The Rosary Girls (4 page)

On the way into Center City, Jessica watched the neighborhoods change. No other city she could think of had a personality so split between blight and splendor. No other city clung to the past with more pride, nor demanded the future with more fervor.

She saw a pair of brave joggers working their way up Frankford, and the floodgates opened wide.A torrent of memories and emotions washed over her.

She had begun running with her brother when he was seventeen; she, just a gangly thirteen, loosely constructed of pointy elbows, sharp shoulder blades, and bony kneecaps. For the first year or so she hadn’t a prayer of matching either his pace or his stride. Michael Giovanni stood just under six feet and weighed a trim and muscular 180.

In the summer heat, the spring rain, the winter snow they would jog through the streets of South Philly; Michael, always a few steps ahead; Jessica, always struggling to keep up, always in silent awe of his grace. She had beaten him to the steps of St. Paul’s once, on her fourteenth birthday, a contest to which Michael had never wavered in his claim of defeat. She knew he had let her win.

Jessica and Michael had lost their mother to breast cancer when Jessica was only five, and from that day forward Michael had been there for every scraped knee, every young girl’s heartbreak, every time she had been victimized by some neighborhood bully.

She had been fifteen when Michael had joined the Marine Corps, following in their father’s footsteps. She recalled how proud they had all been when he came home in his dress uniform for the first time. Every one of Jessica’s girlfriends had been desperately in love with Michael Giovanni, his caramel eyes and easy smile, the confident way he could put old people and children at ease. Everyone knew he would join the police force after his tour of duty, also following in their father’s footsteps.

She had been fifteen when Michael, serving in the First Battalion, Eleventh Marines, was killed in Kuwait.
Her father, a thrice-decorated veteran of the police force, a man who still carried his late wife’s internment card in his breast pocket, had closed his heart completely that day, a terrain he now tread only in the company of his granddaughter. Although small of stature, Peter Giovanni had stood ten feet tall in the company of his son.
Jessica had been headed to prelaw, then law school, but on the night they received word of Michael’s death she knew that she would join the police force.
And now, as she began what was essentially an entirely new career in one of the most respected homicide units of any police department in the country, it looked like law school was a dream relegated to the realm of fantasy.
Maybe one day.
Maybe.

By the time Jessica pulled into the parking lot at the Roundhouse, she realized that she didn’t recall any of it. Not a single thing. All the cramming in procedure, evidence, the years on the street, everything evacuated her brain.

Did the building get bigger?
she wondered.
At the door she caught her reflection in the glass. She was wearing a fairly expensive skirt suit, her best sensible girl-cop shoes. A big difference from the torn jeans and sweatshirts she had favored as an undergrad at Temple, in those giddy years before Vincent, before Sophie, before the academy, before all...
this
. Not a care in the world, she thought. Now her world was built on worry, framed with concern, with a leaky roof shingled with trepidation.
Although she had entered this building many times, and although she could probably find her way to the bank of elevators blindfolded, it all seemed foreign to her, as if she were seeing it for the first time. The sights, the sounds, the smells all blended into the demented carnival that was this small corner of the Philadelphia justice system.
It was her brother Michael’s beautiful face that Jessica saw as she grabbed the handle on the door, an image that would come back to her many times over the next few weeks as the things upon which she had based her whole life became redefined as madness.
Jessica opened the door, stepped inside, thinking:
Watch my back, big brother.
Watch my back.

5

MONDAY, 7:55 A M

The Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department was located on the first floor of the Roundhouse, the police administration building—or PAB, as it was often called—at Eighth and Race Streets, nicknamed for the round shape of its three-story structure. Even the

elevators were round. Criminals were fond of pointing out that, from the air, the building looked like a pair of handcuffs. When a suspicious death occurred anywhere in Philadelphia County, the call came here.

