Richard Montanari: Four Novels of Suspense (96 page)

“Where in North Philly?” Byrne asked. He was in the doorway, nearly vibrating with anticipation. He slammed his fist three times into the doorjamb.
“Where?”

“They’re working on it,” Park said. He pointed to a map on one of the monitors. “It’s down to these two square blocks. Get on the street. I’ll guide you.”

Byrne was gone before he had finished the sentence.

84

I
N ALL HER
years, she had only wished once that she could hear. Just once. And it hadn’t been so long ago. Two of her hearing friends had gotten tickets to see John Mayer. John Mayer was to die. Her hearing friend Lula had played John Mayer’s album
Heavier Things
for her, and she had touched the speakers, felt the bass and vocals. She knew his music. She knew it in her heart.

She wished she could hear now. There were two people in the room with her, and if she could hear them, she might be able to figure a way out of this.

If she could hear …

Her father had explained to her many times what he did. She knew that what he did was dangerous, and the people he arrested were the worst people in the world.

She stood with her back to the wall. The man had taken off her hood, and that was a good thing. She was terrifyingly claustrophobic. But now the light in her eyes was blinding. If she couldn’t see, she couldn’t fight.

And she was ready to fight.

85

T
HE AREA OF
Germantown Avenue near Indiana was a proud but long-struggling community of row houses and brick storefronts, deep in the Badlands, a five-square-mile section of North Philadelphia that ran from Erie Avenue south to Spring Garden; Ridge Avenue to Front Street.

At least a quarter of the buildings on the block were retail space, some occupied, most not; a clenched fist of three-story structures bracing each other, cavities between. The task of searching them all was going to be daunting, almost impossible. Generally, when the department chased a cell phone trace, they had some earlier intelligence with which to work: a suspect with a tie to the area, a known associate, a possible address. This time they had nothing. They had already run every check imaginable on Nigel Butler—previous addresses, rental properties he might have owned, addresses of family members. Nothing linked him to this area. They would have to search every square inch of this block, and search it blindly.

As crucial as the element of time was, they were walking a thin line, constitutionally speaking. Although there was enough leeway for them to storm a house if probable cause existed that someone was being harmed on the premises, that PC better be open and obvious.

By one o’clock, nearly twenty detectives and uniformed officers had descended on this enclave. They moved like a wall of blue through the neighborhood, holding up a photograph of Colleen Byrne, asking the same questions over and over. But this time, for the detectives, it was different. This time, they had to read the person on the other side of the threshold in an instant—kidnapper, killer, maniac, innocent.

This time, it was one of their own.

Byrne held back, behind Jessica, as she rang the doorbells, knocked on the doors. Each time, he would scan the face of the citizen, plugging in his radar, every sense on high alert. In his ear was an earpiece patched directly to an open phone line to both Tony Park and Mateo Fuentes. Jessica had tried to talk him out of the live updates, but she had failed.

86

B
YRNE’S HEART WAS
ablaze. If anything happened to Colleen, he would take out the son of a bitch—one shot, point blank—and then himself. There would not be a single reason to draw a single breath afterward. She was his life.

“What’s going on now?” Byrne asked into the headset, into his three-way connection.

“Static shot,” Mateo replied. “Just the … just Colleen against the wall. No change.”

Byrne paced. Another row house. Another possible scene. Jessica rang the doorbell.

Was this the place? Byrne wondered. He ran his hand along the grimy window, felt nothing. He stepped back.

A woman opened the door. She was a stout black woman in her late forties, holding a baby, probably her granddaughter. She had gray hair pulled back into a tight bun. “What’s this about?”

Walls up, attitude out front. To her, it was another invasion by the police. She glanced over Jessica’s shoulder, tried to hold Byrne’s gaze, backed off.

“Have you seen this girl, ma’am?” Jessica asked. She held up the picture with one hand, her badge with the other.

The woman didn’t look at the photograph right away, choosing instead to exercise her right not to cooperate.

