They stepped across the street, into the shadows. Jessica didn't ask Byrne what he was doing there. That would come later. She was just about to head back to the surveillance vehicle when Eric Chavez raised her on channel. "Jess."
"Yeah."
"There's music coming from the house."
Bruno Steele was already inside.
Byrne watched the team prepare to take the house. Jessica had quickly briefed him on the events of the day. With each word she said, Byrne saw his life and career spiral. It all fell into place. Julian Matisse was the Actor. Byrne had been so close, he had not seen it. The system was now going to do to what it did best. And Kevin Byrne was right under its wheels.
A few minutes, Byrne thought. If he had gotten there a few minutes before the strike team, this would have been over. Now, when they found Matisse tied up in that chair, bloodied and beaten, they would trace it all back to him. Regardless what Matisse had done to Victoria, Byrne had kidnapped and tortured the man.
Conrad Sanchez would find cause for a police brutality charge at the very least, maybe even federal charges. There was a very real possibility that Byrne might be sharing a holding cell, right next to Julian Matisse, this very night. Nlck Palladino and Eric Chavez took the lead into the row house; Jessica and Nicci, the rear. The four detectives searched the first and second floors. They were clear.
They began to make their way down the narrow stairs.
It was a damp, vile heat that permeated the house, redolent of sewage and human salt. Beneath it, something primal. Palladino reached the bottom tread first. Jessica followed. They ran their Maglites over the cramped room.
And saw the very heart of evil.
It was a slaughter. Blood and viscera everywhere. Flesh clung to the walls. At first, the source of the blood was not apparent. But soon it dawned on them what they were looking at, that the thing draped over the metal rod was once a human being.
Although it would be more than three hours before fingerprint tests would confirm it, at that moment what the detectives knew for certain was that the man known to adult-film aficionados as Bruno Steele-but better known to the police and the courts and the penal system, and to his mother, Edwina, as Julian Matisse-had been cut in half.
The bloody chain saw at his feet was still warm.