Play dead

SIXTY-FOUR

JUNE 30, 2008

They call him Mr. Ludo, though no one can describe him. I've been a detective for years. How is this possible? Is he a ghost? A shadow?

No. Everyone can be found. Every secret can be discovered. Think of the word "discover." It means to take off the cover. To reveal.

One girl said she knew a girl who had been to Mr. Ludo's house once and escaped. Someone named Cassandra.

I am going to meet Cassandra tomorrow.

The picture is on my wall. She was just another statistic, another cold body, another victim. Killadelphia some call it. I don't believe it. This is my city. This was someone's daughter. She was an innocent.

Perhaps it is because she was from a small town. Perhaps it is because she wears a lilac backpack. My favorite color.

She was just a child. Like me. She was me.

Caitlin O'Riordan.

I cannot let this rest.

I will not let this rest.

SIXTY-FIVE

Even before they opened the last file, they knew what it was going to be. The file contained the scanned copies of the three missing interviews from the O'Riordan case binder. Eve Galvez had taken Freddy Roarke's notes from the binder, scanned them, kept the file on her flash drive, along with the rest of her life.

"The case Jimmy Valentine was talking about," Jessica said. "The case he told me Eve was obsessed with. It was the Caitlin O'Riordan case. Eve stole the notes out of the binder. She was investigating it on her own. She was tracking him. He got to her first."

Byrne turned twice, fists raised, looking for something to slam, something to break.

"Eve was a runaway," Jessica said. "She'd lived the life. I guess she saw Caitlin's murder as one too many. She went deep-end on it."

They'd both seen it before. A detective who had taken a case too personally. They'd both been there themselves.

They read the missing interviews. Starlight, Govinda, and Daria. All three kids said they had met a man. A man who had tried to bring them back to his house. A man who identified himself by a strange name.

Mr. Ludo.

Byrne told his story, his end of the wire. When he was done, he left the room.

Minutes later he was back upstairs with the strongbox he had taken from Laura Somerville's apartment. In the other hand he had a cordless drill, courtesy of one of the crew working on the renovation on the first floor. In moments he had the box open.

Inside was a sheaf of papers. Postcards, ticket stubs in at least ten languages, going back fifty years. And photographs.

They were photographs of a magician on a stage. The man looked like the man in the videos, but thinner, taller. Many of the photographs were yellowed with age. Byrne flipped one over. In a woman's handwriting it read Vienna, 1959. Another photo, this of the man with three large linking steel rings. Detroit, 1961.

In each photo a beautiful young woman stood next to the man.

"Behold the lovely Odette," the man on the video had said.

The photographs in the strongbox made it clear. Odette was his stage assistant.

Odette was Laura Somerville.