Richard Montanari: Rosary girls

As much as it brought Byrne shame and regret, that was the reality of that long, terrible night.

The reality of this night, however, found a dark balance in Byrne's mind, a delicate symmetry that he knew would bring Jimmy Purify peace. Deirdre Pettigrew was dead, and Gideon Pratt was going to take the full ride. Another family was shredded by grief, but this time the killer had left behind his DNA in the form of a gray pubic hair that would send him to the little tiled room at SCI Greene. There Gideon Pratt would meet the icy needle if Byrne had anything to say about it.

Of course, the justice system being what it was, there was a fifty-fifty chance that, if convicted, Pratt would get life without parole. If that turned out to be the case, Byrne knew enough people in prison to finish the job. He would call in a chit. Either way, the sand was running on Gideon Pratt. He was in the hat.

"The suspect fell down a flight of concrete steps while he attempted to evade arrest," Byrne offered to Dr. Hirsch.

Avram Hirsch wrote it down. He may have been young, but he was from Jefferson. He had already learned that, many times, sexual predators were also quite clumsy, and prone to tripping and falling. Sometimes they even had broken bones.

"Isn't that right, Mr. Pratt?" Byrne asked.

Gideon Pratt just stared straight ahead.

"Isn't that right, Mr. Pratt?" Byrne repeated.

"Yes," Pratt said.

"Say it."

"While I was running away from the police, I fell down a flight of steps and caused my injuries."

Hirsch wrote this down, too.

Kevin Byrne shrugged, asked: "Do you find that Mr. Pratt's injuries are consistent with a fall down a flight of concrete steps, Doctor?"

"Absolutely," Hirsch replied.

More writing.

On the way to the hospital, Byrne had had a discussion with Gideon Pratt, imparting the wisdom that what Pratt had experienced in that parking lot was merely a taste of what he could expect if he considered a charge of police brutality. He had also informed Pratt that, at that moment, Byrne had three people standing by who were willing to go on the record that they had witnessed the suspect tripping and falling down the stairs while being chased. Upstanding citizens, all.

In addition, Byrne disclosed that, while it was only a short ride from the hospital to the police administration building, it would be the longest few minutes of Pratt's life. To make his point, Byrne had referenced a few of the tools in the back of the van: the saber saw, the surgeon's rib- cracker, the electric shears.

Pratt understood.

And he was now on the record.

A few minutes later, when Hirsch pulled down Gideon Pratt's pants and stained underwear, what Byrne saw made him shake his head. Gideon Pratt had shaved off his pubic hair. Pratt looked down at his groin, back up at Byrne.

"It's a ritual," Pratt said. "A religious ritual."

Byrne exploded across the room. "So's crucifixion, shithead,"he said. "What do you say we run down to Home Depot for some religious supplies?"

At that moment Byrne caught the intern's eyes. Dr. Hirsch nodded, meaning, they'd get their sample of pubic hair. Nobody could shave that close. Byrne picked up on the exchange, ran with it.

"If you thought your little ceremony was gonna stop us from getting a sample, you're officially an asshole," Byrne said. "As if that was in some doubt." He got within inches of Gideon Pratt's face. "Besides, all we had to do was hold you until it grew back."

Pratt looked at the ceiling and sighed.

Apparently that hadn't occurred to him. Byrne sat in the parking lot of the police administration building, braking from the long day, sipping an Irish coffee. The coffee was cop-shop rough. The Jameson paved it.

The sky was clear and black and cloudless above a putty moon.

Spring murmured.

He'd steal a few hours sleep in the borrowed van he had used to lure Gideon Pratt, then return it to his friend Ernie Tedesco later in the day. Ernie owned a small meat packing business in Pennsport.

Byrne touched the wick of skin over his right eye. The scar felt warm and pliant beneath his fingers, and spoke of a pain that, for the moment, was not there, a phantom grief that had flared for the first time many years earlier. He rolled down the window, closed his eyes, felt the girders of memory give way.

In his mind, that dark recess where desire and revulsion meet, that place where the icy waters of the Delaware River raged so long ago, he saw the last moments of a young girl's life, saw the quiet horror unfold…

… sees the sweet face of Deirdre Pettigrew. She is small for her age, naive for her time. She has a kind and trusting heart, a sheltered soul. It is a sweltering day, and Deirdre has stopped for a drink of water at a fountain in Fair- mount Park.A man is sitting on the bench next to thefountain. He tells her that he once had a granddaughter about her age. He tells her that he loved her very much and that his granddaughter got hit by a car and she died.That is so sad, says Deirdre. She tells him that a car had hit Ginger, her cat. She died, too. The man nods, a tear forming in his eye. He says that, every year, on his granddaughter's birthday, he comes to Fairmount Park, his granddaughter's favorite place in the whole world.

The man begins to cry.

Deirdre drops the kickstand on her bike and walks to the bench.

Just behind the bench there are thick bushes.

Deirdre offers the man a tissue…

Byrne sipped his coffee, lit a cigarette. His head pounded, the images now fighting to get out. He had begun to pay a heavy price for them. Over the years he had medicated himself in many ways-legal and not, conventional and tribal. Nothing legal helped. He had seen a dozen doctors, heard all the diagnoses-to date, migraine with aura was the prevailing theory.

But there were no textbooks that described his auras. His auras were not bright, curved lines. He would have welcomed something like that.

His auras held monsters.

The first time he had seen the "vision" of Deirdre's murder, he had not been able to fill in Gideon Pratt's face. The killer's face had been a blur, a watery draft of evil.

By the time Pratt had walked into Paradise, Byrne knew.

He popped a CD in the player, a homemade mix of classic blues. It was Jimmy Purify who had gotten him into the blues. The real thing, too: Elmore James, Otis Rush, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bill Broonzy. You didn't want to get Jimmy started on the Kenny Wayne Shepherds of the world.

At first Byrne didn't know Son House from Maxwell House. But a lot of late nights at Warmdaddy's and trips to Bubba Mac's on the shore had taken care of that. Now, by the end of the second bar, third at the latest, he could tell the difference between Delta and Beale Street and Chicago and St. Louis and all the other shades of blue.

The first cut on the CD was Rosetta Crawford's "My Man Jumped Salty on Me."

If it was Jimmy who had given him the solace of the blues, it was Jimmy who had also brought him back into the light after the Morris Blanchard affair.

A year earlier, a wealthy young man named Morris Blanchard had murdered his parents in cold blood, blown them apart with a single shot each to the head from a Winchester 9410. Or so Byrne had believed, believed as deeply and completely as anything he had understood to be true in his two decades on the job.

He had interviewed the eighteen-year-old Morris five times, and each time the guilt had risen in the young man's eyes like a violent sunrise.

Byrne had directed the CSU team repeatedly to comb Morris's car, his dorm room, his clothing. They never found a single hair or fiber, nor a single drop of fluid that would place Morris in the room the moment his parents were torn apart by that shotgun.

Byrne knew that the only hope he'd had of getting a conviction was a confession. So he had pressed him. Hard. Every time Morris turned around, Byrne was there: concerts, coffee shops, studying in McCabe Library. Byrne had even sat through a noxious art house film called Eating, sitting two rows behind Morris and his date, just to keep the pressure on. The real police work that night had been staying awake during the movie.