had hits. They found something called the ADI 2018 Process Ion Analyzer. It rang no bells. 'Keep looking,' Jessica said. BYRNE STARED AT the letters. They meant something to him, but he had no idea what. Not yet. Then, suddenly, the images touched the edge of his memory. ADI. ION. The vision came back on a long ribbon of remembrance, a vague recollection of his youth. He closed his eyes and-heard the sound of steel on steel… eight years old now… running with Joey Principe from Reed Street… Joey was fast… hard to keep up…felt the rush of wind, spiked with diesel fumes… ADI… breathed the dust of a July afternoon… ION… heard the compressors fill the main reservoirs with high-pressure airHe opened his eyes.
'Play the audio again,' Byrne said.
Mateo brought the file up, clicked PLAY. The sound of the hissing air filled the small room. All eyes turned to Kevin Byrne. 'I know where he is,' Byrne said.
The South Philadelphia train yards were a huge, foreboding parcel of land at the southeastern end of the city, bounded by the Delaware River and I-95, along with the navy shipyards to the west and League Island to the south. The yards handled the bulk of the city's freight and cargo, while Amtrak and SEPTA handled the commuter lines out of the Thirtieth Street station across town.
Byrne knew the South Philly yards well. When he was growing up, he and his buddies would meet at the Greenwich Playground and ride their bikes down to the yards, usually sneaking onto League Island along Kitty Hawk Avenue, then onto the yards. They'd spend the day there, watching the trains come and go, counting boxcars, throwing things into the river. In his youth, the South Philly rail yards were Kevin Byrne's Omaha Beach, his Martian landscape, his Dodge City, a place he believed to be magic, a place he believed to be inhabited by Wyatt Earp, Sergeant Rock, Tom Sawyer, Eliot Ness.
Today he believed it to be a burial ground. THe K-9 Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department worked out of the training academy on State Road, and had more than three dozen dogs under its command. The dogs-all male, all German shepherds-were trained in three disciplines, that being the detection of cadavers, narcotics, and explosives. At one time there were well over one hundred animals in the unit, but a shifting of jurisdictions had reduced the force to a tightly knit, highly trained squad of fewer than forty men and dogs.
Officer Bryant Paulson was a twenty-year veteran of the unit. His dog, a seven-year-old shepherd named Clarence, was trained as a cadaver dog, but also worked patrol. Cadaver dogs were attuned to any and all human smells, not just that of the deceased. Like all police dogs, Clarence was a specialist. If you put a pound of marijuana in the middle of a field, Clarence would walk right by it. If the quarry was human- dead or alive-he would work all day and all night to find it.
At nine o'clock, a dozen detectives and more than twenty uniformed officers gathered at the western end of the rail yard, near the corner of Broad Street and League Island Boulevard.
Jessica gave Officer Paulson the nod. Clarence began to work the area. Paulson kept him on a fifteen-foot lead. The detectives hung back, in order to not disturb the animal. Air scenting is different from tracking, a method by which a dog follows a trail, head close to the ground, searching for human smells. It was also more difficult. Any shift in the wind could redirect a dog's effort, and any ground covered might have to be re-covered. The K-9 Unit of the PPD trained its dogs in what was called the 'disturbed earth theory.' In addition to any human smells, the dogs were trained to respond to any recently turned soil.
If the baby was buried here, the earth would be disturbed. There was no dog better at this than Clarence.
For now, all that the detectives could do was watch.
And wait. Byrne surveyed tHe huge parcel of land. He was wrong. The baby wasn't here. A second dog and officer had joined the search, and together they had nearly covered the entire plot with no results. Byrne glanced at his watch. If Tom Weyrich's assessment had been accurate, the baby was already dead. Byrne walked alone toward the eastern end of the yard, toward the river. His heart was heavy with the image of that baby in the pine box, his memory now alive with the thousand adventures he had played out on these grounds. He stepped down into a shallow culvert, and up the other side, an incline that was-Pork Chop Hill… the last few meters to the summit of Everest… the mound at Veterans Stadium… the Canadian border, protected by Mounties.
He knew. ADI. ION.
'Over here!' Byrne yelled into his two-way.
He ran toward the tracks near Pattison Avenue. Within moments his lungs were on fire, his back and legs a network of raw nerve endings and searing pain. He scanned the ground as he ran, running the beam of the Maglite a few feet ahead. Nothing looked fresh. Nothing overturned.
He stopped, his lungs now spent, hands on his knees. He couldn't run anymore. He was going to let the baby down like he had let Angelika Butler down.
He opened his eyes.
And saw it.
At his feet was a square of recently overturned gravel. Even in the gathered dusk, he could see that it was darker than the surrounding earth. He glanced up to see a dozen cops racing his way, led by Bryant Paulson and Clarence. By the time the dog came within twenty feet, he began to bark and paw the ground, indicating that he had located his quarry.
Byrne fell to his knees, tearing the dirt and gravel away with his hands. Within seconds he came across loose, damp soil. Soil that had recently been turned over.
'Kevin.' Jessica came over, helped him to his feet. Byrne backed off, breathing heavily, his fingers already raw from the sharp stones.
Three uniformed officers stepped in with shovels. They began to dig. A few seconds later they were joined by a pair of detectives. Suddenly they hit something solid.
Jessica looked up. There, less than thirty feet away, in the dim light thrown from the sodium lamps on I-95, she saw a rusted freight car. The two words were stacked, one atop the other, broken into three segments, separated by the battens on the steel boxcar.
CANADIAN NATIONAL
On the center of the three sections were the letters ADI over the letters ION. THe paramedics RUSHed over to the hole. They pulled out the small casket and began to pry it open. All eyes were on them. Except Kevin Byrne's. He couldn't bring himself to look. He closed his eyes, waited. It seemed like minutes. All he could hear was the sound of the nearby freight train, its drone a somnolent hum in the evening air.
In that moment between life and death Byrne recalled the day Colleen was born. She was about a week early, even then a force of nature. He recalled her tiny pink fingers curled against the white of Donna's hospital gown. So small…
When Kevin Byrne was absolutely certain they had been too late, that they had failed Declan Whitestone, he opened his eyes and heard the most beautiful noise. A little cough, then a thin cry that soon grew to a loud throaty wail.
The baby was alive.
The paramedics rushed Declan Whitestone to the EMS rescue. Byrne looked over at Jessica. They had won. They had trumped evil this time. But they both knew that this lead came from somewhere other than databases and spreadsheets, or psychological profiles, or even the highly attuned senses of the dogs. This came from a place about which they would never speak. THeY SPeNt tHe rest of the night investigating the crime scene, writing out their reports, catching a few minutes' sleep as they could. As of 10:00 AM, the detectives had been on for twenty- six hours straight.
Jessica sat at a desk, wrapping up her report. As primary detective on the case, it was her responsibility. She had never been so exhausted in her life. She looked forward to a long bath and a full day and night's sleep. She hoped that sleep would not be invaded by dreams of a small baby buried in a pine box. She had called Paula Farinacci, her babysitter, twice. Sophie was fine. Both times.
Stephanie Chandler, Erin Halliwell, Julian Matisse, Darryl Porter, Seth Goldman, Nigel Butler.
And then there was Angelika.
Would they ever get to the bottom of what happened on the set of Philadelphia Skin? There was one man who could tell them, and there was a very good chance that Ian Whitestone would take that knowledge to his grave.
At ten thirty, while Byrne was in the bathroom, someone put a small box of Milk-Bones on his desk. When he returned, he saw it and began to laugh.