Of the sixty-five detectives in the unit, only a handful were women, a stat the brass were desperate to change.
Everyone knew that, these days, in a department as politically sensitive as the PPD, it wasn’t necessarily a person who was promoted, but quite often a statistic, a delegate of some demographic that made the cut.
Jessica knew this. But she also knew that her career on the street was exceptional, and that she had earned her slot on the Homicide Unit, even if she arrived there a few years ahead of the standard decade or so on the job. She had her degree in criminal justice; she had been a more-thancompetent uniformed officer, garnering two commendations. If she had to knock a few old-school heads in the unit, so be it. She was ready. She had never backed down from a fight, and she wasn’t going to begin now.
One of the three supervisors of the Homicide Unit was Sergeant Dwight Buchanan. If the homicide detectives spoke for the dead, it was Ike Buchanan who spoke for those who spoke for the dead.
When Jessica walked into the common room, Ike Buchanan noticed her and waved her over. The daywork shift began at eight, so at this hour the room was packed. Most of the last out shift was still on, which was not all that uncommon, making the already cramped half-circle space a snarl of bodies. Jessica nodded at the detectives sitting at desks, all men, all on the phone, all of whom returned her greeting with cool, perfunctory nods of their own.
She wasn’t in the club
yet
.
“Come on in,” Buchanan said, extending his hand.
Jessica shook his hand, then followed him, noticing his slight limp. Ike Buchanan had taken bullets in the Philly gang wars of the late 1970s and, according to legend, had endured half a dozen surgeries and a year of painful rehab to get back in blue. One of the last of the iron men. She had seen him with a cane a few times, but not today. Pride and grit, around this place, were more than luxuries. Sometimes they were the glue that held the chain of command together.
Now in his late fifties, Ike Buchanan was rail-thin, whipcord-strong, and sported a full head of cloud-white hair and bushy white eyebrows. His face was flushed and pocked by nearly six decades of Philly winters and, if the other legend was true, more than his share of Wild Turkey.
She entered the small office, sat down.
“Let’s get the details out of the way.” Buchanan closed the door halfway and walked behind his desk. Jessica could see him trying to cover the limp. He may have been a decorated cop, but he was still a man.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your background?”
“Grew up in South Philly,” Jessica said, knowing that Buchanan knew all this, knowing that this was a formality. “Sixth and Catharine.”
“Schools?”
“I went to St. Paul’s. Then N.A. Did my undergraduate work at Temple.”
“You graduated Temple in three years?”
Three and a half,
Jessica thought.
But who’s counting?
“Yes, sir. Criminal justice.”
“Impressive.”
“Thank you, sir. It was a lot of—”
“You worked out of the Third?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How did you like working for Danny O’Brien?”
What was she supposed to say? That he was an overbearing, misogynistic, witless shithead? “Sergeant O’Brien is a good officer. I learned a lot from him.”
“Danny O’Brien is a Neanderthal,” Buchanan said.
“That’s one school of thought, sir,” Jessica said, trying her best to keep the smile inside.
“So tell me,” Buchanan said. “Why are you
really
here?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” she said. Buying time.
“I’ve been a cop for thirty-seven years. Hard for me to believe, but true. Seen a lot of good people, a lot of bad people. On both sides of the law. There was a time when I was just like you. Ready to take on the world, punish the guilty, avenge the innocent.” Buchanan turned around, faced her. “Why are you here?”
Be cool, Jess,
she thought.
He’s tossing you an egg.
“I’m here because... because I think I can make a difference.”
Buchanan stared at her for a few moments. Impossible to read. “I thought the same thing when I was your age.”
Jessica wasn’t sure if she was being patronized or not. Up came the Italian in her. Up came the South Philly. “If you don’t mind me asking, sir,
