Badlands

Byrne had always suffered from some degree of insomnia, but he had rarely slept more than five or six hours a night since he had become a detective. When he was in uniform he had drawn last-out as often as not, and the schedule of working all night was something the body clock never forgot. The routine and rhythms of sitting in a cramped, airless car at three and four and five in the morning, drinking coffee, eating high-sugar, high-fat foods became the usual, not the exception. Sleep became u

Now the insomnia was invasive and seemingly permanent. Since moving over to SIU, the schedule had been a little easier to predict, and that was both the good news and the bad news, at least as far as the victims were concerned. In SIU there wasn’t the heat of a new homicide, the buzz of the immediate chase, the drive to get the forensics and witnesses and collateral perso

Still, when you picked up a scent, Byrne had to admit, if only to his partner, it was the same thrill, the same rush that accompanied that first sniff of the chase you encountered when you were a rookie at twenty-two.

Byrne glanced up at the window, at the smoke-blackened bricks of the top floor of the Denison, the area surrounding apartment 1015. In the sodium streetlights the building was bathed in pale blue. The two windows were large eyes staring down at him, defying him to understand what had happened in that apartment.

Because they were able to make the 911 call early—Byrne had phoned the fire department from just outside Laura Somerville’s front door—the fire had destroyed less than half of the space. Much of the apartment had been left virtually intact. There was smoke and water damage to the furniture, the bookcases, the walls, but little else.

Byrne had seen quite a bit in his time on the job. He had seen just about everything a human being could do to another human being, had seen just about everything human beings could do to themselves, had encountered every weapon, every opportunity, every motive. Despite his experience, he had to admit that Laura Somerville’s suicide was as startling as anything he had ever come across.

Byrne had cornered Mickey Dugan, an old friend and PFD captain. Dugan told him that, presumptively—which meant very little at this stage—the Philadelphia Fire Department believed the source of the fire was an oil lamp under the mattress in the bedroom. Moments before Laura Somerville dove through that window, moments after she excused herself from the living room, she had walked into her bedroom, pulled an oil lamp from her closet, lit a match, placed it beneath the bed, and deliberately set her apartment on fire.

What was she trying to conceal by burning down her apartment, her possessions, perhaps the entire building? Not to mention her prized collection of games and puzzles. Could it be that the Philadelphia Police Department had coincidentally shown up on the same day this elegant, cultured woman pla

Byrne sipped his coffee, a thought circling him, a dark feeling he knew he was not shaking anytime soon. Unvarnished, unwarranted, unearned, yet all too real.

There was no evidence that this was anything other than a suicide. Jessica and Byrne were homicide detectives, and there were plenty of homicides to go around in the City of Brotherly Love. They had a full day ahead of them. A day belonging to Caitlin O’Riordan. A day Kevin Byrne knew would be haunted by the image of Laura Somerville’s demolished body, and one strange word.

Ludo.

ELEVEN

THE BASEMENT WAS a vast and silent cavern, cool even in high summer—corridors crosshatching corridors, carved lintels threatening headroom from above each passageway, stone walls unencumbered by paint or memory. Its corners were clean, damp, sunless.

The enormous space was divided into more than a dozen rooms. When Faerwood had been built, around 1900, the basement was used primarily for storage. There was a coal chute, of course, the boiler, an oil heater, a forest of rusted iron support columns.

The original owner—an executive with the Pe

As an adult Swa

Originally there had been only one set of stairs leading to the basement, from a small pantry directly off the main kitchen, a direct route to both the wine and root cellars.

All that changed when Joseph Swa

One basement room—perhaps the smallest at a mere six feet by seven—was his dressing room. On one wall was a large mirror, ringed with yellow globe lamps. In the corner was a tall collector’s cabinet, its many drawers containing a lifetime collection of items dedicated to the art of makeup. One of these drawers held prosthetic devices used for both concealment and diversion. One was devoted to scabs, wounds, and scars. Another, Swa

Yet even the finest of prosthetics and wigs were useless without the true secret of makeup—application.

The tools of this trade were laid out precisely on the clinically clean table—brushes, combs, sponges, pencils, and crayons, along with tubes and jars of powders, matte foundations, paint, glitter, lipsticks, and the increasingly important neutralizers and concealers. Now that he was nearing forty, Swa

His wig already in place, Swa

He stood, slipped on the cutaway coat, adjusted the shoulders, the waist. He tapped the remote in his left pocket, turning on the music. Bach’s Sleepers Awake began to softly fill the outer rooms.

Moments later Joseph Swa

KATJA SAT CROSS-LEGGED in the box, her eyes vacant, distant.

The Sword Box was painted in a lustrous red lacquer. It measured approximately four feet tall, two feet wide, two feet deep. It rested on a short, polished-steel pedestal. The inside was a glossy black enamel.

The box was fitted with a drain hole at the bottom, a portal that fed the iron pipe that emptied into the sanitary sewer ru

Swa

A few feet away watched the eye of the camera, an unblinking silver portal in the gloom.

He glanced at the open box, at Katja’s face. She looked young again, in need of tending. Alas, it was too late for that. He reached out, touched her cheek. She tried to shy away, but she could not move, not in the confines of the magnificent Sword Box.