Byrne didn’t wait for an answer. He bulled his way past her, looked around the living room, ran down the narrow steps to the basement. He found a dusty Nautilus machine, a pair of broken appliances. He did not find his daughter. He charged his way back up and out the front door. Before Jessica could utter a word of apology—including the hope that there would not be a lawsuit—he was banging on the door to the next row house.

T
HEY SPLIT UP.
Jessica would take the next few row houses. Byrne jumped ahead, around the corner.

The next residence was a shambling three-story row house with a blue door. The nameplate next to the door read
V. TALMAN
. Jessica knocked. No answer. Again, no answer. She was just about to move on when the door inched open. An elderly white woman opened the door. She wore a fuzzy gray robe and Velcro-strap tennis shoes. “Help you?” the woman asked.

Jessica showed her the picture. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am. Have you seen this girl?”

The woman lifted her glasses, focused. “Pretty.”

“Have you seen her recently, ma’am?”

She refocused. “No.”

“Do you live—”

“Van!” she shouted. She cocked her head, listened. Again.
“Van!”
Nothing. “Musta gone out. Sorry.”

“Thanks for your time.”

The woman closed the door as Jessica stepped over the rail onto the stoop of the adjoining row house. Beyond that house was a boarded-up retail space. She knocked, rang the bell. Nothing. She put her ear to the door. Silence.

Jessica walked down the steps, back across the sidewalk, and almost ran into someone. Instinct told her to draw her weapon. Luckily, she did not.

It was Mark Underwood. He was in plainclothes—dark PPD T-shirt, blue jeans, running shoes. “I heard the call go out,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“What have you cleared?”

“Right up through this house,” Jessica said, although the word
cleared
was less than accurate. They had not been inside and checked every room.

Underwood looked up and down the street. “Let me get some warm bodies down here.”

He reached out. Jessica gave him her rover. While Underwood made the request of base, Jessica stepped up to the door, put her ear against it. Nothing. She tried to imagine the horror for Colleen Byrne in her world of silence.

Underwood handed the rover back, said: “They’ll be down here in a minute. We’ll take the next block.”

“I’ll catch up with Kevin.”

“Just tell him to be cool,” Underwood said. “We’ll find her.”

87

K
EVIN
B
YRNE STOOD
in front of the boarded-up retail space. He was alone. The storefront looked as if it had housed a variety of enterprises over the years. The windows were painted black. There was no sign over the front door, but there were years of names and sentiments carved into the wood-framed entrance.

A narrow alleyway cut between the store and the row house to its right. Byrne drew his weapon, walked down the alley. There was a barred window halfway down. He listened at the window. Silence. He continued forward, emerging into a small courtyard at the back, a courtyard bounded on the three sides by a high wooden fence.

The back door was not covered in plywood, nor padlocked from the outside. There was a rusted dead bolt. Byrne pushed on the door. Locked tight.

Byrne knew he had to focus. Many times in his career, someone’s life had hung in the balance, someone’s very existence riding on his judgment. Each and every time he had felt the enormity of the responsibility, the weight of his duty.

But it was never like this. It wasn’t supposed to
be
like this. In fact, he was surprised that Ike Buchanan hadn’t called him in. If he had, though, Byrne would have thrown his badge on the desk and gotten right back out on the street.

Byrne took off his tie, undid the top button of his shirt. The heat in the confines of the courtyard was stifling. Sweat laced his neck and shoulders.

He bulled open the door with his shoulder, entered, weapon held high. Colleen was close. He knew it.
Felt
it. He pitched his head to the sounds of the old building. Water clanging through rusted pipes. The creak of long-dried joists.

He stepped into the small entrance room. Ahead was a door, closed. To the right was a wall of dusty shelves.

He touched the door and the images slammed into his mind …

… Colleen against the wall … the man in the red monk’s robe … help, Dad, oh help hurry, Dad, help—

She was here. In this building. He had found her.