have
you made a difference?”
Buchanan smiled. This was good news for Jessica. “I haven’t retired yet.”
Good answer,
Jessica thought.
“How is your father?” he asked, shifting gears on the fly. “Is he enjoying retirement?”
The truth was, he was climbing the walls. The last time she stopped by his house he was standing by the sliding glass door, looking out into his tiny backyard with a packet of Roma tomato seeds in his hand. “Very much, sir.”
“He’s a good man. He was a great cop.”
“I’ll tell him you said so. He’ll be pleased.”
“The fact that Peter Giovanni is your father won’t help you or hurt you around here. If it ever gets in the way, you come see me.”
Not in a million friggin’ years.
“I will. I appreciate it.”
Buchanan stood up, leaned forward, pinned her with his intense gaze. “This job has broken a lot of hearts, Detective. I hope yours isn’t one of them.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Buchanan looked over her shoulder, out into the common room. “Speaking of heartbreakers.”
Jessica followed his gaze to the big man standing next to the assignment desk, reading a fax. They stood, exited Buchanan’s office.
As they approached him, Jessica sized the man. He was in his early forties, about six three, maybe 240, solid. He had light brown hair, wintergreen eyes, huge hands, a thick, shiny scar over his right eye. Even if she hadn’t known he was a homicide cop, she would have guessed. He met all the criteria: good suit, cheap tie, shoes that hadn’t seen polish since they left the factory, along with the de rigueur trio of scents: tobacco, Certs, and the faint trace of Aramis.
“How’s the baby?” Buchanan asked the man.
“Ten fingers, ten toes,” the man said.
Jessica spoke the code. Buchanan was asking how a current case was going. The detective’s response meant:
All is well.
“Riff Raff,” Buchanan said. “Meet your new partner.”
“Jessica Balzano,” Jessica said, extending her hand.
“Kevin Byrne,” he replied. “Nice to meet you.”
The name immediately dragged Jessica back a year or so. The Morris Blanchard affair. Every cop in Philly had followed the case. Byrne’s image had been plastered all over the city, on every news show, newspaper, and local magazine. Jessica was surprised she hadn’t recognized him. At first glance he seemed five years older than the man she remembered.
Buchanan’s phone rang. He excused himself.
“Same here,” she replied. Eyebrows up. “Riff Raff?”
“Long story. We’ll get to it.” They shook hands as the name registered with Byrne. “You’re Vincent Balzano’s wife?”
Jesus Christ,
Jessica thought. Nearly seven thousand cops on the force and you could fit them all in a phone booth. She applied a few more footpounds—or, in this instance, hand-pounds—of pressure to her handshake. “In name only,” she said.
Kevin Byrne got the message. He winced, smiled. “Gotcha.” Before letting go, Byrne held her gaze for a few seconds in the way that only veteran police officers can. Jessica knew all about it. She knew about the club, the territorial makeup of a unit, the way that cops bond and protect. When she was first assigned to Auto, she had to prove herself on a daily basis.After a year, though, she could roll with the best of them. After two years, she could pull a J-turn on two inches of solid ice, could tune up a Shelby GT in the dark, could read a VIN number through a smashed pack of Kools on the dashboard of a locked car.
When she caught Kevin Byrne’s stare and threw it right back at him, something happened. She wasn’t positive if it was a good thing, but it let him know that she was no probie, no boot, no damp-seated rookie who got here based on her plumbing.
They retrieved their hands as the phone rang at the assignment desk. Byrne answered, made a few notes.
“We’re up on the wheel,” Byrne said. The wheel was the duty roster of assignments for detectives on the Line Squad. Jessica’s heart sank. How long had she been on the job, fourteen minutes? Wasn’t there supposed to be a grace period? “Dead girl in crack town,” he added. Guess not.
Byrne fixed Jessica with a look afloat somewhere between a smile and a challenge. He said: “Welcome to Homicide.”

