The Doll Maker Read online

  Byrne had no response to this.

  Father Corey closed his car door, locked it. He turned back to Byrne.

  ‘May I ask you something, detective?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Have you made peace with the fact that, when you arrested Valerie Beckert, you were doing that which you are sworn to do? That you did your job without hatred or prejudice?’

  It was a good question. Byrne decided that he had done his job properly. There had been many before Valerie, and many since. He hoped he could, in the end, say the same about them all.

  ‘I have, Father.’

  ‘That’s all any of us can do.’

  The priest reached into his pocket, pulled out a card. He handed it to Byrne.

  ‘I know there’s a few miles between Philly and Muncy, but you could always call.’ He pointed at the lightening sky. Byrne hadn’t even noticed. ‘We never close.’

  Byrne took the card. ‘Thank you, Father.’

  ‘Have a safe journey.’

  Byrne watched the priest walk toward the side entrance, sign in at the security checkpoint, and disappear into the building. He wondered what the man was going to encounter this day, if he would save even one soul. He wondered if such a thing was even possible.

  A few minutes later, with a milky sun rising behind a bank of deep gray clouds, Byrne got in his car, and headed back to Philadelphia.

  18

  In the days that followed the discovery of Nicole Solomon’s body at the Shawmont train station, and the suicide of her father, the neighborhood in which Nicole had last been seen was canvassed three times, at three different times of day.

  The interviews had produced nothing in the way of evidence or leads.

  No one had come forward with any information, despite daily items in the Inquirer and Daily News that all were tagged with the tip-line number, and the pledge that all calls would be kept confidential.

  Investigators learned that, on the morning before her body was found, Nicole had visited the Franklin Institute with ten of her classmates. They’d left at just after noon. All ten of the girls had been interviewed, as had the bus driver and key personnel at the Institute.

  One of Nicole’s classmates – a fourteen-year-old girl named Naomi Burris – told Jessica that they had walked three blocks south on Sixteenth Street, and parted company on the corner of Sixteenth and Spruce.

  Naomi, who cried the entire time Jessica had spoken with her, said that she didn’t notice anything strange or wrong, or that they were being followed. She said everyone called Nicole ‘Nic,’ and asked if it was true that Nicole’s father had killed himself like everyone said.

  There was no way to sugarcoat it, so Jessica told her that it was true.

  The crime scene had since been released, and all traces of the crime, except for the spots on which the legs of the bench had rested, were gone. The bench had been transported to the police garage where it was processed for fingerprints and hair evidence. None were found. The paint was determined to be an exterior latex.

  Whatever scientific evidence that investigators could gather from the area surrounding the Shawmont train station – that which had not been destroyed by passing SEPTA trains – had been processed, logged, filed, and entered into the binder. Two days after the murder there had been a number of violent thunderstorms, and any evidence that had not been collected, or destroyed, had been given back to the earth.

  The one piece of evidence that was unique, and therefore gave the investigation a new avenue of inquiry, was the stockings used to strangle the victim. According to the preliminary report from the lab, the stockings were not made of nylon, or any of the synthetic blends that are currently available. The stockings were silk. Criminalistics estimated that they were at least thirty years old, maybe as old as fifty.

  They concluded that there was a lot of biological material available on the stockings that did not belong to Nicole Solomon. Further tests were underway.

  It was not lost on either Jessica or Byrne that Adinah Solomon – David’s ailing mother – was near an age where such stockings might be packed away in a trunk or in storage. A thorough search of the house and property did not yield any stockings, but that didn’t mean the Solomons had not rented a storage facility somewhere.

  The sad truth was that, until concrete leads were generated, David Solomon – despite his loving daily missives to his daughter – could not be ruled out as a suspect.

  Jessica and Byrne visited the McDonald’s on Christian Street. The manager made a DVD of the surveillance videos from the time David Solomon and his daughter had visited the restaurant.