Byrne knew he should call for backup, but he did not know what he would do when he found the Actor. If the Actor was in one of these rooms, and he had to draw down on him, he would pull the trigger. No hesitation. If it was not a clean shoot, he didn’t want to put his fellow detectives on the line. He would not draw Jessica into this. He would handle this alone.

He pulled the earpiece from his ear, turned off the phone, and stepped through the door.

88

J
ESSICA STOOD OUTSIDE
the store. She looked up and down the street. She had never seen so many police officers on one detail. There had to be twenty sector cars. Then there were the unmarked vehicles, the tech vans, and the ever-growing crowd. Men and women in uniforms, men and women in suits, their badges glinting in the gold sunlight. To many of the people in the crowd, this was just another siege of their world by the police. If they only knew. What if it was their son or daughter?

Byrne was nowhere in sight. Had they cleared this address? There was a narrow alleyway between the store and the row house. She walked down the alley, stopping for a moment to listen at a barred window. She heard nothing. She continued on until she arrived in a small courtyard behind the shop. The back door was slightly open.

Had he entered without telling her? It certainly was possible. She thought for a moment about getting backup to enter the building with her, then thought better of it.

Kevin Byrne was her partner. It may have been a department operation, but it was his show. It was his daughter.

She made her way back to the street, looked both ways. Detectives and uniformed officers and FBI agents were at either end. She walked back down the alley, drew her weapon, and stepped through the door.

89

H
E MOVED THROUGH
a lair of small rooms. What had once been an interior space designed for retail commerce had many years ago been remodeled into a maze of nooks and alcoves and cubbyholes.

Designed just for this purpose?
Byrne wondered.

Down the narrow confines of a tight hallway, gun waist-high. He felt a larger space open before him, the temperature dropping a degree or two.

The main room of the retail space was dark, crowded with broken furniture, retail fixtures, a pair of dusty air compressors. There was no light streaming through the windows. They were painted with thick black enamel. As Byrne ran his Maglite around the large space he saw that the once brightly colored boxes that were stacked in the corners held a decade of mildew. The air—what air there was—was fat with a stagnant, bitter heat that clung to the walls, to his clothes, his skin. The smell of mold and mice and sugar was dense.

Byrne clicked off his flashlight, tried to adjust to the dim light. To his right were a series of glass retail counters. He could see brightly colored paper inside.

Shiny red paper. He had seen it before.

He closed his eyes, touched the wall.

There had been happiness here. The laughter of children. All of that stopped years earlier when an ugliness entered, a morbid soul that devoured the joy.

He opened his eyes.

Ahead was another hallway, another door, its jamb chipped and splintered years earlier. Byrne looked more closely. Fresh wood. Someone had recently brought something large through the doorway, damaging the jamb. Lighting equipment? he thought.

He put his ear to the door, listened. Silence. This was the room. He felt it. He felt it in a place that did not know his heart or his mind. He slowly pushed open the door.

And saw his daughter. She was tied to a bed.

His heart shattered into a million pieces.

My sweet little girl, what have I done to you?

Then: Movement.
Fast.
A flash of red before him. The sound of fabric snapping in the still, hot air. Then the sound was gone.

Before he could react, before he could bring his weapon up, he felt a presence to his left.

Then the back of his head exploded.

90

W
ITH DARK
-
ADAPTED EYES
, Jessica edged her way down the long hallway, moving deeper into the center of the building. Soon she came upon a makeshift control room. There were two VHS editing decks, their green and red lights glowing cataracts in the gloom. This was where the Actor had dubbed the tapes. There was also a television. On it was the website image she had seen at the Roundhouse. The light was dim. There was no sound.

Suddenly, on screen, there was movement. She saw the monk in the red robe move across the frame. Shadows on the wall. The camera lurched to the right. Colleen was strapped to the bed in the background. More shadows, darting and scurrying over the walls.