‘For instance?’ Byrne said. ‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all.’
As she spoke, she signed everything.
‘The early instances were actually Rotas Squares, not Sator Squares. The words themselves, if taken to be Latin, can be loosely translated, with only the word Arepo appearing nowhere in the language. Some believe Arepo was a proper name. The sentence – again, loosely, and by no means literally – reads: “The farmer, Arepo, uses his plough for work.” Or something like that. Believe it or not, I was a C student in Latin.’
Byrne waited for more. There was no more. He looked at his daughter, who smiled and shrugged.
‘Granted, not an earth-shattering sentence,’ Sister Kathleen said. ‘It probably wasn’t even proper Latin, but that’s just one idea. Others consider it an amulet of sorts. The Latin words
Pater Noster
—’
‘Meaning “Our Father”,’ Byrne said, translating.
Sister Kathleen smiled. ‘Catholic.’
‘I’ve done my share of penance.’
She pointed out the letters in the square. ‘
Pater Noster
is contained in the square as an anagram, along with two instances of
alpha and omega
– A and O.
‘There are many who believe early Christians used it as a secret symbol to let other Christians know of their presence. There are even more who believe that the invocation of the square can lift jinxes and curses.’
‘Curses?’ Byrne asked, recalling his conversation with Jessica about the last weeks of Frankie Sheehan’s life.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘The Prayer of the Virgin in Bartos claims that these are the names of the five nails used to crucify Christ.
‘On balance, the Sator Square is seen by many, in both religious and secular quarters, as a mystical symbol, an emblem used to ward off evil.’
Byrne wasn’t sure any of this had anything to do with his cases. It was only two words. Could it be coincidence? Had the Rousseaus known Edwin Channing? Had these handkerchiefs belonged to them, not the Farren brothers?
He made a note to call South Detectives to see if any sign of the Sator Square had been found at the tavern on Montrose.
‘What about now?’ he asked. ‘Why would it show up here?’
Sister Kathleen sat down at her desk, steepled her fingers. ‘I’m afraid that is a bit out of my wheelhouse,’ she said. ‘I don’t know the context, and that’s as it should be.’
She leaned forward, continued.
‘I’ve known Colleen a long time, and I know what you do for a living, detective. It would not be a surprise if these words have come up as part of an investigation.’
‘They have,’ Byrne said.
Sister Kathleen thought for a moment. ‘In many ways our chosen lives are similar. We try to make sense of an upside-down world, to confront and attempt to vanquish evil where we find it, to bring comfort to the grieving.’
Byrne had given this much thought over the years, still hung on to the vestiges of his Catholic upbringing. He could not find any disagreement with what this woman was saying.
‘Quite often people will attach meaning to things when there is no meaning in other areas of their lives. They cling to alcohol or drugs or promiscuity.’
Sister Kathleen stood, glanced at her walls, the ongoing mathematical problems. She looked back at Byrne and Colleen.
‘Einstein once said that pure mathematics is the poetry of logical ideas,’ she said. ‘If there is a logic to this, and I suspect there is, I know you will find it.’
As they were leaving, Byrne looked at the picture hanging on the wall next to the door.
‘Where was this taken?’ he asked.
She looked at the photo, ran a finger along the bottom of the frame.
‘This is in Ghana.’
Byrne studied the smiling children. Twelve in number. All of them looked to be seven or eight years old.
‘Four of these children are no longer with us,’ Sister Kathleen said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘The rest have graduated college.’ She touched the smiling girl in the front row. ‘Abeeku is now a pediatrician, with five children of her own.’
Byrne didn’t know what to say. He could now see why Colleen held this woman in such high regard. He took out a card, handed it to Sister Kathleen. ‘If you think of anything else, please call.’
‘I certainly will.’
‘And thanks again for your time. I trust you’ll keep this confidential.’
‘You have my word.’
Out in the parking lot, Colleen stopped him, signed: ‘
I trust you’ll keep this confidential
?
