The Doll Maker (13 page)

The investigation into the boy’s death was closed. Byrne was looking at the data in the hopes of finding out what happened to Thaddeus Woodman and the other children

He opened the folder, looked at the lab reports, his eyes bleary from the lack of sleep.

He then went to the photographs of the victim. The first in the series was taken at Fairmount Park. Valerie Beckert had wrapped the boy in an old shower curtain liner, securing it with packing tape. The first photograph, take by CSU, showed the small figure, barely discernible through the translucent material.

The second crime scene photograph was of the victim, lying on the unfurled plastic sheet. In this picture Thomas Rule was on his back, his hands to his sides. He wore dark trousers and a light colored crewneck sweater. If it were not for the deep welt around his neck, it would appear that he was sleeping.

Byrne opened a second folder. It was not officially part of any record kept by the PPD. This folder was his own, one he kept to chronicle the disappearance of Thaddeus Woodman.

He picked up the photo of Thaddeus, an Olan Mills type. The smiling, dark-haired boy was in that painful and awkward stage between baby teeth and permanent teeth, a time when a haircut was more of an inconvenience than anything related to vanity. He had inquisitive eyes, an untamable cowlick. Byrne tried to imagine the boy as a pre-teen, a teenager, a young man.

How tall were you going to be, Thaddeus?
 

What were you going to do for a living?
 

What were going to be your sports? Baseball? Football? Basketball? Hockey?
 

Were you going to be a husband and a father?
 

Were you going to be a good man?
 

Byrne often wished he could be the kind of person who could hold out hope for things like this, that he would one day have the answers to these questions. He was not that kind of person. More than two decades unearthing the darkest impulses of the human heart had forever stolen this from him.

Thaddeus Woodman was dead.

And, in two weeks, his killer would be, too.

When Byrne went out to his car in the service plaza lot he was all but certain he would go back to Philadelphia. He knew he was on a fool’s errand, and that by the time he reached the three p.m. mark later that day, he would hit the wall of exhaustion, and be all but useless in his part of the investigation that mattered at the moment: the senseless, brutal murder of Nicole Solomon.

But still he pressed on, driven by an opaque, unnamable energy, one born of the belief that Valerie Beckert was a mass murderer.

Byrne arrived at SCI Muncy at just after two a.m. He knew that Deputy Superintendent Barbara Wagner had the night off, and it was for that reason Byrne had chosen to drive the nearly two hundred miles to Muncy in the first place. Barbara was good people, former PPD, and he didn’t want her to experience any blowback if his little plan backfired.

Byrne did not know all the internal politics of the corrections system, but he knew that inmate #209871 – also known as Valerie Beckert – was not mandated by law to meet with anyone, including the only three classifications of people who had access to her at this point in the process; that being her attorney, her clergy, and her family.

Byrne also realized that his credentials as a city detective would pull little weight at a State Correctional Institution – indeed, an often bitter rivalry and sense of mistrust existed between law enforcement officers and corrections officials. Still, in his experience, he found that it was harder to blow him off in person than it was on the phone, and it was for this reason he had not called ahead.

He should have. As it turned out, he’d made the trip for nothing.

Upon arriving – after nearly four hours on increasingly snowy Pennsylvania roads – he was told that Valerie Beckert had already been moved to SCI Rockview to await her ultimate fate.

In consolation, after meeting with the superintendent herself – a pleasant and understanding woman named Gretchen Allenby – Byrne was offered a small suite of rooms in which to shower and take a nap before heading back on the journey to Philadelphia.

Byrne needed both, but declined.

He stood in the all but empty visitor’s parking lot, hoping the frigid night air would revive him. Before long a car pulled into the lot, parked a few spaces to Byrne’s left. It was a large four-door sedan, perhaps a decade old, its finish caked with road salt. Before the driver cut the lights, Byrne saw the license plate, and the small crucifix in the corner.

The man who emerged from the car was in his late fifties or early sixties, fit and trim for his age. He wore a dark blue overcoat, charcoal fedora. He also wore a priest’s collar. In his hands was a thick stack of manila folders.

