Duchesne smiled. 'Tell me, detective. Where did you study music?'
'A little honky-tonk at the crossroads.'
'With the esteemed Mr. Johnson.'
'Yeah, well,' Byrne said. 'I made a different deal with the devil.'
Duchesne took a moment, thinking. 'To answer your astute question, yes. For the most part. There are a few exceptions, one being Vivaldi's Four Seasons'
Jessica tried to listen closely but the only sound she could hear was the conversation flying over her head. She knew that Byrne took cryptic but detailed notes. She hoped he was getting all this. She was completely lost when it came to classical music. Whenever someone mentioned The Barber of Seville she thought of Bugs Bunny.
'Are there any symphonic poems, program music, that involve the use of animal imagery?'
'My goodness. Many.'
'Specifically a lion, a rooster, a swan, or a fish?'
'Perhaps the most famous of all. Carnival of the Animals,' Duchesne said without a moment's hesitation. 'It is a musical suite of fourteen movements. Much beloved.'
'The movements are all about animals?'
'Not all,' Duchesne said.
'Who was the composer?' Byrne asked.
'Carnival of the Animals was written by a great proponent of the tone poem. A French Romantic composer named Camille Saint-Saens.'
'Do you have information on this that you might let us borrow?' Byrne asked.
'Of course,' Duchesne said. 'It will take me a little while to collate all of it. Do you want to wait?'
'Can you fax it to us as soon as you have it all together?'
'Sure,' Duchesne said. 'I'll get right on it.'
Jessica and Byrne rose. 'We really appreciate this,' Byrne said, handing the man a business card.
'Not at all,' Duchesne replied. He walked them to the door of his office, through the reception area, to the front doors.
'Were you here when Christa-Marie Schцnburg studied here?' Byrne asked.
'No,' Duchesne said. 'I've been here for almost twenty years, but she had left by then.'
'Did she teach here?'
'She did. It was only for two years or so, but she was quite something, as I understand. The students were madly in love with her.'
They descended the steps, reached the side door of Prentiss.
'Perhaps this is something you are not at liberty to discuss, but does any of this have something to do with Ms. Schцnburg?' Duchesne asked.
'No,' Byrne said, the consummate liar. 'I'm just a fan.'
Duchesne glanced over at the wall. Jessica followed his gaze. There, next to the door, mixed into a precise grouping of portraits of young musicians — violinists, pianists, flutists, oboists — was an expensively framed photograph of a young Christa-Marie Schцnburg sitting in a practice room at Prentiss.
On the way to the van — parked just off Locust Street on a narrow lane called Mozart Place — they walked in silence.
'You saw it, didn't you?' Jessica finally asked.
'Oh yeah.'
'Same one?'
'Same one.'
In the decades-old photograph of Christa-Marie next to the door she wore a stainless steel bracelet with a large garnet stone inlaid.
They had seen the same bracelet on the shelf at Joseph Novak's apartment.
Chapter 60
The Audio-Visual Unit of the PPD was located in the Roundhouse basement. The purview of the unit was to provide A/V support to all of the city's agencies — cameras, TVs, recording devices, audio and video equipment. The unit was also responsible for recording every public event in which the mayor or police department was involved, providing an official record. The detective divisions relied upon the unit to analyze surveillance footage as it related to their cases.
In this regard there was no one better than Mateo Fuentes. In his mid-thirties, Fuentes was a denizen of the gloomy confines of the basement studios and editing bays, a fussy and geometrically precise investigator who seemed to take every foray by detectives into his world as an unwelcome invasion.
Recently promoted to sergeant, Mateo was now commander of the unit. What had passed for punctiliousness when he was Officer Fuentes now bordered on the obsessive.
When Jessica and Byrne arrived in the basement, Mateo Fuentes was holding court in one of the bays off the main studio, chatting with David Albrecht.
'So, you prefer the L-series lens, then?' Mateo asked.
'Oh yeah,' Albrecht said. 'No comparison.'
'No ghosting?'
'None.'
Mateo smirked. 'So, if I mortgage my house and sell all my possessions, I might be able to buy a rig like this?'
'You might be able to rent one.'
Both men looked over at Jessica and Byrne. Albrecht smiled. Mateo frowned. It appeared that the two detectives were harshing his vibe. A few minutes later the rest of the team arrived — six detectives in all, plus Sergeant Dana Westbrook.
Mateo was outnumbered.
'And so to business,' Fuentes said. 'Ready?'
The detectives gathered around David Albrecht's camera. The LCD screen was about four inches diagonally, but Mateo had hooked it up to one of the fifteen-inch monitors from the Comm Unit.
Mateo fast-forwarded through footage of the West Philly location until he came to the sequence showing the parking lot where Jessica had been assaulted.
The video showed Jessica walking out of the diner and into the parking lot. Ordinarily this would have been a moment for hoots and hollers, for a bout of good-natured ribbing. Everyone was silent. They knew what was coming.
On the screen Jessica made a call on her cellphone, then pocketed the phone. She leaned against the wall of the building, and opened the diary. She pulled something out of the back. This went on for a full minute. Cars passed in the foreground. A mother walking with her three small children stopped in front of the lot. The woman adjusted the jacket on a two-year-old girl, who wanted nothing to do with it. They soon moved on. Jessica continued to read.
A few moments later Thompson emerged from behind the building. It showed him sucker-punching Jessica, the diary flying from her hand. Two loose pieces of paper lofted on the wind. Everyone watching winced. The second blow took Jessica down. Thompson paced for a few moments, strutting. The audio was from across the street, just the sound of traffic. His words were unintelligible, but his gestures were not.
'There,' Albrecht said. He hit a button on the small remote in his hand. The video froze. Albrecht pointed to the right side of the screen. There, just beyond the corner of the building, was a shadow on the ground, the unmistakable shadow of a person. Albrecht restarted the video. Thompson stood over Jessica's body, but all eyes were on the shadow. The shadow didn't move.
He's watching, Jessica thought. He's just standing there watching what's happening. He's not helping me. He's part of this.
