50
BYRNE PARKED A BLOCK AWAY FROM THE ADDRESS DARRYL Porter had given him. It was a busy street in North Philly. Almost every house on the street was occupied and had the lights on. The house that Porter had directed him to was dark, but it was attached to a hoagie shop that was doing a brisk business. Half a dozen teenagers lounged on cars out front, eating their sandwiches. Byrne was sure he would be seen. He waited as long as he could, got out of the car, slipped behind the house, picked the lock. He stepped inside, drew the SIG.
Inside, the air was dense and hot, clogged with the smell of rotting fruit. Flies buzzed. He stepped into the small kitchen. Stove and fridge to the right, sink to the left. A kettle sat on one of the burners. Byrne felt it. Cold. He reached behind the fridge, unplugged it. He didn’t want the light carrying into the living room. He eased open the door. Empty, save for a pair of moldering pieces of bread and a box of baking soda.
He cocked his head, listened. The jukebox was playing in the hoagie shop next door. The house was silent.
He thought about his years on the force, about how many times he had entered a row house, never knowing what to expect. Domestic disturbances, breaking and entering, home invasions. Most row houses had a similar layout, and if you knew where to look, you would rarely be surprised. Byrne knew where to look. As he moved throughout the house, he checked the likely niches. No Matisse. No signs of life. He walked up the stairs, weapon out front. He searched the two small bedrooms and closets on the second floor. He descended the two flights to the basement. An abandoned washer, a long-rusted brass bed frame. Mice scurried in the beam of his Maglite.
Empty.
Back to the first floor.
Darryl Porter had lied to him. There was no food trash, no mattress, no human sounds or smells. If Matisse had ever been here, he was gone now. The house was vacant. Byrne holstered the SIG.
Had he really cleared the basement? He’d look again. He turned to descend the steps. And that’s when he felt the shift in the atmosphere, the unmistakable presence of another human being. He felt the tip of the blade at the small of his back, felt a slight trickle of blood, and heard the familiar voice say:
“We meet again, Detective Byrne.”
* * *
MATISSE PULLED THE SIG from the holster on Byrne’s hip. He held it up in the streetlight streaming through the window. “Sweet,” he said. Byrne had reloaded the weapon after leaving Darryl Porter. It had a full magazine. “Doesn’t look like department issue, Detective. Naughty, naughty.” Matisse put the knife on the floor, keeping the SIG at the small of Byrne’s back. He continued to pat him down.
“I kind of expected you a little earlier,” Matisse said. “Darryl doesn’t really strike me as the sort to stand up to too much punishment.” Matisse frisked Byrne’s left side. He took a small roll of bills out his pant pocket. “Did you have to hurt him, Detective?”
Byrne remained silent. Matisse checked his left jacket pocket.
“And what have we here?”
Julian Matisse removed the small metal box from Byrne’s left coat pocket, keeping the weapon to Byrne’s spine. In the dark, Matisse did not see the thin wire running up Byrne’s sleeve, around the back of his jacket, then down the right sleeve to the button in his hand.
When Matisse stepped to the side to get a better look at the object in his hand, Byrne pressed the button, sending sixty thousand volts of electricity into Julian Matisse’s body. The Taser, one of two he had purchased from Sammy DuPuis, was a state-of-the-art device, fully charged. As the Taser sparked and bucked, Matisse shrieked, reflexively discharging the handgun. The slug missed Byrne’s back by only a few inches, slamming into the dry wood floor. Byrne pivoted, threw a hook toward Matisse’s midsection. But Matisse was already on the floor, the effects of the Taser making his body spasm and jerk. His face was locked in a silent scream. The smell of singed flesh drifted up.
When Matisse settled down, docile and spent, his eyes blinking rapidly, the reek of fear and defeat coming off him in waves, Byrne knelt next to him, removed the weapon from his limp hand, got very close to his ear, and said:
“Yes, Julian. We meet again.”
* * *
MATISSE SAT IN the chair in the center of the basement. There had been no response to the sound of the gunshot, no one banging on the door. This was, after all, North Philly. Matisse’s hands were duct-taped behind him; his feet, to the legs of the wooden chair. When he came around, he didn’t struggle against the tape, didn’t flail about. Perhaps he did not have the strength. He calmly assessed Byrne with his predator’s eyes.
Byrne looked at the man. In the two years since he had seen him last, Julian Matisse had put on some prison bulk, but there was something about him that seemed diminished. His hair was a little longer. His skin was pitted and greasy, his cheeks sunken. Byrne wondered if he had the first stages of the virus.
Byrne had stuffed the second Taser unit down the front of Matisse’s jeans.
When Matisse regained some of his strength, he said: “Looks like your partner— or should I say, your dead
ex
-partner— was dirty, Detective. Imagine that. A dirty Philly cop.”
“Where is she?” Byrne asked.
Matisse twisted his face into a parody of innocence. “Where is
who
?”
“Where is she?”
Matisse just glared at him. Byrne placed the nylon gym bag on the floor. The bulk and shape and heft of the bag was not lost on Matisse. Byrne then removed his belt, slowly wrapped it around his knuckles.
“Where is she?” he repeated.
Nothing.
Byrne stepped forward and punched Matisse in the face. Hard. After a moment, Matisse laughed, then spit the blood out of his mouth, along with a pair of teeth.
“Where is she?” Byrne asked.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Byrne feinted another punch. Matisse flinched.
