Richard Montanari (51 page)

    In
addition to its main purpose - the treatment and rehabilitation of the
emotionally disturbed - the facility had a secure wing maintained and staffed
by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. In its twenty
beds slept some of the most notorious criminals of the early twentieth century.

    By
the early 1950s the facility's funding had begun to dry up. Staff were laid off,
buildings were not maintained, equipment became outdated and plagued by time
and disrepair. Rumors of inhumane conditions at Convent Hill circulated. In the
1970s a documentary film was made, showing deplorable and sickening conditions.
Public and political outrage followed, with a million dollars being pumped into
the coffers.

    By
1980 Convent Hill had once again been forgotten. More gossip of corruption
circulated, as did tales of incalculable horror. But the public can only be
outraged about something for so long.

    Convent
Hill closed for good in 1992 and its inmates and patients were moved to other
state-run mental health facilities, as well as to correctional facilities
throughout New York and Pennsylvania.

    Over
the next eighteen years the grounds were bequeathed to the elements, the
vandals, the ghost-hunters and derelicts. A few attempts were made to secure
the facility, but with its nearly two hundred acres and many points of entry,
much of it surrounded by forest, it was impossible.

    The
fieldstone wall near the winding road that led up to the entrance still bore a
sign. As Kevin Byrne and Christa-Marie Schönburg approached, Byrne noticed that
someone had altered the sign, painting over it, rewording the message. It no longer
announced entry to what had once been a state-of-the-art mental-health
facility, a place of healing and rehabilitation, a place of serenity and peace.

    It
now announced entry to a place called Convict Hell.

    Byrne
thought about what he was doing. He knew the clock was ticking, that he was
needed back in the city, but he also believed that the answers to many of his
questions - past and present - were locked inside Christa-Marie's mind.

    
'Will
you come back on Halloween?' she had asked. 'I want to show you a special place
in the country. Well make a day of it. We'll have such fun
.'

    A
special place.

    Christa-Marie
wanted him to come here for a reason.

    Byrne
knew he had to take the chance.

    As he
parked the van Byrne heard the call of larks, announcing an impending storm.
The wind began to rise. It seemed to encircle the stone buildings like a frigid
embrace, holding inside its many horrors.

    The
two immense oak doors were secured by large rusted hinges.

    Over
the years the doors had been marked with epithets, pleas, confessions, denials.
To the right of the entry was an inscription carved in the weathered stone.

    Christa-Marie
turned, an animated look on her face.

    'Take
a picture of me,' she said. She smoothed her hair, adjusted the silk scarf at
her neck. She looked beautiful in the pale morning light.

    Taking
a photograph was the last thing Byrne had expected to do. He took out his
cellphone, opened it, framed Christa-Marie in the doorway, and snapped.

    A
moment later he pocketed his phone, put a shoulder to one of the huge doors,
pushed it open. A cold breeze rushed through the atrium, bringing with it years
of mildew and decay.

    Together
they stepped over the threshold, into Christa-Marie Schönburg's past, into the
infernal confines of Convent Hill.

    
The
dead walk here. The dead and the insane and the
forgotten.
If you come
with me, and hear what I hear, there is much more than the whistle of the wind.

    
There
is the young man who came here in 1920. He had been wounded at St. Mihiel
Salient. He bleeds from both wrists. 'I am going home,' he says to me. 'First
to Pont-a-Mousson, then home.'

    
He
never left.

    
There
is the solicitor from Youngstown, Ohio. Twice he has tried to take his life.
His neck is deeply scarred. He cannot speak above a whisper. His voice is a dry
wind in the night desert.

    
There
are the two sisters who tried to eat each other's flesh, found in the basement
of their Olney row house, locked in an embrace, wrapped in barbed wire, blood
dripping from their lips.

    
They
gather around me, their voices lifted in a chorus of madness.

    
I
walk with my lover.

    
I
walk with the dead.

    They
strolled arm in arm through the hallways, their heels echoing on the old tiles.
A powdery light sifted through the windows.

    Overhead
was a vaulted ceiling, at least thirty feet high, and on it Byrne saw three
layers of paint, each a dismal attempt at cheerfulness. Lemon yellow, baby
blue, sea-foam green.

    Christa-Marie
pointed to a room off the main entry. 'This is where they take you on arrival,'
she said. 'Don't let the flowers fool you.'

    Byrne
peeked inside. The remains of a pair of rusted chains, bolted to the wall, lay
on the ground like dead snakes. There were no flowers.

    They
continued on, deeper into the heart of Convent Hill, passing dozens of rooms,
rooms pooled with stagnant water, rooms tiled floor to ceiling, grout stained
with decades of mold and long-dried blood, drains clogged with sewage and
discarded clothing.

