The Stolen Ones (27 page)

‘Does the ME have a time of death on Marquez?’ Jessica asked.

Bontrager flipped through his notes, found the medical examiner’s estimate.

‘That’s twenty-four hours before the woman was killed,’ Jessica said. ‘It kind of rules out Marquez for Joan Delacroix’s murder.’

‘It does,’ Bontrager said. ‘Question: when Joan Delacroix was found at Priory Park, was her purse found at the crime scene?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘No. Her purse was at her house. It’s in evidence now.’

‘Do you have a list of the contents?’

‘We do,’ Jessica said. She crossed the room, retrieved the binder for Joan Delacroix. She then flicked through the documents, found the one she was looking for. ‘In addition to her driver’s license, a Macy’s charge card and a hundred and seventeen dollars in cash, she also had an Edward Jones issue MasterCard.’

Bontrager reached into the envelope, pulled out a photocopy of a receipt. It was from the City Fresh Market, with a time code of exactly the moment Joan Delacroix paid for her purchases on that day. The card she used was an Edward Jones issue MasterCard, with a matching number to the one found in her wallet.

‘Well, this is just getting better and better, isn’t it?’ Jessica said. ‘If Marquez lifted this woman’s card, how the hell did it find its way back in her purse?’

‘Maybe he followed her out of the store, and gave it back to her,’ Torrance said.

Bontrager re-started the recording. The camera angle cut to the parking lot view. On screen they saw Joan Delacroix leaving the store. She walked off frame to the left. A few moments later, Marquez walked out of the store, and all but ran off frame to the right, in the opposite direction.

‘Now you can see why I am no longer a detective,’ Torrance said.

Bontrager again hit
PAUSE
. ‘I wish I had some answers here, but I’m about as lost with this as you are. That said, remember what I said about curiouser and curiouser?’

Jessica couldn’t imagine what was coming.

‘I was just down at the lab getting some of the preliminary tests from the Marquez job,’ Bontrager said. ‘I was talking to the tech in the blood lab, and he asked me if I would bring over a couple of documents from the Delacroix case. It turns out the woman’s blood type was AB negative. As you know, that’s extremely rare.’

It was true. Less than 1 per cent of the population of the United States was AB negative.

‘The tech told me he runs across AB negative maybe once a year, or once every two years,’ Bontrager said. ‘He’s telling me this because he ran across AB negative from two different cases in one day.’

Bontrager reached into the envelope, and pulled out a pair of documents that detailed two different blood tests.

‘It turns out the other instance of AB negative blood was found on another one of your cases,’ Bontrager said.

‘You mean, other than Joan Delacroix?’ Jessica asked.

‘Yes. There was trace evidence of blood on the inside of that sandwich bag.’

‘What sandwich bag?’

‘The sandwich bag in that little girl’s purse.’

‘
Violet
?’ Jessica asked. ‘There was blood on the bag in her purse?’

‘Yes,’ Bontrager said. ‘And it’s not just that the blood on that bag is AB negative. It’s a dead solid match. The blood in the little girl’s purse belonged to Joan Delacroix.’

In all the time Jessica had been a homicide detective she had never quite had as many bombshells dropped on a case as those that had just happened here. She looked up at her partner, then at Ray Torrance.

Byrne was staring at the documents on the desk.

Ray Torrance was staring at Kevin Byrne.

The foster care home was a double row house in the Francisville section of North Philadelphia.

Byrne and Ray Torrance were met at the door by a woman in her early forties. She had about her an unflappable air, a woman who spent her days corralling small children – being climbed upon, drooled upon, defied and defiled by people no more than two feet tall.

There was now an official connection between the little girl and an ongoing homicide investigation. It was for this reason, and many others – not the least of which was that Violet did not need a longer parade of adults coming in and out of her life – that Byrne decided to keep Ray Torrance in the background.

Torrance voiced no objections.

There were four children in the front room. Violet was wearing a purple sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. Okay, not an exact match. It was the kind of match made at Walmart when you were trying to buy a birthday gift for someone named Violet.

Violet was at one of the small tables, by herself, working on a castle made of blocks.

According to the woman who ran the home, Violet had yet to say a word. She said the little girl responded to instructions, and slept through the night, but had yet to answer a question.

When Violet saw Byrne there was a moment of hesitation. Byrne watched her carefully as she spotted him, looked away, then got up, walked across the room, and put her arms out. Byrne picked her up, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.

He walked her back to the table.

‘What are we building?’ Byrne asked.

No answer. He put the little girl down, and she went immediately back to her task. At first it looked like Violet was going for a pyramid shape, but when she stacked the blocks too high, they all fell over.

Still no reaction. No anger, no frustration, no joy. As Byrne watched her gather together the blocks for another try, he marveled at how pale she was. Her skin was almost paper white; her hair was nearly white blond. Someone, it seemed, had found a barrette for her, a clip to keep the hair from falling into her face. The barrette, in the shape of a five-petal flower was, of course, a shade of purple.

