He had missed her. You don't always get to choose your partners on this job, but from the moment he met her, he knew she was the real thing. The sky was the limit for a woman like Jessica Balzano, and although he was only ten or twelve years older than she, he felt ancient in her company. She was the future of the unit, he was the past.
Byrne sat at one of the plastic booths in the Roundhouse lunchroom, sipped his cold coffee, thought about being back. How it felt. What it meant. He watched the younger detectives breeze through the room, their eyes so bright and clear, their loafers polished, their suits pressed. He envied them their energy. Had he looked like that at one point? Had he walked through this room twenty years earlier, a chest full of confidence, observed by some damaged cop?
He had just called the hospital for the tenth time that day. Victoria was listed in serious but stable condition. No change. He'd call again in an hour.
He had seen the crime scene photos of Julian Matisse. Although there was nothing human left, Byrne gazed upon the raw tissue as if he were looking at a shattered talisman of evil. The world was cleaner without him. He felt nothing.
It still did not answer the question of whether or not Jimmy Purify had planted the evidence in the Gracie Devlin case.
Nick Palladino entered the room, looking as tired as Byrne felt. "Did Jess go home?"
"Yeah," Byrne said. "She's been burning both ends."
Palladino nodded. "You hear about Phil Kessler?" he asked.
"What about him?"
"He died."
Byrne was neither shocked nor surprised. Kessler had looked bad the last time he had seen him, a man resolved to his fate, a man seemingly without the will or doggedness to fight.
We didn't do right by that girl.
If Kessler had not meant Gracie Devlin, it could only be one other person. Byrne struggled to his feet, downed his coffee, and headed off to Records. The answer, if there was an answer, would be there. TRY AS HE might, he could not remember the girl's name. Obviously, he couldn't ask Kessler. Or Jimmy. He tried to zero in on the exact date. Nothing came back. There had been so many cases, so many names. Every time he seemed to get close, within a few months, something occurred to him to change his mind. He put together a brief list of notes about the case as he remembered them, then handed it off to an officer in Records. Sergeant Bobby Powell, a lifer like himself, and far better with computers, told Byrne he would get to the bottom of it, and get the file to him as soon as possible.
Byrne piled the photocopies of the Actor's case files in the middle of his living room floor. Next to it he placed a six-pack of Yuengling. He took off his tie, his shoes. He found some cold Chinese food in the fridge. The old air conditioner barely cooled the room, even though it was rattling on high. He flipped on the TV.
He cracked a beer, picked up the remote. It was nearly midnight. He had not yet heard from Records.
As he cruised the cable channels, the images melted into each other. Jay Leno, Edward G. Robinson, Don Knotts, Bart Simpson, each face a6 8 -blur, linking to the next. Drama, comedy, musical, farce. I settle on an old noir, maybe from the 1940s. It isn't one of the major noir films, but it looks as if it was shot fairly well. In this scene, the femme fatale is trying to get something out of the heavy's raincoat while he talks on a pay phone.
Eyes, hands, lips, fingers.
Why do people watch movies? What do they see? Do they see who they want to be? Or do they see who they fear becoming? They sit in the darkness, next to total strangers, and for two hours they are the villains, the victims, the heroes, the forsaken. Then they get up, walk into the light and live their lives of despair.
I should rest, but I cannot sleep. Tomorrow is a very big day. I look back at the screen, turn the channel. A love story, now. Black-and-white emotions storm my heart as6 9 -Jessica flipped through the channels. She was having a hard time staying awake. She had wanted to sift through the time line of the case one more time before going to bed, but everything was fog.
She glanced at the clock. Midnight.
She turned off the TV, sat at her dining room table. She spread the evidence out in front of her. To the right was the pile of three books on crime cinema she had gotten from Nigel Butler. She picked up one of them. In it, Ian Whitestone was briefly mentioned. She learned that his idol was a Spanish director named Luis Bunuel.
As with every homicide, there was a wire. A wire that plugged into every aspect of the crime, ran through every person. Like the old-style Christmas lights, the string did not light up until all the bulbs were snapped into place.
She wrote the names down on a legal pad.
Faith Chandler. Stephanie Chandler. Erin Halliwell. Julian Matisse. Ian Whitestone. Seth Goldman. Darryl Porter.
What was the wire that ran through all these people?
