Broken Angels

22

Walt Brigham pulled onto the shoulder on Lincoln Drive, cut the engine, the headlights, still reeling from his farewell party at Finnigan's Wake, still a bit overwhelmed at the big turnout.

This section of Fairmount Park was dark at this hour. Traffic was sparse. He rolled down his window, the frigid air somewhat reviving him. He could hear the water of the Wissahickon Creek flowing nearby.

Brigham had mailed the envelope before he had gotten on the road. He felt underhanded; almost criminal, sending it anonymously. He'd had no choice. It had taken him weeks to make the decision, and now he had. All of it-thirty-eight years as a cop-was behind him now. He was someone else.

He thought about the Annemarie DiCillo case. It seemed like only yesterday when he had gotten the call. He remembered pulling up to the stormy scene-right at this spot-getting out his umbrella, walking into the forest…

Within hours they had rounded up the usual suspects, the peepers, the pedophiles, the men who had recently been released from prison after having served time for violence against children, especially against young girls. No one stood out from the crowd. No one cracked, or rolled over on another suspect. Given their nature, their heightened fear of prison life, pedophiles were notoriously easy to turn. No one did.

A particularly vile miscreant named Joseph Barber had looked good for a while, but he had an alibi-albeit a shaky alibi-for the day of the murders in Fairmount Park. When Barber himself was murdered- stabbed to death with thirteen steak knives-Brigham had figured it was the story of a man being visited by his sins.

But something nagged Walt Brigham about the circumstances of Barber's demise. Over the next five years, Brigham had tracked a number of suspected pedophiles, both in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Six of those men had been murdered, all with extreme prejudice, none of their cases solved. Granted, no one in any homicide unit anywhere really busted his hump trying to close a murder case when the victim was a scumbag who hurt children, but still the forensic data was collected and analyzed, the witness statements taken, the fingerprints run, the reports filed. Not a single suspect materialized.

Lavender, he thought. What was it about lavender?

In all, Walt Brigham found sixteen men murdered, all of them mo- lesters, all of them questioned and released-or at least suspected-in a case involving a young girl.

It was crazy, but possible.

Someone was killing the suspects.

His theory never really gained any traction in the unit, so Walt Brigham had dropped it. Officially speaking. He had made highly detailed notes about it anyway. As little as he might have cared about these men, there was something about the job, the nature of being a homicide detective that compelled him to do so. Murder was murder. It was up to God to judge the victims, not Walter J. Brigham.

He turned his thoughts to Annemarie and Charlotte. They had stopped running through his dreams just a short time ago, but that didn't mean the images didn't haunt him. These days, when the calendar flipped from March to April, when he saw young girls in their springtime dresses, it all came back to him in a brutish, sensory overload-the smell of the woods, the sound of the rain, the way it looked like those two little girls were sleeping. Eyes closed, heads bowed. And then the nest.

The sick son of a bitch who did it had built a nest around them.

Walt Brigham felt the anger wrench inside him, a barbwire fist in his chest. He was getting close. He could feel it. Off the record, he had already been to Odense, a small town in Berks County. He'd gone several times. He had made inquiries, taken pictures, spoken to people. The trail to Annemarie and Charlotte's killer led to Odense, Pennsylvania. Brigham had tasted the evil the moment he crossed into the village, like a bitter potion on his tongue.

Brigham got out of the car, walked across Lincoln Drive, continued through the barren trees until he reached the Wissahickon. The cold wind howled. He flipped up his collar, bunched his wool scarf.

This was where they had been found.

"I'm back, girls," he said.

Brigham glanced up at the sky, at the raw gray moon in the blackness. He felt the undressed emotion of that night so long ago. He saw their white dresses in the police lights. He saw the sad, empty expressions on their faces.

"I just wanted you to know, you have me now," he said. "Full time. Twenty-four seven. We're gonna get him."

He watched the water flow for a while, then walked back to the car, a sudden spring in his step, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, as if the rest of his life had been suddenly mapped. He slipped inside, started the engine, cranked up the heater. He was just about to angle onto Lincoln Drive when he heard… singing?

No.

It wasn't singing. It was more like a nursery rhyme. A nursery rhyme he knew very well. His blood froze in his veins.

"Here are maidens, young and fair,

Dancing in the summer air…"

Brigham looked into the rearview mirror. When he saw the eyes of the man in the backseat, he knew. This was the man for whom he had been searching a very long time.

"Like two spinning wheels at play…"

Fear lurched up Brigham's spine. His weapon was under the seat. He'd had too much to drink. He'd never make it.

"Pretty maidens dance away."

In those last moments many things became apparent to Detective Walter James Brigham. They settled upon him with a heightened clarity, like in those seconds before an electrical storm. He knew that Mar- jorie Morrison was indeed the love of his life. He knew that his father had been a good man, and that he had raised decent kids. He knew that Annemarie DiCillo and Charlotte Waite had been visited by true evil, that they had been followed into the forest and delivered unto the devil.

And Walt Brigham also knew that he had been right all along.

It had always been about the water.