Richard Montanari - The Killing Room

The seven churches of Asia, all in Turkey. It was no coincidence.

He remembered hearing the story as if it were yesterday.

*

We were stationed in Incirlik, part of the 628th Airlift Support. This was between the wars, so things weren’t too crazy, right?

Now, what you have to remember is that the antiquities black market is off the charts in Turkey, or at least it was back then. There’s Persian, Roman, Greek antiquities. Stuff from the Crusades. If you want it, and you have the green, someone will find it for you.

So we get a little R amp; R, and my best buddy in the unit wants to take a ride to this place called Pasli. Four of us head out, taking the Persian Road south, then off road for hours. Up and down these dirt roads. Nothing. It’s almost sundown now, and we’re not going to find it. We see this old guy walking up one of the back roads. Had to be ninety and change.

My buddy talks a little Turkish to him, and the guy points at his feet. My buddy says something about shoes, getting him new shoes, but the guy shakes his head. He points at his feet again. This goes on for awhile, back and forth. Dead end.

On the way back to the Jeep my buddy stops, jumps up and down a few times. He suddenly realizes what the old man was saying. The place we were looking for was right under us. The ground was hollow.

We make our way down this cliff, and come upon this old door. Thick old door bolted right into the rock. For the rest of the night my buddies try to shoulder the thing open. No luck. I didn’t want anything to do with it, but you know how it is. You get enough booze in you and you’ll do anything.

Just before dawn, with my buddies passed out, I thought I’d give it a shot. I go down there, and I just touch the door, and it opens. All I did was touch it.

Inside was this big room, carved right out of the mountain. I run my flashlight around, and I see what I figure is dust. Big balls of dust. Or maybe it was rocks. But it wasn’t. You know what it was? It was skeletons, man. Little skeletons. A whole room full of them. They were all placed neatly, side by side.

At that moment something happened inside me, Kevin. I think I actually heard my heart change. I fell to my knees, and I tried to cry, but nothing came out. Believe me, it came out later. Almost every day since. But then, in the middle of this night, I had to ask myself why. I don’t mean why they did it, whoever did it. I mean, why did the door open for me?

One hundred dead children. God doesn’t put that in front of you for no reason, does He? No way.

I came back stateside, bummed around for two years, drank too much. I knew I wasn’t smart enough to become a doctor or a lawyer or anything. So I decided to become a cop. How else could I do good, man?

How else could I do good?

Marcus Haines had looked at Byrne that night, asking the question.

How else could I do good?

A few days later Marcus Haines stepped in front of another door. Byrne remembered the burst of automatic-weapon fire, recalled the red mist that was the back of Marcus Haines’s head.

This time the door wasn’t in Turkey but rather a North Philly hellhole, a place where children were made slaves to a drug called crack cocaine. Marcus Haines had finally found the door where the souls of another hundred children lay, and had taken a bullet meant for Kevin Byrne.

How do you repay a debt like that?

Byrne picked up the picture of Marcus, then took Gabriel’s school photograph out of his pocket. He held them side by side. Marcus looked so much like Gabriel, the son he never lived to know. Byrne recalled that night with Tanya Wilkins, how he had hit her. She had been pregnant with Gabriel at that moment. He hadn’t known then.

Byrne took out his cell, made the call. The woman answered in two rings.

‘Do you know who this is?’ Byrne asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’ve been expecting your call.’

‘We?’

‘My son and I.’

Byrne said nothing.

‘God chooses us for a reason,’ the woman said. ‘Are you ready?’

‘I’m ready.’

There was a moment of silence. Then, ‘Do you know what you must do?’

‘I do.’

‘It has all led to this moment. Do you feel the weight of providence?’

More than you know , Byrne thought. ‘Yes. But there’s something I need first.’

‘I am listening.’

Byrne told her what he needed. The woman agreed to get it for him.

‘Do you want to know where we will be?’ she asked.

‘I know where you’ll be. I just don’t know how long it will take me to get there.’

‘We are patient.’

‘Expect me.’

Byrne clicked off, sent Jessica a text message. He put his cell phone on his dining-room table, next to his service weapon and his badge.

How else could I do good, man?

Kevin Byrne knew.

Jessica could not find Byrne. She tried every cell, landline, pager number, text. Nothing. She had not told Maria of Mateo’s call — indeed, Jessica had asked Mateo to keep it to himself as long as he could. She couldn’t ask him to lie or erase the footage of Kevin, but Mateo was a stand up cop, and agreed to follow her lead on this. He promised not to say anything. For the moment.

St Simeon’s was now crowded with personnel. Jessica had seen the look on Dana Westbrook’s face when she pulled up, and it wasn’t good. Their killer had committed a crime, right under the noses of two detectives, and this would not play out well with the media.

Jessica decided to worry about the wrath of her boss later. Her immediate concern was Kevin Byrne.

What had he been doing at the church?

Jessica walked out of St Simeon’s. Her phone rang. It was Maria.

‘Yeah, Maria.’

‘I’m checking the cars on the street. There’s a compact car about a half-block from your location.’

Jessica recalled the car from when she entered the church. ‘What about it?’

‘It looks like we’ve got a second victim.’

‘There’s a body in that car?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s DOA?’

‘Oh, he is definitely DOA. There’s something on the seat next to him you should see, though.’

Jessica jogged down the alley, turned the corner. She saw Maria a half-block away, standing near the car. She walked the remaining distance, thinking there was no need to run. A DOA tended to stay dead.

When she arrived she looked in the driver’s window. The victim was a white male, late twenties, early thirties. His head was back on the headrest. A thin trickle of vomit leaked from the corners of his mouth. Jessica shone her Maglite into the car.

‘Ah, Christ,’ she said.

‘What? You know him?’

‘His name is Shane Adams. He’s a reporter. He tried to shadow me earlier today.’

Jessica ran her Maglite around the inside of the car. The backseat was full of junk, the kind of stuff you’d have if you lived half your life inside your car — extra clothing, fast-food trash, Handi-Wipes.

‘You are not going to believe this,’ Maria said. With her gloved hands she took a digital video camera off the front seat and put it on top of the car. ‘This was playing when I walked up to the car.’ She hit a button, turned the LCD screen to face them.

At first the image was out of focus. Soon it became clear. It was the image of a cross. It was hard to tell on the small screen what the cross was made of, but the closer Jessica looked at it, the more she realized it was made of glass.

‘Is that a window?’ Jessica asked.

‘I’m pretty sure it is,’ Maria said. She froze the image, pointed at the screen. ‘It looks like this is tinted glass, doesn’t it?’