She looked at the notes on Julian Matisse. How did his print get on that gun? There had been a break-in at the home of Edwina Matisse a year earlier. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was when their doer had obtained Matisse's gun and the blue jacket. Matisse had been in prison, and he might very likely have stored these items at his mother's house. Jessica got on the phone and had the police report faxed over to her. When she read it, nothing out of the ordinary popped out at her. She knew the uniformed officers who took the initial call. She knew the detectives who caught the case. Edwina Matisse reported that the only thing that was stolen was a pair of candlesticks.
Jessica looked at the clock. It was still a reasonable hour. She called one of the detectives on that case, a longtime veteran named Dennis Las- sar. They got their pleasantries out of the way quickly, in deference to the hour. Jessica got to the point.
"Do you remember a break-in at a row house on Nineteenth? A woman named Edwina Matisse?"
"When was it?"
Jessica gave him the date.
"Yeah, yeah. Older woman. Kinda nuts. Had a grown son doing time."
"That's her."
Lassar detailed the case as he remembered it.
"So the woman reported that the only thing stolen was a pair of candlesticks? That sound right?" Jessica asked.
"If you say so. Lotta assholes under the bridge since then."
"I hear you," Jessica said. "Do you remember if the place was really ransacked? I mean, a lot more roughed up than a pair of candlesticks would have warranted?"
"Now that you mention it, it was. The son's room was torn apart," Lassar said. "But hey, if the vic says nothing's missing, then nothing's missing. I remember being in a hurry to get the hell out of there. Smelled like chicken broth and cat piss."
"Okay," Jessica said. "Do you remember anything else about the case?"
"I seem to recall there was something else about the son."
"What about him?"
"I think the FBI had been watching him before he went up."
The FBI had been watching a lowlife like Matisse? "Do you remember what that was about?"
"I think it was some Mann Act violation. Interstate transport of underaged girls. Don't quote me on it, though."
"Did an agent show up at the crime scene?"
"Yeah," Lassar said. "Funny how this shit comes back to you. Young guy."
"Do you remember the agent's name?"
"Now, that part's lost to the Wild Turkey forever. Sorry."
"No problem. Thanks."
She hung up, thought about calling Terry Cahill. He had been released from the hospital and was back working a desk. Still, it was probably a little late for a choirboy like Terry to be up. She'd talk to him tomorrow.
She put Philadelphia Skin into her laptop's DVD drive, forwarded it. She freeze-framed the scene near the beginning. The young woman in the feather mask stared out at her, her wide eyes vacant and pleading. She ran a check on the name Angel Blue, even though she knew it was false. Even Eugene Kilbane had no idea who the girl was. He said he'd never seen her before or after Philadelphia Skin.
But why do I know those eyes?
Suddenly Jessica heard a sound at the dining room window. It sounded as if it might be the laughter of a young woman. Both of Jessica's neighbors had children, but they were boys. She heard it again. A girl's giggle.
Close.
Very close.
She turned and looked at the window. There was a face staring at her. It was the girl from the video, the girl in the teal feather mask. Except now the girl was skeletal, her pale skin stretched tight over her skull, her mouth a ragged grin, a red slash in her pallid smear of features.
Then, in an instant, the girl was gone. Jessica soon sensed a presence right behind her. The girl was right behind her. Someone flipped on the lights.
Someone is in my house. How did No, the light was coming from the windows.
Huh?
Jessica picked her head off the table.
Oh my God, she thought. She'd fallen asleep at the dining room table. It was light out. Bright light out. Morning. She looked at her watch. No watch.
Sophie.
She shot to her feet, looked around, frantic for the moment, her heart racing to burst. Sophie was sitting in front of the TV, pajamas still on, a box of cereal in her lap, the TV showing cartoons.
"G'morning, Mom," Sophie said through a mouthful of Cheerios.
"What time is it?" Jessica asked, even though she knew it was rhetorical.
"I can't tell time," her daughter replied.
Jessica darted into the kitchen, looked at the clock. Nine thirty. In her entire life, she had never slept past nine. Ever. What a day to set the record, she thought. Some task force leader.
Shower, breakfast, coffee, dressed, more coffee. All in twenty minutes. A world record. A personal best, at least. She gathered the photos and files together. The photo on top was a still of the girl from Philadelphia Skin.
And that's when she saw it. Sometimes extreme fatigue coupled with extreme pressure can open the floodgates.
The first time Jessica had watched the film, she thought she had seen those eyes before.
Now she knew where.