Jessica put her phone in her pocket, crossed the living room into the compact Pullman kitchen. She opened the cabinets above the range hood. There she found a dozen or so cookbooks — Mexican, Italian, Cajun. She pulled a few of them out, riffled the pages. Nothing. The second-to-last cookbook was labeled Home Recipes. She pulled it out. When she did, something fell on the floor. It was a slim leather-bound journal. The cover was worn and creased. She picked it up. Stuck in the front was an old photograph. It was Joseph Novak at fifteen or so, standing next to a beautiful cello. Jessica slipped the picture back in the book, opened it.
It was a diary.
June 22. The competition is this Saturday. But it is more than just a competition for first chair. We both know that. It is a competition for her. It will always be thus.
Jessica flipped ahead to the back of the journal. She read the final entry.
November 1. All Saints Day. It is done. I know now that I will be forever beholden to him. I will never be out of his shadow. For the rest of my life I will do his bidding. My heart is forever broken, forever in his hands.
Zig, zig, zig.
He is death in cadence.
Jessica closed the journal. She needed a warrant to search every square inch of this apartment, and she needed one fast. She put in a call to the DA's office, told them what she had, what she needed. She took the journal, intending to say it had been in plain sight, therefore not covered by the warrant. She stepped outside, locked the door. She told the two CSU officers they could return to the lab. She would call them when and if she needed them.
She walked across the street, grabbed a coffee-to-go at the diner, stepped into the parking lot behind. She called Byrne, got his voice- mail. She called Dana Westbrook, gave her a status report. Westbrook said she would send two other detectives from the Special Investigations Unit to aid in the search.
Jessica opened the journal. There was something under the back cover. She peeled it back gently. There was a second photograph there, an old Polaroid, a long shot of a window in a huge stone building. In the window was a figure. It was impossible to see who it was, but it looked like a slender woman. On the back of the photograph was one word scrawled in red pencil.
Hell.
Before Jessica could get the photograph back into the journal she heard someone approaching, footfalls on hard gravel. She turned.
The fist came from nowhere, connecting with the right side of her face in a dull thud. She staggered back, saw stars. The journal flew out of her hands. The second blow was more glancing, but it carried enough force to knock her to the ground. She had enough presence to roll onto the side where she had her weapon holstered.
Through the haze she saw her assailant. White-blond hair, filthy jeans, laceless sneakers. She didn't recognize him. Not by sight, not at first. When he spoke again, she knew. And there was no mistaking those eyes.
'I think we have some unfinished business, Detective Balzano,' Lucas Anthony Thompson said. 'Or should I say Detective Cunt Balzano.'
Jessica rolled to her right, worked the Glock from her holster, but she was too slow. Thompson stepped forward, kicked the weapon from her hand.
'You shoulda shot me when you had the fucking chance, bitch. Ain't gonna happen today.'
When Thompson took another step toward her, Jessica saw movement at the back of the parking lot. A shadow slithered along the pavement.
Someone was standing behind Thompson.
And then everything went gray.
Chapter 49
The Philadelphia Orchestra began life in 1900. Over the next century it held many distinctions, not the least of which was the 'Philadelphia Sound', a legacy that, under conductor Eugene Ormandy, became known for its clarity and skilled execution, its warm tonality and precise timing.
The orchestra also had a unity of artistic leadership virtually unknown in the world of great orchestras, with only seven musical directors in its entire history. Two men, Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, held the reins from 1912 to 1980.
It was on the occasion of Ormandy's leaving that the Philadelphia Orchestra found itself at a crossroads and, perhaps in an attempt to modernize its somewhat staid image, turned to a young firebrand, Neapolitan Riccardo Muti, as its new musical director. Darkly handsome, intensely serious to the point of almost never smiling on stage, Muti ushered in a new era, an era dominated by a man whose insistence on the letter of the musical law earned him the nickname — at least around the opera houses of Italy — of lo scerif, the sheriff.
In 1981, in a move still discussed in some circles, the orchestra rattled the classical musical world by hiring as its principal cellist a nineteen-year-old named Christa-Marie Schцnburg — a tempestuous wunderkind who was taking the world of strings by storm. Within a year her name became as synonymous with the Philadelphia Orchestra's as Muti's, and when the chamber orchestra toured Eastern Europe that summer Christa-Marie Schцnburg was the talk of the classical- music universe.
By the time she was twenty-two there was no doubt in the minds of the cognoscenti that she would surpass, in technical skill, pure artistry and, indeed, world-wide recognition, the only other woman to capture international fame on the cello, the tragic Jacqueline du Pre, the brilliant cellist whose career was cut short at the age of twenty-eight by multiple sclerosis.
And while Jacqueline du Pre made her most memorable recording with Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor, Christa-Marie put her imprimatur on the Bach suites.
For nearly a decade, from Vienna's Konzerthaus to Rotterdam's Grote Zaal, from the Royal Festival Hall in London to Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, Christa-Marie Schцnburg, with her tensile, passionate music, brought audiences to their feet.
On a cold autumn night in 1990 all of that changed.
Something tragic happened on that night when Christa-Marie returned home after a triumphant performance at the Academy of Music — a benefit attended by many of Philadelphia's elite society, a fund-raiser for Philadelphia's homeless children.
Although details of the last two hours remain unknown, it was believed that Christa-Marie returned to her Chestnut Hill house at approximately 11:45 p.m., delivered there by a car service. A few hours later, according to her housekeeper, there were sounds of an argument in the kitchen, a struggle, then a scream. The housekeeper called the police.
Police arrived at around two-thirty. They found a man named Gabriel Thorne — a psychiatrist who had treated Christa-Marie for many years — sprawled on the kitchen floor, bleeding heavily from wounds to his abdomen and chest, the bloodied knife at his side. He was still alive. They called EMS, who tried to save him at the scene but failed. He was pronounced dead minutes after their arrival. The ME's office would eventually rule that Thorne bled out as a result of multiple stab wounds.
Christa-Marie Schцnburg never played another public concert.
Because she confessed to the crime there was no show trial, much to the disappointment of the burgeoning cable-TV court shows. Christa- Marie Schцnburg was as enigmatic as she was strikingly beautiful, and her relationship with Thorne was, for many years, cause for gossip and speculation.
The last time Byrne saw Christa-Marie Schцnburg was at her allocution, when she stood before a judge and admitted her guilt regarding the murder of Dr. Gabriel Thorne.
As Byrne drove north he thought of the Chestnut Hill house, how when people heard what had happened they began to gather across the street early the next morning, bringing with them flowers and stuffed animals, even sheet music. It was as if Christa-Marie had been the victim, not the perpetrator.
Byrne had thought of Christa-Marie often. It wasn't just that Christa-Marie Schцnburg had been his first case as the lead detective in a homicide. Something else about the woman haunted him. What drew him to her had never been entirely clear to him.
