Rosary girls

2 9

If Sophie Balzano was the most beautiful little girl in the world when she was wide awake, she was positively angelic in that moment when day became night, in that sweet twilight of half sleep.

Jessica had volunteered to take the first watch on Brian Parkhurst's home in Garden Court. She was told to go home, get some rest. As was Kevin Byrne. There were two detectives on the house.

Jessica sat on the edge of Sophie's bed, watching her.

They had taken a bubble bath together. Sophie had washed and conditioned her own hair. No help needed, thank you very much. They had dried off, shared a pizza in the living room. It was breaking a rule-they were supposed to eat at the table-but now that Vincent wasn't around, a lot of rules seemed to be slipping by the wayside.

No more of that, Jessica thought.

As she got Sophie ready for bed, Jessica found herself hugging her daughter a little more closely, a little more often. Even Sophie had given her the fish eye, as if to say: What's up, Mom? But Jessica knew what was up. The way Sophie felt at these times was her salvation.

And now that Sophie was tucked in, Jessica allowed herself to relax, to start to unwind from the horrors of the day.

A little.

"Story?" Sophie asked, her tiny voice riding on the wings of a big yawn.

"You want me to read a story?"

Sophie nodded.

"Okay," Jessica said.

"Not the Hoke," Sophie said.

Jessica had to laugh. The Hoke was Sophie's bogeyman du jour. It all began with a trip to the King of Prussia mall, about a year earlier, and the presence of the fifteen-foot-tall inflatable green Hulk they had erected to promote the release of the DVD. One look at the giant figure and Sophie had immediately taken trembling refuge behind Jessica's legs.

"What's that?" Sophie had asked, lips aquiver, fingers clutching Jessica's skirt.

"It's only the Hulk," Jessica had said. "It's not real."

"I don't like the Hoke."

It had gotten to the point where anything green and more than four feet tall inspired panic these days.

"We don't have any Hoke stories, honey," Jessica said. She'd figured that Sophie had forgotten about the Hoke. Some monsters died hard, it seemed.

Sophie smiled and scrunched down under the covers, ready for a Hoke-free dream.

Jessica went to the closet, got out the book box. She perused the current slate of toddler lit. The Runaway Bunny; You're the Boss, Baby Duck!; Curious George.

Jessica sat down on the bed, looked at the spines of the books. They were all for children two and under. Sophie was nearly three. She was actually too mature for The Runaway Bunny. Dear God, Jessica thought, she's growing up way too fast.

The book on the bottom was How Do I Put It On?, a primer on getting dressed. Sophie could easily dress herself, and had been able to do so for months. It had been a long time since she had put her shoes on the wrong feet, or slipped her OshKosh overalls on backward.

Jessica decided on Yertle the Turtle, the Dr. Seuss story. It was one of Sophie's favorites. Jessica's, too.

Jessica began to read, chronicling the adventures and life lessons of Yertle and the gang on the island of Sala-ma-Sond. After a few pages she looked over at Sophie, expecting to see a big smile.Yertle was a laugh riot, usually. Especially the part where he becomes King of the Mud.

But Sophie was already fast asleep.

Lightweight, Jessica thought with a smile.

She flipped the three-way bulb onto the lowest setting, bunched the covers around Sophie. She put the book back in the box.

She thought about Tessa Wells and Nicole Taylor. How could she not? She had the feeling that these girls would not be far from her conscious thoughts for a long time.

Had their mothers sat on the edges of their beds like this, marveling at the perfection of their daughters? Had they watched them sleep, thanking God for every breath in, and every breath out?

Of course they had.

Jessica looked at the photo frame on Sophie's nightstand, the Precious Moments frame covered in hearts and bows. There were six photos displayed. Vincent and Sophie at the shore when Sophie was just over a year old. Sophie wore a floppy orange bonnet and sunglasses. Her chubby little legs were caked with wet sand. There was a picture of Jessica and Sophie in the backyard. Sophie was holding the one and only radish they got out of the container garden that year. Sophie had planted the seed, watered the plant, harvested her crop. She had insisted on eating the radish, even though Vincent had warned her she wouldn't like it. Being a trouper, and stubborn as a little mule, Sophie had tasted the radish, trying not to make a face. Eventually her face went cabbage-patch with the bitterness, and she spit it into a paper towel. That marked the end of her agricultural curiosity.

The picture in the lower right-hand corner was of Jessica's mother, taken when Jessica had been a toddler herself. Maria Giovanni looking spectacular in a yellow sundress, her tiny daughter on her knee. Her mother looked so much like Sophie. Jessica wanted Sophie to know her grandmother, although Maria was barely a lucid memory to Jessica these days, more like an image glimpsed through a glass block.

She flipped off Sophie's light, sat in the dark.

Jessica had been on the job two full days, and it already seemed like months. The entire time she had been on the force, she had looked at homicide detectives the way many cops did: They only had one job to do. Divisional detectives handled a much broader range of crimes. As the saying goes, a homicide is just an aggravated assault gone wrong.

