Читать книгу Some Choose Darkness - Charlie Donlea - Страница 14

CHAPTER 2

Chicago, October 1, 2019

RORY MOORE INSERTED HER CONTACT LENSES, ROLLED HER EYES, and blinked to bring the world into focus. She despised the vision her Coke-bottle glasses offered—a bowed and distorted world when compared to the crispness of her contacts—but she loved the shelter her thick-rimmed frames provided. So, a compromise. After her contact lenses settled, she slipped nonprescription glasses onto her face and hid behind the plastic casings like a warrior ducking behind a shield. To Rory, each day was a battle.

They agreed to meet at the Harold Washington Library Center on State Street, and thirty minutes after Rory had dressed in her protective armor—thick-framed glasses, beanie hat pulled low, coat buttoned to her chin with the collar up—she climbed from her car and walked into the library. Initial meetings with clients always took place in public locations. Of course, most collectors had trouble with this arrangement because it meant hauling their precious trophies out into the daylight. But if they wanted Rory Moore and her restoration skills, they’d follow her rules.

Today’s meeting called for more attention than normal, since it had been arranged as a favor for Detective Ron Davidson, who was not only a trusted friend but also her boss. Since this was her side job, or what others annoyingly called her “hobby,” some part of her was honored that Davidson had reached out. Not everyone understood the complicated personality of Rory Moore, but over the years, Ron Davidson had broken through to win her admiration. When he asked for a favor, Rory never gave it a second thought.

As she walked through the library doors, Rory immediately recognized the Kestner doll that was housed in a long, thin box and resting in the arms of the man waiting in the lobby. The blink of an eye and a quick glance at the gentleman holding the box was all it took for Rory to run through her appraisal of him, her thoughts flashing like lightning through her mind: midfifties, wealthy, a professional of some sort—business, medicine, or law—cleanly shaven, polished shoes, sport coat, no tie. She quickly backtracked and rejected the initial thought of a doctor or lawyer. He was a small-business owner. Insurance or similar.

She took a deep breath, arranged her glasses squarely on her face, and walked up to him.

“Mr. Byrd?”

“Yes,” the man said. “Rory?”

The man, a full twelve inches taller than Rory’s five-two stature, looked down on her petite frame and waited for confirmation. Rory offered none.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” she said, pointing at the porcelain doll that was carefully packaged in the box, before walking into the main section of the library.

Mr. Byrd followed her to a table in the corner. The library was only scantly populated in the middle of the afternoon. Rory patted the table and Mr. Byrd laid the box down.

“What’s the issue?” Rory asked.

“This is my daughter’s Kestner doll. It was a gift for her fifth birthday, and has been kept in pristine condition.”

Rory leaned over the table to get a better look at the doll through the plastic window in the box. The porcelain face was badly split down the middle, the crack starting somewhere beyond the doll’s hairline, running through the left eye socket and down the cheek.

“I dropped it,” Mr. Byrd said. “I’m beside myself that I was so careless.”

Rory nodded. “Let me have a look?”

He pushed the box toward her and Rory carefully unlocked the latch and lifted the lid. She inspected the damaged doll like a surgeon’s initial assessment of an anesthetized patient lying on the operating table.

“Cracked or shattered?” she asked.

Mr. Byrd reached into his pocket and produced a ziplock bag that contained small pieces of porcelain. Rory noticed his thyroid cartilage rise and fall as he swallowed hard to control his emotions.

“These were everything I could find. I dropped it on hardwood, so I think I located all the pieces.”

Rory took the bag and analyzed the shards. She went back to the doll and gently ran her fingers over the fractured porcelain. The split was well opposed and should come together nicely. The restoration of the cheek and forehead could be made to look flawless. The eye socket was another issue. It would take all her skill to restore, and she’d likely need help from the one person who was better than Rory at restoring dolls. The shattered portion, Rory was sure, would be found on the back of the head. The repair there, too, would be challenging due to the hair and the small bits of porcelain she held in the ziplock bag. She didn’t want to remove the doll from the box until she was in her workshop for fear that more porcelain might fall from the shattered area.

She nodded slowly, keeping her gaze on the doll.

“I can fix this.”

“Thank God,” Mr. Byrd said.

“Two weeks. A month, maybe.”

“As long as it takes.”

“I’ll let you know the pricing after I get started.”

“I don’t care what it costs. As long as you can fix it.”

Rory nodded again. She placed the ziplock bag containing the shattered pieces into the box, closed the lid, and relatched the lock.

“I’ll need a phone number where I can reach you,” she said.

Mr. Byrd fished a business card from his wallet and handed it to her. Rory glanced at it before sticking it into her pocket: BYRD INSURANCE GROUP. WALTER BYRD, OWNER.

Rory attempted to lift the box and leave when Mr. Byrd put his hand on hers. A stranger’s touch had never been well tolerated, and Rory was about to recoil when he spoke.

“The doll belonged to my daughter,” he said in a soft voice.

The past tense caught Rory’s attention. It was meant to. Rory looked at the man’s hand on her own, and then met his eyes.

“She died last year,” Mr. Byrd said.

Rory slowly sat down. A normal response might have been I’m sorry for your loss. Or, I see why this doll means so much to you. But Rory Moore was anything but normal.

“What happened to her?” Rory asked.

“She was killed,” Mr. Byrd said, taking his hand off Rory’s and sitting down across from her. “Strangled, they think. Her body was left in Grant Park last January, half-frozen by the time she was found.”

Rory looked back at the Kestner doll resting in the box, the right eye shut peacefully, the left eye open and askew with a deep fissure running through the orbit. She understood what was happening, and knew why Detective Davidson had been so adamant that she take this meeting. It was a classic bait and switch that Davidson knew Rory would be helpless to resist.

“They never found him?” Rory asked.

Mr. Byrd shook his head, dropping his gaze to his dead daughter’s doll. “Never had so much as a lead. None of the detectives return my calls anymore. It feels like they’ve simply moved on.”

Rory’s presence in the library that morning proved Mr. Byrd’s statement false, since it was Ron Davidson who had convinced her to come.

Mr. Byrd brought his gaze back to her.

“Listen, this is not a setup. I reached for Camille’s doll the other day because I was badly missing my daughter and needed to hold something that reminded me of her. I dropped the goddamn thing and shattered it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my wife because I feel so guilty, and I know it would send her into a fit of depression. This doll was my daughter’s favorite possession through her childhood. So please believe me that I want you to restore it. But Detective Davidson told me that your work as a forensic reconstructionist is heralded in the City of Chicago, and beyond. I’m prepared to pay you anything it takes for you to reconstruct the crime and find the man who wrapped his hands around my daughter’s neck and choked the life from her.”

Mr. Byrd’s stare became too much for Rory to handle, penetrating the protective shield of her nonprescription glasses. She finally stood, lifted the Kestner doll box off the table, and secured it under her arm.

“The doll will take a month. Your daughter, much longer. Let me make some calls and I’ll be in touch.”

Rory walked out of the library and into the fall morning. She felt it as soon as Camille Byrd’s father had used the past tense to describe his daughter, that subtle tingling in her mind. That nearly imperceptible, but now ever-present, whisper in her ears. A murmur her boss knew goddamn well she wouldn’t be able to ignore.

“You’re a real son of a bitch, Ron,” Rory said as she exited the library. She had been on hiatus from her job as a forensic reconstructionist, a scheduled break she forced herself to take every so often to avoid burnout and depression. This most recent pause had been longer than any of her others, and was starting to piss off her boss.

As she walked along State Street and back to her car, with Camille Byrd’s shattered doll under her arm, Rory knew the vacation was over.