Richard Montanari (35 page)

    
My
dearest Detective Byrne,

    
It
has been a long time, n'est-ce pas? I wonder how you have fared. Do you think
of me? I think of you often. In fact I dreamed of you the other night. It was
the first time in years. You looked quite dashing in your dark overcoat and
black fedora. You carried an umbrella with a carved ivory handle. Do you carry
an umbrella as a rule? No, I would think not.

    
So
tell me. Have you found them yet? The lion and the rooster and the swan? Are
there others? You might think they do not play together, but they do. I hope
you are well, and that the future brings you every happiness. I am no longer
scared.

    
-
C

    Jessica
was stunned. She read the note a second time, the rich scent filling her head.

    'Are
you fucking
kidding
me?' she finally said in a loud whisper. 'The lion
and the rooster and the swan?'

    Byrne
remained silent.

    'Who
the hell sent this, Kevin? Who is
C
?'

    Byrne
turned the envelope over and over in his hands, searching for words. Words were
usually his strong suit. He always chose them carefully. He was good at it.

    He
told her the story.

    Jessica
looked at her partner. She wasn't sure how long she had been staring at him
without saying anything, her mouth open, eyebrows raised. Then all she could
muster was one word. 'Wow.'

    Byrne
said nothing.

    'I
remember her,' Jessica said. 'I mean, I remember the story. I think my father
talked about it. Plus, it was all over the news for a while.' Although she'd
been in high school at the time she and her friends had discussed the case,
mainly because it involved sex, violence and celebrity.

    In
November 1990 a woman named Christa-Marie Schönburg, a cellist with the
Philadelphia Orchestra, was arrested and charged in the murder of a man named
Gabriel Thorne. According to the news reports, Thorne was Christa-Marie's
psychiatrist, but there was a great deal of speculation at the time as to
whether or not they were romantically involved, even though Thorne had been
Christa-Marie's caregiver since she was a child and was three decades her
senior. If Jessica remembered correctly, Christa-Marie confessed to second-degree
murder, diminished capacity, and was sentenced to twenty-to-life in the women's
facility at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy.

    'That
was your first case?' Jessica asked.

    Byrne
nodded. 'My first as a lead detective, yeah. I was partnered with Jimmy.'

    Jimmy
Purify, his rabbi in the homicide unit, had been Byrne's partner before
Jessica.

    'I
don't understand,' Jessica said. 'Is Christa-Marie still in Muncy?'

    'No,'
Byrne said. 'She was released a few years ago. The last I heard she's still
living in the Chestnut Hill house.'

    Jessica
decided not to ask her partner why he knew all this. It was not all that
uncommon for detectives to keep track of people they had arrested and convicted
of crimes. What surprised Jessica was that she had known none of this.

    'Have
you spoken to her since her release?'

    'No.'

    'Has
she tried to contact you before this?'

    'Not
that I know of.'

    Jessica
took a few beats. She looked again at the handwriting on the note. It did not
look like the penmanship of someone deranged. 'Is she, how do I put this ...
better
now?'

    Byrne
shrugged. 'I don't know. The murder was pretty brutal, and she went through a
battery of psychological tests at the time of the hearings. I saw some of the
reports. Chronic depression. Borderline bipolar. It never came to anything
because she pled out. There never was a trial.'

    'Were
you called at the hearing?'

    'I
was.'

    'Did
you testify?'

    Byrne
hesitated before answering. Jessica sensed a feeling of regret. 'Yes.'

    Jessica
tried to arrange the timeline in her mind. 'When was that card postmarked?'

    Byrne
looked at the envelope. 'Last Thursday.'

    Jessica
did the math. 'So she sent it—'

    'Before
the murders.'

    Jessica
felt her breath catch. She tried to process all this. It wasn't often that she
was thrown such a curve. 'Is she capable of something like this? I mean,
physically capable?'

    Jessica
knew that at least part of her question was rhetorical. The woman was a
convicted murderer, after all. Obviously she was capable of violence. But
violence committed in the throes of rage or passion didn't necessarily lead to
cold blooded, well-calculated murder. And then there were the physical
elements.

    'She's
capable,' Byrne said. 'The logistics? She's not a big woman, Jess, and she's
obviously a lot older now. I don't think she could have done all this without
some help.'

    Jessica
was silent for a moment. 'Okay. Maybe it's just a coincidence. The lion and the
rooster and the swan.'

    Byrne
just glared.

    'Okay,
it was worth a shot.' Jessica glanced at her watch. 'Do you want to go now or
in the morning?'

    'Go
where?'

    'Kevin.
We need to talk to her.'

    Byrne
took the note card from her, slipped it back into the envelope. 'I should
probably talk to her alone.'

