The Stolen Ones (23 page)

Rachel sat in the hallway on the second floor. She could all but hear the sound of her sister’s footsteps running down the hall, for her sister had never walked anywhere. She was always so full of energy.

Rachel stood up, took a deep breath, braced herself.

She opened the door for the first time in almost three years. In the past three years the only people to enter this room were the cleaning ladies, and they had dusted and replaced the light bulbs as needed.

There was no furniture in the room, nothing on the walls. The only indication that two little girls ever occupied the space were the notches on the casing of the closet, notches showing slow, steady growth, although Rachel had eventually topped out at just under five feet.

Rachel sat on the floor in the corner, near the window. She recalled the time she and her sister had thought the shadow thrown by the large pin oak tree next to the house had been the claws of a giant lobster, and after that they would never eat lobster again, or crab for that matter.

Rachel held her sister’s picture in hand, a photo taken of her in the days before she disappeared, her hands on her hips, her face fashioned into a diva pout, a look Rachel remembered well.

What am I doing
? Rachel thought.
All these years of looking at other houses, of crawling through crawlspaces, of walking through subterranean corridors and catacombs and sewers. Years of trying to relive the twilight walk they took, to find the raggedy man, to find the man in the white coat.

Had it all been a dream?

‘Oh, Bean,’ she said through the tears. ‘What happened to you?’

After the party, Byrne and Ray Torrance sat in a quiet corner on the second floor of Finnigan’s Wake. Below them, on Spring Garden Street, the traffic crawled through the freezing rain, which the weatherman promised would become snow.

‘I don’t know the whole story, Ray,’ Byrne said. ‘I can’t make a move before I know the story.’

Torrance put the locket down, took a few moments, began.

‘We had this case up in the Northeast. Series of break-ins.’

Breaking and Entering was not in the purview of SVU. There had to be more. ‘What year are we talking?’

‘I think it was around ’ninety-seven,’ Torrance said. ‘Boogeyman stuff where a guy was coming into these houses in the middle of the night, going upstairs or whatever, and sitting in the bedrooms of these little girls.’

‘All girls?’

Torrance nodded. ‘Yeah. All girls. They were all five or six years old. All blond.’

‘No assaults?’

‘No, believe it or not. That’s just it. This guy is just sitting in their rooms. No sexual contact, no contact at all. The only reason SVU got involved at all was the ages of the girls.

‘But there was one case where the guy came back a number of times. It was the first time he did that, as far as we could tell. So we get a call from the chief’s office to shut this guy down. I caught the case, set up a time with this girl’s family, and I went up and talked to her.’

Torrance called for another drink.

‘So I go up there, and I meet the girl. A little doll. Her name was Marielle. Marielle Gray. Her nickname was Bean. I went up, talked to her, but I didn’t get much. The girl had an older sister, but the mother wouldn’t let me talk to her.’

‘Why?’

Torrance shrugged. ‘The mother was a boozer. I guess she couldn’t deal with it. And that was it. There were no more reports after that.’

‘What spooked the guy?’

‘No idea,’ Torrance said. ‘But you know and I know that these guys don’t just stop.’

Torrance’s drink came. He took a sip.

‘So, fast forward about ten years. I’m working this case, a runaway. Twelve-year-old boy. I’m down on South making a few inquiries, kicking the curbs. I look up and I see her standing across the street.’

‘The girl,’ Byrne said. ‘Marielle.’

Torrance nodded. ‘I’m not sure how I knew it was her. I was thirty feet away, it was night, and it had been ten years. There was just something about her. I knew.’

‘What happened?’

Torrance hesitated, sipped his drink. ‘She saw me, and I guess she knew, too. I imagine I hadn’t changed that much in those years. A little heavier, I suppose. A little slower. But she went from being this little kid to a young woman.’

Byrne just listened.

‘I tried to get across South but it was a Friday night and there was a lot of traffic. A lot of people. By the time I got to the other side of the street, she was gone. When I got back to the office that night I went through my files, got the mother’s phone number, called, even though it was late.’

‘Did you talk to the mother?’

Torrance shook his head. ‘That number belonged to someone else at that point. The guy – this very pissed-off guy who I awakened at one in the morning – told me that he’d had the number almost five years.’ Torrance drained his glass, rattled the cubes, calling for another. He looked at Byrne. Byrne shook his head.