Byrne watched her for a while, woefully unprepared to talk to the little girl. He simply didn’t know what to ask her. He knew she had been seen by a child psychologist, to whom the girl had not uttered a word. If a behavioral therapist couldn’t get anything out of her, what chance did a big dumb cop have?

Apparently, none.

When it came time to leave, Byrne gave Violet another hug.

She stood next to the table, watching him as he crossed the room. But when Byrne turned around to wave goodbye to her, he saw that her attention had been drawn away from him. She was looking at the television.

Violet stood in front of the screen. She looked over at Byrne for a moment, then back at the TV. She put her tiny hand on the screen.

The movie playing was
The Wizard of Oz.
The scene was the one where Judy Garland comes around the bend on the yellow brick road, and meets Ray Bolger for the first time.

It was the scarecrow.

Violet was trying to touch the scarecrow.

They stood on the sidewalk in front of the row house. When it began to rain again they stepped under the awning of the bakery next door. The aromas of fresh bread and pastries were maddening. Byrne had not eaten all day.

‘This is a bit of a reach, Ray.’

‘Come on, Kevin. You saw that sketch that Marielle made. She said the man looked like a scarecrow.’

‘All due respect,
you
said it was a scarecrow. She didn’t correct you on that.’

‘You’re saying there’s no connection?’

Byrne considered what Torrance was saying. He wanted to shoot it down. He had no ammunition.

‘One night,’ Torrance said. ‘Give me one night on the streets. If I don’t make the link, I’ll go back to my cabin.’

‘I don’t want that, Ray. Nobody wants that.’

‘Look, I won’t insult you by asking if you have a case or two you can’t shake. Christ, I know for a fact you do. You don’t get to pick and choose which ones get to you.’

Byrne looked at his old friend. His posture was stooped, he was leaning forward. He didn’t want to reduce this once great cop to begging. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder.

‘One night,’ Byrne said.

Ray Torrance smiled.

‘But first we have to get some of this bread.’

It had been a while since Byrne had done this kind of street work. He never cared for it. It mostly amounted to drinking coffee, trying to stay not only awake but alert and on point, playing bathroom tag team with your partner, and getting home at dawn with nothing to show for it. Once in a while you got lucky, and the person for whom you were looking made the mistake of going where they should have known not to go, and you had them.

That was rare.

There were a few places in Philadelphia to find street kids. If you were a runaway you came in through the bus terminal on Filbert, or the majestic, cavernous 30th Street train station. These were your points of entry.

But the place you hung out, once you got here, was South Street. Especially after dark. You could hang out at the malls during the day, right up until closing time, but after that you headed to South.

Both Byrne and Torrance dressed down as much as possible. Byrne wore his leather coat, jeans, his comfortable black boots. He didn’t know how much running might be involved this night. None, he hoped. Torrance was between wardrobes, as it were. He borrowed one of Byrne’s old navy pea coats, and a pair of dark gray corduroys. They were about the same size, and the ensemble, even as dated as it might’ve been, suited him.

They began the search near the bottom of South Street, in front of Downey’s. After an hour or so they split up for a while, Torrance staying in touch via a burner cell phone Byrne had bought for him.

When they reconvened, at ten o’clock, they had talked to maybe three dozen teenagers. They’d learned nothing. The temptation to slip into one of the many bars on South was great, but they decided to give it until midnight.

The girls couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. They both stood with their cell phones in hand, glancing at them every few seconds, as if the answers to all life’s problems could be found on a four-inch LCD display.

Maybe they could
, Byrne thought. He’d looked everywhere else, and so far came up empty.

‘You guys are cops, right?’ one of the girls asked.

‘I’m not a cop,’ Torrance said.

It was technically true. Ray was an ex-cop. Byrne had not produced a badge or ID.

Torrance took the photograph out of his pocket. ‘I’m trying to find this girl,’ he said. ‘She’s not in any trouble or anything. And you won’t be in any trouble if you help us.’

It was a high school photograph of Marielle Gray, one taken just a few weeks before she ran away from home. Ray Torrance had gotten it out of a yearbook he had purchased online.

One of the girls, the taller one, took the picture from Torrance and looked at it closely. When she was done she handed it to the other girl who did likewise.

‘I like her earrings,’ the short one said. ‘Do you know where she got them?’

Byrne heard Ray Torrance take a deep breath, exhale. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think they were a gift. Does she look familiar to you?’

The girl handed the photograph back, shook her head. ‘No,’ the girl said. ‘Sorry.’

Torrance reached into his coat pocket, took out a coupon for a pizza place on South, courtesy of an old friend, a former detective from Major Case who had recently opened a parlor. Torrance had been handing them out all night.

Torrance then pulled out a pencil, put the coupon on top of a newspaper box, scribbled his cell phone number on the back. ‘If you think of anything, like where you may have seen this girl, or who she might have hung out with, give me a call.’ He handed the coupon to the taller girl. ‘If not, this is good for a free slice.’

