Richard Montanari (32 page)

    As
Novak approached, Byrne watched the man's hands. It was a habit he'd acquired
as a rookie and he'd never forgotten it. Watch the hands, watch the man.

    Novak
stopped in front of them. He did not look at Jessica, just at Byrne.

    'I
just wanted to say I harbor no hard feelings,' Novak said.

    
This
isn't over, Byrne thought. You might change your mind about that
.

    Novak
extended his hand.

    Byrne
had learned a lesson from his father many years earlier, and that was never to
refuse to shake a man's hand, even if you think he is the most despicable
person on earth. The reason, Paddy Byrne explained to his young son, was that
if at some point in the future you needed to take that man down, he would never
see you coming.

    Byrne
reached out.

    The
two men touched, and Byrne saw...

    ...
the
house bathed in darkness, light coming in the high windows, milk of an autumn
moon painting everything in a sulfurous blue.

    
Four
people here. Music plays in the background. Lilting, familiar music, soon
buoyed by screams of terror and agony. Now the smell of blood in the air. Blood
and jasmine.

    
At
midnight three people stand over a dead body, blood spreading on the white
tile, glossy crimson clouds reflecting faces that
. . .

    . . .
Byrne could not see. Not yet. He held Joseph Novak's hand for an uncomfortable
second too long. The gesture was not lost on Novak, who turned quickly and
walked out of the duty room.

    Byrne
had one question circling the disturbing vision in his mind, one question to
which he did not really want the answer.

    
Was
this Joseph Novak's memory, or my own?

    They
met in the boss's office. In the room, besides Dana Westbrook, were Russell
Diaz, Nicci Malone, Nick Palladino, Josh Bontrager and Dennis Stansfield.

    Byrne
drew two triangles on the white board. On the first triangle he wrote a name at
the top. Antoinette Chan. At the bottom left he wrote Kenneth Beckman. Bottom
right, Sharon Beckman.

    'Let's
start with Antoinette Chan,' Byrne said. 'Let's say for the sake of argument
that Beckman killed her. And let's say that Sharon Beckman was his accomplice,
in that she set fire to their house to destroy any evidence. Kenneth Beckman's
body was found at the original Chan crime scene. Sharon Beckman's was found on
Antoinette Chan's grave. Killer, accomplice and victim, all joined in this
triangle, each point completed.'

    Byrne
moved over to the second triangle. At the top he put a question mark. At the
lower left he wrote John Doe. At the lower right, another question mark.

    'Now,
if our bad boy is some kind of vigilante, righting old wrongs, and his MO is to
take out the lead suspect in an unsolved homicide and leave the body at the
original crime scene, then move on to an accomplice and dump
that
body
on the grave of the original victim, I think we can extrapolate a bit here.'

    Byrne
pointed at the bottom left of the second triangle.

    'Because
our John Doe was found on the street, we can assume that he was someone who our
guy believes was responsible for a homicide that took place at that location.
Who the victim was, and who the accomplice was, we won't know until we track
down the original crime. We have to start here. Unless we can turn up a
witness, it's the only move.'

    Byrne
turned to Nicci. 'Nothing on the John Doe's prints yet?'

    Nicci
shook her head. 'The guy was a crackhead. His fingers are so burned we couldn't
get a good print. Still working on it, though.'

    Byrne
nodded. 'Okay, then we'll have to find a homicide committed at the corner of
Second and Poplar.'

    There
were audible moans around the room. This was going to be a paper chase.

    Jessica
flipped through the books covering 2003 to 2007. Case after case her eyes
jumped from the name of the victim to the date, to the crime-scene location. Case
after case took her on a grotesque tour of her city, its crimes of violence,
its victims and perpetrators. It occurred to her more than once that she had
been to virtually all these places, many times, often with her family as a
child, or with Sophie and Vincent, blissfully unaware that someone in her
city's past had been murdered there.

    Every
so often Jessica got up and fetched herself a fresh cup of coffee, hoping to
keep on mission. The names and addresses all started to blend together, and the
danger of finding herself daydreaming carried with it the hazard that she would
have no idea how long she had been drifting and therefore no idea how far she
needed to go back.

    Fresh
cup, a quick stretch, and back at it. Mid-2004. The page on which she had
stopped told a charming little tale of a man who had shot his wife eleven times
for having an affair with the UPS man. Jessica wondered if the guy delivered.

    
You're
getting loopy, Jess
.

    She
flipped a page.

    'Here
it is!' she shouted, almost before she knew it.

    The
other five detectives got up, all but ran over to her.

    'June
21, 2004. DOA found in a Dumpster near Second and Poplar. Victim's name was
Marcellus Palmer.'

