Read Online Broken Angels by Richard Montanari - Free Book Online Page B

1699,” Bontrager said. “You
just might be Amish if you ask, ‘Does this shade of black make me look
fat?’ ”
Byrne smiled. “Not bad.”
“And then there’s the Amish pickup lines.” Bontrager said. “Are thee at barn-raisings often? Can I buy thee a buttermilk colada? Are
thee up for some plowing?”
Jessica laughed. Byrne laughed.
“Yeah, yuck it up,” Bontrager said, reddening at his own off-color
humor. “Like I said. I’ve heard them all.”
Jessica glanced around the room. She knew the people in the homicide unit. She had the feeling that, before too long, Detective Joshua
Bontrager would hear a few new ones.

10
    Midnight. The river was black and silent.
    Byrne stood on the riverbank in Manayunk. He looked back, toward the road. No streetlights. The parking lot was dim, long-shadowed by moonlight. If someone pulled in at that moment, even to turn around, Byrne would not be seen. The only illumination came from the headlights of the cars on the expressway, glimmering on the other side of the river.
    A madman could pose his victim on the riverbank, take his time, compelled by whatever madness ruled his world.
Philadelphia had two rivers. Where the Delaware was the working soul of the city, the Schuylkill, and its winding course, always held a dark fascination for Byrne.
Byrne’s father Padraig had been a longshoreman his entire working life. Byrne owed his childhood, his education, his life to the water. He had learned in grade school that Schuylkill meant “hidden river.” In all his years in Philadelphia—which, except for his time in the service, had been Kevin Byrne’s whole life—he had looked at the river as an enigma. It was more than one hundred miles long, and he honestly had no idea where it led. From the oil refineries in southwest Philly to Shawmont and beyond, he had worked its banks as a police officer, but never really followed it out of his jurisdiction, an authority that ended where Philadelphia County became Montgomery County.
He stared down into the dark water. In it he saw the face of Anton Krotz. He saw Krotz’s eyes.
Good to see you again, Detective.
For what was probably the thousandth time in the past few days, Byrne second-guessed himself. Had he hesitated out of fear? Was he responsible for Laura Clarke’s death? He realized that, for the past year or so, he had begun to question himself more than he ever had, had seen the architecture of his indecision. When he was a young cocky street cop he had known— known —that every decision he made had been right.
He closed his eyes.
The good news was that the visions were gone. For the most part. For many years he had been plagued and blessed with a vague sort of second sight, the ability to sometimes see things at a crime scene that no one else could see, an ability that began years earlier when he had been pronounced dead after plunging into the icy Delaware River. The visions were tied to migraine headaches—or so he had convinced himself—and when he had taken a bullet to the brain from the gun of a psychopath, the headaches stopped. He’d thought the visions were gone, too. But now and then they came back with a vengeance, sometimes for only a vivid split second. He’d learned to accept it. Sometimes it was just a glimpse of a face, a sliver of sound, a rippled vision not unlike something seen in a fun-house mirror.
The premonitions came less often these days, and that was a good thing. But Byrne knew that at any moment he might put his hand on a victim’s hand, or brush up against something at a crime scene, and he would feel that terrible surge, the fearsome knowledge that would take him to the dark recess of a killer’s mind.
How had Natalya Jakos known this about him?
When Byrne opened his eyes, Anton Krotz’s image was gone. Now there was another pair of eyes. Byrne thought about the man who had carried Kristina Jakos to this place, the raging storm of madness that compelled someone to do what he had done