Byrne just nodded. She was probably right.

“Want to know what happened?” she continued. “I’ll tell you what happened. This sick bastard killed Monica, cut her up, stuck her in boxes, then put her heart in a jar and put it in that refrigerator. Then he put his psycho clue in that Bible, hoping we would figure out the Jeremiah Crosley ruse and we would come here to find his little treasure. We did. Now he’s out there having a good laugh at how clever he is.”

Byrne bought into the entire theory.

“He’s targeting runaways, Kevin. Lost kids. First this girl, then Caitlin. He just hid Monica Renzi a little too well. When no one found her, he had to ratchet up the game. He’s still out there and he’s going to do it again. Fuck him, fuck this job, and fuck this place.”

Byrne knew that his partner sometimes ran on emotion—she was Italian, it came with the genes—but he rarely saw her get this worked up at a scene. Stress eventually got to everyone. He put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Top of the world, Ma.”

“Look. We’re going to get this freak. Let’s get the lab work back on this one. There are a million ways to fuck up with a crime like this. This guy may be evil, but he’s no genius. They never are.”

Jessica stared at the ground for a few moments, simmering, then reached into the car, pulled out a folder. She opened it, retrieved a sheet. “Look at this.”

She handed Byrne the paper. It was a photocopy of the activity log for the O’Riordan case.

“What am I looking for?”

She tapped the page. “These three names.” She pointed to a trio of names on the log. They were first names, nicknames at that, no last names. Three people who were interviewed on the day after Caitlin O’Riordan’s body was found. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

“What about them?” Byrne asked.

“They were interviewed back in May. Nothing was typed up, and the notes are missing.”

Byrne saw that all the interviews were conducted by Detective Freddy Roarke. The late Freddy Roarke. “You checked the binder?” he asked. “There’s no notes?”

“Nope. Not for these three people. Everything else is there. These notes are gone.”

As a rule, when a detective conducted a neighborhood survey, or an interview in the field, he or she made handwritten notes in their official notebook, which was called their work product. Most detectives also carried a personal notebook, which was not included in the file. The work product, when filled, was put in the binder, which was the official and only file on a homicide case. If a detective wrote notes for two or three different jobs, the pages would be torn out and placed in the corresponding file. If the interviews became important, they were typed up. If not, the notes became the only record of the interview.

“What about Freddy’s partner?” Jessica asked. “What was his name?”

“Pistone,” Byrne said. “Butchie Pistone.”

“Butchie. Jesus. You know him well?”

“Not well,” Byrne said. “He was kind of a hard-ass. He was a hotshot when I was coming up, but it all went to shit after he was involved in a questionable shoot. He was comatose near the end. Drinking on the job, chewing Altoids by the case.”

“Is he still around?”

“Yeah,” Byrne said. “He owns a bar on Lehigh.”

Jessica glanced at her watch, at the entrance to 4514 Shiloh Street. CSU was just getting started. “Let’s go talk to him.”

As they pulled away, a pair of news teams arrived on scene. This was going to make the evening news.

TWENTY-EIGHT

ROCCO “BUTCHIE” PISTONE had been a Philadelphia police officer for thirty years. In his time he had worked as a patrol officer in the Fifth District, as well as a detective in West Division before coming to homicide. When he retired, two months ago, he bought into the Aragon Bar on Lehigh Avenue, a tavern owned by his brother Ralph, also a retired cop. It was a halfway popular cop stop for the officers in the Twenty-sixth District.

Now in his sixties, Butchie lived above the tavern and, rumor had it, held court in the club a few nights per week, running a medium-stakes poker game in the basement.

Jessica and Byrne parked the car, walked the half block to the bar. The entrance to the apartment on the second floor was a doorway about twenty feet west of the entrance to the tavern.

As they approached, beefy white guys in their twenties—knit watch caps, sleeveless T-shirts, fingerless gloves. Two drank from brown paper bags. The smell of pot smoke was thick in the air. Real House of Pain types. A boom box on the sidewalk played some kind of budget white-boy rap. As Jessica and Byrne got closer—and it became clear that they were heading for the doorway—the three guys went a little chesty, like this was their piece of geography, their inch of Google Earth, that needed to be defended.

“Yo. Excuse me. Somethin’ I can help you with?” one asked. He was the smallest of the trio, but clearly the alpha male in this pack. Built like a Hummer. Jessica noted that he had a crucifix tattooed on the right side of his neck, just below the ear. The cross was a switchblade with a drop of blood on its tip. Charming.

“Yo?” Byrne said. “Who are you, Frank Stallone?”

The kid smirked. “Funny stuff.”

“It’s a living.”

The kid cracked his knuckles, one at a time. “I repeat. Somethin’ I can help you with?”

“I don’t believe there is,” Byrne said. “But thanks for asking.”

The biggest of the three, the one wearing a bright orange ski vest in eighty-degree weather, stepped into the doorway, blocking their access. “It wasn’t really a question.”

“And yet I answered,” Byrne said. “Must be my upbringing. Now, if you’ll step aside, we’ll go about our business, and you can go about yours.”

The big guy laughed. It was apparent that this was going to continue. He pushed a stiff finger into Byrne’s chest. “I don’t think you’re hearing me, Mick.”

Bad idea, Jessica thought. Very, very bad idea. She unbuttoned the front of her blazer, took a few steps back, flanking the other two.

In a flash, Byrne had the big goon by the right wrist. He brought the arm down, twisted it under, turned the young man around, jammed the arm skyward and slammed him face-first into the brick wall. Hard. The other two went on alert, but didn’t make a move. Not yet. Byrne hauled out the kid’s wallet, tearing a pants seam in the process. He tossed the billfold to Jessica. She opened it.

One of the other two thugs took a step toward Jessica. She flipped back the hem of her jacket without looking up. The butt of her Glock was exposed, along with the badge clipped to her belt. The punk backed off, hands out to his sides.

“What are you gonna do? Fuckin’ shoot me?”

“Just the once,” Jessica said. “They have us buying our own bullets now. It’s a cutback thing.” Jessica tossed the wallet back to Byrne. “This gentleman is one Flavio E. Pistone.”

Byrne patted the kid down, spun him back around. Flavio’s nose gushed blood. It might have been broken. Byrne stuffed the wallet into Flavio’s vest pocket, looked him in the eye. Inches away now. “I’m a police officer. You put your hands on me. That’s assault. That’s three to five. You don’t go home tonight.”

The kid tried to maintain eye contact, but he couldn’t hold on to Byrne’s gaze. Jessica had never seen anyone actually do it.

“My uncle’s an ex-cop,” Flavio said. The word cop came out gop. His nose was broken.

“He has my condolences,” Byrne said. “Now, Flavio, I can cuff you right here on the street, in front of your little Eminem social club, haul your ass down to the Roundhouse, or you can step aside.” Byrne stepped back, squared off. It was almost as if he wanted the kid to make a move. “Out of respect for your uncle, I’m willing to forget about this. But it’s your call. Anything else?”