'Are you alone?'
'I'm with Detective Bontrager.' 'Hang tight. I'll call you back.'
Jessica clicked off her phone. She stood in the middle of the road, in the impenetrable country darkness. The road stretched into the gloom in both directions. Dark, forbidding, unknown, silent.
Chapter 85
Darkness.
They were moving. There was tape over her eyes and her mouth. Her hands were still bound together behind her back with the plastic band.
Lucy tried to listen to sounds around her. She heard the sound of the road beneath her. They were on a paved road, smooth, maybe an expressway, although she did not have the sense that they were traveling at high speed. Every so often she heard the sound of something passing. It was a distinct rhythm. Light poles?
Underneath it all was the sound of the heater fan. There was no music coming from the radio, no conversation. Then she heard humming. She didn't know the song.
Lucy rolled to her right, then her left. The movements were small but she could feel the plastic on her wrists shift a little bit each time. If she had strength anywhere in her body it was in her arms and hands. You didn't lift as many mattresses as she had without getting stronger.
Left.
Right.
She flexed her wrists, relaxed.
Little by little she felt the plastic start to give.
Chapter 86
Drummond called back ten minutes later.
'Michael,' Jessica said. 'What do you have for me?'
There were a few seconds of silence. At first Jessica thought the call had been dropped. She looked at the screen. They were still connected. She put the phone back to her ear. It was now quiet in the background on Drummond's end. He had either left or stepped away from his Halloween party.
'I don't know how to say this, Jess.'
This was not good, whatever it was. 'Just say it, Michael.'
Another pause. Jessica heard the rustling of paper. 'I just heard from the Hudson County prosecutor's office. They issued a search warrant yesterday to the Mailboxes USA location in Jersey City.'
Drummond was talking about the location to which the tattoos had been mailed from World Ink.
'Do we have something?' Jessica asked.
'We do. But it's not good news.'
'What did they say?'
'They got the records of where the material was forwarded to from Box 1606. The tattoos from World Ink. The package went to an address in South Philly.'
Jessica waited. And waited. 'Michael.'
'It was Kevin Byrne's address. The tattoos went to his home address.'
Jessica felt the ground shift beneath her. She wanted to speak, but her breath had not yet caught up to her words. 'It's not possible.'
'It's the only piece of mail the location ever forwarded from this box, under this registration. It was sent about a month ago.'
Another long pause. Drummond continued. 'Half the department is looking for him, Jessica. If I take this warrant request to the chief they're going to use it to locate Kevin and bring him in.'
'Okay, Michael. I understand,' Jessica said. 'But I have a favor to ask.'
'What is it?'
'I need a head start. There's an explanation for all of this. I just need to get to Kevin first.'
Silence for a moment. 'I can't break the law, Jess. You know and I know that there is now a record of us having this conversation.'
'I'm not asking you to break the law. I just need some time. Besides, who's to say what we talked about? Maybe we talked about the Phillies.'
'How about that Chase Utley, eh?'
Jessica took a moment, her mind spinning. 'All I'm asking for is a little window. Kevin is innocent. Let me bring him in.'
The next few seconds were excruciating. Finally: 'If the office brings me into this I'm going to have to drop the hammer. You know that, right?'
'I know.'
'But maybe it doesn't have to be immediately. Maybe I can't get a cellphone signal. Maybe my phone was off.'
Jessica felt a cool wave of relief. 'Thanks, Michael.'
'Good luck, detective.'
Jessica clicked off. She filled in Josh Bontrager on the parts of the conversation that he had not heard. She began to pace. The rain began to fall a little harder. She barely noticed.
'Okay,' Jessica said. 'The killer was working toward this night for a reason.'
'Danse Macabre,' Bontrager said. 'Midnight on Halloween.'
'Right. The killer is doing this for Christa-Marie. Why?'
Bontrager thought for a moment. 'If he is true to form he's going to kill one more person to fill in the last note.'
'If this is all coming down to Christa-Marie, there must be a connection.'
'She can't be a target, though. She was convicted of murder. She didn't get away with anything, not like the other victims.'
'Unless there's something we don't know about,' Jessica said.
'I'm scared that I made a mistake,' Byrne had said.
Jessica took out her phone again. She called a man named Gary Peters, a friend of hers who worked the city desk at the Inquirer. They got their pleasantries quickly out of the way.
'What do you need?'
'I need you to check something for me.'
'Shoot.'
'I need you to look up an obituary,' Jessica said. 'It would be in November 1990.'
'What's the name?'
'Gabriel Thorne.'
'Okay,' Peters said. 'What am I looking for?'
'I just need the notice.'
'Got it,' he said. 'Do you want me to fax it to you?'
'Can you email it to me?'
'Not a problem.'
Jessica gave him her email address. 'ASAP, okay?'
'On the case, detective.'
Two minutes later Jessica's phone dinged with the arrival of the email. She tapped it, opened it. It was a. pdf file from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Prominent Psychiatrist Dead at 58.