Byrne walked over to the priest’s car. ‘Good morning, Father.’

A little startled, the man looked up. He searched Byrne’s face for recognition, found none.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see you standing there.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Not to worry.’ He pointed at the main building. ‘It’s a little scarier inside.’

Although Byrne was much taller than the priest, and the parking lot was dark, Byrne saw no fear or apprehension in the man’s face. Even in the dim light, Byrne could see a pair of small scars on the priest’s right cheek, but the man’s nose was straight and true. Apparently, the chaplain had won more fights than he’d lost. Byrne wished he could say the same for himself.

Byrne extended a hand in greeting. ‘Kevin Byrne.’

The man smiled, shifted the stack of folders. ‘Sounds Philly Irish.’

Byrne returned the smile. ‘Born and bred.’

The priest put out his hand. ‘Tom Corey.’

‘Nice to meet you, Father.’

‘Back in the day, I spent some time at St. Anthony’s,’ he said. ‘Do they still call it the Devil’s Pocket around there?’

‘Only by old-timers like me.’

The scene drew out, but it was not uncomfortable, nor a moment unknown to either man. Still, it was Byrne’s duty to find entrance to the conversation.

‘Do you have a second?’ Byrne asked.

Father Corey closed the trunk of his car, put the folders down. ‘I do.’

Byrne had no idea where to begin. He just began. ‘I’m a homicide detective with the PPD. I’ve run up against something that I just can’t seem to shake.’

Father Corey just listened.

‘I came up here to see one of the inmates,’ Byrne said. ‘I’m not even sure why, or what I would say when I saw her.’

It appeared that Father Corey expected Byrne to continue. When he did not, the priest asked: ‘May I ask who it is you came to see?’

There was no reason not to tell him. ‘The inmate’s name is Valerie Beckert.’

The priest’s face did not register surprise. Despite some widely held perceptions, the carrying out of the death penalty, especially in Pennsylvania, was not a common occurrence. For women, it was even rarer, almost unknown. The burden on a prison chaplain at such a time as this had to be heavy. It was one thing to prepare a person for the end of life in a hospital or hospice. In such a grim and forbidding environment as this one, it had to be much harder. Byrne did not envy the man his cargo.

‘I was the arresting officer,’ Byrne added.

Byrne knew that whatever Valerie had told Father Corey – if indeed she had said anything to him – was between her and her confessor. For many reasons, not the least of which was his own Catholic upbringing, Byrne did not ask the question.

‘I’m sure you’re aware that, at this late date, her contact with the outside world is quite limited.’

‘I know,’ Byrne said. ‘It’s just …’

Father Corey waited a few moments. ‘A matter of faith?’ he asked.

Byrne hadn’t thought of it in these terms, but he imagined it was. ‘I think it probably is.’

Father Corey nodded, looked at the prison complex, the high stone walls, back. ‘In the end, what we do, it’s
all
about faith, right? What I mean is, I have to have faith in the system. I have to believe that everybody along the way did their jobs, and that no mistakes were made. I have to have faith that all these women are here for a reason. Especially a woman in Valerie Beckert’s position.’

Byrne understood. While it was true that many of the people he encountered in his job had broken the law, it was not part of his mandate to make life easier for them. It was just the opposite. His job was to make the lives of everyone else a little safer by putting criminals behind bars.

Yet, in many ways, the job of a prison chaplain was the reverse. Everyone Father Corey encountered was also a criminal, but it was the priest’s purview to help them find a path to salvation, no matter how heinous the crime. Byrne had never considered what a difficult job it was until this very second.

‘Can you tell me about your concerns?’ the priest asked.

Byrne gave the man a brief rundown of the circumstances surrounding the other missing children.

‘But you have no proof of this,’ Father Corey said.

‘No, Father.’

The priest once again looked at the prison complex, back. ‘Hebrews says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’

‘I believe she did these crimes, Father. And if she never confesses to them, once she is gone, the families will never know peace. I feel that they deserve to know, no matter how painful it will be. I feel that the burden of not knowing is worse.’

