Jessica thought: Frank Wells yesterday, Althea Pettigrew today. Two parents separated by worlds and just a few blocks, joined in unimaginable grief and sorrow. She hoped they would have the same results for Frank Wells.

Although he was probably doing his best to mask it, as they walked back to the car Jessica noticed a slight spring in Byrne’s step, despite the downpour, despite the grimness of their current case. She understood it. All cops did. Kevin Byrne was riding a wave, a small ripple of satisfaction known to law enforcement professionals when, after a lot of hard work, the dominoes fall and they spell out a beautiful pattern, a clean, borderless image called justice.

Then there was the other side of the business.

Before they could get in the Taurus, Byrne’s phone rang again. He answered, listened for a few seconds, his face void of expression. “Give us fifteen minutes,” he said.

He snapped the phone shut.

“What is it?” Jessica asked.

Byrne made a fist, poised to smash it into the windshield, stopped himself. Barely. Everything he had just felt was gone in an instant.

“What?” Jessica repeated.

Byrne took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, said: “They found another girl.”

21

TUESDAY, 8:25 A M

Bartram Gardens was the oldest botanical garden in the United States, having been frequented by Benjamin Franklin, after whom John Bartram, the garden’s founder, had named a genus of plant. Located at Fifty-fourth Street and Lindbergh, the forty-five-acre site boasted a

landscape of wildflower meadows, river trails, wetlands, stone houses, and farm buildings. Today it hosted death.

A police cruiser and an unmarked were parked near the River Trail when Byrne and Jessica arrived. A perimeter had already been established around what appeared to be half an acre of daffodils. As Byrne and Jessica approached the scene, it was easy to see how the body could have been overlooked.

The young woman lay on her back amid the bright flowers, her hands clasped in prayer at her waist, holding a black rosary. Jessica could see immediately that one of the decades of beads was missing.

Jessica looked around. The body was placed about fifteen feet into the field and, except for a narrow path of tramped flowers, probably caused by the medical examiner, there was no obvious ingress into the field. The rain had certainly washed away any footprints. If there was an abundance of forensic possibilities in the row house on Eighth, out here, after hours of torrential rain, there would be none.

Two detectives stood at the edge of the immediate crime scene: a slender Hispanic man in an expensive-looking Italian suit and a shorter, powerfully built man whom Jessica recognized. The cop in the Italian suit seemed equally concerned with the rain ruining his Valentino as with the investigation. At least at the moment.

Jessica and Byrne approached, considered the victim.

The girl wore a navy blue and green plaid skirt, blue knee socks, penny loafers. Jessica recognized it as the uniform belonging to Regina High School, a Catholic girls school on Broad Street in North Philly. She had raven-black hair cut into a pageboy style and, from what Jessica could see, had about a half dozen piercings in her ears and one in her nose, piercings that bore no jewelry. It was clear that this girl played the Goth role on weekends, but, due to the strict dress code at her school, wore none of her hardware in class.

Jessica looked at the young woman’s hands and although she didn’t want to accept the truth, there it was. The hands were bolted together in prayer.

Out of earshot of the others, Jessica turned to Byrne and asked, softly: “Have you ever had a case like this before?”

Byrne didn’t have to think long about it. “No.”

The two other detectives approached, thankfully bringing their big golf umbrellas with them.

“Jessica, this is Eric Chavez, Nick Palladino.”

Both men nodded. Jessica returned the greeting. Chavez was the Latin pretty boy, long lashes, smooth skin, midthirties. She had seen him at the Roundhouse the day before. It was clear that he was the unit’s fashion plate. Every squad had one: the type of cop who, on a stakeout, would bring along a fat wooden hanger on which to hang his suit coat in the backseat, along with a beach towel he would tuck into his shirt collar when he ate the crap food you were forced to eat on a stakeout.

Nick Palladino was well dressed, too, but in a South Philly style— leather coat, tailored slacks, polished loafers, gold ID bracelet. He was about forty, with deep-set dark chocolate eyes, stone-set features; his

140 Richard montanari

black hair was combed straight back. Jessica had met Nick Palladino a few times before; he had partnered with her husband in Narcotics before moving over to Homicide.

Jessica shook hands with both men. “Nice to meet you,” she said to Chavez.

“Likewise,” he responded.

“Nice to see you again, Nick.”

Palladino smiled. There was much danger in that smile. “How are you, Jess?”

“I’m good.”

“The family?”

“All good.”

“Welcome to the Show,” he added. Nick Palladino had been with the squad less than a year himself, but he was solid blue. He had probably heard about her and Vincent separating, but he was a gentleman. Now was neither the time nor place.

“Eric and Nick work out of the Fugitive Squad,” Byrne added.

The Fugitive Squad was one-third of the Homicide Unit. Special Investigations and the Line Squad—that section that handled the new cases—were the other two. When a big case came along, or whenever the wheel began to spin out of control, every homicide cop caught.

“Any ID?” Byrne asked.

“Nothing yet,” Palladino said. “Nothing in her pockets. No purse or wallet.”

“She went to Regina,” Jessica said.

Palladino wrote it down. “That’s the school on Broad?”

“Yeah. Broad and CB Moore.”

“This the same MO as your case?” Chavez asked.

Kevin Byrne just nodded.

The idea, the very notion, that they might be up against a serial killer set all their jaws tight, throwing an even heavier pall over the day.

It had been less than twenty-four hours since this scene had played out in a dank and putrid basement of a row house on Eighth Street, and here they were again in a lush garden of cheerful flowers.

Two girls.

Two dead girls.

All four detectives watched as Tom Weyrich knelt next to the body. He pushed up the girl’s skirt, examined her.