Boy, was she mistaken.

If this was only one job to do, it was enough.

Jessica wondered, as she had every day for the past three years, if it was fair to Sophie that she was a cop, that she put her life on the line every day when she left the house. She had no answer.

Jessica went downstairs, checked the front and the back door to the house for the third time. Or was it the fourth?

She was off on Wednesday, but she hadn't the slightest idea what to do with herself. How was she supposed to relax? How was she supposed to go about her life when two young girls had been brutally murdered? Right now she didn't care about the wheel, the duty roster. She didn't know a cop who would. At this point, half the force would donate their overtime to take this son of a bitch down.

Her father always had his yearly Easter get-together on Wednesday of Easter Week. Maybe that would get her mind off things. She would go and try to forget about the job. Her father always had a way of putting things in perspective for her.

Jessica sat on the couch, ran through the cable channels five or six times. She turned the set off. She was just about to climb into bed with a book when the phone rang. She really hoped it wasn't Vincent. Or maybe hoped it was.

It wasn't.

"Is this Detective Balzano?"

It was a man's voice. Loud music in the background. Disco beat.

"Who is calling?" Jessica asked.

The man didn't answer. Laughter and ice cubes in glasses. He was in a bar.

"Last chance," Jessica said.

"It's Brian Parkhurst."

Jessica glanced at the clock, noted the time on a notepad she kept near the phone. She looked at the screen on her caller ID. Private number.

"Where are you?" Her voice sounded high and nervous. Reedy.

Calm,Jess.

"Not important," Parkhurst said.

"It kinda is," Jessica said. Better. Conversational.

"I'm doing the talking."

"That's good, Dr. Parkhurst. Really. Because we'd really like to talk to you."

"I know."

"Why don't you come to the Roundhouse? I'll meet you there. We can talk."

"I'd rather not."

"Why?"

"I'm not a stupid man, Detective. I know you were at my house."

He was slurring his words.

"Where are you?" Jessica asked a second time.

No answer. Jessica heard the music morph into a Latin disco beat. She made another note. Salsa club.

"Meet me," Parkhurst said. "There are things you need to know about these girls."

"Where and when?"

"Meet me at The Clothespin. Fifteen minutes."

Next to salsa club she wrote: within 15 min. of city hall.

The Clothespin was the huge, Claes Oldenburg sculpture at the Center Square Plaza, right next to city hall. In the old days, people in Philly would say Meet me at the eagle at Wanamaker, the late, great department store with the mosaic of the eagle in the floor. Everyone knew the eagle at Wanamaker's. Now, it was The Clothespin.

Parkhurst added: "And come alone."

"Not gonna happen, Dr. Parkhurst."

"If I see anyone else there, I'm leaving," he said. "I'm not talking to your partner."

Jessica didn't blame Parkhurst for not wanting to be in the same room as Kevin Byrne at this point. "Give me twenty minutes," she said.

The line went dead.

Jessica called Paula Farinacci who, once again came through for her. There was certainly a special place in Babysitter Heaven for Paula. Jessica bundled a drowsy Sophie into her favorite blanket and shuttled her three doors down. When she got back home, she called Kevin Byrne on his cell phone, got his voice mail. She called him at home. Ditto.

Come on, partner, she thought.

I need you.

She put on jeans and running shoes, her rain slicker. She grabbed her cell phone, popped a fresh mag into her Glock, snapped on her holster, and headed into Center City.

Jessica waited near the corner of Fifteenth and Market Streets in the pouring rain. She decided not to stand directly beneath The Clothespin sculpture for all the obvious reasons. She didn't need to be a sitting target.

She glanced around the square. Few pedestrians were out, due to the storm. The lights on Market Street formed a shimmering red-and-yellow watercolor on the pavement.

When she was small, her father used to take her and Michael to Center City and the Reading Terminal Market for cannoli from Termini's. Granted, the original Termini's in South Philly was only a few blocks from their house, but there was something about riding SEPTA downtown and walking to the market that made the cannoli taste better. It still did.

In those days they used to saunter up Walnut Street after Thanksgiving, window-shopping at all the exclusive shops. They could never afford anything they saw in the windows, but the beautiful displays had sent her little-girl fantasies adrift.

So long ago, Jessica thought.

The rain was relentless.

A man approached the sculpture, snapping Jessica out of her reverie. He wore a green rain slicker, hood up, hands in pocket. He seemed to linger near the foot of the giant art piece, scanning the area. From where Jessica stood, he looked to be Brian Parkhurst's height. As to weight and hair color, it was impossible to tell.

Jessica drew her weapon, kept it behind her back. She was just about to head over when the man suddenly walked down into the subway stop.

Jessica drew a deep breath, holstered her weapon.

She watched the cars circle the square, headlights cutting the rain like cat's eyes.

She called Brian Parkhurst's cell phone number.

Voice mail.

She tried Kevin Byrne's cell phone.

Ditto.

She pulled the hood of her rain slicker tighter.

And waited.