  The video showed them entering the store at seven-ten a.m. Nicole walked to the counter, while David took a seat in a booth. While Nicole waited in line, she did not engage any of the other patrons in conversation, and did not appear to speak to anyone other than the young woman at the counter who took her order.

  Jessica and Byrne watched the entire video, up until a few minutes after David and Nicole Solomon left the restaurant at 7:36. They watched all three vantage points. No one paid them any particular attention, or was found staring at the teenager for anything more than a few seconds.

  They made notes regarding the people sitting around the Solomons, as well as hard copies of freeze-framed stills of the people sitting at nearby tables.

  If the killer put his eye on Nicole Solomon inside that restaurant, he did not make a show of it.

  Both Jessica and Byrne attended David Solomon’s funeral service, out of both respect to the man, and to put their own eyes on everyone who showed up.

  They walked away with exactly that with which they arrived.

  There were no leads.

  As to David Solomon’s suicide, Byrne had followed up on both the gun David had used, as well as with David’s co-workers and friends. The people with whom he worked – he was a member of the staff at a healthcare provider called AdvantAge in Langhorne, Pennsylvania – were shocked and saddened at both Nicole’s murder and her father’s suicide, but seemed unable or unwilling to shed any light on the reasons behind either.

  By mid-week, investigators did uncover some possible motives for David Solomon’s suicide. They learned that David Solomon’s wife had been killed in a car accident two years earlier, and that the driver of the other car – a man ruled to be legally intoxicated – had received a jail term of only nine months. They learned from neighbors that Solomon, after burying his wife, had become morose and unsociable, all but inconsolable, and had recently been hospitalized for more than three weeks for severe depression.

  A search of the Solomon home had uncovered a number of prescriptions for antidepressants and sleeping pills – all current, yet hidden in a box in the basement, perhaps to keep them from Nicole’s eyes.

  The weapon, a Charter Arms Bulldog .357, was legal and licensed to David Solomon.

  None of the man’s co-workers knew the name Mary Gillen.

  The SEPTA train that passed the station in the brief window of time at which the ME had been able to presumptively put the time of death did not carry passengers who used any kind of rail card, which could have been used to identify them. Any leads generated in this area would have to go out over the media, or involve investigators taking the train themselves, and interviewing passengers.

  Both avenues of investigation were being considered.

  There was no link yet found between Jeffrey Malcolm and Nicole Solomon. Malcolm had told the truth about being in Atlanta the previous week. A canvass of the other residents on Malcolm’s street yielded nothing in the way of eyewitnesses to Malcolm’s Honda Accord coming or going from Malcolm’s garage.

  Hair and fiber samples were taken from the Honda’s trunk, and had been submitted to the FBI for testing.

  The document examination section of the PPD was located on the first floor of the crime lab, formally known as the Forensic Science Center at Eighth and Poplar streets.

  The building also housed the other s
cience units – Firearms and Ballistics, Criminalistics, and the drug lab.

  The director of the document section was Sgt. Helmut Rohmer. A giant of a man with bleached white hair, Sgt. Rohmer – who insisted on being called Hell – was a lab rat in the truest and most noble sense of the word. Among the number of artifacts and newspaper articles framed and mounted on the walls, his proudest piece was a large section of drywall cut from the lobby of an apartment building, a piece of drywall where a killer – a man currently serving a sentence of life without parole in Rockview – had misspelled a word while spray painting a taunt to the police.

  It was Hell Rohmer’s work that put the man away. In a job that was mostly about forged signatures, sometimes a document examiner could be the only link between a killer and justice.

  When Jessica and Byrne entered the room, Hell was poring over a document from a current case, his brow furrowed, a look of intense concentration on his face. As Jessica got closer she saw it wasn’t a police document at all, but rather a copy of the latest issue of Maxim and a photo spread of actress Lacey Chabert.

  Hell looked up from his magnified swing-arm light, a bit startled. He gently slid a manila folder over the Maxim.

