Play dead

FIFTY-NINE

They met in the duty room. A suspect sketch was being run off at that moment, and would be distributed to every sector car in the division on the next shift. They would not be releasing it to the media for a while, but that did not mean it wouldn't leak.

The K-9 officer and his dog had tracked to a bank of portable toilets. There, in one of the stalls, they found a pile of men's clothing stuck into the holding tank, along with what appeared to be the young officer's service weapon. A CSU team was en route to the site to begin the unenviable task of collecting evidence.

At just after noon, a detective walked into the unit. It was Tony Park. Park was in his late forties, one of only a handful of Korean- American detectives in the department. There were few people better with a database or spreadsheet. No one was better on the Internet.

"I've been running missing persons of an age along with unidentified DOAs. The DOA data was slim, but, as you might imagine, the missing-person files were huge. Why do so many kids want to come to Philly? Why not New York?"

"Got to be the cheesesteaks," someone said. Then, as expected, from around the room:

"Which means John's Roast Pork."

"Which means Sonny's Famous."

"Which means Tony Luke's."

Park shook his head. "Every friggin' time, the same argument," he said. "Anyway, one of the files jumped high. Last December, a sixteen-year-old girl from Chicago went missing. Her name was Elise Beausoleil. Elise told one of her friends that she was coming to Philadelphia. Her father, who owns a multinational company called Sunshine Technologies-and also happens to be golfing buddies with the governor of Illinois-makes a call to the governor, who in turn calls his friend, the governor of our fair commonwealth, who in turn puts pressure on the mayor and the commissioner to turn over every rock and bucket to find this kid. You guys remember this case, don't you?"

The homicide detectives look at each other, shrugged. The truth was, homicide was a fairly insulated unit. If it wasn't a dead body, you pretty much didn't see it.

"Anyway, detectives in East division discovered that Elise got a part-time job doing door-to-door surveys for some human-rights group. They interviewed the director and some of the people who worked there. They remembered Elise. They turned up a route she worked. They said that after New Year's Day she never showed up again. They all just figured she went home. Her father put on some private detectives, but they turned up zilch."

"Philly guys?" Byrne asked.

"Two from Philly, two from Chicago."

"When did he call them in?"

"Around March."

"Was she on the FBI site?"

"Oh, yeah." Park reached into the folder, pulled out a photograph. "This is her."

He put the picture on the desk. The girl was a beauty-almond- shaped eyes, cropped dark hair, a long swanlike neck.

The detectives looked at the route Elise had taken on her surveys.

"How deep was the canvass?" Jessica asked.

"Like the Mariana Trench. I think they hit six hundred doors."

"I take it there were no leads."

"Not a one."

The Collector, Jessica thought, a little dismayed that the nickname had seeped into her consciousness. She looked at Elise Beausoleil's beautiful dark eyes, wondering if the last person this girl had seen was the man they so desperately sought.