know.”

“I will,” Byrne said. “Thanks again.”

Byrne turned to walk to his car. Across the street from the shelter a pair of teenaged girls watched and waited and paced and smoked, perhaps summoning the courage to cross the street. Byrne slipped into his car thinking that, like a lot of journeys in life, the last few feet were the hardest.

34

S
ETH
G
OLDMAN AWOKE
in a sweat. He looked at his hands. Clean. He sprang to his feet, naked and disoriented, his heart pounding in his chest. He looked around. He experienced that enervating feeling where you have no idea where you are—not which city, not which country, not which planet.

One thing was certain.

This ain’t the Park Hyatt.
The wallpaper was peeling in long, brittle scabs. There were deep brown water stains on the ceiling.

He found his watch. It was after
ten.

Fuck.

The call sheet. He found it and discovered he had less than an hour to be on set. He also discovered that he had the thick binder containing the director’s copy of the script. Of all the tasks a director’s assistant had—and these ran the gamut from secretary, to psychologist, to caterer, to chauffeur, to drug runner—the most important was as guardian of the shooting script. There were no duplicates of this version of the script, and outside the egos of the leading man and lady, it was the most fragile and delicate item in the entire rarefied world of the production.

If the script was here, and Ian was not, Seth Goldman was fucked.

He picked up his cell phone—

She had green eyes.

She had cried.

She had wanted to stop.

—and called the production office, made his excuses. Ian was in a rage. Erin Halliwell was out sick. Plus, the public relations person from the Thirtieth Street station had not gotten back to them on the final arrangements for the shoot. The set piece of
The Palace
was going to be filmed in the huge train station at Thirtieth and Market streets in less than seventy-two hours. It was a sequence three months in the planning, by far the most expensive shot in the entire film. Three hundred extras, an elaborate track, a number of in-camera special effects. Erin had been on point for the negotiations and now it was up to Seth to finalize the details, on top of everything else he had to do.

He looked around. The room was trashed.

When had they left?

As he gathered his clothes, he straightened up the room, bagging everything that needed to be thrown out in the plastic bag from the wastebasket in the motel room’s small bathroom, knowing that he was going to miss something. He would take the trash with him, as always.

Before he left the room he examined the bedsheets. Good. At least something was going right.

No blood.

35

J
ESSICA BRIEFED
ADA Paul DiCarlo on what they had learned the previous afternoon. Eric Chavez, Terry Cahill, and Ike Buchanan sat in. Chavez had spent the early morning sitting outside Adam Kaslov’s apartment. Adam had not gone to work, and a pair of phone calls went unanswered. Chavez spent the past two hours digging up background on the Chandler family.

“Pretty expensive furnishings for a woman working for minimum and tips,” Jessica said. “Especially one who drinks.”

“She drinks?” Buchanan asked.

“She drinks,” Jessica replied. “Stephanie’s closet was full of designer clothes, too.” They had printouts of the Visa bills she had photographed. They had gone over them. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Where’s the money coming from? Inheritance? Child support? Alimony?” Buchanan asked.

“Her husband took a powder almost ten years ago. Never gave them a dime that I can find,” Chavez said.

“Rich relative?”

“Maybe,” Chavez said. “But they’ve lived at that address for twenty years. And dig this. Three years ago Faith paid off her mortgage in one lump sum.”

“How big of a lump?” Cahill asked.

“Fifty-two thousand.”

“Cash?”

“Cash.”

They all let this sink in.

“Let’s get that sketch from the news vendor and Stephanie’s boss,” Buchanan said. “And let’s get on her cell phone records.”

A
T TEN THIRTY,
Jessica faxed a request for a search warrant to the district attorney’s office. Within an hour they got it. Eric Chavez then ran Stephanie Chandler’s financials. She had little more than three thousand dollars in her bank account. According to Andrea Cerrone, Stephanie made thirty-one thousand dollars per year. This was not a Prada budget.

As uncaring as it may have sounded to anyone outside the department, the good news was that they had evidence now. A body. Scientific evidence with which they could work. They could now begin to piece together what had happened to this woman, and perhaps
why
it happened.

B
Y ELEVEN THIRTY,
they had phone records. Within the past month Stephanie had made only nine calls on her cell phone. Nothing stood out. But the record from the landline at the Chandler house was a little more interesting.

“Yesterday, after you and Kevin left, there were twenty calls to a single number from the Chandler home phone,” Chavez said.

“Twenty to the same number?” Jessica asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do we know whose number?”

Chavez shook his head. “No. It’s registered to a disposable cell phone. The longest call lasted fifteen seconds. The rest were just a few seconds long.”

“Local number?” Jessica asked.

“Yeah. Two-one-five exchange. The number was one of a block of ten cell phones that were purchased last month at a wireless store on Passyunk. All prepaids.”

“The ten phones were purchased together?” Cahill asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why would someone buy ten phones?”

“According to the manager of the store, small companies will buy a block of phones like this if they have a project where a number of employees are going to be in the field at the same time. She said it keeps a cap on time spent on the phone. Also, if an out-of-town firm sends a number of employees to another city, they’ll buy ten consecutive numbers just to keep things tidy.”

“Do we know who bought the phones?”

Chavez consulted his notes. “The phones were purchased by a company called Alhambra LLC.”

“Philly company?” Jessica asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Chavez said. “The address they gave is a mail drop on South. Nick and I are taking a ride up to the wireless store and see if we can shake anything else loose. If not, we’ll stake the mail drop for a few hours, see if anyone picks up mail.”

“What’s the number?” Jessica asked. Chavez gave it to her.

Jessica put the desk phone on speakerphone, dialed the number. It rang four times, then clicked over to the standard
user not available
recording. She redialed. Same result. She hung up.

“I ran a Google search on Alhambra,” Chavez added. “Got a lot of hits, nothing local.”

“Stay with the phone number,” Buchanan said.

“We’re on it,” Chavez said.

Chavez left the room as a uniformed officer poked his head in. “Sergeant Buchanan?”

Buchanan spoke briefly with the uniformed officer, then followed him out of the Homicide Unit.

Jessica processed the new information. “Faith Chandler placed twenty calls to a disposable cell. What do you think that was all about?” she asked.

“No idea,” Cahill said. “You call a friend, you call a business, you leave a message, right?”

“Right.”

“I’ll get back in touch with Stephanie’s boss,” Cahill said. “See if this Alhambra LLC rings a bell.”

They assembled in the duty room and drew a straight line on a city map from the Rivercrest Motel to the offices of Braceland Westcott McCall. They would begin a canvass of the people, shops, and businesses on that line.

Someone had to have seen Stephanie on the day she disappeared.

As they began to divide up the canvass, Ike Buchanan returned. He walked toward them, his face grim, a familiar object in his hand. When the boss had that look on his face it usually meant two things. More work, and a
lot
more work.

“What’s up?” Jessica asked.

Buchanan held the object up, a formerly benign, now ominous item made of black plastic, and said: “We’ve got another tape.”

36

B
Y THE TIME
Seth reached the hotel, he had made his calls. Somehow, he had created a fragile symmetry to his day. Providing there were no disasters, he would survive it. If Seth Goldman was anything, he was a survivor.