    One
room held six chairs still in a semicircle, the cane seats missing, one chair
curiously facing away from the others. One room had a three-tiered bunk bed
bolted to the floor over a decayed Oriental rug. Byrne could see where attempts
had been made to tear away the rug. Both ends were shredded. Three brown
fingernails remained.

    One
room, at the back of the main hallway, had rusted steel buckets lined against
the wall, each filled with hardened feces, white and chalky with time. One
bucket had the word
happy
painted on it.

    They
took the winding staircase to the second floor.

    In
one meeting room was a slanted stage. Above the stage, on the fascia, was a
large medallion made of crisscrossed black string, perhaps an
occupational-therapy project of some sort.

    They continued
through the wing. Byrne noted that many of the individual rooms had observation
windows, some as small and simple as a pair of holes drilled into the door.
Nothing, it seemed, went unobserved at Convent Hill.

    'This
was Maristella's room,' Christa-Marie said. The room was no larger than six by
six feet. Against the wall, a long-faded pink enamel, were three threadbare
stretchers. 'She was my friend. A little crazy, I think.'

    The
massive gymnasium had a large mural, measuring more than fifty feet long. The
background was the rolling hills surrounding the facility. Scattered throughout
were small scenes, all drawn by different hands - hellish depictions of rape,
murder, and torture.

    It
took Byrne a few moments to realize, in the dim light, that it was only a
cutout
of a person. As they drew closer, he could see that it was a plywood
pattern of a child, a boy perhaps ten or twelve years old. The figure wore a
yellow shirt and dark brown pants. Behind the figure, on the wall, was painted
a blue stripe, perhaps meant to mimic the ocean. As they passed the figure,
Byrne saw pockmarks in the plywood, along with a few holes. Behind the figure
were corresponding holes. At some point the figure had been riddled with
bullets. Someone had drawn blood on the shirt.

    They stopped
at the end of the hall. Above them the roof had rotted away. A few drops of
water found them.

    'You
know at the first note,' Christa-Marie said.

    'What
do you mean?'

    'Whether
a child has the potential to be a virtuoso.' She looked at her hands, her long,
elegant fingers. 'They draw you in. The children.

    At
Prentiss they asked me a hundred times to teach. I kept refusing. I finally
gave in. Two boys stood out.'

    Byrne
took her hand. 'Who are these boys?'

    Christa-Marie
did not answer right away. 'They were there, you know,' she eventually said.

    'Where?'

    'At
the concert,' she said. 'After.'

    There
was a sound, an echoing sound from somewhere in the darkness. Christa-Marie
seemed not to notice.

    'That
night, Christa-Marie. Take me back to that night.'

    Christa-Marie
looked at him. In her eyes he saw the same look he had seen twenty years
earlier, a look of fear and loneliness.

    'I
wore black,' she said.

    'Yes,'
Byrne said. 'You looked beautiful.'

    Christa-Marie
smiled. 'Thank you.'

    'Tell
me about the concert.'

    Christa-Marie
glided across the corridor, into the semi-darkness. 'The hall was decorated for
the holidays. It smelled of fresh pine. We debated fiercely over the program.
The audience was, after all, children. The director wanted yet another
performance of
Peter and the Wolf:

    Byrne
expected her to continue. She did not. Her eyes suddenly misted with tears. She
walked slowly back, reached into her bag, retrieved a piece of paper, handed it
to Byrne. It was a letter, addressed to Christa-Marie and copied to her
attorney, Benjamin Curtin. It was from the Department of Oncology at the
University of Pennsylvania Hospital. Byrne read the letter.

    A few
moments later he took her hands in his. 'Will you play for me tonight?'

    Christa-Marie
moved closer. She put her arms around him, her head on his chest. They stood
that way for a long time, not moving, not speaking. She broke the silence
first.

    'I'm
dying, Kevin.'

    Byrne
stroked her hair. It was silken to his touch. 'I know.'

    She
nestled closer. 'I can hear your heart. It is steady and strong.'

    Byrne
looked out the window, at the fogbound forest surrounding Convent Hill. He
remained silent. There was nothing to say.

    Jessica
could not find her partner. she had stopped by Byrne's apartment, visited all
his familiar breakfast and coffee haunts, checked his favorite watering holes,
hoping not to find him. She had not.

    Byrne
had not called into the unit nor, more importantly, shown up for his
deposition, his on-the-record statement about his whereabouts on the night
Eduardo Robles had been killed. Jessica knew that the inspector had smoothed it
over with the DAs office, but it was unlike Byrne in any number of ways, not
the least of which was his commitment to keeping his word.

    Jessica
spent the remainder of the morning reading through the material on
Carnival
of The Animals.
There were indeed fourteen movements, not all of them
devoted to animals. One was called
Fossils;
another,
Pianists;
yet another,
Finale.
For some reason the killer had chosen eight of the
movements. But they were all there, and it was all making slow sense.