The other girl looked hurt. Ray Torrance reached into his pocket, pulled out a second coupon, handed it to her. ‘One for you, too.’

Both girls smiled.

‘Just one other thing,’ Torrance said. He reached into his inner pocket, took out a picture of Dustin Green. ‘Do you know him?’

The girls looked at each other, then at the ground.

‘You
do
know him,’ Torrance added.

‘Yeah,’ the taller girl said. ‘We know Dusty. I heard he died. Is that, like, true?’

There was no reason to lie. The kid’s death was probably in the paper. ‘Yeah,’ Byrne said. ‘He did.’

‘He said there was a guy he used to do things for,’ Torrance said. ‘An older guy.’

‘I know who you mean,’ the taller girl said.

‘You do?’

‘I think so. This guy would show up now and then. Always has money. Drives this really cool old car.’

‘A black car?’ Byrne asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘This guy, the guy with the black car,’ Torrance said, ‘could you describe him to a sketch artist?’

‘No problem.’

‘Do you know his name?’

‘Sure,’ the girl said. ‘His name is Luther.’

Jessica stood over the printer, the fatigue a grand piano on her shoulders. She had soldiered through two morning classes, and still managed to get to the Roundhouse by ten a.m.

The transcripts of the recorded tape, sent by the detective in Estonia, had arrived in Byrne’s email box at seven a.m. Jessica was making copies for all eight detectives on the task force.

The man the two street kids called Luther was a cipher. There was no record of him in any police database. There were plenty of men named Luther in the system, but none of them looked like the sketch made from the girls’ description.

A copy of the sketch was in every sector car in the city of Philadelphia.

They had processed the MasterCard found in Joan Delacroix’s purse, and found no trace evidence of blood or fingerprints. The card had been wiped clean with a bleach solution. There was only one plausible explanation, and that was that whoever had killed Cheque Marquez, had also killed Joan Delacroix.

The direct line between the two homicides had yet to be drawn.

Eight detectives, along with Sergeant Dana Westbrook and the captain of the homicide unit crowded into Westbrook’s office. Each had a copy of the transcript – fifty-five pages in all – in hand.

Kevin Byrne stood at the front of the room.

He began to read:

For a long time, no one in the room said a word. What Byrne had just read was an account of Robert Freitag’s murder, committed nearly fifty years earlier, halfway around the world. The circumstances were not the same, but the act was identical.

Over the next ten minutes or so they all read the rest of the transcripts in silence.

In 1966 Eduard Kross bludgeoned to death a woman named Etti Koppel, and left her body on the banks of the Narva River, large stones on her hands. He’d dressed her in the dark, placing her shoes on the wrong feet.

In 1970 he killed a Latvian businessman named Juris Spalva by suspending him between two trees with a steel wire wrapped around his neck.

In 1977 he killed a thief named Jaak Männik by cutting out his eyes.

Robert Freitag was Toomas Sepp.

Joan Delacroix was Etti Koppel.

Edward Richmond was Juris Spalva.

Ezequiel Marquez was Jaak Männik.

‘As far as I know, this has never been published anywhere. No books or articles,’ Byrne said. ‘According to Peeter Tamm these murders are considered ancient history in Estonia. I asked him to look and see if he could find any books written on this Eduard Kross. He said he searched the libraries and the bookstores, and found none.’

Dana Westbrook looked at the transcript for a few long moments. ‘Sorry to be such a dunce, but where is Estonia again?’

Byrne reached in the folder, produced a printout he had made from Google Maps.

‘Tamm told me that a lot of the records – police records, birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, and the like – from the years of Soviet occupation were destroyed.’

‘So we’re thinking that someone – this Luther – is basing these murders on this tape?’ Westbrook asked.

‘It’s possible.’

Westbrook held up the transcript. ‘What
is
this, though? He calls him “Doctor” at the end of each session. Is this a therapy session with a psychiatrist?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Byrne said. ‘I think the voice on that tape is Eduard Kross himself, and I think he was dreaming when it was recorded. I think these are recollections from his life.’

‘How did our subject get hold of this?’

‘I think he was a patient at Cold River when Joan Delacroix worked there,’ Byrne said. ‘I think he was a subject of this
Die Traumkaufleute
group. I think they created this monster, and now he is visiting this violence on them.’

‘But why now?’ Westbrook asked. ‘It’s been years. The place is shut down.’

Byrne thought for a few moments. He looked out the window. The rain was pouring down in torrents. There was a flood advisory for the city in effect. He looked back at everyone in the room, and said: ‘I don’t know.’

A few minutes later, Jessica’s cell phone rang. She stepped out of the office, took the call. When she stepped back in, everyone was gathering their belongings. She got Byrne’s attention.

‘I just heard from Martin Léopold’s publishing house. They said they spoke to him, and that he would be delighted to talk to us.’

‘Delighted?’

‘His word.’

‘That may be a first.’