Play Dead (2 page)

At just after 11:00 am, Jessica’s phone rang. It was their boss, Sgt. Dwight Buchanan. Byrne had finished his sketches of the basement and was catching some air on the sidewalk. He came back inside. Jessica put her cell phone on speaker.

“What’s up, Sarge?”
“We have a confession,” Buchanan said.
“For our job?”
“Yes.”
“What are you talking about? How?
Who?
”
“We got a call on the Tip Line. The caller told the CIU officer he

killed Caitlin O’Riordan, and he was ready to turn himself in.”

The Tip Line was a relatively new initiative of the Criminal Intelligence Unit, a community response program that was part of a Philadelphia Police Department project called Join the Resistance. Its purpose was to provide citizens of Philadelphia with the opportunity to covertly partner with the police without fear of being exposed to the criminal element. Sometimes it was used as a confessional.

“All due respect, Sarge, we get those all the time,” Jessica said. “Especially on a case like this.”
“This call was a little different.”
“How so?”
“Well, for one thing, he had knowledge of the case that was never released. He said there was a button missing from the victim’s jacket. Third from the bottom.”
Jessica picked up two photographs of the victim in situ. The button on Caitlin’s jacket—third from the bottom—was missing.
“Okay, it’s missing,” Jessica said. “But maybe he saw the crimescene photos, or knows someone who did. How do we know he has firsthand knowledge?”
“He sent us the button.”
Jessica glanced at her partner.
“We got it in the mail this morning,” Buchanan continued. “We sent it to the lab. They’re processing it now, but Tracy said it’s a slam dunk. It’s Caitlin’s button.”
Tracy McGovern was the deputy director of the forensic crime lab. Jessica and Byrne took a second to absorb this development.
“Who’s this guy?” Jessica asked.
“He gave his name as Jeremiah Crosley. We ran the name, but there was nothing in the system. He said we could pick him up at Second and Diamond.”
“What’s the address?”
“He didn’t give a street address. He said we would know the place by its red door.”
“Red door? What the hell does that mean?”
“I guess you’ll find out,” Buchanan said. “Call me when you get down there.”

TWO
J
essica thought,
August is the cruelest month.
T. S. Eliot believed the cruelest month was April, but he was never a homicide cop in Philly.

In April there was still hope, you see. Flowers. Rain. Birds. The Phillies.
Always
the Phillies. Ten thousand losses and it was still the Phillies. April meant there was, to some extent, a future.

In contrast, the only thing August had to offer was heat. Unrelenting, mind- scrambling, soul- destroying heat; the kind of wet, ugly heat that covered the city like a rotting tarpaulin, coating everything in sweat and stink and cruel and attitude. A fistfight in March was a murder in August.

In her decade on the job—the first four in uniform, working the tough streets of the Third District—Jessica had always found August to be the worst month of the year.

They stood on the corner of Second and Diamond Streets, deep in the Badlands. At least half the buildings on the block were boarded up or in the process of rehab. There was no red door in sight, nothing called the Red Door Tavern, no billboards for Red Lobster or Pella Doors, not a single sign in any window advertising a product with the word
red
or
door
in it.

There was no one standing on the corner waiting for them. They had already walked two blocks in three directions, then back.

The only path left to explore was south on Second.
“Why are we doing this again?” Jessica asked.
“Boss says go, we go, right?”
They walked a half block south on Second Street. More shuttered

stores and derelict houses. They passed a used- tire stand, a burned car, a step van on blocks, a Cuban restaurant.

The other side of the street offered a colorless quilt of battered row houses, stitched between hoagie shacks, wig shops, and nail boutiques, some open for business, most shuttered, all with fading, hand- lettered signs, all crosshatched with rusting riot gates. The upper floors were a tic- tac- toe of bedsheet- covered windows with busted panes.

North Philly, Jessica thought. God save North Philly. As they passed a vacant lot fronted by a shanty wall, Byrne stopped. The wall, a listing barrier made of nailed- together plywood, rusted corrugated metal, and plastic awning panels, was covered in graffiti. On one end was a bright red screen door, wired to a post. The door looked recently painted.
“Jess,” Byrne said. “Look.”
Jessica took a few steps back. She glanced at the door, then back over her shoulder. They were almost a full block from Diamond Street. “This can’t mean anything. Can it?”
“Sarge said the
guy
said ‘near Second and Diamond.’ And this is definitely a red door. The only red door around here.”
They walked a few more feet south, glanced over a low section of the wall. The lot looked like every other vacant lot in Philadelphia— weeds, bricks, tires, plastic bags, broken appliances, the obligatory discarded toilet.
“See any killers lurking?” Jessica asked.
“Not a one.”
“Me neither. Ready to go?”
Byrne thought for a few moments. “Tell you what. We’ll do one lap. Just to say we went to the fair.”
They walked to the corner and circled around behind the vacant lot. At the rear of the property, facing the alley, was a rusted chain- link fence. One corner was clipped and wrestled back. Overhead, three pairs of old sneakers, tied together by their laces, looped over an electrical wire.
Jessica glanced around the lot. Against the wall of the building on the west side, which had once housed a well- known music store, were a few stacks of discarded brick pallets, a stepladder with only three rungs, along with a handful of broken appliances. She resigned herself to getting this over with. Byrne held up the fencing while she ducked underneath. He followed.
The two detectives did a cursory sweep of the parcel. Five minutes later they met in the middle. The sun was high and melting and merciless. It was already past lunchtime. “Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Byrne replied.
Jessica took out her cell phone. “Okay,” she said. “Now I’m hooked. I want to hear that hotline call.”

Twenty minutes later Detective Joshua Bontrager arrived at the scene. He had with him a portable cassette player.

