Broken Angels

42

The crime scene was once again on the bank of the Schuylkill River, this time adjacent to the Shawmont train station, near Upper Roxborough. The Shawmont station was one of the oldest stations in the United States. The trains no longer stopped there, and it had fallen into disrepair, but it was a frequent stop for railroad aficionados and purists, much photographed and rendered.

Just below the station, down a steep incline that angled toward the river, was the enormous derelict Shawmont waterworks, located on one of the last publicly owned riverfront parcels of land in the city.

The exterior of the mammoth pump house was overgrown with decades of scrub and vines and gnarled branches hanging from dead trees. In daylight it was an imposing relic of a time when the facility had taken water from the pool behind Flat Rock Dam and pumped it up to the Roxborough Reservoir. At night it was all but an urban mausoleum, a dark and forbidding haven for drug deals, clandestine unions of all sorts. The inside was gutted, stripped of anything even remotely of value. There was graffiti around the walls to a height of seven feet or so. A few ambitious taggers had written their sentiments at a height of perhaps fifteen feet on one wall. The floor was an uneven topography of pebbled concrete, rusted iron, and sundry urban rubble.

As Jessica and Byrne approached the building, they could see the bright temporary lights illuminating the front of the building, the facade facing the river. A dozen officers, CSU techs, and detectives waited for them.

The dead woman sat in the window, legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap. Unlike Kristina Jakos, this victim did not appear to be mutilated in any way. At first, it looked as if she were praying, but closer inspection showed that her hands were cupped around an object.

Jessica stepped into the building. It was almost medieval in scale. Since the facility's closing, it had fallen into decay. A number of ideas had been floated regarding its future, not the least of which had been the possibility of turning it into a training facility for the Philadelphia Eagles. The cost of renovation would be enormous, though, and so far nothing had been done.

Jessica approached the victim, careful not to disturb any possible footprints, although there was no snow inside the building and collecting any thing usable was unlikely. She shone her light on the victim. This woman was in her late twenties or early thirties. She wore a long dress. It, too, seemed to be from another time, with its elasticized velvet bodice and fully shirred skirt. There was a nylon belt around her neck, knotted at the back. It appeared to be an exact duplicate of the one found around the neck of Kristina Jakos.

Jessica hugged the wall as she scanned the interior. The CSU techs would soon be setting up a grid. Before leaving, she took her Maglite, made a slow careful sweep of the walls. And saw it. About twenty feet to the right of the window, buried in a jumble of gang tags, was the graffiti of the white moon.

"Kevin."

Byrne stepped inside, followed the beam of light. He turned, found Jessica's eyes in the gloom. They had stood there before, as partners, at the threshold of a burgeoning evil, at a moment when something they thought they'd understood had become something bigger, something far more sinister, something that had redefined everything they'd believed about a case.

Standing outside, their breath formed vapor clouds in the night air. "ME's office won't be here for an hour or so," Byrne said.

"An hour?"

"Christmas in Philly," Byrne said. "Two other homicides already. They're stretched."

Byrne pointed to the victim's hands. "She's holding something."

Jessica looked closely. Something was in the woman's grasp. Jessica took a number of close-up pictures.

If they were to follow procedure to the letter, they would have to wait for the ME's office to pronounce the woman dead, and for a full set of photographs and perhaps video to be taken of the victim and the scene. But Philadelphia was not exactly following procedure this night-that bit about love thy neighbor came to mind, followed closely by that peace-on- earth business-and the detectives knew that the longer they waited, the more likely it was that precious information would be lost to the elements.

Byrne stepped closer, tried to gently pry apart the woman's fingers. Her fingertips responded to his touch. Full rigor had not set in.

At first glance it appeared that the victim had a ball of leaves or twigs in her cupped hands. In the harsh light it looked to be a dark brown material, definitely organic. Byrne stepped closer, set himself. He spread a large evidence bag on the woman's lap. Jessica tried to hold her Maglite steady. Byrne continued to pry apart the victim's grasp, slowly, one finger at a time. If the woman had scooped a ball of earth or compost from the ground during a struggle, it was possible that she had gotten important evidence from her killer lodged beneath her nails. There could even have been a piece of direct evidence in her hands-a button, a clasp, a piece of fabric. If something could immediately point to an individual of interest, such as hair or fiber or DNA evidence, the sooner they could begin looking for him the better.

Little by little, Byrne pulled back the woman's dead fingers. When he finally had four fingers back on her right hand, they saw something they did not expect to see. In death this woman was not holding a fistful of earth or leaves or twigs. In death she held a small brown bird. In the light thrown by the emergency lamps it appeared to be a sparrow, or perhaps a wren.

Byrne gently closed the victim's fingers. They would place a clear plastic evidence bag around them to preserve every trace of evidence. This was far beyond their ability to assess or analyze in situ.

Then something totally unexpected happened. The bird wiggled out of the dead woman's grip and flew away. It darted around inside the huge, shadowed space of the waterworks, the beat of its flitting wings resonating off the icy stone walls, chirping either in protest or relief. Then it was gone.

"Son of a bitch," Byrne yelled. "Fuck."

This was not good news for the team. They should have immediately bagged the corpse's hands and waited. The bird might have provided a host of forensic details, but even in its departure it yielded some information. It meant that the body could not have been there that long. The fact that the bird was still alive-perhaps preserved by the warmth of the cadaver-meant that the killer had posed this victim within the last few hours.

Jessica aimed her Maglite at the ground beneath the window. A few of the bird's feathers remained. Byrne pointed them out to a CSU officer, who picked them up with a pair of forceps and placed them in an evidence bag.

They would now wait for the ME's office.

Jessica walked to the bank of the river, looked out, then back at the body. The figure was perched in the window, high above the gentle slope that ran to the road, then more steeply to the soft bank of the river.

Another doll on a shelf, Jessica thought.

Like Kristina Jakos, this victim faced the river. Like Kristina Jakos, she had a painting of the moon nearby. There was little doubt that there would be another painting on her body, an image of the moon rendered in semen and blood.

The media showed up just before midnight. They clustered at the top of the cutoff, near the train station, behind the crime-scene tape. It always amazed Jessica how fast they could get to a crime scene. The story would make the morning editions of the paper.