Richard Montanari: Play dead

"Bomb squad on scene?"

"Deploying now."

"Where are we setting up?"

"Nineteenth and Cherry."

Jessica looked at her watch. She hesitated for a moment, then said, "I'm on my way."

Byrne knew the tone. He knew her. "Jess. Are you-"

"I'll meet you there."

Before Byrne could say anything more, she folded her phone, and got out of the car.

5:10 AM

Lilly had waited until Joseph Swann left her room. He had not said a word, but he had paced, seemed agitated. He left a dress for her, a velvet dress on a hanger. It was deep scarlet. Lilly recognized it as the dress the woman was wearing in the photograph Karl Swann had shown her. She imagined she was to wear it. She imagined she, like the other girls in the videos, was supposed to play the part of his assistant, an assistant who did not survive the trick.

She checked the door. Locked, of course. She tried to open the panel in the wall, but it did not work. Had Joseph known she left the room? Did he know she found his father? Had he sealed off her exit?

She glanced around the room. There had to be a dozen candles burning.

She put on the dress.

5:11 AM

Galerie Cygne was located in the Marketplace Design Center at Twenty-fourth and Market streets. It was a large building, overlooking the Schuylkill River, home to more than fifty exclusive showrooms offering antiques, building products, AV systems, lighting, and wall coverings.

Jessica buzzed the night security guard. She badged him, he let her in. He was in his late fifties, ex-PPD. His name was Rich Gardener. He knew Jessica's father.

Cutting the cop dance short, Jessica got to the point. "What can you tell me about this Galerie Cygne?"

"Not much. Nice-looking stuff. Custom cabinetry, one of a kind furniture. Tables and dressers that cost what I make in a year. It's one of the smaller showrooms here."

"Can I see the place?"

Gardener squared his shoulders, then gestured to the elevators, looking pretty pumped about being back in the game. "Right this way, Detective."

Jessica and Gardener stood in the hallway in front of the long glass wall that was Galerie Cygne. The interior was immaculately clean. The space was sliced with spotlights, highlighting cabinets, armoires, chairs, tables.

"Do you know the owner?" Jessica asked.

"Never met him."

"Have you ever seen him?"

"No. Sorry."

"Do you have a home address for him?"

The man hesitated. "I know you're on the job and all, but I have a job, too, right? I mean, I've run a few warrants in my time. Do you mind if I make a call?"

Jessica glanced at her watch. The team would be taking Logan Circle soon. She would be missed. "Please make it fast." Two minutes later, down in the lobby, Gardener looked up from his computer monitor. "Believe it or not, all correspondence with the owner goes to a post office box."

"There's no home address or other business address?"

"No."

"Is there a name at least?"

"No," Gardener said. "There's usually a page with emergency contact information, stuff like that. In case there's a fire, flood, act of God. But, for some reason, it's gone."

"Gone."

"As in erased. I know that there was an address here, because sometimes FedEx and UPS would have a delivery and the owner had to have it sent to his or her house."

"You're saying that the page has been deleted?"

"Yeah. But I've talked to one of the drivers who went out there once. Real horror-movie nut. Scared of his own shadow. Says the place is really spooky."

"Spooky how?"

"Said it's the old Coleridge place. I think they call it Faerwood or something. Said it's haunted."

"Where is this Faerwood?"

"No idea."

Jessica pointed to the monitor. "Can we get on the Internet?" Rich Gardener looked at his watch, over his shoulder, back. "We are not supposed to. But seeing as you're Pete Giovanni's daughter and all."

Jessica found the reference immediately on one of the wiki sites. Artemus Coleridge (1866–1908) was an engineer and a draftsman. He worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1908 he hanged himself from a roof beam at the huge North Philadelphia house he had built eight years earlier, a twenty-two-room Victorian mansion called Faerwood.

Click here to see a photograph of Faerwood, the webpage teased. Jessica clicked. The image ran ice through her veins. She'd been there.

5:20 AM

Swann remembered a time when his Father played a venue in West Texas. The Great Cygne had performed a close-up routine at a honky-tonk called Ruby Lee's. When his father refused to reveal the secret of a card routine based on Dai Vernon's Cutting the Aces, he had been taken out back, beaten, his entire act stolen out of the car.

Twenty minutes later, perhaps in drunken remorse, the three men who'd assaulted the Great Cygne came outside with food for the man's young son. As his father lay unconscious in a dusty alley, Joseph ate chicken-fried steak and drank Coca Cola.

It had been this hot that night.

Swann put his hand on the box. Fire and water. Water and flame. There were many variations of the fire illusions. The cremation illusions. Some call the illusion Suttee, the term coming from the name of the goddess Sati who immolated herself because she could not stand living with her father's humiliation over her husband Shiva.

Some illusionists called the effect She, a title inspired by a strange little book by H. Ryder Haggard.

The Great Cygne called it the Fire Grotto. The effect was similar to the Sub Trunk, but that was the original version. This version would be different.

Swann sat in the shadow of the box. The red clock ticked. It was time. He would open the box and begin the final illusion of what the world would know, for as long as history was recorded, as the Seven Wonders.

5:25 AM

The house seemed larger than it had in the daytime, more Forbidding. Where the grounds had seemed merely unkempt in bright sunlight, they now seemed populated with specters, with hunkering apparitions in the darkness.

Jessica had printed out the photograph from the website. Faer- wood, in 1908, was magnificent-sculpted hedges, a small well-tended orchard, even a waterfall. Now it was a ruin.

Jessica had her handset live, an earphone in her ear. The SWAT team had not yet moved in on Logan Circle. Any second now. The detectives and support personnel were assembled. Byrne had not yet called her.

She had turned off her headlights halfway up the winding driveway, cut the engine, drew her weapon, and approached the crumbling porch. For the second time in as many days.

"I remember now. Last year a pair of policemen came around."

Jessica wondered how many places there were like this. Places hidden from view. Places where time had stopped. She put her ear to the front window. At first it was cold silence, then she heard music. Someone was home. Was she chasing a ghost, or was this the place of a monster?

She rang the doorbell, stepped back, waited. No one answered. She shone her flashlight up the vine-covered wall. The sinister windows stared back. Next she tried the rusted iron knocker. Same result.

She rounded the house to the east, stepping through the tall brush, the high grass, skirting a small wooden gazebo. A multi-car garage was attached to the house. She stepped up to the doors, peered inside, saw a van, along with three late-model cars. One empty bay.

She continued around to the rear of the property. Crumbling stone benches squatted next to the path.

She looked at the back of the house, at the windows on the second floor. Half the windows were barred, even though there were no fire escapes. No way to get in.