Play dead

TWENTY-SEVEN

Kevin Byrne crouched in the crawlspace, his sciatica besting the Vicodin in his system. It always did. At his height, just over six- three, he felt entombed by the damp, close walls.

Jessica was directing the scene out front.

Byrne looked at the three brightly colored boxes in front of him. Red. Yellow. Blue. Used-car lot pennant colors. Happy colors. The boxes-each had a small bronze doorknob and hinges-were closed now, but he had looked inside each. He wished he hadn't, but he'd been thinking that same thought since the first time he walked onto the scene of a violent homicide on the first night he spent in uniform. That night it was a shotgun triple in Juniata. Brains on the wall, guts on the coffee table, St. Elsewhere on the blood-splattered TV It never got better. A little easier sometimes, but never better.

The wooden boxes were covered in a layer of dust, disturbed only, he hoped, by the gloved hands of the two police officers who had been down here. Jessica and a uniformed officer named Maria Caruso.

Byrne studied the joints, the miters, the construction of these small coffins. They were expertly crafted. There was definitely a great deal of skill at work here.

In a few moments the crime scene unit would begin their collection of evidence in situ, then the victim would be transported to the medical examiner's office. The techs were outside the building now, drinking cold coffee and chatting, waiting for Detective Kevin Byrne's signal.

Byrne wasn't ready yet.

He looked at the placement of the boxes. They were not in a line, but were not placed at random either. They were precisely organized, it seemed, edges all but touching in a staggered pattern. The first box, the yellow one, was closest to the wall on the north side. Byrne made note of this. This was the direction in which the body was facing. He was experienced enough to know that you never knew what might be important, what pathology lurked in the disturbed mind of a psychopathic killer. The second box, the red one, was staggered to the left. The third box, a shade of royal blue, was in line with the first.

He examined the hardpack earth around the base of the wooden cubes. There were no obvious scrape marks indicating the boxes had been dragged. Earlier he had slipped a few gloved fingers under one corner of one of the boxes, tried to lift it. The box was not light. This meant that whoever had brought these boxes down here probably had to duckwalk them across the expanse. That took strength.

One thing was certain: This was not the primary crime scene. The victim had bled out long before she was put into these boxes and moved into this crawlspace. As far as he could tell, there was a small amount of dried blood in the boxes themselves, and none on the floor.

Before coming down, Byrne had borrowed a measuring tape from one of the techs, and measured the opening cut into the floor, then the size of the boxes. The opening was about two inches larger than the boxes in all directions.

Had the opening existed, and then the killer built the boxes to fit? Or was it the other way around? Or was it a lucky coincidence? Byrne doubted it. There were few coincidences in his line of work.

Byrne shifted his weight. His legs were killing him. He tried to straighten them, but he could not stand up more than a few inches, and he wasn't about to kneel down on a dirt floor. This was a relatively new suit. He tried steadying himself on the yellow box and — senses the killer coming in from the back. He brings down the boxes one at a time. He has a truck, or a van. He did not assemble the boxes here. They are heavy, cumbersome, but he manages. He has been here before, many times, knew about the access door, knew he would not be discovered. Why?

He brings the girl down in pieces, no middle, the middle is empty, no heart, heartless. He arranges the boxes, meticulous and precise in this dank and confined tomb. She is a runaway, his first? Second? Tenth? He has done this before, has collected a child of the night, long fingers, a man's clever hands on a box of bones, the smoke of a funeral pyre, light my fire…

Byrne rocked back on his heels, sat down hard. His head throbbed.

The headaches were returning.

When Byrne emerged from the building he pulled off his latex gloves, dropped them in a trash can. He saw Jessica across the street, leaning against her car, arms crossed. She tapped a finger on her bicep. She looked wired, manic. She wore a pair of amber Serengeti sunglasses.

Before coming out of the crawlspace, Byrne had dry-swallowed a pair of Vicodin, his last two. He'd have to make a call.

The outside air was a melange of acrid exhaust fumes and the rich tang of barbecue.

Still no rain.

"What do you think?" Jessica asked.

Byrne shrugged, stalling. His head seemed ready to implode. "Did you talk to the officer who discovered the victim?" "I did."

"Do you think she contaminated the scene in any way?"

Jessica shook her head. "No. She's sharp. She's young, but she knows what she's doing."

Byrne glanced back at the building. "So, why this place? Why here?"

"Good question."

