absolutely love cats. Love 'em. In fact, we have three of them. Coltrane, Dizzy, and Snickers. That's their names. I've been scratched, oh, at least a dozen times in the last few years. None of the scratches looked anything like yours.'
Patrick looked at the floor for a few moments. 'She's not a bobcat, Detective. Just a big old tabby.'
'Huh,' Shepherd said. He rolled on. 'By the way, what sort of vehicle do you drive?' John Shepherd, of course, already knew the answer to this question.
'I have a few different vehicles. I mostly drive a Lexus.'
'LS? GS? ES? SportCross?' Shepherd asked.
Patrick smiled. 'I see you know your luxury cars.'
Shepherd returned the smile. Half of it, anyway. 'I can tell a Rolex from a TAG Heuer, too,' he said. 'Can't afford one of them, either.' 'I drive a 2004 LX.'
'That's the SUV, right?'
'I guess you could call it that.'
'What would you call it?'
'I would call it an LUV,' Patrick said.
'As in Luxury Utility Vehicle, right?'
Patrick nodded.
'Gotcha,' Shepherd said. 'Where is that vehicle right now?'
Patrick hesitated. 'It's in the back parking lot here. Why?'
'Just curious,' Shepherd said. 'It's a high-end vehicle. I just wanted to make sure it was safe.'
'I appreciate it.'
'And the other vehicles?'
'I have a 1969 Alfa Romeo and a Chevy Venture.'
'That's a van?'
'Yes.'
Shepherd wrote this down.
'Now, on Tuesday morning, according to records at St. Joseph's, you didn't go on duty until nine o'clock in the morning,' Shepherd said. 'Is that accurate?'
Patrick thought about it. 'I believe it is.'
'Yet your shift began at eight. Why were you late?'
'Actually, it was because I had to take the Lexus in for service.'
'Where did you take it?'
There was a slight rap on the door, then the door swung open.
In the doorway Ike Buchanan stood next to a tall, imposing man in an elegant Brioni pin-striped suit. The man had perfectly layered silver hair, a Cancun tan. His briefcase cost more than either detective made in a month.
Abraham Gold had represented Patrick's father, Martin, in a high- profile malpractice suit in the late 1990s. Abraham Gold was as expensive as they come. And as good as they come. As far as Jessica knew, Abraham Gold had never lost a case.
'Gentlemen,' he began, using his best courtroom baritone. 'This conversation is over.'
'What do you think?' Buchanan asked.
The entire task force looked at her. She searched her mind for not only the right thing to say, but the right words to say it. She truly was at a loss. From the moment that Patrick had walked into the Roundhouse an hour or so earlier, she knew this moment would arrive. Now that it was here, she had no idea how to deal with it. The notion that someone she knew might be responsible for such horror was bad enough. The notion that it was someone she knew intimately-or thought she did-seemed to immobilize her brain.
If the unthinkable was true, that Patrick Farrell was indeed the Rosary Killer, from a purely a professional standpoint, what would it say about her as a judge of character?
'I think it's possible.'There. It was said out loud.
They had, of course, run a background check on Patrick Farrell. Except for a pot misdemeanor in his sophomore year in college, and a penchant for driving well above the speed limit, his record was clean.
Now that Patrick had retained counsel, they would have to step up the investigation. Agnes Pinsky had said that he could've been the man she saw knocking on Wilhelm Kreuz's door. A man who worked at a shoe repair shop across from Kreuz's apartment building thought he recalled a cream- colored Lexus SUV parked out front two days earlier. He wasn't sure.
Regardless, there would now be a pair of detectives on Patrick Far- rell 24/7.
65
FRIDAY, 8:00 PM
The pain was exquisite, a slow rolling wave that inched up the back of his neck, then down. He popped a Vicodin, chased it with rancid water from the tap in the men's room of a gas station in North Philly.
It was Good Friday. The day of the crucifixion.
Byrne knew that, one way or another, this was all probably coming to an end soon, probably tonight; and with it, he knew he would face something inside himself that had been there for fifteen years, something dark and violent and troubling.
He wanted everything to be in order.
He needed symmetry.
He had one stop to make first. The cars were parked two deep on both sides of the street. In this part of the city, if the street was blocked, you didn't call the police or knock on doors.You definitely didn't want to blow your horn. Instead, you quietly put your car in reverse, and found another way.
The storm door of the ramshackle Point Breeze row house was open, all the lights burning inside. Byrne stood across the street, sheltered from the rain beneath the tattered awning of a shuttered bakery. Through the bay window across the street he could see the three pictures that graced the wall over the strawberry velvet Spanish modern sofa. Martin Luther King, Jesus, Muhammad Ali.
Right in front of him, in the rusted Pontiac, the kid sat alone in the backseat, completely oblivious to Byrne, smoking a blunt, rocking gently to whatever was coming through his headphones. After a few minutes he butted the blunt, opened the car door, and got out.
He stretched, flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt, straightened his baggies.
'Hey,' Byrne said. The pain in his head had settled into a dull metronome of agony, clicking loud and rhythmically at either temple. Still, it felt as if the mother of all migraines was just a car horn or flashbulb away.
The kid turned, surprised but not scared. He was about fifteen, tall and rangy, with the kind of body that would serve him pretty well in playground hoops, but take him no further. He wore the full Sean John uniform-full- cut jeans, quilted leather jacket, fleece hoodie.
The kid sized up Byrne, assessed the danger, the opportunity. Byrne kept his hands in plain sight.
'Yo,' the kid finally offered.
'Did you know Marius?' Byrne asked.
The kid gave him the twice-over. Byrne was way too big to mess with.
'MG was my boy,'the kid finally said. He flashed a JBM sign.
Byrne nodded. This kid could still go either way, he thought. There was a simmering intelligence behind his now bloodshot eyes. But Byrne got the feeling the kid was too busy fulfilling the world's expectations of him.
Byrne reached slowly inside his coat-slowly enough to let this kid know there was nothing coming. He removed the envelope. The envelope was of a size and shape and heft that could only be one thing.
'His mother's name is Delilah Watts?' Byrne asked. It was more like a statement of fact.
The kid glanced at the row house, at the bright bay window. A thin, dark-skinned black woman in oversized gradient sunglasses and a deep auburn wig dabbed at her eyes as she received mourners. She was no more than
