Byrne knew that Jessica had saved him. He would never forget. He would never be able to pay her in full.
No one has to know…
Byrne had held his gun to the back of Ian Whitestone's head, mistakenly believing he was the Actor. When he had shot the lights out, there had been noises in the darkness. Crashes. Stumbling. Byrne had been disoriented. He couldn't risk firing again. When he lashed out with the butt of the pistol he had connected with flesh and bone. When he turned the overhead light on, the monk was on the floor in the center of the room.
The images he had gotten were from Whitestone's own blackened life-what he had done to Angelika Butler, what he had done to all the women on the tapes they had found in Seth Goldman's hotel room. Whitestone had been bound and gagged beneath his mask and robe. He had tried to tell Byrne who he was. Byrne's gun had been empty, but a full magazine was in his pocket. If Jessica had not come through that door…
He would never know.
At that moment a battering ram crashed through the painted picture window. Dazzlingly bright daylight flooded the room. Within seconds a dozen very nervous detectives spilled in after, weapons drawn, adrenaline raging.
"Clear!" Jessica yelled, holding her badge high. "We're clear!"
Eric Chavez and Nick Palladino stormed through the opening, got between Jessica and the mass of divisional detectives and FBI agents who looked a little too eager to cowboy up this detail. The two men held up their hands, stood protectively on either side of Byrne and Jessica and the now prostrate, sobbing Ian Whitestone.
The blue womb. They were sheltered. No harm could come to them now.
It really was over. Ten minutes later, as the machine that was a crime scene investigation began to rev up around them, as the yellow tape unspooled and the CSU officers began their solemn ritual, Byrne caught Jessica's eye, the one question he needed to ask on his lips. They huddled in a corner, at the foot of the bed. "How did you know Butler was behind you?"
Jessica glanced around the room. Now, in the bright sunlight, it was obvious. The interior was covered in a silken dust, the walls patchworked with cheaply framed photographs of a long-faded past. Half a dozen padded stools lay on their sides. And then there were the signs.
WATER ICE. FOUNTAIN DRINKS. ICE CREAM. CANDY.
"It isn't Butler," Jessica said.
The seed had been planted in her mind when she read the report of the break-in at Edwina Matisse's house, when she had seen the name of the responding officers. She hadn't wanted to believe it. She had all but known the moment she had talked to the old woman next to the former candy store. Mrs. V. Talman.
Van! the old woman had yelled. It wasn't her husband she was yelling for. It was her grandson.
Van. Short for Vandemark.
I came close once.
He had taken the battery from her two-way radio. The dead body in the other room was Nigel Butler.
Jessica walked over, peeled back the mask on the dead man in the monk's robe. Although they would wait for the ME's ruling, there was no doubt in Jessica's mind, or anyone else's for that matter. Officer Mark Underwood was dead.