eyes. Although she was somewhat overweight, her clothes were tailored with an architectural precision. She wore a dark olive linen suit and a honey-colored pashmina.
Byrne moved on. 'How long did Stephanie work here?'
'About a year. She came here right out of college.'
'Where did she go to school?'
'Temple.'
'Did she have any problems with anyone here at work?'
'Stephanie? Hardly. Everybody liked her and she liked everyone. I don't remember a cross word ever coming out of her mouth.'
'What did you think when she didn't show up for work last week?'
'Well, Stephanie had a lot of sick days coming. I thought she took the day off, even though it was unlike her not to call in. The next day I called her cell phone, left a few messages. She never got back to me.'
Andrea reached for a tissue, dabbed her eyes, perhaps now realizing why her phone never rang.
Jessica made a few notes. No cell phone had been found in the Saturn or near the crime scene. 'Did you call her house?'
Andrea shook her head, her lower lip beginning to tremble. Jessica knew that the dam was about to break.
'What can you tell me about her family?' Byrne asked.
'I think there's just her mother. I don't recall her ever talking about her father, or any brothers or sisters.'
Jessica glanced at Stephanie's desk. In addition to the pen caddy and neatly stacked file folders, there was a silver-framed five-by-six photograph of Stephanie and an older woman. In this picture-smiling, standing in front of the Wilma Theater on Broad Street-Jessica thought the young woman looked happy. She found it hard to reconcile the photo with the image of the brutalized corpse she had seen in the trunk of the Saturn.
'This is Stephanie and her mother?' Byrne asked, pointing to the photo on the desk.
'Yes.'
'Have you ever met her mother?'
'No,' Andrea said. She reached for a tissue from Stephanie's desk. She dabbed at her eyes.
'Did Stephanie have a bar or a restaurant she liked to go to after work?' Byrne asked. 'Anywhere she frequented?'
'Sometimes we'd go to the Friday's next to the Embassy Suites on the parkway. If we felt like dancing we'd go to Shampoo.'
'I have to ask this,' Byrne said. 'Was Stephanie gay or bi?'
Andrea almost snorted. 'Uh, no.'
'Did you go down to Penn's Landing with Stephanie?'
'Yes.'
'Did anything unusual happen?'
'I'm not sure what you mean.'
'Was anybody bothering her? Following her?'
'I don't think so.'
'Did you see her do anything out of the ordinary?' Byrne asked.
Andrea thought for a few moments. 'No. We were just hanging around. Hoping maybe to see Will Parrish or Hayden Cole.'
'Did you see Stephanie talking to anyone?'
'I wasn't really paying attention. But I think she did talk to a guy for a while. Men were always coming on to her.'
'Can you describe the guy?'
'White guy. Flyers cap. Sunglasses.'
Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance. This fit with Little Jake's recollection. 'How old?'
'No idea. I really didn't get that close.'
Jessica showed her a picture of Adam Kaslov. 'Could this be the guy?'
'I don't know. Maybe. I just remember thinking that the guy wasn't her type.'
'What was her type?' Jessica asked, flashing back to Vincent's routine. She imagined everyone had a type.
'Well, she was pretty picky about the men she dated. She always went for the well-dressed guy. Chestnut Hill types.'
'Was this guy she was talking to part of the crowd, or was he part of the production company?' Byrne asked.
Andrea shrugged. 'I really don't know.'
'Did she say she knew this guy? Or maybe that she gave him her number?'
'I don't think she knew him. And I'd be really surprised if she gave him her phone number. Like I said. Not her type. But then again, maybe he was just dressed down. I just didn't get a really close look at him.'
Jessica made a few more notes. 'We'll need the names and contact information for everyone who works here,' she said.
'Sure.'
'Would you mind if we looked through Stephanie's desk?'
'No,' Andrea said. 'It's okay.'
While Andrea Cerrone drifted back into the reception area, afloat on her wave of shock and grief, Jessica snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She began her invasion of Stephanie Chandler's life.
The left-hand drawers held hanging files, mostly press releases and press clippings. A few folders were stuffed with proof sheets of black- and-white press photos. The photos were mostly of the stab-and-grab variety, the type of photo op where two people pose holding a check or a plaque or a citation of some sort.
The middle drawer held the nutrients of office life: paper clips, pushpins, mailing labels, rubber bands, brass brads, business cards, glue sticks.
In the top right-hand drawer was the urban survival kit of the young single workingwoman: a small tube of hand lotion, lip balm, a few samplers of perfume, mouthwash. There was also a spare pair of panty hose, a trio of books: The Brethren by John Grisham, Windows XP for Dummies, and a book titled White Heat, the unauthorized biography of Ian Whitestone, the Philadelphia-native director of Dimensions. Whitestone was directing the new Will Parrish movie, The Palace.
There were no notes, no threatening letters, nothing to tie Stephanie to the horror of what had happened to her on the videotape.
It was the picture on Stephanie's desk of her and her mother that had already begun to haunt Jessica. Not the fact that, in the picture, Stephanie was so vibrant and alive, but rather what the picture represented. A week earlier it was an artifact of a life, the proof of a living, breathing young woman, a human being with friends, ambition, sorrows, thoughts, and regrets. A human being with a future.
Now it was a document of the dead.
24
Faith Chandler lived in a plain but well-maintained brick-front row house on Fulton Street. Jessica and Byrne met with the woman in her small living room overlooking the street. Outside the window, a pair of five-year-olds played hopscotch under the watchful eyes of their grandmothers. Jessica wondered what the laughing children sounded like to Faith Chandler on this, the darkest day of her life.
'I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Chandler,' Jessica said. Even though she had had occasion to say these words a number of times since joining the Homicide Unit in April, it appeared that it was not going to get any easier to say them.
Faith Chandler was in her early forties, a woman who had the creased look of late nights and early mornings,
