Richard Montanari - Broken Angels

In his dream they are still alive. In his dream they have blossomed into beautiful young women with careers and homes and families of their own. In his dream they shimmer beneath a golden sun.

Detective Walter Brigham opened his eyes, his heart a cold and bitter stone in his chest. He glanced at the clock, although it was unnecessary. He knew what time it was: 3:50 AM. It was the exact moment he had gotten the call six years earlier, the dividing line by which he had measured every day prior, and every day since.

Seconds earlier, in the dream, he had been standing at the edge of the forest, the spring rain an icy shroud over his world. Now he lay awake in his bedroom in West Philadelphia, a layer of sweat covering his body, the only sound his wife's rhythmic breathing.

In his time, Walt Brigham had seen many things. He had once seen a drug case defendant try to eat his own flesh in a courtroom. Another time he'd found the body of a monstrous man named Joseph Barber- pedophile, rapist, murderer-lashed to a steam pipe in a North Philly tenement, a decomposing corpse with thirteen knives in its chest. He had once seen a veteran homicide detective sitting on a curb in Brewery- town, quiet tears etching his face, a bloodied baby shoe in his hand. That man was John Longo, Walt Brigham's partner. That case was Johnny's.

All cops had an unsolved case, a crime that haunted their every waking moment, stalked their dreams. If you dodged the bullet, the bottle, the cancer, God gave you a case.

For Walt Brigham, his case began in April 1995, the day two young girls walked into the woods in Fairmount Park and never walked out. It was the dark fable that dwelt at the foothill of every parent's nightmare.

Brigham closed his eyes, smelled the dank brew of loam and compost and wet leaves. Annemarie and Charlotte had worn matching white dresses. They were nine years old.

The homicide unit had interviewed a hundred people who had been in the park that day, had collected and sifted through twenty full bags of trash from the area. Brigham himself found the torn page of a children's book nearby. Since that moment the verse had been a terrible echo in his brain:

Here are maidens, young and fair,

Dancing in the summer air,

Like two spinning wheels at play,

Pretty maidens dance away.

Brigham stared at the ceiling. He kissed his wife's shoulder, sat up, glanced out the open window. In the moonlight, beyond the night- bound city, beyond the iron and glass and stone, was the dense canopy of trees. A shadow moved through those pines. Behind the shadow, a killer.

Detective Walter Brigham would face this killer one day.

One day.

Maybe even today.

He is Moon, and he believes in magic.

Not the magic of trapdoors, and false bottoms, and sleights of hand. Not the magic that comes in the form of a pill or a potion. But rather the magic that can grow a beanstalk to the sky, or spin straw into gold, or turn a pumpkin into a carriage.

Moon believes in the pretty girl who loves to dance.

He had watched her for a long time. She is in her twenties, slender, above average in height, possessed of great refinement. Moon knows she lived for the moment, but for all that she was, for all she was going to be, she still seemed quite sad. Yet he is certain she understood, as does he, that there is an enchantment that lives within all things, an elegance unseen and unappreciated by the passing pageant-the curve of an orchid's petal, the symmetry of a butterfly's wings, the breathtaking geometry of the heavens.

A day earlier he had stood in shadows, across the street from the Laundromat, watching as she loaded clothes into the dryer, marveling at the graceful way she encountered the earth. The night was clear, terribly cold, the sky a seamless black fresco above the City of Brotherly Love.

He watched her step through the frosty glass doors, onto the sidewalk, her bag of laundry over her shoulder. She crossed the street, stood at the SEPTA stop, stamped her feet against the chill. She had never been more beautiful. When she turned to see him, she knew, and he was filled with magic.

Now, as Moon stands on the bank of the Schuylkill River, the magic fills him again.

He looks at the black water. Philadelphia is a city of two rivers, twin tributaries of the same heart. The Delaware River is muscular, broad of back, unyielding. The Schuylkill River is crafty and cunning and serpentine. It is the hidden river. It is his river.

Not unlike the city itself, Moon has many faces. Over the next two weeks he will keep this face unseen, as he must, just another dull daub on a gray winter canvas.

He gently places the dead girl on the bank of the Schuylkill, kisses her cold lips one last time. As beautiful as she is, she is not his princess. He will meet his princess soon.

Thus the tale is spun.

She is Karen. He is Moon.

And this is what the moon saw

The city hadn't changed. He'd been away only a week, and hadn't expected miracles, but after more than two decades on the police force of one of the toughest cities in the nation, one could always hope. On the way into town he had seen two accidents and five arguments, along with a trio of fistfights outside three different taverns.

Ah, the holiday season in Philly, he thought. Warms the heart.

Detective Kevin Francis Byrne sat at the counter of the Crystal Diner, a small, clean coffee shop on Eighteenth Street. Since the Silk City Diner had closed, this had become his favorite late night haunt. The speakers offered "Silver Bells." The chalkboard overhead heralded the holiday message of the day. The multicolored lights on the street spoke of Christmas and joy and merriment and love. All well and good and fa-la-la-la-la. Right now Kevin Byrne needed food, a shower, and sleep. His tour started at 8 AM.

And then there was Gretchen. After a week of looking at deer droppings and shivering squirrels, he needed to look at something beautiful.

Gretchen upended Byrne's cup, poured coffee. She may not have poured the best cup in town, but nobody ever looked better doing it. "Haven't seen you in a while," she said.

"Just got back," Byrne replied. "Took a week in the Poconos."

"Must be nice."

"It was," Byrne said. "Funny thing though, for the first three days I couldn't sleep. It was too damned quiet."

Gretchen shook her head. "You city boys."

"City boy? Me?" He caught a glimpse of himself in the night- blackened window-seven-day growth of beard, L.L.Bean jacket, flannel shirt, Timberland boots. "What are you talking about? I thought I looked like Jeremiah Johnson."

"You look like a city boy with a vacation beard," she said.

It was true. Byrne was born and bred a Two-Streeter. And he'd die one.

"I remember when my mama moved us here from Somerset," Gretchen added, her perfume maddeningly sexy, her lips a deep burgundy. Now in her mid-thirties, Gretchen Wilde's teenaged beauty had softened into something far more striking. "I couldn't sleep either. Way too noisy."

"How's Brittany?" Byrne asked.

Gretchen's daughter Brittany was fifteen, going on twenty-five. She had gotten busted a year earlier at a rave in West Philly, caught with enough Ecstasy to pull a charge of possession with intent. Gretchen had called Byrne that night, at wit's end, not really realizing the walls that existed between the divisions in the police department. Byrne had reached out to a detective who owed him a favor. The charge was reduced to simple possession by the time it got to municipal court, and Brittany had gotten community service.

"I think she's gonna be okay," Gretchen said. "Her grades are up, she's getting home at a respectable hour. At least on weeknights."