The Echo Man

Chapter 61

Byrne got in the van and drove. At first he had no idea where he was going. But soon he found himself on the expressway, and not long after that back in Chestnut Hill, looking beyond the high iron fence at the huge house.

He saw a light in a window, a shadow cross the elegant silk drapery.

Christa-Marie.

Closing his eyes and leaning back in the driver's seat, he returned to that night in 1990. He and Jimmy Purify had been grabbing a bite to eat. They had just closed a double homicide, a drug murder in North Philadelphia.

Had he really been that young? He'd been one of the newer detectives in the unit then, a brash kid who carried over the nickname of his youth. Riff Raff. He wore it with the expected cocky Irish swagger. They called Jimmy 'Clutch.'

Riff Raff and Clutch.

But that was ancient history.

Byrne glanced up at the second floor, at the figure in the window. Was she looking out at him?

He picked up the file next to him on the seat, opened it, looked at the photos, at the body of Gabriel Thorne lying on the floor, the bloody white kitchen where all this had begun.

He had met earlier in the day with a man named Robert Cole, a man who ran an independent lab that sometimes took contracts from the department when rush forensic services were needed. He had seen Cole testify a number of times. He was good, he was thorough and, above all, he was discreet. Cole had promised Byrne a rush job on what he wanted.

Byrne flipped through the case file. He looked at his signature at the bottom of the form. A much younger man had wielded the pen that day. A man who had his whole career, his whole life, ahead of him.

Byrne didn't have to look at the time of arrest, the moment he had placed Christa-Marie Schцnburg in custody. He knew.

It was 2:52.