‘When I saw her that night I knew she was on the game. I
knew
it, and I didn’t react fast enough.’

‘What did you do?’ Byrne asked.

Torrance shrugged. ‘What
could
I do? I shook the bushes for a few weeks, bugged-out my confidential informants. I didn’t have a picture of her, so basically I was looking for a fifteen-year-old blond girl. That describes half the runaways in Philly.’

The waitress brought Torrance his drink. He knocked back half of it in one gulp. Byrne had never seen Ray Torrance hit it this hard. But Byrne knew that this was a confessional.

‘So six months later I see her again. In Old City. She looked hard, Kevin. She’d put on weight. I could see that the streets were making her old before her time.’

Byrne knew all too well what he meant. He’d seen it himself many times. And it happened a lot more quickly than people realized.

‘This time she didn’t see me. She was standing in the doorway waiting for someone. She had shopping bags in her hands, so I knew someone was paying for her clothes. I pulled my hat down low and crossed the street. I was standing in front of her before she could make a move.’

‘Is this when you gave her the locket?’

Torrance nodded. ‘Yeah. I had picked it up at this little place near Eighteenth and Walnut. It was right after the first time I had seen her on South. I didn’t know if I would ever see her again, but I hoped, you know?’

‘What did she say?’

‘At first she made a move to run away. I blocked her in. She struggled with me for a few seconds, but I told her that I just wanted to talk. Nothing more. Just talk. After a little while she settled down.’

Torrance took another sip of his drink, continued. ‘I had rehearsed the speech I was going to give her for weeks, maybe months. Hell, I’d probably been thinking about it for ten
years
. But when I opened my mouth nothing came out. It all sort of vacated my brain when I looked into her eyes. Her young/old eyes. In that second I saw that little girl sitting at her dinette table. I knew that whatever I said wasn’t going to make any difference. Not at that moment. I just reached into my pocket, and pulled out the locket.’

‘What did she do?’

‘At first she didn’t want to take it. I had considered this, of course. I had a speech for that eventuality, too.’

Byrne saw Ray’s eyes begin to mist. He looked away for a few seconds, giving the man time. Torrance continued.

‘Standing in that alley, with my hands wrapped around her hand, knowing that she had the locket, I felt better. Not good, but better. There was now a link between us, and the possibility that she would get out of the life someday. I had given her a portal, something I’d rarely been able to do in my whole time in SVU.’

Torrance drained his glass again, called for another. When he did this he met Byrne’s eyes, and saw in them the concern.

‘I’m okay, Kevin.’

Byrne said nothing.

‘I was just about to give it one more shot, trying to talk her in, when I looked into her eyes and saw the fear. She was looking over my left shoulder when she drew her hand away from mine. The alley was pretty dark, but there was a light at the mouth of the alley, in a doorway that led to the kitchen of a hoagie shack. It cast a shadow on the wall. Before I could turn around I saw the shadow getting larger and I knew someone was coming down the alley. Fast.

‘The next thing I knew, my lower back caught fire. I was down on the ground. I tried to wrestle my weapon out of my holster but I suddenly felt as if I had no arms. I looked up and saw Marielle with her hands at her mouth. She was white as a sheet.’

The waitress brought Torrance his drink. This time, he didn’t pick it up. He just stared into the amber liquid.

‘Right before I blacked out I looked back at the brick wall at the end of the alley, and saw the shadow of the man who cut me. All I remember was the hat.’

‘The hat?’

Torrance nodded. ‘Yeah. The silhouette of a floppy hat.’

Byrne didn’t have to ask about the next hours, days and weeks of Ray Torrance’s life. By eleven o’clock on the night Ray Torrance was attacked every police officer in the city of Philadelphia was aware of what had happened to one of their own.

In the end, there were no arrests. All trace of Ray Torrance’s attacker, and the girl, were gone.

Byrne and a dozen detectives went to visit the man in the hospital a few days after the incident. That’s when Torrance told them about the locket, and what to do if they ever found it.