Josh Bontrager had been in the homicide unit less than eighteen months, but had already proven himself a valuable asset. He was young, and brought a young man’s energy to the street, but he also had what just about everyone in the department considered to be a unique and oddly effective background. No one in the PPD’s homicide division— or probably any homicide division in the country—could claim it.

Joshua Bontrager had grown up in an Amish family.
He had left the church many years earlier, coming to Philadelphia for no other reason than that’s what you did when you left Berks or Lancaster County seeking fortune. He joined the force, and spent a number of years in the traffic unit, before being transferred to the homicide unit to assist on an investigation that led up the Schuylkill River into rural Berks. Bontrager was wounded in the course of that investigation, but recovered fully. The bosses decided to keep him on.
Jessica remembered the first time she met him—mismatched pants and suit coat, hair that looked like it had been cut with a butter knife, sturdy, unpolished shoes. Since that time Bontrager had acquired a gold- badge detective’s swagger, a Center City haircut, a couple of nice suits.
Still, as urbane as he had become, Josh Bontrager would forever be known throughout the unit as the first
Amishide
cop in Philadelphia history.
Bontrager put the cassette player on top of a rusted grill made from a fifty- gallon drum, an abandoned barbecue sitting in the middle of the vacant lot. A few seconds later he had the tape cued up. “Ready?”
“Hit it,” Jessica said.
Bontrager hit play.
“Philadelphia Police Department Hotline,” the female officer said.
“Yes, my name is Jeremiah Crosley, and I have information that might be helpful in a murder case you are investigating.”
The voice sounded white male, thirties or forties, educated. The accent was Philly, but with something lurking beneath.
“Would you spell your last name for me please, sir?”
The man did.
“May I have your home address?”
“I live at 2097 Dodgson Street.”
“And where is that located?”
“In Queen Village. But I am not there now.”
“And which case are you calling about?”
“The Caitlin O’Riordan case.”
“Go ahead, sir.”
“I killed her.”
At this point there was a quick intake of breath. It wasn’t clear if it was the caller or the officer. Jessica would bet it was the officer. You could be a cop forty years, investigate thousands of cases, and never hear those words.
“And when did you do this, sir?”
“It was in May of this year.”
“Do you remember the exact date?”
“It was the second of May, I believe.”
“Do you recall the time of day?”
“I do not.”
I do not,
Jessica thought. No contractions. She made a note.
“If you doubt that I am telling the truth, I can prove it to you.”
“How will you do that, sir?”
“I have something of hers.”
“You have something?”
“Yes. A button from her jacket. Third from the bottom. I have sent it to you. It will come in the mail today.”
“Where are you right now, sir?”
“I will get to that in a second. I just want to have some assurances.”
“I can’t promise you anything, sir. But I’ll listen to whatever it is you have to say.”
“We live in a world in which a person’s word is no longer valid currency. I have seven girls. I fear for them. I fear for their safety. Do you promise me no harm will come to them?”
Seven girls,
Jessica thought.
“If they are in no way responsible for this or any other crime, they will not be involved. I promise you.”
One final hesitation.
“I am at a location near Second and Diamond. It is cold here.”
It is cold here,
Jessica thought. What does
that
mean? The temperature had already topped ninety degrees.
“What’s the address?”
“I do not know. But you will know it by its red door.”
“Sir, if you’ll stay on the line for—”
The line went dead. Josh Bontrager hit stop.
Jessica glanced at her partner. “What do you think?”
Byrne gave it a few moments. “I’m not sure. Ask me when we get the full report back from the lab on that button.”
It was common practice to run a PCIC and NCIC check on anyone who called in with information, especially those who called in to confess to a major crime. According to the boss, there was no record of a Jeremiah Crosley—criminal, DMV, or otherwise—in the city of Philadelphia. His Queen Village address turned out to be nonexistent. There was no Dodgson Street.
“Okay,” Jessica finally said. “Where to?”
“Let’s go back to the Eighth Street scene,” Byrne said. “I want to recanvass. Let’s bring the cassette and see if anyone around there recognizes our boy’s voice. Maybe after that we can take another ride to Millersville.”
A day earlier they had gone to Millersville to speak with Robert and Marilyn O’Riordan. Not to conduct a formal interview—the original team had done that twice—but to assure them that the investigation was moving forward. Robert O’Riordan had been sullen and uncooperative, his wife had been nearly catatonic. They were two people all but incapacitated by the torment of grief, the black hole of an indescribable loss. Jessica had seen it many times, but each time was a fresh arrow in her heart.
“Let’s do it.” Jessica grabbed the cassette player. “Thanks for bringing this down, Josh.”
“No problem.”
Before Jessica could turn and head to the car, Byrne put a hand on her arm.
“Jess.”
Byrne was pointing at a dilapidated refrigerator against the brick wall of the music store. Or what was left of the refrigerator. It was an ancient model from the 1950s or 1960s, at one time a built- in, but the side paneling had long ago been stripped away. It appeared the appliance had originally been a powder blue or green, but age and rust and soot had darkened it to a deep brown. The refrigerator door hung at a crooked angle.
Along the top, on the skewed freezer door, was a logo. Although the chrome letters were long gone, the discolored outline of the brand name remained.
Crosley.
The brand dated back to the 1920s. Jessica recalled a Crosley fridge in her grandmother’s house on Christian Street. They weren’t that common anymore.
My name is Jeremiah Crosley.
“Could this be a coincidence?” Jessica asked.
“We can only hope so,” Byrne replied, but Jessica could tell he didn’t really believe it. The alternative led them down a path nobody wanted to follow.
Byrne reached out, opened the refrigerator door.
Inside, on the one remaining shelf, was a large laboratory specimen jar, half- filled with a filmy red fluid. Something was suspended in the liquid.
Jessica knew what it was. She had been to enough autopsies.
It was a human heart.