Play Dead (12 page)

Jessica wondered if
he
wondered whether or not he had left a clue behind, a hair or fiber or fingerprint, trace evidence that would bring a knock on his door in the middle of the night, or a phalanx of 9 mm pistols to his car windows as he sat at a red light in Center City, daydreaming of his wretched life.

At 8:00 am Kevin Byrne entered the duty room. Jessica walked right by him, through the maze of corridors, into the hallway, not even sparing him a glance or a “good morning.” Byrne knew what it meant. He followed. When they were out of earshot of everyone in the room, alone in the hall, Jessica pointed an accusatory finger, said, “We have to talk about this.” They had left Fairmount Park around three o’clock that morning, neither having said a word.

Byrne looked at the floor for a moment, then back into her eyes. Jessica waited. Byrne said nothing. Jessica tossed both hands skyward.
Still
nothing. She pressed. “So, you were seeing her?” she asked, somehow keeping her voice low.
“Yes,” Byrne said. “On and off.”
“Okay. Was it on or off when she went missing?”
“It was over for a long time by then.” Byrne leaned against the wall, hands in pockets. To Jessica, it looked like he hadn’t slept a wink. His suit coat was wrinkled, his tie creased. Kevin Byrne was no fashion plate, but Jessica had long ago learned that he felt a sense of responsibility to the image of the job—the history of the people who called themselves Philadelphia police officers—and that sense of responsibility included clean shirts, pressed suits, and shined shoes. Today he was 0 for 3.
“You want the backstory?” he asked.
She didn’t and she did. “I do.”
Byrne took a moment, fingering the V-shaped scar over his right eye, a scar he had gotten many years earlier, a result of a vicious attack by a homicide suspect. “Well, we both kind of knew early on it wasn’t going anywhere,” he said. “We probably knew that on the first date. We

99 BADLANDS

were polar opposites. We were never exclusive to each other, we always saw other people. By last fall we were pretty much at the ‘let’s grab some lunch’ stage. After that is was Rite Aid greeting cards and drunken voicemails in the middle of the night.”

Jessica absorbed the details. The “backstory” Byrne was describing didn’t go back far enough. Or deep enough. Not for her. She believed she knew a great deal about her partner—his unyielding love for his daughter Colleen, his commitment to his job, the way he took the grief of a victim’s family and made it his own—but she had long ago conceded that there were many parts of his personal life from which she was, and would always be, excluded. For instance, she had never actually been inside his apartment. On the sidewalk directly below his living room window, yes. Parked around the corner, discussing a case, many times. Actually
inside
Kevin Byrne’s current living quarters, no.

“Did the FBI contact you when she disappeared?”
“Yeah,” Byrne said. “Terry Cahill. Remember him?”
Jessica did. Cahill had consulted with the PPD on a particularly

gruesome case a few years earlier. He had nearly gotten killed for his efforts. “Yeah.”
“I told him what I knew.”
Silence. Jessica wanted to punch him for this. He was making her dig. Maybe it was her penance for asking. “Which was
what
?”
“The who, the what, the where. I told him the truth, Jess. I hadn’t seen or talked to Eve Galvez for months.”
“When you spoke to Cahill, did he ask your opinion?”
“Yeah,” Byrne said. “I told him I thought Eve might have been caught up in the life. I knew she was drinking too much. I didn’t think it was serious. Besides, I’ve had my jags. I’m in no position to judge.”
“So, how come I didn’t know anything about this?” she asked. “I mean, I knew an investigator from the DA’s office had gone missing, but I didn’t know you knew her. I didn’t know you were interviewed. Why didn’t you tell me?” She hoped she didn’t sound matronly. On the other hand, she didn’t really care. She had an obligation.
Byrne took what seemed like a full minute. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Jess.”
“Yeah, well,” Jessica said, in lieu of something pithy or clever. She tried to think of something else to ask. She couldn’t. Or maybe she realized she had pushed this line of inquiry far enough. She didn’t like the position she found herself in. Hell, she had learned 90 percent of what she knew on the job from Kevin Byrne, and here she was putting him on the spot.
At that moment a pair of uniformed officers walked out of the unit, toward the elevators. They made brief eye contact with Jessica and Byrne, nodded a good morning, moved on. They knew what the hallway was for.
“We’ll continue this later, right?” Jessica asked.
“I’ve got a half- day off, remember?”
She had forgotten. Byrne had put in for it a while back. He had also been a little mysterious about it, so she hadn’t pressed. “Tomorrow then.”
“By the way, have we gotten the lab results on the remains?” “Just the preliminaries. The heart in the old fridge was human. It belonged to a female, twelve to twenty- five years old.”
“How long has it been in that specimen jar?”
“There’s no way to tell with any accuracy, not without a hell of a lot more tests,” Jessica said. “Preserved is preserved, I guess. ME’s office thinks it’s less than a year. They also say it was rather inexpertly removed, so this is probably not something that was stolen from a med school laboratory. So, until we find a body to match this organ, the case is going on a shelf.”