Tough guy.
Byrne crossed the room, unwrapped his hand, unzipped the gym bag, then began to lay the contents on the floor, in the wedge of streetlight drawn by the window. Matisse’s eyes widened for a second, then narrowed. He was going to play hard. Byrne wasn’t surprised.
“You think you can hurt me?” Matisse asked. He spit some more blood. “I’ve been through things that would make you cry like a fucking baby.”
“I’m not here to hurt you, Julian. I just want some information. The power is in your hands.”
Matisse snorted at this. But deep down he knew what Byrne meant. This is the nature of the sadist. Put the onus of the pain on the subject.
“Now,” Byrne said. “Where is she?”
Silence.
Byrne planted his feet again, threw a hard hook. This time to the body. The blow caught Matisse right behind his left kidney. Byrne stepped away. Matisse vomited.
When Matisse caught his breath, he managed: “Thin line between justice and hatred, isn’t there?” He spit on the floor again. A putrescent stench filled the room.
“I want you to think about your life, Julian,” Byrne said, ignoring him. He stepped around the puddle, got close. “I want you to think about all the things you’ve done, the decisions you’ve made, the steps you’ve taken to lead you to this moment. Your lawyer isn’t here to protect you. There’s no judge to make me stop.” Byrne got to within a few inches of Matisse’s face. The smell was stomach churning. He took the switch of the Taser in hand. “I’m going to ask you again. If you don’t answer me, we ratchet all this up a notch, and we never return to the good old days of right now. Understand?”
Matisse did not say a word.
“Where is she?”
Nothing.
Byrne pressed the button, sending sixty thousand volts into Julian Matisse’s testicles. Matisse screamed, loud and long. He upended the chair, falling backward, cracking his head on the floor. But that pain paled in comparison with the fire raging through his lower body. Byrne knelt down next to him, covered the man’s mouth, and in that instant the images smashed together behind his eyes—
— Victoria crying . . . pleading for her life . . . struggling against nylon ropes . . . the knife slicing her skin . . . the glossy blood in the moonlight . . . her screams a long shrill siren in the blackness . . . screams that join a dark chorus of pain . . .
— as he grabbed Matisse’s hair. He yanked the chair upright and brought his face close once more. Matisse’s face was now spiderwebbed with blood and bile and vomit. “Listen to me. You are going to tell me where she is. If she’s dead, if she’s suffering in any way whatsoever, I’ll be back. You think you understand pain but you do not. I will teach you.”
“Fuck . . . you,” Matisse whispered. His head lolled to the side. He faded in and out of consciousness. Byrne took an ammonia cap out of his pocket, cracked it under the man’s nose. He came to. Byrne gave him a moment to reorient himself.
“Where is she?” Byrne asked.
Matisse looked up, tried to focus. He smiled through the blood in his mouth. His top two front teeth were missing. The rest were slicked pink. “I did her. Just like Snow White. You’ll never find her.”
Byrne cracked another ammonia cap. He needed Matisse lucid. He put it beneath the man’s nose. Matisse jerked his head backward. From a cup he had brought with him, Byrne took a handful of ice, held it against Matisse’s eyes.
Byrne then took out his cell phone, opened it. He navigated through the menu until he got to the pictures folder. He opened the most recent picture he had taken, one he had snapped that morning. He turned the LCD screen toward Matisse.
Matisse’s eyes widened in horror. He began to shake.
“No . . .”
Of all the things Matisse had expected to see, a photograph of Edwina Matisse standing in front of the Aldi supermarket on Market Street, where she always shopped, was not one of them. Seeing a picture of his mother, in this context, clearly chilled him to the bottom of his being.
“You can’t . . . ,” Matisse said.
“If Victoria is dead, I’m going to stop by and pick up your mother on the way back, Julian.”
“No . . .”
“
Oh
yes. And I will bring her to you in a fucking jar. So help me God.”
Byrne closed his phone. Matisse’s eyes began to fill with tears. Soon his body was racked with sobs. Byrne had seen it all before. He thought of Gracie Devlin’s sweet smile. He felt no sympathy for this man.
“Still think you know me?” Byrne asked.
Byrne dropped a piece of paper into Matisse’s lap. It was the grocery list he had taken from the floor of the backseat of Edwina Matisse’s car. Seeing his mother’s delicate handwriting broke Matisse’s will.
“Where is Victoria?”
Matisse struggled against the duct tape. When he’d exhausted himself he fell limp and spent. “No more.”
“Answer me,” Byrne said.
“She’s . . . she’s in Fairmount Park.”
“Where?” Byrne asked. Fairmount Park was the largest urban park in the country. It covered four thousand acres.
“Where?”
“Belmont Plateau. By the softball field.”
“Is she dead?”
Matisse didn’t answer. Byrne cracked another ammonia cap, then picked up the small butane blowtorch. He positioned it an inch from Matisse’s right eye. He poised his lighter.
“Is she dead?”
“I don’t know!”
Byrne backed off, wrapped Matisse’s mouth tightly in duct tape. He checked the man’s hands and legs. Secure.
Byrne gathered his tools, put them in the bag. He exited the house. Heat shimmered the asphalt, ringing the sodium streetlamps with a carbon-blue aura. North Philly raged with a manic energy this night, and Kevin Byrne was its soul.
He slipped into his car and headed to Fairmount Park.
51