Broken Angels

76

The cellar was dank and musty. It was made up of one large room and three smaller ones. In the main section were a few wooden boxes stacked in one corner, a large steamer trunk. The other rooms were mostly empty. One had a boarded-up coal chute and bin. One had a long rotted shelving unit. On it were a few old one-gallon green glass jars, a pair of broken jugs. Tacked above were cracked leather bridles, along with an old leg-hold trap.

The steamer trunk was not padlocked, but the broad latch seemed to be rusted shut. Jessica found an iron bar nearby. She swung the bar. Three hits later, and the latch sprung. She and Nicci opened the trunk.

Across the top was an old bed sheet. They pulled it away. Beneath that were layers of magazines: Life, Look, Woman's Home Companion, Collier's. The smell of mildewed paper and moth cakes drifted up. Nicci shifted some of the magazines.

Beneath them was a leather binder, perhaps nine by twelve inches, veined and covered with a thin green layer of mold. Jessica opened it. There were only a handful of pages.

Jessica flipped to the first two pages. On the left was a yellowed news clipping from the Inquirer, a news item from April 1995, an article concerning the murder of two young girls in Fairmount Park. Annemarie DiCillo and Charlotte Waite. The illustration on the right was a crude pen and ink drawing of a pair of white swans in a nest.

Jessica's pulse began to race. Walt Brigham had been right. This house-or more accurately the occupants of this house-had something to do with the murder of Annemarie and Charlotte. Walt had been closing in on the killer. He had been getting close and the killer had followed him into the park that night, to the precise spot the little girls had been murdered, and burned him to death.

Jessica considered the potent irony of it all.

In death, Walt Brigham had led them to his killer's house.

In death, Walt Brigham might get his revenge.