Play dead

AUGUST 2008

Swann's showroom was in the Marketplace Design Center at Twenty- Fourth and Market Streets. The building was home to a number of showrooms for the design professional, including Roche-Bobois, Beatrice amp; Martin, Vita DeBellis.

Swann's small, elegant space on the fourth floor was called Galerie Cygne.

From the moment he had leased the space, eight months earlier, he knew he had found a home here. It was part of the vibrancy that was downtown Philadelphia, but not quite in the beating heart of Center City. It was easily accessible from every city on the eastern corridor of the United States-Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Atlanta. Most important, Marketplace Design Center was just across the Schuylkill River from the Thirtieth Street train station, the hub of Philadelphia's rail traffic, the home of Amtrak.

Elise, Monica, Caitlin, Katja. He needed just three more pieces to his puzzle.

One day after the woman was found buried in Fairmount Park, Joseph Swann stood in the gallery, looking out the window, thinking of all the lost children, the night children. They came to the city by the hundreds, filled with hope and fear and promise.

They arrived every hour.