Three weeks later Ray Torrance left the hospital, and the police force. As far as Byrne knew, no one in the PPD had spoken to the man until Byrne found him on the mountain. Years earlier Ray had given him a map to his cabin in the Poconos.

‘Do you have any idea what happened to Marielle?’ Byrne asked.

Torrance shook his head.

‘She might be alive,’ Byrne said, before he could stop himself. He knew how it must have sounded to Ray. It sounded exactly as it would sound if someone tried to hand him the same line.

‘No she isn’t,’ Torrance said. ‘She’s dead. You know it, I know it.’

‘What can I do for you, Ray?’ Byrne asked. As the words left his lips he realized how inadequate they sounded, as well as how limited the scope would be.

‘I need in on this, Kevin.’

And there it was.

‘I don’t know what I can do,’ Byrne said. ‘Back in the day, when you and I were coming up, it was a lot easier to fly under the radar. Now, not so much.’

‘I know I’m not on the job any more. Look at me. The job wouldn’t even
have
me any more. I just want to be in the loop, you know? I’ve got to know what happened.’

‘Right now it’s just a found child case,’ Byrne said. ‘This locket doesn’t tie her to any open investigation.’

‘My attempted murder case doesn’t count?’

‘Don’t go there, man.’

‘You’re right,’ Torrance said. ‘I’m sorry.’

There was nothing to be sorry about. Byrne would probably have said the same thing.

Torrance got up, stood in front of the large window that overlooked the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in the distance. He didn’t speak for a long time, but when he did he said the three words that Byrne knew were buried deep in his heart.

‘I killed her.’

When Torrance turned back, Byrne saw the pain in his friend’s eyes. He didn’t know what to do. The only thing he could do, at this moment, was to sit there and listen. To just be there. And for that, he had all the time in the world.

Byrne and Torrance stood outside Finnigan’s Wake, near the short steps on 3rd Street. Torrance was smoking.

Since the smoking ban had gone into effect in most Philadelphia bars and nightclubs (the rule had something to do with what percentage of your income was derived from alcohol, no one understood it) small designated areas had sprung up just outside the entrances to watering holes – from small corner taverns in Grays Ferry to the poshest hotel bars in Center City. On any given night – whether it was ninety degrees with a hundred per cent humidity or ten below zero with a wind chill factor of minus forty – you would find tiny clusters of smokers, attached to the building like gargoyles, enshrouded in gray smoke.

‘She seems good,’ Torrance said.

‘Jessica?’

Torrance nodded.

‘I don’t know what I’d do without her,’ Byrne said. ‘She makes me look a lot better than I am. Best partner I’ve ever had. Best partner you
could
have.’

They were joined by two more smokers. They edged down the sidewalk.

‘Unfortunately, I’m going to find out soon what it’s like not to work with her,’ Byrne went on.

‘Why is that?’ Torrance asked. ‘She’s retiring?’

Byrne nodded.

‘She’s a
kid
.’

‘She’s going to law school.’

‘Uh oh.’

‘Trust me. She’s going to land on the right side.’

Torrance flicked his cigarette butt into the street.

The voice came from behind them.

‘You know, you can be arrested for that.’

Byrne and Torrance both turned to see two women in their mid-twenties descending the steps. One redhead, one blonde. At this time of the night, in this light, they both looked off-the-chart gorgeous.

‘Is that right?’ Torrance said.

‘Yeah,’ the blonde said. ‘Don’t make me pat you down.’

The two young women laughed, walked down 3rd Street. Byrne and Torrance watched.

‘One of life’s great ironies,’ Torrance said.

‘You mean how, when you’re twenty-two, you have no idea how to talk to women. And once you’re over forty you’re too old to do anything about it?’

‘That’s the one.’

Torrance waited a while, shot his final arrow. ‘Look, I realize there’s only so much you can do on this,’ he said. ‘Just copy me in on everything. Okay?’

‘Yeah,’ Byrne said, hoping the decision would not come back to haunt him. ‘Okay.’ He buttoned his coat to the top, wrapped his scarf tighter. ‘By the way, I have news for you.’ He pointed down the street. ‘Those two women you just talked to?’

‘What about them?’

Byrne gave his response the proper weight. ‘They’re both cops.’