EIGHTEEN
T

hey came from Scranton and Wilkes- Barre, from York and State College and Erie, from points south, west, east, north. They came with the intention of making it big, with the intention of disappearing completely, or with no intention at all. Except, perhaps, finding the love they both ran from and sought. They came with paperbacks and Diet Cokes in hand, with mini Bic lighters in the small change pockets of their jeans, with mysterious female treasures tucked into the folds of their backpacks and purses, raw materials unseen and perplexing to even the brightest of the male species. They got on their buses and trains in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Youngstown, in Indianapolis and Newark. They hitched rides from Baltimore and D.C. and Richmond. They smelled of the road. They smelled of Daddy and cigarettes and cheap food and even cheaper perfume. They smelled of hunger. Of desire.

They had so many styles—from Goth to grunge, from Barbie to baby doll—yet they seemed to have just one heart, one thing that united them in their differences. They all needed tending. They all needed loving care.

Some, of course, more than others.

Joseph Swann sat near the periodicals room of the main branch of the Free Library. There were fifty- four branches citywide, but Swann preferred the main branch for its size, for the way it diminished a patron by proportion. He preferred it for its choice.

The library also attracted runaways. It was indeed a free space, and in summer the air-conditioning was splendidly cool. Along the parkway, from City Hall to the art museum, they could often be seen blending in with students and tourists. Locals rarely walked the sidewalks here, along Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a wide tree- lined boulevard fashioned after the Champs- Élysées in Paris. In summer it was packed with sightseers.

Swann was one of the Philadelphians who did come here often. In addition to the library he also frequented the Rodin Museum, the Franklin Institute, the steps of the art museum, which reminded him of the
Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti,
the Spanish Steps in Rome. Here, as there, people lunched on the steps, lingered, romanced, photographed.

But for the night children, the Free Library was a place to spend a few quiet hours. As long as you were relatively quiet, and you looked to be studying or researching something, you were left alone.

And it was for this reason that Swann was rarely unaccompanied in his quest, regardless of the venue. There were others, so many others, he had seen over the years. Men who came for their own dark purposes. Men who lingered too long near restrooms and fast- food restaurants located near middle schools. Men who parked on suburban streets, maps deceptively in hand for cover, side and rearview mirrors adjusted toward sidewalks and playgrounds.

There, right now, stood just such a man. He was younger than Swann, perhaps in his late twenties. He had long, thin hair pulled back into a ponytail, tucked into his shirt. Swann pegged the man by the cant of his lascivious leer, the angle of his hips, the nervous fingers. He was covertly watching a girl at one of the catalog computers. The girl was adorable in her matching pink T-shirt and jeans, but she was far too young. The man may have thought he was invisible to others, especially to the girls themselves, but not to Joseph Swann. Swann could smell the repulsiveness of his soul from across the room. He wanted to put the man in the world of a particularly gruesome illusion called
Strobika,
a deliciously shocking effect that involved sharpened spikes and—

Swann calmed himself. There was no time, nor need, for anything of the sort.

