later they found her floating in the Delaware River.
Supposedly Matisse had been staying with his mother after his release from Curran-Fromhold. Detectives staked out Matisse's mother's apartment, but he never showed. The case went cold.
Byrne knew that he would see Matisse again one day.
Then, two years ago, on a freezing January night, a 911 call came in that a young woman was being attacked in an alleyway behind an abandoned movie theater in South Philadelphia. Byrne and Jimmy were eating dinner a block away and took the call. By the time they reached the scene, the alley was empty, but a blood trail led them inside.
When Byrne and Jimmy entered the theater, they found Gracie on the stage, alone. She had been brutally beaten. Byrne would never forget the tableau-Gracie's limp form on the stage in that frigid theater, steam rising from her body, her life force departing. While the EMS rescue was on the way, Byrne frantically tried to give her CPR. She had breathed once, a slight exhalation of air that had gone into his lungs, the existence leaving her body, entering his. Then, with a slight shudder, she died in his arms. Marygrace Devlin lived nineteen years, two months, and three days.
The Crime Scene Unit found a fingerprint on the scene. It belonged to Julian Matisse. With a dozen detectives on the case, and more than a little intimidation of the low-life crowd with whom Julian Matisse consorted, they found Matisse huddling in a closet in a burned-out row house on Jefferson Street, where they also found a glove covered in Gracie Devlin's blood. Byrne had to be restrained.
Matisse was tried and convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in the state penitentiary at Greene County.
After Gracie's murder, Byrne walked around for many months with the belief that Gracie's breath was still inside him, that her strength impelled him to do his job. For a long time, he felt as if it were the only clean part of him, the only piece of him that had not been sullied by the city.
Now Matisse was out, walking the streets, his face to the sun. The thought made Kevin Byrne sick. He dialed Paul DiCarlo's number.
'DiCarlo.'
'Tell me I heard your message wrong.'
'Wish I could, Kevin.'
'What happened?'
'You know about Phil Kessler?'
Phil Kessler had been a homicide detective for twenty-two years, a divisional detective ten years before that, a loose cannon who more than once had put a fellow detective in jeopardy with his inattention to detail or ignorance of procedure or general lack of nerve.
There were always a few guys in the Homicide Unit who were not very good around dead bodies, and they usually would do whatever they had to do to avoid going out to a crime scene. They made themselves available to go get warrants, round up and transport witnesses, work stakeouts. Kessler was just this sort of detective. He liked the idea of being a homicide detective, but the actual homicide itself freaked him out.
Byrne had worked only one job with Kessler as his primary partner, the case of a girl found in an abandoned gas station in North Philly. It turned out to be an overdose, not a homicide, and Byrne couldn't get away from the man fast enough.
Kessler had retired a year ago. Byrne had heard that the man had late- stage pancreatic cancer.
'I heard he was sick,' Byrne said. 'I don't know much more than that.'
'Well, the word is he doesn't have more than a few months,' DiCarlo said. 'Maybe not even that long.'
As much as Byrne didn't like Phil Kessler, he didn't wish such a painful end on anyone. 'I still don't know what this has to do with Julian Matisse.'
'Kessler went to the DA and told her that he and Jimmy Purify planted the bloody glove on Matisse. He gave a sworn statement.'
The room began to spin. Byrne had to steady himself. 'What the fuck are you talking about?'
'I'm only telling you what he said, Kevin.'
'And you believe him?'
'Well, number one, it's not my case. Number two, the Homicide Unit here is looking into it. And three, no. I don't believe him. Jimmy was the most stand-up cop I ever knew.'
'Then why does this have traction?'
DiCarlo hesitated. Byrne read the pause as meaning something even worse was coming. How was that possible? He found out. 'Kessler had a second bloody glove, Kevin. He turned it over. The gloves belonged to Jimmy.'
'It's pure fucking bullshit! It's a setup!'
'I know it. You know it. Anybody who ever rode with Jimmy knows it. Unfortunately, Conrad Sanchez is representing Matisse.'
Jesus, Byrne thought. Conrad Sanchez was a legend in the public defender's office, a world-class obstructionist, one of the few who'd decided long ago to make a career out of legal aid. Now in his fifties, he had been a public defender for more than twenty-five years. 'Is Matisse's mother still alive?'
'I don't know.'
Byrne never got a handle on Matisse's relationship with his mother, Edwina. He'd had his suspicions, though. When they were investigating Gracie's murder, they obtained a search warrant for her apartment. Matisse's room was decorated like a little boy's room: cowboy shades on the lamps, Star Wars posters on the walls, a Spider-Man bedspread.
'So he's out?'
'Yeah,' DiCarlo said. 'They released him two weeks ago pending the appeal.'
'Two weeks? Why the hell didn't I read about it?'
'This is not exactly a shining moment in the commonwealth's history. Sanchez found a sympathetic judge.'
'Do they have him on a monitor?'
'No.'
'This fucking city.' Byrne slammed his hand into the drywall, caving it in. There goes the security deposit, he thought. He didn't feel even a slight ripple of pain. Not at that moment, anyway. 'Where's he staying?'
'I don't know. We sent a pair of detectives out to his last-known, just to show him a little muscle, but he's in the wind.'
'That's just great,' Byrne said.
'Listen, I've got to be in court, Kevin. I'll call you later and we'll plot a strategy. Don't worry. We'll put him back. This charge against Jimmy is bullshit. House of cards.'
Byrne hung up, rose slowly, painfully to his feet. He grabbed his cane and walked across the living room. He looked out the window, watched the kids and their parents on the street.
For a long time, Byrne had thought that evil was a relative thing; that all sorts of evil walked the earth, each in its own shoes. Then he saw Gra- cie Devlin's body, and knew that the man who had done that monstrous thing was the embodiment of evil. All that hell would allow on this earth.
Now, after contemplating a day and a week and a month and a lifetime with nothing to do, Byrne had moral imperatives in front of him. All of a sudden there were people he had to see, things he had to do, regardless of how much pain he was in. He walked into the bedroom, pulled open the top drawer of his dresser. He saw Gracie's handkerchief, the small pink silk square.
There is a terrible memory in this cloth, he thought. It had been in Gracie's pocket when she was murdered. Gracie's mother had insisted Byrne take it the day Matisse was sentenced. He removed it from the drawer and-her screams echo in his head her warm breath enters his body her blood washes over him hot and glossy in the frigid night air-stepped back, his pulse now slamming in his ears, his mind deep in denial that what he had just felt was a recurrence of a frightful power he believed was part of his past.
The prescience was back.
Melanie Devlin stood at the small barbecue on the tiny back patio of her row house on Emily Street. The smoke rose lazily from the rusting grill, mingling with the thick, humid air. A long-empty bird feeder sat atop the crumbling back wall. The tiny terrace, like most so-called backyards in Philly, was barely big enough for two people.
