Bette Davis, Emily Watson, Jean Arthur, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly. The young man's face had been defaced with what might have been a knife or an ice pick. Page after page, Angelika Butler-in the guise of Elizabeth Taylor, Jeanne Crain, Rhonda Fleming-stood next to a man whose face had been obliterated in a terrible rage. In some instances, there were rips in the page where the young man's face once was.
'Kevin.' Jessica pointed to one picture, a picture where Angelika Butler wore the mask of a very young Joan Crawford, a picture where her defaced companion sat on a bench next to her.
In this picture, the man was wearing a shoulder holster.
72
How long has it been? I know to the hour. Three years, two weeks, one day, twenty-one hours. The landscape has changed. The topography of my heart has not. I think of the thousands and thousands of people who have passed by this place in the past three years, the thousands of dramas unfolding. Despite all our claims to the contrary, we really do not care about each other. I see it every day. We are all simply extras in the movie, not even worthy of a credit. If we have a line, perhaps, we will be remembered. If not, we take our meager pay and strive to be the lead in someone's life.
Mostly, we fail. Remember your fifth kiss? The third time you made love? Of course not. Just the first. Just the last.
I glance at my watch. I pour the gasoline.
Act III.
I light the match.
I think of Backdraft. Firestarter. Frequency. Ladder 49.
I think of Angelika.
73
By one o'clock they had set up a situation room at the Roundhouse. Every piece of paper found in Nigel Butler's house had been boxed and tagged and was currently being sifted through for an address, a telephone number, or anything else that might provide a lead as to where he might have gone. If there really was a cabin in the Poconos, there was no rental receipt found, no deed located, no pictures taken.
The lab had the photo albums and had reported that the glue used to affix the photographs of movie stars to the face of Angelika Butler was standard white craft glue, but what was surprising was that it was fresh. In some instances, according to the lab, the glue was still wet. Whoever had glued those pictures into the album had done so in the past forty- eight hours. At one ten, the call for which they were both hoping and dreading came in. It was Nick Palladino. Jessica took the call, put him on the speakerphone.
'What's up, Nick?'
'I think we found Nigel Butler.'
'Where is he?'
'He's parked in his car. North Philly.'
'Where?'
'In the parking lot of an old gas station on Girard.'
Jessica glanced at Byrne. It was clear that he didn't need to be told which gas station. He had been there once. He knew.
'Is he in custody?' Byrne asked.
'Not exactly.'
'What do you mean?'
Palladino took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. It seemed like a full minute passed before he answered. 'He's sitting behind the wheel of his car,' Palladino said.
A few more excruciating seconds passed. 'Yeah? And?' Byrne asked.
'And the car is on fire.'
74
By the time they arrived, the PFD had extinguished the fire. The acrid smell of burning vinyl and immolated flesh hung upon the already humid summer air, steaming the entire block with a thick redolence of unnatural death. The car was a blackened husk; the front tires were melted into the asphalt.
As they got closer, Jessica and Byrne could see that the figure behind the wheel was charred beyond recognition, its flesh still smoldering. The corpse's hands were fused to the steering wheel. The blackened skull offered two empty caves where eyes once were. Smoke and greasy vapor rose from seared bone.
Four sector cars ringed the crime scene. A handful of uniformed officers directed traffic, kept the growing crowd away.
The arson unit would tell them exactly what happened here eventually, at least in the physical sense. When the fire started. How the fire started. Whether an accelerant was used. The psychological canvas on which this had all been painted was going to take a lot longer to profile and analyze.
Byrne considered the boarded-up structure before him. He recalled the last time he had come here, the night they had found Angelika Butler's body in the ladies' room. He had been a different man then. He recalled how he and Phil Kessler had pulled into the lot, parking just about where Nigel Butler's ruined shell of a car stood now. The man who had found the body-a homeless man who had teetered between running, in case he would be implicated, and staying, in case there was some sort of reward-had nervously pointed to the ladies' room. Within minutes they had determined that this was probably just another overdose, another young life thrown to the wind.
Although he couldn't swear to it, Byrne would bet that he had slept well that night. The thought made him sick to his stomach.
Angelika Butler had deserved every bit of his attention, just like Gra- cie Devlin. He had let Angelika down.
75
The mood was mixed at the Roundhouse. For what it was worth, the media was prepared to run with the story as a tale of a father's revenge. Those in the Homicide Unit, however, knew they had not exactly triumphed in the closing of this case. This was not a shining moment in the 255-year history of the department.
But life, and death, went on.
Since the discovery of the car, there had been two new, unrelated homicides. At six ociock Jocelyn Post entered the duty room, six CSU evidence bags in hand. 'We found something in the trash at that gas station you should see. These were in a plastic portfolio, stuffed into a Dumpster.'
Jocelyn arrayed the six bags on the table. In the bags were eleven- by-fourteens. They were the lobby cards-miniature movie posters originally designed for display in a movie theater's lobby-to Psycho, Fatal Attraction, Scarface, Les Diaboliques, and Road to Perdition. In addition, there was the torn corner from what might have been a sixth card.
'Do you know what movie this one is from?' Jessica asked, holding up the sixth bag. The piece of glossy cardboard had a partial bar code on it.
'No idea,' Jocelyn said. 'But I made a digital image and sent it to the lab.'