  If Hell Rohmer was known for anything, it was for his collection of black T-shirts. The rumor was that he had thousands. Today’s shirt read:

  The last thing I want to do is hurt you.

  But it’s still on the list.

  Hell pointed sheepishly at the copy of Maxim. ‘Did you know Tim Burton is thinking of making a sequel to Beetlejuice?’

  Neither detective was buying into the cover story. Hell moved on.

  ‘It’s funny that you guys are here. I was just thinking about you,’ he said.

  ‘But not enough to actually call,’ Byrne said, letting him off the hook.

  Hell laughed. ‘I may be easy but I ain’t cheap.’

  He walked over to his massive bookcase, took out a file. He walked back to the examining table, extracted a photocopy from the folder. It was a facsimile of the invitation found under the bench.

  ‘This is beautiful penmanship,’ he said. ‘I mean, I realize that whoever wrote this is probably a psychopath, but still, there’s a pretty high skill set at work here. This reflects many hours of practice.’

  ‘Did you run it by the ID unit?’ Jessica asked.

  Hell shook his head. ‘Not yet. But I examined it under the heaviest magnification I’ve got. I don’t think we’re going to lift any prints from this. Or the envelope. However, if whoever touched that envelope touched the gummed part, we may get a partial.’ He pulled a stool over. ‘But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a cornucopia of information to be found within.’

  ‘That much?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Okay, maybe I’m overstating. I just love saying the word “cornucopia,” although I only use it seasonally.’

  ‘Maybe you just like blowing your horn,’ Byrne said with a smile.

  ‘Snap!’ Hell replied. ‘Good one.’

  Hell sat on his rollaway stool, got down to business. ‘Okay, first off, I’m a hundred percent sure that the entire document was written by one person.’ He put the photocopy of the invitation on the examining table, angled the swing-arm lamp over the top. ‘What do you guys know about calligraphy?’

  For Jessica and her partner, it was almost a rhetorical question. Jessica would say ‘almost nothing.’ Byrne would say ‘a little.’ He knew a little bit about almost everything. Jessica let him answer.

  ‘A little,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Well, I’ll just touch on the basics here,’ Hell said. He opened the drawer, took out a small telescoping pointer, pulled it out to full length. ‘The first thing you learn about is called the pen width.’ He pointed to the top line of the invitation. ‘With calligraphy pens, other than monoline pens, you are using nibs that have a narrow side and a wide side. The measurement from one edge of the wide side to the other is called the pen width.’

  He pointed to the individual letters in the first line:

  You are invited!

  ‘The other important thing to know is about the pen angle. Different alphabets demand different angles, from zero all the way up to ninety degrees. Most calligraphy, however, is done at a forty-five degree or thirty degree angle.’

  Hell looked up at the two detectives. ‘Are you still with me?’

  ‘Riveted,’ Jessica said.

  Hell opened the file, took out another document, a second photocopy of the invitation. This one had an overlay of five horizontal lines, like a musical staff.

  ‘All calligraphy is based on five basic lines,’ Hell said. ‘The ascender line, the waistline, the branching line, the writing line, and the descender line.’

  As he rattled off these somewhat confusing terms, he tapped each of the five lines he had drawn horizontally across the photocopy of the invitation.

  ‘Ascenders go above the waistline to the ascender line. Descenders go below the waistline to the descender line. Keep in mind I did this with a ruler and the finest point nib made. Look how precise and uniform these strokes are. If we get another example of this – and I hope we don’t – I’ll be able to make a match from ten feet away. This is almost perfect.’

  Hell looked up, realized he was gushing, added:

  ‘For a crazy person, I mean.’

  Jessica said nothing. What detectives in the field did every day, and what the forensic people did in the lab every day, was as different as jobs could be. It was understandable that the scientist sometimes yearned for the so-called excitement of the physical chase, and that the detective yearned for less of it.