’
Byrne didn’t even bother signing. ‘I know, I know.
Jesus
, am I stupid.’
Colleen hauled off and punched him in the shoulder for that one. He knew it was coming, tried to brace himself. It still hurt.
With Colleen fast asleep on the living room couch, Byrne sat at the dining room table. In front of him was his laptop, a half-bottle of Bushmills and the box. It was how he had come to think of it.
The box
. He had returned Desmond Farren’s bus pass and dark glasses, and they now sat next to the .38, as they had for the past forty years.
Or had they?
Who was to say that the gun had not been removed from the box and used over and over to commit crimes? Who was to say that there was not, right at this moment, bullet evidence in an envelope at FIU that would match this weapon and bring a killer or killers to justice?
There was no question in Byrne’s mind that he was being, at the very least, derelict in his duties by not turning the weapon in to FIU for examination. His failure to do so bordered on the criminal.
He went to the hall closet, took down a shoebox he used for news clippings and old photographs. He found the three items he was looking for.
One was a picture taken by the river beneath the South Street bridge. In it, Byrne stood with Dave Carmody, Ronan Kittredge and Jimmy Doyle. It had been taken sometime in June 1976. Dave, as always, wore his spotless Phillies jersey. Ronan had on his running shorts and worn Nikes. Jimmy wore a white T-shirt and Levi’s.
It was the last picture they had ever taken together. After the events of the Fourth of July that year, they had drifted apart. Part of it was that they were teenagers, and, like all teenagers, had begun to leave behind those things of childhood, including friendships. Part of it was the darkness they all carried from having been in some way involved in the maelstrom of evil surrounding the deaths of Catriona Daugherty and Desmond Farren.
Byrne had never spent another summer in the Pocket. The four of them never discussed what happened that night.
The second item Byrne removed from the box was a yellowed news clipping from 1996. It was from the
Newark Star-Ledger
. The headline read:
Hunterdon County Teacher Dies in Fiery Crash.
Byrne skimmed the short article, although he knew most of it by heart. It told how Ronan Ian Kittredge, 33, had been found at the bottom of a hill, off Route 31, burned to death in his 1995 Ford Aspire. The article said that the road had been treacherous that night due to a blinding snowstorm.
When news of Ronan’s death had reached Byrne, he had called the Hunterdon County
sheriff’s office to find out more details. He was told that there were two sets of tracks found on the shoulder of the road that night. One set – the set that ran down the hill – belonged to Ronan’s Aspire. The other set belonged to a much bigger vehicle.
The sheriff’s office also said that no one had come forward with any information. They promised to call Byrne if and when there were further details. They never called.
The third item was also a newspaper clipping. Although it was newer, from August 2004, it was more worn and creased. There were rips in the paper, a few spots where liquid had been splashed. That was because Byrne had removed it from the box dozens of times, reading it over and over again with his coffee, or with his Bushmills in the middle of the night, as he was doing now.
This headline read:
Pittsburgh Man Found Shot to Death.
The article chronicled how David Paul Carmody, 41, was found dead in an alleyway in the Homewood section of the city.
When Byrne had got the call from Dave’s mother, he drove to Pittsburgh and met with the homicide detectives assigned to the case. They had graciously allowed him to look at the files, the autopsy findings, the toxicology results. Nothing made sense. Dave lived all the way across town from Homewood, had no record of drug use. He did not drink, was happily married. According to the ME’s office he had been killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head. No bullet or casing was found. His car was discovered a block away. No witnesses came forward.
Byrne looked at the photograph that accompanied the article. A smiling, early-middle-aged Dave Carmody looked back.
Byrne had called the homicide unit in Pittsburgh once a year since 2004. No arrest was ever made.
Of his three friends from the Pocket, Jimmy Doyle was the one Byrne had lost track of most completely. In fact, after the summer of 1976, he did not talk to him until the day five years ago when Jimmy walked into the Roundhouse, clapped him on the back and announced that he had taken a position with the Philadelphia DA’s office homicide division.
