Richard Montanari (56 page)

    'Hard
to tell,' Shepherd said. 'I know a lot of the room attendants - most of them,
in fact. But from this angle it's difficult.'

    When
the view returned to the eastern hallway, they saw the attendant stop in front
of 1208 for a few seconds. She didn't knock, she didn't try the door. She just
stood there, perhaps listening. The camera then cut away to another view, again
to the elevators, where it stayed for six seconds. No one came or went. It then
cut to a view of the other end of the hallway, the western wing. Two women came
out of a room there. The next cut was to the service elevators. Empty. Back to
the young woman in front of 1208. The recording caught up with her as she
knocked on the door. There was no audio, but Jessica could see her lips move.
In the split second before the cut-away she lifted her hand, and appeared to
swipe a card in the electronic lock.

    The
recording moved again to its other locations. No other people were visible.

    They
watched the rotation for the next minute and saw no activity. When they
returned to the eastern hallway they saw a man heading away from the camera. He
was in costume, a wizard's costume. He moved slowly, so that by the time he
reached 1208 the camera had rotated. When the camera returned he was gone, and
the door to the stairwell was just closing.

    'Shit,'
Shepherd said. He rewound the recording with the joystick, and toggled it back
and forth. There were no details visible. It was impossible to tell if the man
had entered the room or just passed by. With his hat, long coat and what
appeared to be gloves on his hands, there were no identifiable details.

    Shepherd
pointed to the time code in the lower right-hand corner of the frame.

    'Right
around here is when we went up,' he said.

    A
minute later Jessica saw herself and Josh Bontrager walking down the hall. A
few seconds later Shepherd joined them. They went inside the room.

    'I'm
going to interrogate these locks,' Shepherd said. 'I'll be right back.'

    While
Shepherd was gone Jessica toggled the video back and forth. She saw nothing
new. She looked at the menu down the right side of the screen. She saw that one
of the selections was the rear loading dock. She clicked over. It was a static
shot from above one of the three docks behind the hotel, showing the loading
bay, a pair of Dumpsters, and the hotel's shuttle bus parked in a space. There
was no movement. In the upper right-hand corner she could see a sliver of
Seventeenth Street.

    She
was just about to click back over - she was certain that John Shepherd didn't want
her messing around with the computers - when she saw a view that she had not
seen before. It was above the side door to the loading dock, the man door, not
the huge corrugated steel door. The view cut away, but before it did she saw
something. She ran it back.

    There
was no mistake. It was Kevin Byrne standing near the mouth of the alley.

    Jessica
checked the time code.

    
Was
this when Byrne dropped off the package with the concierge? If so, what was he
doing at the rear of the hotel
?

    Jessica
heard the door open in the outer office. She clicked back to the paused
recording at the beginning of the clip of the twelfth floor. Shepherd reentered
the office.

    'I
interrogated all four locks along the path,' Shepherd said. 'The lock on 1208,
the service elevator, the security door leading out to the loading dock, and
the door on the dock itself. All four locks register the same card. It is
signed out to one of the room attendants. Lucinda Doucette.'

    
Why
is that name familiar?
Jessica thought. 'Do you know her?'

    'Oh
yeah,' Shepherd said. 'Sweet kid. Shy.'

    'Do
you have a photograph of her?'

    'Sure,'
Shepherd said. He moved to another computer terminal, tapped a few keys. He
input Lucinda's name and a few seconds later her ID page came up. He hit
print
and the color printer began to cycle. Seconds later, Jessica was
looking at Lucinda Doucette's young face. Jessica knew her. She was the young
woman at the Hosanna House, the one who'd been sitting at the little table with
Carlos.

    Jessica
had no choice. She called in an all-points bulletin on the girl.

    Shepherd
hit a few keys, printing off one hundred copies of Lucinda Doucette's
photograph. 'We need to get this to all the sector cars in the area.'

    When
John Shepherd grabbed the printed photos and left the office, Jessica's
cellphone rang. It was Nicci Malone.

    'Nicci.
Why aren't you on channel with this?'

    'I'm
not in the hotel anymore.'

    'What
do you mean? Where are you?'

    Nicci
gave her the location. It was a few blocks away.

    'What's
going on?' Jessica asked.

    Detective
Malone hesitated. 'You better get over here right away.'

    Lucy
walked up Sansom Street in a fog, stepping from shadow to shadow. Everyone who
passed her was a danger. They all knew what she had done. She could see it in
their eyes. There was traffic, conversations, street sounds all around her, but
she didn't hear the sounds. All she heard was the white noise in her head,
raised to an insane volume, the static of her impending madness.

    What
had
she done?

    All
she remembered was the bell. It had rung twice.

    
What
did it mean
?

    She
kept walking. Block after block passed. Walk. Don't Walk. Red light. Green
light. There were people all around her, but they were ghosts. The only person
who lived in her world right now was a dead man. A man lying under the sheets,
soaked in blood.