  ‘There’s a lot more to learn about this,’ Hell continued. ‘Some of it involves the slant of letters in certain alphabets, but we don’t need to go into that now.’

  ‘Can you tell if it was written by a man or woman?’ Jessica asked.

  Hell thought about this for a few moments. ‘That’s a tough one, but I would say it was written by a man. Men tend to press a little harder. This is presumptive, but I’m pretty good at this.’

  ‘What about the age of the document?’ Jessica asked. ‘Can you tell how long ago it was written?’

  ‘Oh, it’s recent. I’d say it was written within a day or two before it was recovered.’

  ‘What about the paper?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘See, now we’re getting into the factual part of our show. I love this part.’

  Hell walked over to a bookshelf, pulled out a large sample book of papers. The name Qena was written on the binder. Hell put the book down on the table, opened it to the center.

  ‘The paper is manufactured by a company called Qena. The stock is a sixty-five pound cover, vellum finish.’ On the right-hand side of the book were nine different color samples. He tapped one called Aged. ‘The line of paper is called Lunaparche. Very elegant. This particular note was written on sixty-five pound cover Lunaparche Aged.’

  For a moment, Jessica thought about asking him if he was sure about this, but besides being an insult – every scientist in the forensic sciences, especially the director of a unit, never said they were certain unless they were certain – it was clear, even to her untrained eye, in a side-by-side comparison with the original document, that he was right.

  ‘It’s a great line of paper,’ he said. ‘It has the look and feel of parchment. Plus it is FSC certified, and made from thirty percent recycled postconsumer fiber.’

  Whenever you talk to Hell, you had to expect some fan boy jargon.

  ‘Where is it available?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Unfortunately, a lot of places online,’ he said. ‘Unfortunate for us, of course. Fortunate for the friendly folks at Qena.’

  ‘Are the cards available in that size from the manufacturer?’

  Hell smiled. ‘Very good question, detective.’

  ‘I have moments.’

  ‘The answer is no,’ he said. ‘It comes from the manufacturer only in eight-and-a-half by eleven sheets. This document was
cut to this size.’

  ‘Do we know what was used to cut it?’

  ‘It was cut with an extremely sharp blade. I would say an X-Acto blade, probably first use. It definitely was not cut on a paper cutter.’

  ‘What about the envelope?’

  ‘The envelope is what’s known as a baronial. It has this deep pointed flap and a diagonal seam. It’s the envelope of choice for announcements and invitations. Greeting cards too, of course.’

  ‘I always go baronial with my greeting cards,’ Jessica said.

  Hell smiled. ‘Once you go baronial …’

  ‘What can you tell us about the pen and ink?’

  Hell reached into his pocket, produced a pen. ‘It’s a Staedtler Calligraph Duo. Black ink.’

  ‘Just like that?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Just like that,’ Hell said. ‘I do some calligraphy myself. I’ve yet to meet a document examiner who hasn’t at least dabbled in it. I tested the ink, measured the width. It’s a Staedtler.’

  ‘Also available everywhere.’

  ‘Sorry to say it is. Available at Blicks, for one. Amazon, of course. Under three bucks.’

  Byrne studied the note. ‘What about the last line?’

  See you at our thé dansant!

  ‘It means “tea dance”,’ Hell said. ‘According to Merriam-Webster, first known use was in 1819.’

  ‘I’m going to guess you know what a tea dance is,’ Jessica said. She declined to look at her partner. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  ‘I do,’ Hell said. ‘But only because I looked it up. A tea dance is a late afternoon or early evening dance, often held after a garden party. Believe it or not, they were often given by officers in the Royal Navy.’

  ‘Royal Navy as in British?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hell said. ‘Weird, huh?’

  Jessica looked at all the material on the table: the original document, the paper samples, the pen.

  She felt as if they were just at the edge of something, but she had no idea what it was.

  By the time they returned to the Roundhouse, the initial toxicology report on Nicole Solomon was completed. The fax from the ME’s office was in Jessica’s mailbox.