Richard Montanari - The skin Gods

Jessica had worked the desk for nearly a week and was glad to be back on the Line Squad. She was no house cat.

Buchanan handed her back her Glock. "Welcome back, Detective."

"Thank you, sir."

"Ready for the street?"

Jessica held up her weapon. "The question is, is the street ready for me?"

"There's someone here to see you." He pointed over her shoulder. Jessica turned around. There was a man leaning against the assignment desk, a big man with emerald-green eyes and sandy hair. A man with the bearing of someone stalked by powerful demons.

It was her partner, Kevin Byrne.

Jessica's heart fluttered for a moment as their eyes met. They had only been partnered a few days when Kevin Byrne had been shot this past spring, but what they had shared that terrible week was so intimate, so personal, that it went beyond something even lovers felt. It spoke to their souls. It appeared that neither of them, even over the course of the past few months, had time to reconcile these feelings. It was unknown whether Kevin Byrne was going to return to the force and, if he did, whether or not he and Jessica would be partnered again. She had meant to call him in the past few weeks. She had not.

The bottom line was that Kevin Byrne had taken one for the company-had taken one for Jessica-and he deserved better from her. She felt bad, but she was really glad to see him.

Jessica crossed the room, arms out. They embraced, a little awkwardly, separated.

"Are you back?" Jessica asked.

"The doctor says I'm on forty-eight, off forty-eight. But yeah. I'm back."

"I can hear the crime rate dropping already."

Byrne smiled. There was sadness in it. "Got room for your old partner?"

"I think we can find a bucket and a crate," Jessica said.

"That's all us old-school guys need, you know. Get me a flintlock and I'll be all set."

"You got it."

It was a moment Jessica had both longed for and dreaded. After the bloody incident on Easter Sunday, how would they be together? Would it, could it, be the same? She had no idea. It looked like she was going to find out.

Ike Buchanan let the moment play out. When he was certain it had, he held up an object. A videocassette. He said: "I want you two to see this."

Jessica, Byrne, and Ike Buchanan huddled in the cramped snack room that held a bank of small video monitors and VCRs. After a few moments, a third man entered.

"This is Special Agent Terry Cahill," Buchanan said. "Terry is on loan from the FBI's task force on urban crime, but just for a few days."

Cahill was in his mid-thirties. He wore the standard-issue navy-blue suit, white shirt, burgundy-and-blue-striped tie. He was fair-haired, combed and collegial, good-looking in a J.-Crew-catalog, buttondown kind of way. He smelled like strong soap and good leather.

Buchanan finished the introductions. "This is Detective Jessica Balzano." "Nice to meet you, Detective," Cahill said. "Same here."

"This is Detective Kevin Byrne."

"Good to meet you."

"My pleasure, Agent Cahill," Byrne said.

Cahill and Byrne shook hands. Cool, mechanical, professional. You could slice the interagency rivalry with a rusty butter knife. Cahill then turned his attention back to Jessica. "You're the boxer?" he asked.

She knew what he meant, but still it sounded funny. Like she was a dog. You're the schnauzer? "Yes."

He nodded, apparently impressed.

"Why do you ask?" Jessica asked. "Plan on getting out of line, Agent Cahill?"

Cahill laughed. He had straight teeth, a single dimple on the left. "No, no. I've just done a little boxing myself."

"Professional?"

"Nothing like that. Golden Gloves mostly. Some in the service."

Now it was Jessica's turn to be impressed. She knew what it took to square off in the ring.

"Terry is here to observe and make recommendations to the task force," Buchanan said. "The bad news is that we need the help."

It was true. Violent crime, across the board, was up in Philadelphia. Still, there wasn't an officer in the department who wanted any outside agencies butting in. Observe, Jessica thought. Right.

"How long have you been with the bureau?" Jessica asked.

"Seven years."

"Are you from Philadelphia?"

"Born and raised," Cahill said. "Tenth and Washington."

The whole time, Byrne just stood back, listening, observing. This was his style. On the other hand, he'd been on the job more than twenty years, Jessica thought. He had a lot more experience distrusting feds.

Sensing a territorial skirmish, good-natured or otherwise, Buchanan inserted the tape into one of the VCRs and hit PLAY.

After a few seconds, a black-and-white image rolled to life on one of the monitors. It was a feature film. Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, the 1960 film starring Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh. The picture was a little grainy, the video signal blurry around the edges. The scene that was cued up on the tape was well into the film, beginning where Janet Leigh, having checked into the Bates Motel, and having shared a sandwich with Norman Bates in his office, was preparing to take a shower.

As the film unspooled, Byrne and Jessica glanced at each other. It was clear that Ike Buchanan wouldn't have called them in for a horror classic morning matinee but, at the moment, neither detective had the slightest clue what this was all about.

They continued to watch as the movie rolled on. Norman removing the oil painting from the wall. Norman peeking through the crudely cut hole in the plaster. Janet Leigh's character-Marion Crane-undressing, slipping on her robe. Norman walking up to the Bates house. Marion stepping into the bathtub and shutting the curtain.

Everything seemed normal until there was a glitch in the tape, the type of slow, vertical roll produced by a crash edit. For a second the screen went black; then a new image appeared. It was immediately clear that the movie had been recorded over.

The new shot was static, a high-angle view of what looked like a motel bathroom. The wide-angle lens showed a sink, toilet, bathtub, a tile floor. The light level was low, but there was enough brightness thrown by the fixture above the mirror to illuminate the room. The black-and- white image had a coarse look to it, like the image produced by a webcam or an inexpensive camcorder.

As the tape continued, it appeared that someone was in the shower with the curtain pulled closed. The ambient sound on the tape yielded the faint noise of water running, and every so often the shower curtain billowed out with the movement of whoever was standing in the tub. A shadow danced on the translucent plastic. Beneath the sound of the water was a young woman's voice. She was singing a song by Norah Jones.

Jessica and Byrne looked at each other again, this time with the knowledge that this was one of those situations when you know you are watching something you shouldn't be seeing, and by the very fact that you were watching it, something bad was imminent. Jessica glanced at Cahill. He seemed riveted. A vein pulsed in his temple.

On the screen, the camera remained stationary. Steam emerged from above the shower curtain, slightly blurring the top quarter of the picture with condensation.

Then, suddenly, the bathroom door opened and a figure entered. The slender person appeared to be an elderly woman with gray hair pulled back into a bun. She wore a flower-print calf-length housedress and a dark cardigan sweater. She held a large butcher knife. The woman's face was not visible. The woman had a man's shoulders, a man's deportment and bearing.

After a few seconds' hesitation the figure drew back the curtain, and it became clear that there was a naked young woman in the shower, but the angle was too steep, and the picture quality too poor, to even begin to ascertain what she looked like. From this vantage, all that could be determined was that the young woman was white and probably in her twenties.