They’d met at a number of functions, but had never sat down over a bottle and fully caught up.
Byrne got online, did a search for Greene Towne LLC, the company that was doing the rehabilitation on the house in Devil’s Pocket where the box had been found.
He discovered that the company was based in Chestnut Hill, and had a small website by corporate standards, only a few pages deep. It appeared that the project in Devil’s Pocket was their first. On one page were short bios of the four principal owners.
One of the names was familiar: Robert Anselmo. Although the man was forty years older than the last time he had seen him, Byrne had no problem recognizing him.
Robert Anselmo had once been partners in the landscaping business with Jimmy’s stepfather, Tommy Doyle.
‘What did you do, Jimmy?’ Byrne asked of the night.
He navigated to Jimmy Doyle’s campaign website. He read Jimmy’s bio page.
After graduating high school, Jimmy had worked his way through Duquesne University, where he went on to obtain his law degree.
One item in Jimmy’s CV jumped off the page. From January 2002 to March 2005, he had been an assistant district attorney for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Byrne picked up the photograph of himself and his three boyhood friends.
As he looked at the young, smiling face of Jimmy Doyle, he felt a cold finger rake his spine.
The largest city in Allegheny County was Pittsburgh.
The meeting was for ADAs working the Farren case, and the unit chief of the homicide division. Unless and until arrests were made in the current string of murders, of which the DA’s office was all but certain Danny Farren was the orchestrator, the focus would be on building the case in the Jacinta Collins murder, and compiling as much collateral evidence against Farren as possible.
In attendance were Jimmy Doyle, Jessica, Amy Smith and three first-year ADAs.
‘We pretty much have what we had before,’ Jessica began. ‘We have a deposition and statement from the woman who saw Danny Farren park his car on the street that night. She saw him get out of the vehicle, walk behind the building. She said he was back there no more than a few minutes or so – which syncs with the pole-cam recording – then he returned to his car and drove off.’
‘Do we have any other eyewitnesses?’ Jimmy asked.
‘No, that’s it. But we do have that pole-cam video, and it aligns with what our witness says Farren was wearing that night.’
‘And you met with a member of the bomb squad?’ Jimmy asked.
Jessica nodded. ‘Detective Zachary Brooks. He walked us through the scene.’
‘I’ve had him on the stand,’ Jimmy said. ‘Good officer. Great witness.’
Jessica agreed. ‘And then we have Farren’s fingerprint on the duct tape.’
Before Zach Brooks had given her a crash course on the making, deploying and detonating of a pipe bomb, she would have bet against any kind of forensic evidence – hair, fiber, blood, DNA, fingerprints – surviving the heat and pressure of the blast. Now she knew the opposite.
A series of photographs taken in the basement of The Stone were spread out on the table.
‘What do we have from this evidence?’ Jimmy asked.
‘It’s still being tagged and collated. But I can tell you that these photographs and drawings go back many years,’ Jessica said.
She tapped one photograph. It showed a picture of a heavyset man wearing powder-blue double-knit slacks and a matching Ban-Lon shirt. It looked to be 1990s vintage.
Beneath the picture was a clipping from the
Inquirer
. The headline read:
Reputed Mobster Gunned Down in Cherry Hill.
‘We’ve identified this man as Carmine Sciaccia. He was a captain in the Ruolo crime family from the late seventies until his demise in 1997. The article is about his as-yet-unsolved murder in the parking lot of the Cherry Hill mall. A pipe bomb on a timer.’
‘You’re saying we think the Farrens carried out the hit?’
‘Too early to tell,’ Jessica said. ‘But I can tell you that there are at least a dozen other instances where we have a covert surveillance photograph over a news clipping wherein the subject of the photograph has been killed. I’ve run a half-dozen of them. None so far have been closed.’
