There was no running water in this building. There were no bathtubs, plastic tubs, buckets, aquariums, or cans—not a single vessel that could hold enough water to drown a human being.
There was some quiet debate at the Roundhouse, the police administration building at Eighth and Race, about whether or not this was a bona fide homicide. Both Jessica and Byrne believed it was, yet conceded the possibility that Caitlin had accidentally drowned, perhaps in a bathtub, and that her body had been moved to the crime scene after the fact. This would bring about charges of abuse of a corpse, not homicide.
One thing was not in doubt: Caitlin O’Riordan did not arrive here under her own power.
There had been no ID on the victim, no purse or wallet at the scene. Caitlin had been identified by the photograph that circulated via the FBI website. There was no evidence of sexual assault.
CAITLIN O’RIORDAN WAS THE DAUGHTER of Robert and Marilyn O’Riordan of Millersville, Pennsylvania, a town of about 8000, five miles southwest of Lancaster. She had one sister, Lisa, who was two years younger.
Robert O’Riordan owned and operated a small, home-style restaurant on George Street in downtown Millersville. Marilyn was a homemaker, a former Miss Bart Township. Both were active in the church. Although far from wealthy, they maintained a comfortable home on a quiet rural lane.
Caitlin O’Riordan had been a runaway.
On April 1, Robert O’Riordan found a note from his daughter. It was written in red felt tip marker, on stationery that had Scotties along the border. The O’Riordans had two Scottish terriers as pets. The note was taped to the mirror in the girl’s bedroom.
Dear Mom and Dad (and Lisa too, sorry Lisey)
I’m sorry, but I have to do this.
I’ll be okay. I’ll be back. I promise.
I’ll send a card.
On April 2, two patrol officers from the Millersville Police Department were sent to the O’Riordan house. When they arrived, Caitlin had been missing for nineteen hours. The two patrolmen found no evidence of kidnapping or violence, no evidence of any foul play. They took statements from the family and the immediate neighbors—which, in that area, were about a quarter mile away on either side—wrote up the report. The case went through the expected channels. In seventy-two hours it was handed off to the Philadelphia field office of the FBI.
Despite a more than modest reward, and the fact that the young woman’s photograph was published in local papers and on various websites, two weeks after her disappearance there were no leads regarding the whereabouts or fate of Caitlin O’Riordan. To the world, she had simply vanished.
As April passed, the case grew colder, and authorities suspected that Caitlin O’Riordan might have fallen victim to a violent act.
On May 2, their darkest suspicions were confirmed.
THE ORIGINAL LEAD INVESTIGATOR in the Caitlin O’Riordan case, a man named Rocco Pistone, had retired two months ago. That same month his partner, Freddy Roarke, died of a massive stroke while watching a horse race at Philadelphia Park. Dropped right at the rail, just a few feet from the finish line. The 25-to-1 filly on which Freddy had put twenty dollars—poetically named Heaven’s Eternity—won by three lengths. Freddy Roarke never collected.
Pistone and Roarke had visited Millersville, had interviewed Caitlin’s schoolmates and friends, her teachers, neighbors, fellow churchgoers. No one recalled Caitlin mentioning a friend or Internet acquaintance or boyfriend in Philadelphia. The detectives also interviewed a seventeen-year-old Millersville boy named Jason Scott. Scott said that when Caitlin went missing, they were casually dating, stressing the word “casually.” He said Caitlin had been a lot more serious about the relationship than he was. He also told them that, at the time of Caitlin’s murder, he was in Arkansas, visiting his father. Detectives confirmed this, and the case went cold.
As of August 2008 there were no suspects, no leads, and no new evidence. Jessica turned the last page of the file, thinking for the hundredth time in the past two days, Why had Caitlin O’Riordan come to Philadelphia? Was it simply the allure of the big city? And, more importantly, where had she been for those thirty days?
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 crime-scene 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
JESSICA 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.