This man was nothing like him. This man was a predator, a pederast, a criminal. Few things made Swann angrier.
Over the months, as his mind fit these pieces into his puzzle, he had often wondered about the fates of those he had not chosen, those completely unaware just how close they had come to becoming part of his riddle. How close they had come to becoming part of
history.
Given his needs, the selection process was easier than one might think. Often, a single stroll through the library’s computer center, where patrons could sign on to the Internet, produced interesting results. One glance at what someone was looking at on the Web told him much about the person. If he followed, and was pressed for a topic, he could recall the subject of their search and weave it into conversation. It rarely failed to engage.
Swann glanced at his watch, then across the room, toward the magazine racks. Sunlight suddenly streamed through the windows, and he saw her. A new maiden, slouching in the corner armchair. His heart skipped a beat.
This one was about seventeen or so. She had coal black hair. She was Asian- American, perhaps of Japanese descent. She had the slightest overbite, her two front teeth resting on her lower lip as she twirled a strand of hair, deep in concentration on her periodical, biting gently down as the possibilities swirled, all the choices presented to one so young.
He watched her as she idly flipped through the pages. Every so often she glanced at the doorways, out the windows; watching, waiting, hoping. Her fingernails were raw and red. Her hair was three days or more from a shampoo.
At just after 9:20—Swann checked his watch again, these moments were valued in his memory—she put down the magazine, picked up another, then gazed across the room, a downy longing to which Swann instantly responded.
The girl rose from her table, returned the magazine to its rack, traversed the room, the lobby, and stepped onto Vine Street, her nutmeg skin aglow in the Philadelphia summer morning. She believed she had nowhere to go, it seemed, no destination known.
Joseph Swann knew differently.
He had just the place.

NINETEEN
T

he Savoy was open for breakfast, and fairly well known for its three- egg Greek omelets and paprika- laced home fries, but it also served liquor, starting at 7 am. When Jessica walked in she saw that Detective Jimmy Valentine was taking full advantage of the liquid portion of the menu. He was at a booth near the back.

Jessica traversed the restaurant. As she approached, Valentine rose. “Nice to meet you, Detective.”
“And you,” Jessica replied.
They shook hands. Jimmy Valentine was about forty. He had dark

Irish good looks, just beginning to crease; black hair tipping silver. He wore a navy suit with subtle gray stripes, decent quality, open white shirt, gold on both wrists. Good- looking in a South Philly way, Jessica thought. He’d had better days than this, though.

“It’s Balzano, right?”
“It is.”
“I know that name,” he said, holding their handshake just a beat too

long. “Why do I know that name?”

Jessica was getting used to this. If you were a woman on the job, and married to another cop, you were always in your husband’s shadow. Regardless of your own reputation or rank. You could be chief, you could be
commissioner,
and you would still be a half- step behind your spouse. Such was law enforcement. “My husband is on the job.”

Valentine let go of Jessica’s hand, as if it were suddenly radioactive. He snapped his fingers. “Vincent,” he said. “You’re married to Vincent Balzano?”

“For better or worse,” Jessica said.

Valentine laughed, winked. In another life, Jessica might have been charmed. “What are you having?” he asked.
“Just coffee.”
He caught a waitress’s eye. A few moments later Jessica had a cup in front of her.
“Thanks for seeing me,” she said.
Valentine mugged. He was a player. “Not a problem. But, like I said on the phone, I already talked to Detective Malone.”
“And, like I said on the phone, I appreciate that we’re keeping this off the record.”
Valentine nodded, tapped out a nervous paradiddle on the table. “What can I do you for, Detective?”
“How long have you been with the DA’s office?”
“Nine years,” Valentine said. There was an edge to his voice that implied he suddenly found this number to be a long time. Perhaps too long.
“And how long were you partnered with Eve Galvez?”
“Almost three years.”
Jessica nodded. “In all that time, did she make many enemies? I mean, more than the usual? Anyone who might have wanted to take the standard shit to the next level?”
Valentine thought. “Nobody stands out. We all get our threats, right? Eve was tough to read.”
“So what happened? I mean, when she went missing.”
Valentine drained his glass, called for another drink. “Well she had a week coming, right? The following Monday she just doesn’t show up. That’s about it.” He shrugged. “It had happened before.”
“Was she troubled?”
Valentine laughed. It was an empty sound. “You know anybody on the job who ain’t?”
“Point taken,” Jessica said. “When was the last time you saw her?”
Jessica expected some hesitation, some grasping at memory. Valentine did neither. “I can tell you exactly when it was,” he said. “I can tell