    All
that blood.

    At
22nd Street her legs felt as if she could not take another step, but she forced
herself, she knew she had to keep moving.

    When
she reached the corner of Sansom and 23rd something jolted her out of her dark
reverie. There were police cars all up and down the streets, their lights
flashing on the walls of the buildings. Groups of people were gathered on the
corners, chatting with each other, pointing at the church. Lucy had walked this
way many times.

    She
was pretty sure that there was a small cemetery next to the church. What was
going on?

    It
didn't matter. It had nothing to do with her. She knew what she had to do. She
knew who she had to call. She crossed 23rd Street. There was a policeman
standing in the middle of the street, directing traffic away from the church.
Lucy pulled up the collar on her coat, angled her head away from him. As she
passed, she chanced a glance. He was looking right at her. She quickened her
pace, made it across the street. When she had gone half a block she stepped
back into the shadows, glanced back. The cop was still looking in her
direction.

    Lucy
ran. She tried to get her bearings. The river was just a few blocks to her
left. Ahead was Chestnut, Market, Arch, Cherry.

    
Cherry.

    There
was only one place for her to go.

    She
tried the doorknob. It turned in her hand. She pushed open the door, and
stepped into Mr. Costa's apartment.

    Lucy
moved slowly through the living room, glanced into the tiny kitchen. The old
appliances remained, but that was it. There was no dinette table, no chairs, no
dishes in the sink, no strainer. She turned back to the living room. On the
right was a door that she figured led to a bedroom. She stepped lightly, but
the old wooden floor still creaked under her weight. She stopped, waiting for
the light to go on, for Mr. Costa to appear suddenly as he was likely to do.
But it didn't happen. Lucy inched open the door to the bedroom. It too was
empty. No furniture, no clothing, no personal items of any kind. There was a
single window overlooking the street. That was it.

    But
it wasn't.

    There
was something on the wall. A small picture in a frame. Lucy reached over,
flipped the light switch, but it didn't work. She crossed the bedroom, pushed
the curtain to the side. A wedge of illumination from the street lights across
the road spilled into the room. She took the small picture from the wall,
angled it toward the borrowed light. The photograph was old, kind of blurry. It
was a picture of a little girl, no more than two years old. She sat on a beach.
In front of her was a bright red plastic bucket. In her hand was a small
shovel. She squinted at the sunlight. She wore a floppy flowered sun hat.
Chubby cheeks, chubby knees.

    Lucy
knew the face, the eyes. The last time she had seen those eyes they had been
red with crying.

    It
was Peggy van Tassel.

    Lucy's
hands began to shake. She tried to plug it into everything that had happened in
the past few days and she could not. Then she tried to put the picture in the
pocket of her coat but it wouldn't fit.

    She
knew what she had to do. She would get to the nearest phone and call Detective
Byrne. The longer she waited, the worse it was going to get for her.

    Before
she could take a single step, she heard the floorboards creak, felt the warm
breath on her neck. Someone stood right behind her.

    'Police,'
the man said. 'Get down on the floor and put your hands behind your back. Do it
now.'

    Lucy
felt her legs go soft. The photograph slipped from her grasp. It crashed to the
floor.

    'Now,'
he repeated.

    Lucy
got down on the floor, next to the shattered glass, put her hands behind her
back. She felt the man take her arms by the wrists, then slip a plastic band
around them, tighten it.

    He
left her there like that for a full minute. She dared not turn to look at him.
She heard him pace around the room. Then he spoke.

    'Can
you hear them?' he asked softly.

    Lucy
didn't know what he was talking about. She tried to listen hard, to figure out
what he meant, but there was only the roar of terror in her head.

    'The
dead are all over the city,' the man continued. 'Tonight it belongs to them. It
always has.'

    A few
moments later the man shone a flashlight on the broken photograph on the floor,
spotlighting the little girl's face. He held it there for a long time.

    'You
could have saved her,' the man said. 'You could have saved her and you did
nothing.'

    Lucy's
mind began to spin. This man was not the police.

    She
was pulled roughly to her feet. She felt the man's breath right near her ear.

    'You're
as guilty as George Archer.'

    The
St Demetrios Orthodox Church was a long rectangular building with a single
cupola. Behind it was a graveyard, a small neighborhood cemetery, easily a
hundred years old. There was a waist-high brick wall surrounding the courtyard,
which was accessible by a double wrought-iron gate. In the light thrown from
the headlights of the sector cars and departmental sedans, the headstones cast
long shadows over the grounds, as well as onto the walls of the row homes on
either side. The flashing lights projected images nearly ten feet tall, giant
specters overseeing the dead.

    As
Jessica approached the scene, Nicci Malone came jogging up to her side. Nicci
pointed to a young couple standing near one of the sector cars. They looked
terribly frightened.