    Byrne
was probably right, but that didn't make Jessica want to go along any less.
'You have to tell the boss, Kevin. You have to share it with the team.'

    Byrne
glanced around the small, cramped room. There wasn't really anything to look at
besides a beaten-up coffee maker and the two-way mirror looking into one of the
interview rooms. He looked back at his partner.

    'Tomorrow,'
he said.

    Jessica
started to object, but Byrne continued.

    'Look,
this is connected with the Kenneth Beckman case, and I'm working that case. How
it's connected, I have no idea. But if it turns out to be something, I'll post
it. If it doesn't, then there's no need to drag all this into the mix.'

    'How
could it
not
be connected, Kevin? It's not as if Christa-Marie could
have just now learned any of this from anyone here. She wrote the note
before
the murders happened.'

    'If I
tell Dana right now, what is she going to do? Send a couple of detectives to
interrogate Christa-Marie? I
know
Christa-Marie. I'm the one Dana would
send, anyway. There's no reason to turn this woman's life upside down until we
know what this is all about.'

    'So
you're going to talk to her off the record?'

    Byrne
said nothing.

    Jessica
wanted to remind her partner that Christa-Marie Schönburg was a confessed
murderer, a woman who had spent more than fifteen years in prison. If he didn't
have some sort of as-yet-unidentified emotional attachment to the woman and her
case, and he'd heard that a confessed murderer had information on fresh
homicides, he'd be charging that way with the cavalry and more.

    'Besides,'
Byrne began, moving on to his closing argument, 'who's to say I didn't read
this note tomorrow? Everyone knows I never open my mail.'

    Kevin
Byrne's secrets were safe with Jessica, as were hers with him. She trusted his
judgment more than anyone else she knew.

    'Okay,'
Jessica said. 'Where do you want me on this?'

    'I'll
drive up to Chestnut Hill first thing in the morning. I'll call you after.'

    Jessica
nodded. They both went silent for a long time.

    Finally
Jessica asked, 'Are you okay, Kevin?'

    Byrne
opened the door of the coffee room, glanced out. The duty room was a ghost
town. He turned back to his partner and said softly: 'I really don't know.'

    Something
he wasn't telling her.

    
He
sits across the table from me, a trembling wreck of a man. In his hands is an
old photograph, its colors long faded, its edges folded and creased.

    
We
have had our coffee, shared our pleasantries. I am not one seduced by
nostalgia. It means nothing to me.

    
'I
didn't think you were coming back,' he says.

    
'But
you know why I am here,' I say. 'Don't you?'

    
He
nods.

    
'Everything
has changed now,' I say. 'We can never go back.'

    
He
nods again, this time with a tear in his eye.

    
I
glance at my watch. It is time, and time is short. I stand, bring my coffee cup
to the sink, rinse it in scalding water. I dry the cup, return it to the cupboard.
I am wearing gloves, but one can never be too careful. I return to the table.
We fall silent. There is always a calm before the truth.

    
'Will
it hurt?' he asks.

    
I
listen to the voices of the dead swirling around me. I would love to ask them
this question. Alas, I cannot. 'I don't know.'

    
'It's
all so Cho Cho San, is it not?'

    
'
Without the baby,' I say.

    
'
Without the baby.'

    
A
few moments pass. Clouds shade his eyes. 'Remember how it was?' he asks.

    
'I
do. All things were possible then, n'est-ce pas.
^?
All futures.'

    
When
I think of those times, I am saddened. I realize how much of it is gone
forever, lost in the ductwork of memory. I stand. 'Do you want me to wait?'

    
He
looks at the table for a moment, then at his hands. 'No,' he says softly.

    
I
take the photograph from him, put it into my pocket. At the door I stop, turn.
I see myself in the mirror at the end of the hall. It reminds me of the shiny
crimson mirror of blood on the floor.

    
Before
leaving I turn up the music. It is not Chopin this time, but rather Hoist's
Planets Suite, a movement called 'Venus, The Bringer of Peace'.

    
Peace.

    
Sometimes,
I think, as I step through the door for the last time, the music exalts the
moment.

    
Sometimes
it is the other way around
.

    The
Penn Sleep Center, part of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital system, was
located in a modern steel and glass building on Market Street near 36th.

    Byrne
crossed the river about six, found a parking space, checked in at the desk,
presented his insurance card, sat down, speed-skimmed a copy of
Neurology
Today,
one of his all-time favorite magazines. He covertly checked the
handful of people scattered around the waiting room. Not surprisingly, everyone
looked exhausted, beat-up, dragged- out. He hoped everyone there was a new
patient. He didn't want to think they were on their twentieth appointment and
still looked this bad.