“How do you know Vincent?” Jessica asked.

They had ridden in silence for a few blocks after pulling out of the lot. Byrne drove the standard-issue Ford Taurus. It was the same uneasy silence experienced on a blind date, which, in many ways, this was.

“A year ago we took down a dealer in Fishtown. We’d been looking at him for a long time. Liked him for the murder of one of our CIs. Real badass. Carried a hatchet on his belt.”

“Charming.”
“
Oh
yeah.Anyway, it was our case, but Narcotics set up a buy to draw the prick out. When it came time for entry, about five in the morning, there’s six of us, four from Homicide, two from Narcotics. We get out of the van, checking our Glocks, adjusting our vests, getting pumped for the door.You know the drill. All of a sudden, no Vincent. We look around, behind the van, under the van. Nothing. It’s quiet as hell, then all of sudden we hear
‘Get onna ground...get onna ground . . . hands behind yer back motherfucker!’
from
inside
the house. Turns out Vincent was off, through the door and up the guy’s ass before any of us could move.”
“Sounds like Vince,” Jessica said.
“And how many times has he seen
Serpico
?” Byrne asked.
“Let’s put it this way,” Jessica said. “We’ve got it on DVD
and
VHS.”
Byrne laughed. “He’s a piece of work.”
“He’s a piece of something.”
Over the next few minutes they went through their who-do-youknows, where-did-you-go-to-schools, who-have-you-busted repartee. All of which brought them back to their families.
“So is it true that Vincent was in the seminary once?” Byrne asked.
“For about ten minutes,” Jessica said. “You know how it is in this town. If you’re male and Italian, you’ve got three choices. The seminary, the force, or cement contracting. He has three brothers, all in the building trades.”
“If you’re Irish, it’s plumbing.”
“There ya go,” Jessica said. Although Vincent tried to posture himself as a swaggering South Philly homeboy, he had a BA from Temple with a minor in art history. On Vincent’s bookshelves, next to the
PDR, Drugs in Society,
and
The Narc’s Game,
sat a well-worn copy of H. W. Janson’s
History of Art
. He wasn’t all Ray Liotta and gold-plated
malocchio
.
“So what happened to Vince and the calling?”
“You’ve met him. Do you think he was built for a life of discipline and obedience?”
Byrne laughed. “Not to mention celibacy.”
No friggin’ comment,
Jessica thought.
“So, you guys are divorced?” Byrne asked.
“Separated,” Jessica said. “You?”
“Divorced.”
It was a standard refrain for cops. If you weren’t splitsville, you were en route. Jessica could count the happily married cops on one hand, with an empty ring finger left over.
“Wow,” Byrne said.
“What?”
“I’m just thinking...two people on the job, under one roof. Damn.” “Tell me about it.”
Jessica had known all about the challenges of a two-badge marriage from the start—the egos, the hours, the pressures, the danger—but love has a way of obscuring the truth you know, and molding a truth you seek.
“Did Buchanan give you his
why are you here
speech?” Byrne asked.
Jessica was relieved that it wasn’t just her. “Yeah.”
“And you told him you were here because you want to make a difference, right?”
Was he baiting her? Jessica wondered. Fuck
this
. She glanced over, ready to reveal a few talons. He was smiling. She let it slide. “What is that, the standard?”
“Well, it beats the truth.”
“What’s the truth?”
“The real reason we became cops.”
“And what is
that
?”
“The big three,” Byrne said. “Free meals, no speed limits, and the license to beat the shit out of bigmouthed assholes with impunity.”
Jessica laughed. She had never heard it put quite so poetically. “Well, let’s just say I didn’t tell the truth, then.”
“What did you say?”
“I asked him if he thought
he’d
made a difference.”
“Oh, man,” Byrne said. “Oh man, oh man, oh
man
.”
“What?”
“You got in Ike’s face the first
day
?”
Jessica thought about it. She imagined she did. “I guess so.”
Byrne laughed, lit a cigarette. “We’re gonna get along just fine.”

The 1500 block of North Eighth Street, near Jefferson, was a blighted stretch of weed-blotted vacant lots and weather-blasted row houses—slanted porches, crumbling steps, sagging roofs. At the rooflines, the cornices wrote wavy contours of waterlogged white pine; the dentils were rotted to toothless scowls.

Two patrol cars flashed in front of the crime scene house, midblock. A pair of uniforms stood guard at the steps, both covertly cupping cigarettes in their hands, ready to flick and stomp the moment a superior officer arrived.

