“The Bridal Chamber. Looks like you were left at the altar.”
This time, a longer silence.
“We’re at the diamond now—this is the diamond, right? The parallelogram part of the tangram puzzle?”
“What about it?”
He didn’t deny it. They were right. “The girl is alive.”
“That’s not true. It can’t be true.”
“I don’t make the weather, man. Besides, why would I start lying to you now? It might sully our beautiful friendship.”
Silence again. Then the killer raised his voice. He was starting to crack. “It’s not true. It’s not. And wait until you see what’s next, Detective Byrne. You will never forget it. Never.”
The line went dead.
Byrne threw his phone halfway to center field. A few minutes later, Josh Bontrager jogged out to get it.
THEY HAD SIX of the tangram pieces—five triangles and one diamond. The killer had left the bodies of Caitlin O’Riordan, Elise Beausoleil, Monica Renzi, Katja Dovic, and a girl they had just identified as Patricia Sato—a runaway from Albany—in North Philadelphia parcels of land that were in the shape of a triangle. He had left his newest victim, as yet unidentified, still alive, on a baseball diamond. All that was left was the square. They had tried dozens of configurations with the pieces they had, trying to build the swan diagram. The horrifying truth was that just about every building in North Philly was either a rectangle or a square.
AT 4:28 Jessica’s phone rang. They were still at the Cecil B. Moore scene. The crime-scene unit was processing the cabinet. It was Tony Park calling.
“Anything on the canvass?” Jessica asked.
“Nothing yet,” Park said. “It’s late, it’s hot, we have a lot of pissed-off people named Swan or Swann in Philadelphia this morning.”
“They’ll get over it.”
“I do have something interesting on what that magician fellow found. Something about Cygne.”
“What about it?”
“There’s a Galerie Cygne,” Park said. “Spelled exactly the same way. It’s the only listing in the city with a name even close.”
“Where is it?”
“Twenty-fourth and Market.”
Tony Park gave her the address. Jessica clicked off, told Byrne. “I’m going to go check on this,” she said.
Byrne held up his handset. “Stay on channel.”
“You got it.”
EIGHTY-FIVE
4:30 AM
SWANN CARRIED the box. It was heavy. He had forgotten how heavy it could be.
They were lying to him. It was a trick. Their trick. Claire was dead. She was in the Bridal Chamber. They would pay for this.
“You have failed.”
“I have not.”
“Acceptance is not enough, Joseph.”
“It is not just acceptance. It is certainty.”
Just about everything was in place for his grand finale. They would forever remember him. He would find a niche in the hierarchy of all things magic, all things puzzling, all things inexplicable. Even Thoreau believed that human beings require mystery.
“People must believe the impossible.”
“They will believe.”
“All magic is mentalism, Joseph. All magic makes people believe. The effect is in the mind.”
He could no longer carry the box. He put it down, began to drag it.
“All magic is mentalism,” he repeated. “All magic.”
He got the box into position. He sat down next to it.
The effect is in the mind.
EIGHTY-SIX
4:55 AM
JESSICA PARKED ON Market Street. The facade of the Thirtieth Street train station loomed in the near distance, its lights reflected on the calm surface of the Schuylkill River.
She replayed the last video over and over in her mind. The Bridal Chamber. She thought of the way the girl looked in that antique dress, how frightened she had been. She thought of the blood. She had called the hospital on the way across town. The girl was being prepped for surgery.
Jessica was just about to get out of her car and enter the building when her phone rang. It was Byrne.
“What’s up?” Jessica asked.
“We have him.”
“We have him? What are you talking about? Where?”
“We got a call from the AV Unit two minutes ago. Three street cams saw someone dragging a big box across Nineteenth Street.”
“Where on Nineteenth?”
“Right at Logan Circle.”
Jessica realized the significance. “It’s his square in the tangram puzzle,” she said.
“It’s his square.”
When William Penn planned the development of Philadelphia in the 1600s, he designed five squares—one central square, with four others equidistant from the center. Today those squares are City Hall, Franklin Square, Rittenhouse Square, and Washington Square. The fifth square, located at the midway point between City Hall and the art museum, was originally called Northwest Square. Once a burial site and scene of public executions, the square was renamed Logan Circle in honor of William Penn’s secretary James Logan. Logan Circle, Logan Square—it went by both names.
More important, at the moment, was the fountain at the center.
Designed by Alexander Calder, it had a name of particular interest to the police right now.
Swann Memorial Fountain.
This is going to be spectacular. It will light up the night.
“Is he still there?” Jessica asked.
“Cams are locked on him. He’s sitting at the edge of the fountain.
Box is next to him. SWAT is getting into position right now.”
Special Weapons and Tactics, headquartered in East Division, generally needed a twenty-four-hour notice for an entry. Getting them to mount an operation on the fly was rare, but it spoke to the urgency of the situation.
“You said there’s a box?”
“Big box,” Byrne said. “Right next to him.”
“Bomb squad on scene?”
“Deploying now.”
“Where are we setting up?”
“Nineteenth and Cherry.”
Jessica looked at her watch. She hesitated for a moment, then said, “I’m on my way.”
Byrne knew the tone. He knew her. “Jess. Are you—” “I’ll meet you there.”
Before Byrne could say anything more, she folded her phone, and got out of the car.
EIGHTY-SEVEN
5:10 AM
LILLY HAD WAITED until Joseph Swann left her room. He had not said a word, but he had paced, seemed agitated.
He left a dress for her, a velvet dress on a hanger. It was deep scarlet. Lilly recognized it as the dress the woman was wearing in the photograph Karl Swann had shown her. She imagined she was to wear it. She imagined she, like the other girls in the videos, was supposed to play the part of his assistant, an assistant who did not survive the trick.
She checked the door. Locked, of course. She tried to open the panel in the wall, but it did not work. Had Joseph known she left the room? Did he know she found his father? Had he sealed off her exit?
She glanced around the room. There had to be a dozen candles burning.
She put on the dress.
EIGHTY-EIGHT
5:11 AM
GALERIE CYGNE WAS located in the Marketplace Design Center at Twenty-fourth and Market streets. It was a large building, overlooking the Schuylkill River, home to more than fifty exclusive showrooms offering antiques, building products, AV systems, lighting, and wall coverings.