They were being led around North Philadelphia. There was no doubt about that, and few things made detectives angrier. Except, perhaps, having a murderer go underground and never get caught.

Who would do such a thing? After the killer's rage had died, after the fire went out, why not dispose of the remains in plastic bags, or dump them in the river? Hell, Philadelphia had two very usable rivers for such purposes. Not to mention Wissahickon Creek. The PPD fished bodies, and parts of bodies, out of the rivers all the time.

Byrne had run into dismemberment a few times when the victim was killed by one of the various mobs in Philly-the Italians, the Colombians, the Mexicans, the Jamaicans. When it came to hyper- violent gangland homicide, all styles were served in the City of Brotherly Love.

But this had nothing to do with the mob.

Two runaways. One drowned, one dismembered.

Was there enough to tie this to the murder of Caitlin O'Riordan? They were a long way from getting any forensic details-hair, fibers, blood evidence, fingerprints-but the phone call to the CIU hotline and the cryptic clue in the Bible could not be ignored.

"This is one killer."

"We don't know that yet," Byrne said, playing devil's advocate.

Jessica uncrossed her arms, recrossed them. Now she tapped both forefingers on both biceps. "Yeah, well. I know we're in the Badlands, partner, but this is beyond the pale. Way beyond." She took off her sunglasses, tossed them into the car. "That was Monica Renzi's heart. You know it and I know it. The DNA's going to match. It's going to hit the papers, and then hell will break its subterranean bonds."

Byrne just nodded. She was probably right.

"Want to know what happened?" she continued. "I'll tell you what happened. This sick bastard killed Monica, cut her up, stuck her in boxes, then put her heart in a jar and put it in that refrigerator. Then he put his psycho clue in that Bible, hoping we would figure out the Jeremiah Crosley ruse and we would come here to find his little treasure. We did. Now he's out there having a good laugh at how clever he is."

Byrne bought into the entire theory.

"He's targeting runaways, Kevin. Lost kids. First this girl, then Caitlin. He just hid Monica Renzi a little too well. When no one found her, he had to ratchet up the game. He's still out there and he's going to do it again. Fuck him, fuck this job, and fuck this place."

Byrne knew that his partner sometimes ran on emotion-she was Italian, it came with the genes-but he rarely saw her get this worked up at a scene. Stress eventually got to everyone. He put a hand on her shoulder. "You okay?"

"Oh, yeah. Top of the world, Ma."

"Look. We're going to get this freak. Let's get the lab work back on this one. There are a million ways to fuck up with a crime like this. This guy may be evil, but he's no genius. They never are."

Jessica stared at the ground for a few moments, simmering, then reached into the car, pulled out a folder. She opened it, retrieved a sheet. "Look at this."

She handed Byrne the paper. It was a photocopy of the activity log for the O'Riordan case.

"What am I looking for?"

She tapped the page. "These three names." She pointed to a trio of names on the log. They were first names, nicknames at that, no last names. Three people who were interviewed on the day after Caitlin O'Riordan's body was found. "I can't believe I didn't see it before."

"What about them?" Byrne asked.

"They were interviewed back in May. Nothing was typed up, and the notes are missing."

Byrne saw that all the interviews were conducted by Detective Freddy Roarke. The late Freddy Roarke. "You checked the binder?" he asked. "There's no notes?"

"Nope. Not for these three people. Everything else is there. These notes are gone."

As a rule, when a detective conducted a neighborhood survey, or an interview in the field, he or she made handwritten notes in their official notebook, which was called their work product. Most detectives also carried a personal notebook, which was not included in the file. The work product, when filled, was put in the binder, which was the official and only file on a homicide case. If a detective wrote notes for two or three different jobs, the pages would be torn out and placed in the corresponding file. If the interviews became important, they were typed up. If not, the notes became the only record of the interview.

"What about Freddy's partner?" Jessica asked. "What was his name?"

"Pistone," Byrne said. "Butchie Pistone."

"Butchie. Jesus. You know him well?"

"Not well," Byrne said. "He was kind of a hard-ass. He was a hotshot when I was coming up, but it all went to shit after he was involved in a questionable shoot. He was comatose near the end. Drinking on the job, chewing Altoids by the case."

"Is he still around?"

"Yeah," Byrne said. "He owns a bar on Lehigh." Jessica glanced at her watch, at the entrance to 4514 Shiloh Street. CSU was just getting started. "Let's go talk to him."

As they pulled away, a pair of news teams arrived on scene. This was going to make the evening news.