A light rain had begun to fall. The deep violet clouds to the west threatened storms.
Across the street from the house a trio of wide-eyed black kids hopped from one foot to the other, nervous, excited, as if they had to pee, their grandmothers hovering nearby, chatting and smoking, shaking their heads at this, yet another atrocity. To the kids, though, this was no tragedy. This was a live version of
COPS,
with a dose of
CSI
thrown in for dramatic value.
Behind them loitered a pair of Hispanic teenaged boys—matching hooded Rocawear sweatshirts, thin mustaches, spotless, unlaced Timberlands. They observed the unfolding scene with casual interest, fitting it into the stories they would pitch later that night. They stood close enough to the theatrics to observe, but far enough away to paint themselves into the backdrop of the urban canvas with a few quick strokes if it appeared they might be questioned.
Huh? What? No man, I was sleepin’.
Gunshots? No man, I had my ’phones on, wicked loud.
Like many of the houses on the street, the front of this row house had plywood nailed over the entrance and the windows, the city’s attempt at closing the house to addicts and scavengers. Jessica took out her notebook, looked at her watch, noted their time of arrival. They exited the Taurus and approached one of the uniforms, badges out, just as Ike Buchanan rolled on the scene. Whenever there was a homicide and two supervisors were on shift, one went to the crime scene, one stayed at the Roundhouse to coordinate the investigation. Although Buchanan was the ranking officer, it was Kevin Byrne’s show.
“What do we have this fine Philly morning?” Byrne asked with a pretty good Dublin brogue.
“Female juvenile DOA in the basement,” said the officer, a stocky black woman in her late twenties. officer j. davis.
“Who found her?” Byrne asked.
“Mr. DeJohn Withers.” She pointed to a disheveled, clearly homeless black man standing near the curb.
“When?”
“Sometime this morning. Mr. Withers is a bit unclear of the time frame.”
“He didn’t consult his Palm Pilot?”
Officer Davis just smiled.
“He touch anything?” Byrne asked.
“He says no,” Davis said. “But he was down there scrapping for copper, so who knows?”
“He called it in?”
“No,” Davis said. “He probably didn’t have change.” Another knowing smile. “He flagged us down, we called radio.”
“Hang on to him.”
Byrne glanced at the front door. It was sealed. “Which house is it?”
Officer Davis pointed to the row house on the right.
“And how do we get inside?”
Officer Davis pointed to the row house to the left. The front door was torn from its hinges. “You have to walk through.”
Byrne and Jessica walked through the row house to the north of the crime scene, a long-since abandoned and stripped property. The walls were scarred with years of graffiti, pocked with dozens of fist-sized holes in the drywall. Jessica noticed that there wasn’t a single item left that might be worth anything. Switch plates, outlet plates, outlets, fixtures, copper wire, even the baseboards were long gone.
“Serious feng shui problem here,” Byrne said.
Jessica smiled, but a bit nervously. Her main concern at the moment was not falling through the rotted joists into the basement.
They emerged in the back and negotiated through the chain-link fence to the rear of the crime scene house. The tiny backyard, which abutted an alley that ran behind the block of houses, was besieged with derelict appliances and tires, all overgrown with a few seasons of weeds and scrub. A small doghouse at the rear of the fenced-in property stood guard over nothing, its chain rusted into the earth, its plastic dish filled to the brim with filthy rainwater.
A uniformed officer met them at the back door.
“You clear the house?” Byrne asked.
House
was a very loose term. At least a third of the rear wall of the structure was gone.
“Yes, sir,” he said. His tag read r. van dyck. He was in his early thirties, Viking blond, pumped, and heavily muscled. His arms strained the material of his coat.
They gave their information to this officer, who was taking the crime scene log. They entered through the back door and as they descended the narrow stairs to the basement, the stench greeted them first. Years of mildew and wood rot dallied beneath the smells of human by-products— urine, feces, sweat. Beneath that there was an ugliness suggesting an open grave.
The basement was long and narrow, mirroring the layout of the row house above, perhaps fifteen by twenty-four feet, with three support columns. As Jessica ran her Maglite over the space she saw it was littered with rotting drywall, spent condoms, crack bottles, a disintegrating mattress. A forensic nightmare. In the damp grime were probably a thousand smeary footprints if there were two; none, at first glance, pristine enough for a usable impression.
In the midst of this was a beautiful dead girl.
