Shutter Man (33 page)

By the end of August, what had begun with one wall of his bedroom now encompassed all four. Dates and times and places and sketches and photographs and transcripts.

It was right there, but he couldn’t nail it down.

On Labor Day he took it all down and made five neat piles. He decided to put it all back up again, but not right away.

He made the calls he’d been putting off, each call a slice opening an old wound, places he had no business going, places he’d never thought he’d go.

Over the past six weeks he’d made it a point to not let so much time pass between visits with Jessica. Each time she would talk of the coming regime in the DA’s office, of how things might change when Jimmy Doyle became district attorney, of her future.

Although it pained him deeply to do so, for the time being, Byrne kept what he thought about Jimmy Doyle, what he suspected, to himself.

The day after Labor Day, Byrne flew to Cleveland, rented a car at Hopkins International Airport and called the CPD. He spoke to a detective named Jack Paris, a good cop with whom he had worked once before. Paris made contact with the Summit County sheriff’s office.

Byrne then drove to a small town near Akron.

The next day he was back in his apartment with a new box to add to the growing clutter.

He went back to the day it all began.

July 4, 1976.

He had seen her in and around the park for a few weeks. She was a shy girl, always blushing.
 

On the day
– the only one that had mattered for forty years, the anniversary of his own daughter’s murder
– he saw her standing alone.
 

He knew.
 

He knew the two sides of his mind, his heart, the explosions overhead, the shelling of Cape Esperance, the smell of the rose, the scent of orchids.
 

The pale yellow ribbon.
All
the pale ribbons.

They watched the fireworks together.
 

‘What do they call you?’ he asked.
 

‘Me?’ she replied.
 

‘Yes. Do they call you Cyndi June?’
 

‘No, silly,’ she said. ‘My name is Catriona Margaret.’
 

The text was from Byrne. Jessica was preparing an opening statement in a robbery case. She dropped what she was doing and drove to East Falls.

Laurel Hill was a sprawling cemetery, with 33,000 monuments and more than 10,000 family plots. It was the second oldest rural cemetery in the United States.

Jessica found Byrne in a section near West Indiana. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

‘Hey, partner.’

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Thanks for coming.’

‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’

Byrne shrugged. ‘I didn’t know who else to tell.’

‘You look like a hundred bucks.’

Byrne smiled. ‘Sweet talker.’

‘My only virtue.’

‘What’s going on with Anjelica Leary?’

‘We’re starting to build the case against her. The DA has released Danny Farren. He’s in the hospital now. He doesn’t have long.’

Byrne gestured to a bench. On it was a white box. They sat down.

He told her the story, the whole story, of his summers in Devil’s Pocket, and that terrible night of July 4, 1976. While the whole city was celebrating the bicentennial, a dark story had begun to take shape in Kevin Byrne’s life, his heart.

He told her the story of how he and his friends had seen Desmond Farren watching the girl, how Jimmy Doyle had braced the man.

‘Jimmy stabbed him?’

‘He cut his leg, yes,’ Byrne said. ‘We kept waiting for the Farren brothers to react, to take Jimmy out, but they never did. Even when Des Farren turned up dead. It never happened.’

Jessica knew there was more. She waited.

Byrne pointed to a low monument nearby. Jessica looked at the headstone. It read:

‘Who is this?’ she asked.

‘His name was Charles Flagg. Ex-army chaplain, Second World War. Served at Guadalcanal. He owned a variety store in the Pocket called F&B. He was also part of a neighborhood block watch.’

Jessica just listened.

‘Turns out that Charles Flagg shot himself that night of July 4th, just a few hours after Catriona was killed. I worked backward from there.’

‘Backward to what?’

Byrne opened the box, took out a typed page, handed it to her.

Jessica immediately saw the pattern. It was a summary of five homicides.

July 4, 1936. Cynthia June Flagg, 10. Unsolved.
 

July 4, 1946. Anna Blossom Gresham, 10. Unsolved.
 

July 4, 1956. Constance Lenore Schute, 11. Unsolved.
 

July 4, 1966. Victoria Francis Jones, 10. Unsolved.
 

July 4, 1976. Catriona Margaret Daugherty, 11. Unsolved.
 

‘Desmond Farren didn’t kill the girl,’ Jessica said. ‘He didn’t kill Catriona Daugherty.’

‘No,’ Byrne said. ‘It was Flagg.’

He again reached into the box next to him. He took out a worn leather edition of the King James Bible and five clear plastic envelopes. Each contained a hair ribbon, each of a different pastel color.

‘I made some calls,’ Byrne said. ‘I located Flagg’s grandson, who it turns out works for the sheriff’s office in Summit County, Ohio. After Flagg’s death, his effects were boxed up and moved a dozen different times. His confession is in there. No one opened that bible in forty years.’

Jessica looked back at the sheet. ‘All on the Fourth of July, all the victims around ten or eleven years old. And then it stops.’

Byrne nodded. ‘I checked every July since. I ran June and August just to bracket the crimes. Nothing even close.’

‘Why didn’t anyone pick up this pattern?’ Jessica asked. As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. At one time – still – she
was
the
anyone
. Byrne said what she was feeling.

‘No one was looking.’

‘So all of this, the dominoes that started falling after Catriona Daugherty’s murder, didn’t have to happen.’

Byrne didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. They’d both heard and felt the repercussions of the music of chance.

‘Flagg lived in every one of those neighborhoods at the times of the murders,’ Byrne said. He held up a thick file folder. ‘These investigations start here and now. I’ve already talked to the captain.’

Jessica was going to ask him if he was sure this was what he wanted, but she knew that it was. She watched as Byrne gently put the ribbons back in the box, followed by the old bible.

She glanced at her watch. As much as she hated to leave, she had a ton of work on her desk.

‘Call me if you need me,’ she said. ‘Day or night. Even if it’s just to talk.’

‘Thanks, partner,’ he said. ‘It means everything.’

Jessica got up, walked back to her car, slipped inside. She thought about the cases. Her daughter wasn’t much older than those girls had been when they were murdered. She couldn’t imagine the shackles of grief.

She knew that Byrne would now embark upon a passage to visit the surviving family members of these murdered girls, to tell them the story as he believed it.

She got out of her car, crossed the cemetery to where Byrne stood, put a hand on his shoulder.

She would not let him make the journey alone.

With thanks to:

Jane Berkey, Meg Ruley, Peggy Boulos Smith, Rebecca Scherer, and everyone at the Jane Rotrosen Agency;

Ed Wood, Catherine Burke, Thalia Proctor, Kirsteen Astor, and the great team at Little, Brown UK;

Michael Krotz, David Najfach, David Wilhite, Kevin McKenzie, Kathleen Heraghty, Mike Driscoll, Jimmy Williams, Annette Haralson, and Kathleen Franco MD;

The men and women of the Philadelphia Police Department;

The people of Devil’s Pocket. Thanks for letting me borrow the neighborhood, move a few boundaries, and set my tale on your streets.