Torrance looked punched. ‘
What?
’

Byrne nodded. ‘Yep. Both rookies out of the Twenty-third.’

Torrance glanced up the street at the two young women, who were getting into a car at the corner of Green and 3rd, just beyond the sprinting capabilities of men of a certain age. He looked back at Byrne. ‘Unbelievable.’

‘No argument there.’

Byrne checked his watch. He had to be in court in the morning to testify in a case he had closed almost three years earlier. ‘We should go.’

Torrance nodded, hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘I’m gonna run back in and say goodbye.’

‘Take your time.’

When Torrance left, Byrne looked down Spring Garden Street. It was clear and cold, and the neon and traffic lights reflected off the street. He wondered if it would ever be spring.

When Ray Torrance didn’t return, Byrne walked up the steps, back into the bar. He got the barmaid’s attention.

‘Did Ray come back in?’

‘He left.’

Byrne went upstairs, and down to the Quiet Man’s Pub. The place was all but deserted.

Ray Torrance was nowhere to be found.

It was well after three a.m. by the time Byrne put his head down on the pillow. Within minutes he was awakened by someone pounding on his door. In the dusk of half-sleep it sounded like a shotgun blast. His first instinct was to take his service weapon with him to the door, but he’d had far too much to drink.

He opened the door to see two young patrol officers in the hallway. In between them was a barely coherent Ray Torrance.

His face was streaked with blood.

‘Are you Detective Byrne?’ one of the officers asked.

‘Yeah,’ Byrne said. ‘What happened to him?’

‘Not sure,’ the officer said. ‘But you should see the other guy.’

‘Is the other guy pressing charges?’

‘No, sir.’

Byrne stepped into the hall. He got hold of Torrance, hooked a meaty arm around his neck.

‘Thanks, guys,’ he said. ‘What house do you work out of?’

‘Sixth.’

‘I’ll remember.’

‘Have a good night, sir.’

Night
, Byrne thought as he lugged Ray Torrance inside and closed the door. Young officers on last-out always called it night, even at four in the morning.

Had he ever been their age?

Ray Torrance sat on the couch. Byrne sat on the chair. The man’s face had begun to swell.

‘Christ, Ray. What did you do?’

Torrance shrugged. ‘I have some stuff in storage. There was a little misunderstanding with the owner about hours of operation.’

Byrne pointed at the cut on Torrance’s forehead. ‘You want to get that looked at?’

Torrance gave him a look, the old Irish flatfoot look. Byrne went into the kitchen and got the Irish first-aid kit – a bottle of Bushmills, ice, and a paper towel. Torrance used all three.

After a few silent minutes Torrance reached into his bag, took out a large rectangle of paper. On it was scribbled a number of words and numbers, connected by a series of arrows. As Torrance began to unfold the paper, Byrne could see that the edges of the creases were soiled with time and use. Whatever this was, it had been folded and unfolded many times.

When Torrance turned it over, and smoothed it out on the coffee table, Byrne saw that it was a map, specifically a city map of a small section of Northeast Philadelphia. Marked on the map were dozens and dozens of red Xs. Before Torrance could say a word Byrne realized what he was looking at.

‘These are the break-ins you were talking about,’ Byrne said. ‘These are the places your boogeyman hit.’

Torrance didn’t answer right away. He just brought a hand to his mouth and stared at the map. A few moments later he nodded and said, ‘Yeah.’

When they had been in the bar, and Torrance had told him that there had been a number of break-ins, Byrne figured he meant five or six. If each X on this map was a separate case, he now knew there were more than three dozen.

‘The first one was up here,’ Torrance said, tapping an index finger on Grant Avenue. ‘The last one, Marielle’s house, was down here.’ He tapped the lower left of the map.

Byrne scanned the grid, felt a small spike in his pulse. ‘They’re all around Priory Park.’

Torrance reached for the bottle of Bushmills, tipped a few more inches into his glass. Byrne knew that his friend was probably six sheets to the wind by now, but he didn’t stop him. Ray wasn’t going anywhere else tonight.

Dozens of break-ins surrounding Priory Park, more than fifteen years earlier, and now the bodies of three homicide victims, four counting Dustin Green. What was the connection?

Because Ray Torrance was not officially involved in any investigation, Byrne kept these questions to himself.