The young woman sat on the floor in the center of the room, her arms wrapped around one of the support pillars, her legs splayed on either side. It appeared that, at some point, a previous tenant had tried to make the supporting columns into Doric-style Roman columns with a material that might have been Styrofoam. Although the pillars had a cap and a base, the only entablature was a rusted I-beam above, the only frieze, a tableau of gang tags and obscenities spray-painted along the length. On one of the walls of the basement was a long-faded mural of what was probably supposed to be the Seven Hills of Rome.
The girl was white, young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. She had flyaway strawberry-blond hair cut just above her shoulders. She wore a plaid skirt, maroon knee socks, and white blouse beneath a maroon V-neck with a school logo. In the center of her forehead was a cross made of a dark, chalky material.
At first glimpse Jessica could not see an immediate cause of death, no visible gunshot or stab wounds. Although the girl’s head lolled to her right, Jessica could see most of the front of her neck, and it did not appear as if she had been strangled.
And then there were her hands.
From a few feet away, it appeared as if her hands were clasped in prayer, but there was a much darker reality. Jessica had to look twice just to be sure that her eyes were not playing tricks on her.
She glanced at Byrne. He had noticed the girl’s hands at the same moment. Their eyes met and engaged a silent knowledge that this was no ordinary rage killing, no garden-variety crime of passion. They also silently communicated that they would not speculate for the time being. The horrible certainty of what was done to this young woman’s hands could wait for the medical examiner.
The girl’s presence, in the middle of this ugliness, was so out of place, jarring to the eye, Jessica thought; a delicate rose pushed through the musty concrete. The weak daylight that struggled through the small, hopper-style windows caught the highlights in her hair and bathed her in a dim sepulchral glow.
The one thing that was clear was that this girl had been posed, which was not a good sign. In 99 percent of homicides, the killer can’t get away from the scene fast enough, which is usually good news for the investigators. The concept of blood simple—people getting stupid when they see blood, therefore leaving behind everything needed to convict them, scientifically speaking—was usually in effect. Anybody who stops to pose a dead body is making a statement, offering a silent, arrogant communication to the police who will investigate the crime.
A pair of officers from the Crime Scene Unit arrived, and Byrne greeted them at the base of the steps. A few moments later, Tom Weyrich, a longtime veteran from the medical examiner’s office, arrived with his photographer in tow. Whenever a person died under violent or mysterious circumstances, or if it was determined that there might be a need for a pathologist to testify in a court of law at some later date, photos documenting the nature and extent of the external wounds or injuries were a routine part of the examination.
The medical examiner’s office had its own staff photographer who took scene photos wherever indicated in homicides, suicides, fatal accidents. He was on call to travel anywhere in the city at any time of the day or night.
Dr. Thomas Weyrich was in his late forties, a meticulous man in all areas of his life, right down to the razor crease in his tan Dockers and perfectly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. He bagged his shoes, gloved his hands, and carefully stepped over to the young woman.
While Weyrich did his preliminary exam, Jessica hung close to the damp walls. She had always believed that simple observation of people who were good at their jobs was a lot more informative than any textbook. On the other hand, she hoped her behavior was not seen as reticence. Byrne took the opportunity to go back upstairs to consult with Buchanan and determine the path of entry for the victim and her killer or killers, as well as to direct the canvass.
Jessica assessed the scene, trying to plug in her training. Who was this girl? What happened to her? How did she get down here? Who did this? And, for what it was worth, why?
Fifteen minutes later, Weyrich cleared the body, meaning that the detectives could approach and begin their investigation.
Kevin Byrne returned. Jessica and Weyrich met him at the base of the steps.
Byrne asked: “You have an ETD?”
“No rigor yet. I’d say around four or five this morning.” Weyrich snapped off his rubber gloves.
Byrne glanced at his watch. Jessica made the note.
“What about a cause?” Byrne asked.
“Looks like a broken neck. I’m going to have to get her on the table to know for sure.”
“Was she killed here?”
“Impossible to tell at this point. But my guess is she was.”
“What about her hands?” Byrne asked.