‘And what about your burden?’

‘Father?’

‘The burden you’ve placed upon your own shoulders to find these answers. How long will you carry it?’

Byrne had no response to this.

Father Corey closed his car door, locked it. He turned back to Byrne.

‘May I ask you something, detective?’

‘Of course.’

‘Have you made peace with the fact that, when you arrested Valerie Beckert, you were doing that which you are sworn to do? That you did your job without hatred or prejudice?’

It was a good question. Byrne decided that he had done his job properly. There had been many before Valerie, and many since. He hoped he could, in the end, say the same about them all.

‘I have, Father.’

‘That’s all any of us can do.’

The priest reached into his pocket, pulled out a card. He handed it to Byrne.

‘I know there’s a few miles between Philly and Muncy, but you could always call.’ He pointed at the lightening sky. Byrne hadn’t even noticed. ‘We never close.’

Byrne took the card. ‘Thank you, Father.’

‘Have a safe journey.’

Byrne watched the priest walk toward the side entrance, sign in at the security checkpoint, and disappear into the building. He wondered what the man was going to encounter this day, if he would save even one soul. He wondered if such a thing was even possible.

A few minutes later, with a milky sun rising behind a bank of deep gray clouds, Byrne got in his car, and headed back to Philadelphia.

In the days that followed the discovery of Nicole Solomon’s body at the Shawmont train station, and the suicide of her father, the neighborhood in which Nicole had last been seen was canvassed three times, at three different times of day.

The interviews had produced nothing in the way of evidence or leads.

No one had come forward with any information, despite daily items in the
Inquirer
and
Daily News
that all were tagged with the tip-line number, and the pledge that all calls would be kept confidential.

Investigators learned that, on the morning before her body was found, Nicole had visited the Franklin Institute with ten of her classmates. They’d left at just after noon. All ten of the girls had been interviewed, as had the bus driver and key personnel at the Institute.

One of Nicole’s classmates – a fourteen-year-old girl named Naomi Burris – told Jessica that they had walked three blocks south on Sixteenth Street, and parted company on the corner of Sixteenth and Spruce.

Naomi, who cried the entire time Jessica had spoken with her, said that she didn’t notice anything strange or wrong, or that they were being followed. She said everyone called Nicole ‘Nic,’ and asked if it was true that Nicole’s father had killed himself like everyone said.

There was no way to sugarcoat it, so Jessica told her that it was true.

The crime scene had since been released, and all traces of the crime, except for the spots on which the legs of the bench had rested, were gone. The bench had been transported to the police garage where it was processed for fingerprints and hair evidence. None were found. The paint was determined to be an exterior latex.

Whatever scientific evidence that investigators could gather from the area surrounding the Shawmont train station – that which had not been destroyed by passing SEPTA trains – had been processed, logged, filed, and entered into the binder. Two days after the murder there had been a number of violent thunderstorms, and any evidence that had not been collected, or destroyed, had been given back to the earth.

The one piece of evidence that was unique, and therefore gave the investigation a new avenue of inquiry, was the stockings used to strangle the victim. According to the preliminary report from the lab, the stockings were not made of nylon, or any of the synthetic blends that are currently available. The stockings were silk. Criminalistics estimated that they were at least thirty years old, maybe as old as fifty.

They concluded that there was a lot of biological material available on the stockings that did not belong to Nicole Solomon. Further tests were underway.

It was not lost on either Jessica or Byrne that Adinah Solomon – David’s ailing mother – was near an age where such stockings might be packed away in a trunk or in storage. A thorough search of the house and property did not yield any stockings, but that didn’t mean the Solomons had not rented a storage facility somewhere.

The sad truth was that, until concrete leads were generated, David Solomon – despite his loving daily missives to his daughter – could not be ruled out as a suspect.

Jessica and Byrne visited the McDonald’s on Christian Street. The manager made a DVD of the surveillance videos from the time David Solomon and his daughter had visited the restaurant.