Torrance stared at the map for a few more moments, then reached back into his bag. He pulled out an old VHS tape, glanced up at Byrne.

‘Please tell me you still have a player.’

Byrne rummaged through his hall closet, hauled out his VHS machine, brought it into the living room. He searched a few drawers, found the RCA cables, hooked it up. He flipped on the TV. Torrance handed him the tape.

‘You’re sure you want me to see this?’ Byrne asked.

‘Kev.’

Byrne held up a hand. He’d asked. It was all he could do. He slipped in the tape, hit
PLAY
.

The video was a high-angle shot of what looked to be a vinyl dinette set. On the right side of the frame was an empty chair. Behind the chair, on the floor, was a pair of royal blue laundry baskets.

After a few moments a little girl slides onto the chair. She wears a pair of magenta pants and a floral long-sleeved T-shirt. Her face is partially obscured by the swag light fixture. She looks to be about four years old.

In the background is the sound of a Saturday-morning cartoon show on television.

The girl knits her fingers, waits.

From off screen:

‘My name is Ray.’

The little girl looks down at her hands. She remains silent.

‘What’s your name?’ Ray asks.

The girl looks up, to her right. From off camera: ‘It’s okay.’ A woman’s voice. Byrne assumes it is the girl’s mother. The girl looks at Ray.

‘Marielle,’ she says.

‘Marielle. That’s a
very
pretty name.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I heard that they call you Bean.’

Marielle nods.

‘That’s a funny name. How did you get that name?’

Another shrug. Another look off camera. She looks back at Ray. ‘It’s because I like string beans.’

‘You like string beans?’

Marielle nods.

‘I like string beans, too!’ Ray says. ‘Especially with mashed potatoes. Do you like mashed potatoes?’

The little girl nods again. ‘With butter.’

‘Got to have butter,’ Ray says. ‘Now, Bean, do you know who I am?’

‘Yes. A p’liceman.’

‘That’s right. Do you know why I’m here?’

Marielle nods again.

‘Why am I here?’

‘The man in the closet.’

‘There was a man in your closet?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know his name?’

Marielle shrugs.

‘It’s okay,’ Ray says. ‘I see people all the time and I don’t know their names.’

Marielle shifts her weight on the chair.

‘Now, this man, did he come out of the closet and into your room?’

Marielle nods.

‘What did he do?’

‘He told stories.’

‘Stories? What kind of stories?’

Another shrug.

‘Were they scary stories?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘They were sleep stories.’

‘Sleep stories?’

The little girl nods again.

‘You mean stories like when you’re sleeping?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many times did he come to visit you?’

Marielle thinks for a few moments, then holds up both hands, all fingers out.

‘Ten times?’

Marielle shrugs.

‘Did you ever go anywhere with the man?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘He took me and Tuff for a walk. To meet the other man.’

‘What other man?’

Marielle looked at her hands again. When she didn’t answer, Ray continued.

‘This man,’ Ray says. ‘The man who was in the closet. Can you tell me what he looks like?’

‘I made a picture of him.’

‘May I see it?’

Marielle slides off the chair. She soon returns with a piece of white construction paper. When she turns it over there is a stick figure drawing of a man.

‘This is the man?’

Marielle nods.

‘He looks like a scarecrow,’ Ray says.

Instead of answering, the little girl just folds her hands in her lap, and remains silent.

When Byrne came back from the kitchen, two steaming mugs of decaf in hand, Ray Torrance was fast asleep on the couch. He had rewound the tape to an instant when Marielle’s face was in profile, her scarecrow drawing in hand. The tape showed both the little girl and the drawing in freeze frame.

As Byrne put the mugs down on the coffee table, Ray Torrance mumbled something in his sleep.

‘PWD, man.’

‘What?’ Byrne asked.

Torrance remained silent, his eyes still closed. He turned onto his side.

‘What did you say, Ray?’ Byrne asked. ‘I didn’t hear.’ It sounded like
PPD
. Philadelphia Police Department. Maybe Ray was reliving the case in his dream.

Nothing. The man was out cold.

Byrne took the remote out of Torrance’s hand. He then got a blanket out of the hall closet, tucked it around his old friend, and turned off the television.