Free Play Dead by Richard Montanari Page A

settee. In addition, there were two nightstands, a cheval mirror, one closet.
But no Laura Somerville.
The room was empty.
The window overlooking Locust Street had been shattered. A handful of glass shards sparkled on the worn carpeting. Broiling air roared inside, a hot and feral breath from hell. The smell of carbon and oil and exhaust filled the small space, along with a dozen different city sounds—traffic, shouts, hip- hop music among them. Beneath those sounds, closer, the CD player on the nightstand softly offered “Witchcraft.” It was Sinatra’s duet version with Anita Baker.
    5 4 R ICHAR D MONTANAR I
    Jessica turned the CD player off, crossed the bedroom, slowly eased open the bedroom’s one closet door. A puff of moth cakes and worn leather and sweet perfume leaked out. Inside was clothing on hangers, boxes, luggage, shoes, folded sweaters. On the bottom shelf were a pair of dusty, teal Samsonite suitcases. Above that, neatly stacked woolen blankets and sheets. To the right, on the top shelf, was what looked like a strong box of some sort.
    But no people. The closet was empty.
Jessica closed the door, put her back to it. The two detectives then crossed the room, looked out the window. Below them, more than ten stories to the pavement, Laura Somerville lay on the baking sidewalk of Locust Street. Her head was demolished pulp, her body a jigsaw of ragged ends. From this height her form appeared to be a dark crimson Rorschach. A crowd was already collecting around the gruesome display.
Byrne got on his handset, called for an ambulance.
Jessica glanced at the writing desk in the corner. It was old, not quite an antique, worn, but well maintained. It held a Tiffany- style lamp, a pair of small black- and- white photos in a tarnished silver double- frame. It also bore a vintage Scrabble board. When Jessica looked more closely, she saw that the words on the board had been disturbed. They were off- center, not quite in their squares. A few of the tiles were scattered on the chair and the floor beneath the desk, as if someone had taken letters off the board in a hurry.
“Jess.”
Byrne pointed at the windowsill. On the sill were four Scrabble tiles. It appeared to be a hastily spelled word, the wooden letters positioned at oblique angles to one another.
In her mind’s eye, Jessica saw Laura Somerville enter this room just a few short moments ago, grab four tiles from her Scrabble board, arrange them on the windowsill, then leap to her death. Suddenly, despite the stifling air rushing in, Jessica was cold.
“Do you have any idea what this means?” she asked.
Byrne stared at the strange configuration a few more seconds. “No.”
At that moment a siren erupted, just a few blocks away. Jessica glanced again at the Scrabble tiles on the windowsill.
One word glared back.
Ludo.
Byrne retrieved his phone from his pocket and flipped it open, preparing to call their boss. But before he could complete the call Jessica put her hand on his forearm, stopping him. She sniffed the air.
In addition to the fact that a woman had just leapt one hundred feet to her death—a woman who, until the Philadelphia Police Department had knocked on her door was only marginally connected to a fourmonth- old homicide investigation, if at all, a case that was growing more cryptic by the second—something else was wrong.
In a moment, Jessica knew. The smell of burning cotton and smoldering hardwood suddenly made her gag.
She looked at Byrne. No words were needed.
The two detectives bolted from the bedroom as the flames began to tear up the drapes, and across the living room.
The apartment was on fire.
    NINE
T
    wo hours later Joseph Edmund Swann, thirty- eight, stood in the spacious foyer, listening to the sounds of his house, the skittering echoes of his life: the chime of the Freadwin of Exeter clock, the settling of old, dry joists and rafters, the mournful heave of the summer wind in the eaves. It was his nightly ritual,