Everyone in the room remained silent for a few moments. The possibility that they were on the brink of solving a dozen more homicides was energizing to say the least.
‘What about the rest of these photos? It looks like there are hundreds of them.’
‘Thousands,’ Jessica said.
‘Good work,’ Jimmy Doyle said. ‘Keep me posted.’
Jessica began to build her case. Along the way she would add anything she thought might help in the criminal conspiracy counts.
She began to research the Farren family. Records went back to 1944. They were all on paper then, and she had to take her lunch over to the building where they were stored, the vast complex that used to be home to the
Philadelphia Bulletin
, at one time the largest afternoon newspaper in the United States.
Liam Farren and his wife Máire had arrived from Ireland in the early 1940s. Liam had been a fusilier in the British Army. Within a year they’d opened their tavern, The Stone.
Liam was first arrested in 1945 on a criminal complaint of assault and intimidation. The details were that he had offered protection to the owner of a small hardware store, who didn’t want to pay. He was convicted and did eleven months.
Jessica made notes on the principals, dates and times.
Over the next fifteen years, Farren was arrested six times, each time on a felony charge. Due to what looked like an efficient system of witness intimidation, he was able to beat all but two of the charges, returning to prison twice for a total of three years.
One of the raps he beat was the firebombing of an insurance firm in Grays Ferry. Jessica underlined the word
firebombing
.
In 1974, Liam Farren was again arrested and indicted, this time on a charge of manslaughter for beating a cab driver to death with a claw hammer. He was sentenced to a ten-year stretch at Graterford. He never made it out. According to prison records, he was killed in a prison yard fight that year.
If Liam Farren’s career in crime had been localized to Devil’s Pocket and a few surrounding neighborhoods, his sons Patrick and Daniel had taken the show on the road. Between the two of them there were no fewer than three dozen indictments, ranging from assault to arson to strong-arm robbery to residential burglary in neighborhoods as far apart as Cobbs Creek in West Philadelphia, Torresdale in the northeast and the Queen Village section of South Philadelphia.
Patrick Farren was killed in a shootout with police in 1988. Byrne had already filled Jessica in on his own role, as well that of Frankie Sheehan.
After Patrick’s death, Danny Farren went on to consolidate his hold on businesses in Devil’s Pocket, Schuylkill, Grays Ferry and Point Breeze.
With Michael and Sean Farren, Danny’s twin sons, the adage about the apples and the tree proved not to be a cliché. Each of the boys did time in juvenile detention. In 2006, Sean was arrested for menacing. He served two years of a five-year sentence.
According to current records, there was no last-known address for Sean Farren. Michael Farren’s only address was The Stone.
Detectives from South were currently looking for known associates of the two men.
When Jessica got home, she took a long, hot shower. She couldn’t seem to get the contents of that room full of photographs off her mind.
The photos of the mutilated faces of Edwin Channing and Laura Rousseau were beyond horrifying. Jessica knew why she had been kept out of the loop on the details of the murders. Her job had been to build a case against Danny Farren. Now that the case would include conspiracy on multiple counts, she was copied in on everything.
With Vincent taking care of the kids, she flopped into bed at just after nine o’clock.
She dreamed of The Stone, and what it must have been like in the 1940s and 1950s. Philadelphia had never had a shortage of corner taverns, ethnic neighborhood corner taverns at that. While The Stone had surely never been an elegant place, it was cozy and welcoming in her dream, certainly a contrast to the reality of the place: a den of thieves.
As light began to filter through the blinds, she opened her eyes, rolled over, reached for her husband. Vincent was already up and gone. He and his team at Narcotics Field Unit North were putting together a far-reaching sting operation, and he was working eighteen-hour days.
Jessica looked at the clock. It was nearly six, which gave her a good forty-five minutes before she got up. She needed every second of it. Thank God Sophie was old enough to take care of herself and her brother.
The job had other ideas. Jessica’s cell phone rang at just after 6 a.m.
It was Byrne.
There had been another murder.