'I have a few errands to run, but I will be back, and you and I will have dinner. Maybe we'll even dress. Won't that be fun?'
The girl looked at him. Her velvet gaze was no longer soft. It amazed him again and again how quickly youth faded. He rolled the chair into the guest room and locked the door.
Minutes later, as he prepared to leave, he heard the girl scream. By the time he reached the foyer and slipped into his coat, the sound had receded to a distant echo. By the time he stepped onto the porch, it was only a memory.
The day was bright and sunny, rich with birdsong. Swann singled out a voice. It was a yellow-throated warbler, another lost soul, asking its peculiar questions of the world.
TWENTY-FIVE
Byrne walked to his car, his heart and mind abuzz with the events of the past hour. He still really didn't know what this lunch date with his wife was all about, but he wasn't going to overanalyze it.
Who was he kidding? Besides being one of his most annoying personality quirks, overanalyzing was pretty much what he did for a living.
He took out his phone, fired it up, wincing immediately at the possibility of a dozen angry messages waiting for him. You were never supposed to be completely out of touch with the unit, even if you were off duty, especially if you had active investigations. But in this age of cellular communications, and all its attendant glitches, there was always an excuse.
I couldn't get a signal.
My battery was low.
I had it on Silent.
As soon as the phone went through its boot-up process and found a tower, he got an e-mail. It was from Colleen. She'd sent him the photograph she'd taken in the lobby. It completed his day.
Seconds later his phone rang. Byrne looked at the display. It was Jessica. Even her name looked pissed off. He flipped open the phone, went for bright and cheerful.
'Hey!'
'So now you turn your phone off?'
Busted. 'I'll explain,' Byrne said. 'Where are you?'
'Shiloh Street.'
'Shiloh Street?' Byrne was a little surprised, a lot intrigued. 'Why?'
'We've got a body. Female, mid-teens.'
Shit. 'Warm or cold?'
'Cold,' Jessica said. 'Been here for months.'
'Inside the house?'
'Yep.'
'Where was she?'
'Remember that rug in the basement?' Jessica asked.
'Yeah.'
'CSU rolled it up and found a hole cut into the floor. An access hole to the crawlspace.'
'She was in the crawlspace?'
'In the crawlspace.'
'Any ID on the victim?'
'I haven't been able to confirm it, but my gut tells me we do.'
'Why is that?'
'She's wearing the same jewelry as the girl whose picture we found in that Bible.'
Byrne's stomach, and mind, began to revolve. This was starting to reach deeper, and further, than he had imagined. And he had imagined something pretty bad. 'Go on.'
'About an hour ago we got the Missing Person info, so we have a name, but the body is decomposed to the point where a visual ID isn't possible. We're going to have to get dental. Still, I think the clothes and jewelry are a slam.'
'We have a COD?'
'We won't know that for a while, but I can make a fairly informed guess,' Jessica said.
'What do you mean?'
A moment's hesitation. 'You don't want to know.'
'It's kinda my job.'
Byrne heard his partner clear her throat. It was her usual stall. 'She's in pieces, Kevin. In boxes.'
'Christ.'
'There are three wooden boxes in the crawlspace, but there are only remains in two of them. One box is empty. The one in the middle. And they're painted. Red, blue, and yellow.'
'The same colors as those marks in the Bible.'
'Yep.'
Byrne closed his eyes, recalled the girl in the photograph. She looked so young, so vulnerable. He'd had hopes. Not great hopes, but hopes. 'And this is ours?'
'It is.'
Byrne took out his notebook, noted the time. 'Hit me.'
'Presumptively, the victim's name is Monica Louise Renzi,' Jessica said, spelling the first and last name. 'She was sixteen. From Scranton. Missing for just over six months. Dino and Eric are on the way up just in case.'
Jessica was talking about Nick Palladino and Eric Chavez, two experienced detectives from the homicide unit. 'Okay.'
'This is developing hard and fast, partner,' Jessica said. 'Ike is down here, and word is that the captain is on his way. Nobody's smoking and everyone's buttoned up. Sarge said he called you three times.' Shit.
'Which one are you going to use?' Jessica asked.
Byrne had to think about it. He didn't want to repeat himself. 'I had my phone on silent.'
'I like that one,' Jessica said. 'Get here as fast as you can.'
'I'm on the way,' Byrne said. He headed toward his car. 'One more question for you. Why is this ours again?'
Jessica took a second-a telling second that, between people who know each other well, spoke volumes. Then came the four words Byrne dreaded hearing.
'She was a runaway.'
TWENTY-SIX
The first thing she noticed was that there were a lot of foreign people. Foreign people as in Asian, Middle Eastern, African. Not foreign as in folks from three counties over.
The second thing she noticed was that this was, by far, the biggest room she had ever been in. It might have even been too big to classify as a room. It was more like a cathedral. The coffered ceilings had to be fifty feet high, maybe more, offering a dozen or so enormous hanging chandeliers, ringed by the tallest windows she had ever seen. The floors were marble, the hand railings looked like they were made of brass. At one end was a huge bronze statue called the Angel of the Resurrection.
As train stations went, she thought, this was probably the Taj Mahal.
She sat on one of the long wooden benches for a while, watching the crowds come and go, listening to the announcements, to the variety of accents and languages, reading-but not really reading-one of the free newspapers. Politics, opinion, reviews, sex ads. Blah, blah, blah. Even the columns on music and movies bored the shit out of
