She picked Sophie up. Sophie put her little arms around her neck. They were safe now. Jessica could feel Sophie’s heart beating against her.

Jessica crossed the bedroom to the front windows. The street was only partially flooded. She watched for backup.

“Ma’am?”

the Rosary girls 357

Drew was calling her.

Jessica walked to the top of the stairs. “What’s wrong?” “Uh, well, I don’t know how to tell you this.” “Tell me what?”

Drew said, “There’s no one in the basement.” Byrne turned the corner onto the pitch-black street. Fighting the wind, he had to walk around the huge tree limbs lying across the sidewalk and the road. He could see flickering lights in some windows, capering shadows dancing on the blinds. In the distance he saw a sparking electrical wire across a car.

There were no patrol cars from the Eighth. He tried his cell again. Nothing. No signal at all.

He had only been to Jessica’s house once. He had to look closely to see if he remembered which house it was. He did not.

This was, of course, one of the worst parts of living in Philadelphia. Even Northeast Philadelphia. At times, everything looked alike.

He stood in front of a twin that looked familiar. With the streetlights out, it was difficult to tell. He closed his eyes and tried to recall. The images of the Rosary Killer obscured everything else, like the hammers falling on an old manual typewriter, soft lead on bright white paper, smeary black ink. But he was too close to see the words.

Drew waited at the bottom of the basement stairs. Jessica lit the candles in the kitchen, then sat Sophie on one of the dinette chairs. She put her weapon on top of the fridge.

She descended the steps. The bloodstain on the concrete was still there. But Patrick was not.

“Dispatch said there’s a pair of patrol cars on the way,” he said. “But I’m afraid there’s no one down here.”

“Are you sure?”

Drew flashed his light around the basement. “Uh, well, unless you have a secret way out of here, he must have gone up the steps.”

Drew aimed his flashlight up the stairs. There were no bloody footprints on the treads. Wearing latex gloves, he knelt down and touched the blood on the floor. He slicked two fingers together.

“You’re saying he was just here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jessica said. “Two minutes ago. As soon as I saw him, I ran upstairs and down the driveway.”

“How did he receive his injury?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, the police will be here any second. They can give the place a good going over.” He stood up. “Until then, we’ll probably be safe down here.”

What? Jessica thought.

We’ll probably be safe down here?

“Is your little girl okay?” he asked.

Jessica stared at the man. A cold hand squeezed her heart. “I never told you I had a little girl.”

Drew peeled off the gloves, tossed them into his bag.

In the flashlight beam, Jessica saw the blue chalk stains on his fingers and the deep scratch on the back of his right hand, at the same moment she noticed Patrick’s feet emerging from beneath the stairs.

And she knew. This man had never called in the 911. No one was coming. Jessica turned to run. To the stairs. To Sophie. To safety. But before she could move a hand shot out of the darkness.

Andrew Chase was upon her.

FRIDAY, 10:05 PM

It wasn’t Patrick Farrell. When Byrne had gone through the files at the hospital, it had all fallen into place.

Besides being treated by Patrick Farrell in the St. Joseph’s emergency room, the one thing that all five girls had in common was the ambulance service. They all lived in North Philly. They all used Glenwood Ambulance Group.

They were all treated first by Andrew Chase.

Chase had known Simon Close, and Simon had paid for that proximity with his life.

On the day she died, Nicole Taylor was not trying to write p-a-r-kh-u-r-s-t on her palm. She was trying to write p-a-r-a-m-e-d-i-c.

Byrne flipped open his cell phone, tried 911 one final time. Nothing. He checked the status. No bars. He wasn’t getting a signal. The patrol cars were not going to make it in time.

He’d have to go it alone.

Byrne stood in front of a twin, trying to shield his eyes from the rain.

Was this the house?

Think, Kevin. What were the landmarks he had seen the day he had picked her up? He could not remember.

He turned and looked behind him.

The van parked out front. Glenwood Ambulance Group.

This was the house.

He drew his weapon, chambered a round, and hurried up the driveway.

FRIDAY, 10:10 PM

Jessica struggled up from the bottom of the impenetrable fog. She was sitting on the floor in her own basement. It was nearly dark. She tried to enter both of these facts into an equation, and got no acceptable results.

And then reality came roaring back.

Sophie.

She tried to get to her feet, but her legs would not respond. She was

not bound in any way. Then she remembered. She had been injected with something. She touched her neck where the needle had penetrated, pulled back a dot of blood on her finger. In the faint light thrown by the flashlight behind her, the dot began to blur. She now understood the terror that the five girls had experienced.

But she was not a girl. She was a woman. A police officer.

Her hand went instinctively to her hip. Nothing there. Where was her weapon?

Upstairs. On top of the refrigerator.

Shit.

She felt nauseated for a moment, the world swimming, the floor seeming to undulate beneath her.

“It didn’t have to come to this you know,” he said. “But she fought it. She tried to throw it away herself once, but then she fought it. I’ve seen it over and over.”

The voice came from behind her. The sound was low, measured, edged with the melancholy of deep personal loss. He still held the flashlight. The beam danced and played about the room.

Jessica wanted to respond, to move, to lash out. Her spirit was willing. Her flesh was unable.

She was alone with the Rosary Killer. She had thought that backup was on the way, but it wasn’t. No one knew they were there together. Images of his victims flashed through her mind. Kristi Hamilton soaked in all that blood. The barbed-wire crown on Bethany Price’s head.