Weyrich looked grim. He tapped his shirt pocket. Jessica could see the outline of a pack of Marlboros there. He would not, of course, smoke at a crime scene, even this crime scene, but the gesture told her that a cigarette was warranted. “Looks like a steel bolt and nut,” he said.
“Was the bolt done postmortem?” Jessica asked, hoping the answer would be yes.
“I’d say it was,” Weyrich said. “Very little blood. I’ll get on it this afternoon. I’ll know more then.”
Weyrich looked at them, found no more immediate questions pending. Walking up the steps, his cigarette was out and lit by the time he reached the top tread.
Silence owned the room for a few moments. Many times, at a homicide scene, when the victim was a gang member shot by a rival warrior, or a tough guy laid out behind a bar by a fellow tough guy, the mood among the professionals delegated to probe, investigate, examine, and clean up after the carnage was one of brisk politeness, sometimes even lighthearted banter. The gallows humor, the off-color joke. Not this time. Everyone in this damp and hideous place went about his or her task with a grim determination, a common purpose that said:
This is wrong
.
Byrne broke the silence. He held out his hands, palms skyward. “Ready to check for ID, Detective Balzano?”
Jessica took a deep breath, centering herself. “Okay,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as wobbly as she felt. She had anticipated this moment for months, but now that it was here, she found herself unprepared. Putting on a pair of latex gloves, she carefully approached the girl’s body.
She had, of course, seen a number of corpses in her time on the street and in the Auto Unit. One time she had babysat a dead body in the backseat of a stolen Lexus on a ninety-five-degree day on the Schuylkill Expressway, trying not to watch the body, which seemed to bloat by the minute in the stifling car.
In all those instances, she knew she was handing the investigation off.
Now it was her turn.
Someone was asking her for help.
In front of her was a dead young girl whose hands were bolted together in eternal prayer. Jessica knew that the victim’s body, at this stage, had much to offer, by way of clues. She would never again be this close to the murderer: to his method, his pathology, his mind-set. Jessica opened her eyes wide, her senses on high alert.
In the girl’s hands was a rosary. In Roman Catholicism, the rosary is a string of beads forming the shape of a circle, with a pendent crucifix, usually consisting of five sets of beads called decades, each composed of one large and ten smaller beads. On the large beads, the Lord’s Prayer is said. On the smaller beads, the Hail Mary.
As Jessica approached, she saw that this rosary was made of black carved wood oval beads, with what appeared to be a Madonna of Lourdes center. The rosary was looped around the girl’s knuckles. It appeared to be a standard, inexpensive rosary, but on closer inspection Jessica noted that two of the five decades were missing.
She gently examined the girl’s hands. Her nails were short and clean, exhibiting no evidence of a struggle. No breakage, no blood. There appeared to be no material beneath her nails, although they would bag her hands anyway. The bolt that passed through her hands entered and exited at the center of the palms, and was made of galvanized steel. The bolt appeared to be new, and was about four inches in length.
Jessica looked closely at the mark on the girl’s forehead. The smudge formed a blue cruciform, as the ashes did on Ash Wednesday. Although Jessica was far from devout, she still knew and observed the major Catholic holy days. It had been nearly six weeks since Ash Wednesday, but this mark was fresh. It seemed to be made of a chalky substance.
Lastly, Jessica looked at the label at the back of the girl’s sweater. Sometimes dry cleaners left a tag with all or part of the patron’s name. There was none.
She stood up a little shakily, but confident she had done a competent examination. At least for a preliminary look.
“Any ID?” Byrne stayed along the wall, his clever eyes scanning the scene, observing, absorbing.
“No,” Jessica replied.
Byrne grimaced. Whenever a victim was not identified at the scene, it tacked hours, sometimes even days onto the investigation. Precious time that could never be recovered.
Jessica stepped away from the body as the CSU officers began their ceremony. They would slip on their Tyvek suits and make a grid of the space, taking detailed photographs of the scene, as well as a video. This place was a petri dish of subhumanity. There were probably prints of every derelict in North Philly here. The CSU team would be here all day. Probably well into the night.
Jessica headed up the steps, but Byrne stayed behind. She waited for him at the top of the stairs, partly because she wanted to see if there was anything else he wanted her to do, partly because she really didn’t want to have to direct the investigation out front.