    A
quick scan of the page told them the basics. Marcellus Palmer had been
indigent, forty-one years old. He was found bludgeoned to death, his pockets
turned inside out, his shoes missing. Jessica made a mental note, as she
assumed Byrne did as well, that the COD was the same as for Antoinette Chan.
Bludgeoned. Perhaps the connection was there.

    They
would have to go to Record Storage to get the full file, but they had made a
start.

    Jessica
looked at the photo clipped to the summary. The new crime scene was literally a
few feet from where Palmer's body had been found. It was one of Kevin Byrne's
old stomping grounds as a patrolman.

    'What's
the status?' Bontrager asked.

    'Open
case,' Jessica said.

    'Suspects?'

    'The
main suspect, also homeless, was a man named Preston Braswell, thirty-one at
the time. Never charged.'

    Nicci
Malone sat down at a computer terminal, typed in the name. A few seconds later
she had a hit. And a picture. 'That's him. Preston Braswell is our John Doe.'

    The
other detectives crowded around the terminal. The photograph on the screen was
that of a younger, cleaner version of the John Doe. A positive match.

    They
now had two separate cases where the original suspect in a homicide case was
found murdered and had been dumped in the precise same spot as the original
homicide. One of the cases had the accomplice dumped on the grave site of the
original victim. They had every reason to believe it was about to happen again.
If it hadn't happened already.

    Nicci
sprang to her feet. Dino helped her with her coat, put on his own. 'We're off
to Record Storage,' Dino said. 'Stand by.'

    As
Nicci and Dino left, Jessica and Byrne returned to the white board. Byrne
erased the question mark at the top of the triangle on the right, then replaced
it with the name Marcellus Palmer. He then erased the question mark at the
lower left, replaced it with the name Preston Braswell.

    Jessica
took a step back, looked at the growing mountain of evidence connected with these
three cases. There were three binders on the desk, each with a thickening group
of folders within. She glanced at Byrne.

    He
was staring at something else.

    He
was staring at the final question mark on the board.

    'How
bad is it?' Jessica asked.

    'Put
on your Nikes. The initial list has seventy-one names.'

    'Seventy-one?'

    'Yeah.
The homeless are a social group,' Nicci said. 'But it looks like there were
four men besides Preston Braswell who we liked more than the others. They were
all questioned and released. I think we should try to track them down first.'

    
Before
our killer does, Jessica thought.

    A few
minutes later they received the fax with the four names. Jessica found them all
in the system and printed off what information they had on the men, including the
most recent photographs.

    Because
there was no information on where Marcellus Palmer was buried they would have
to start on the street.

    For
years, and with no small sense of irony, many homeless had huddled in the park
directly across from the police administration building, in what is known as
Franklin Square. In general, the homeless congregate where they are fed. Not
much had changed in the past twenty-five years.

    The
detectives divvied up the names and photographs of the four men, as well as the
locations of the shelters. They would work these interviews solo, as there were
too many places to visit in teams, and time was short.

    Jessica
would take Old City.

    The
area beneath the Ben Franklin Bridge, at the interchange with 1-95, had long
been a refuge for Philadelphia's homeless. For years the police referred to it
as The Condos. Jessica parked, found a break in the chain-link fence, made her
way beneath the overpass. There were a few dozen people congregated there.
Stacked against the fence were stuffed cardboard boxes, bursting plastic bags.
Nearby was a stroller with only three wheels. Cups, bottles, milk cartons,
fast-food trash. No aluminum cans, of course. Cans were currency.

    There
were ten or twelve people on the north side of the encampment, mostly men. They
glanced up at Jessica, not reacting in any way. Two reasons. One, she was a
woman. Two, even though she was clearly a police officer, or at least a
representative of the system, she was not coming in all guns blazing, with the
obvious intention of uprooting them.

    There
were three distinct camps, with a few men off on their own. Jessica approached
the first group, showed them the photographs. No one admitted recognizing
anyone. The same with the second and third groups of men.

    As
Jessica walked away from the third group, one of the men called out to her.
Jessica turned around. It was one of the older guys. He was lying on a thick
bed of cardboard.

    'Say,
darling, you ever been with a homeless man?' He smiled his keyboard grin, broke
into a phlegmy cough. The other two men in his posse chuckled. 'Guaranteed to
change your
life.
You interested?'

    'Sure,'
Jessica said. 'All you have to do is take a shower and get a job.'

    The
man looked shocked. He got back under his blanket, turned on his side. 'You
ain't all
that.''

    Jessica
smiled, made her way back around the camp, asking the same questions, receiving
nothing. The last man pointed to a man on the other side of the embankment,
someone Jessica hadn't noticed before. As she approached she saw that the man -
who was surrounded by carefully placed trash bags - had his legs covered with
what appeared to be a new blanket. As Jessica got closer she saw that it still
had its price tag.