'I will.'
With that the man gave her a slight bow, turned, and walked toward the Thirtieth Street entrance. In a moment, he was gone.
Lilly knew what she was going to do. Somehow, she wasn't afraid.
He was a father.
She got up from the table and ran across the station. She found him on the corner.
She told him everything.
FORTY-SIX
The white tent sat near the edge of the roof, shielding the murder victim from the sun, and the prying eyes of the media hovering overhead like red-tail hawks. There were no fewer than thirty people on the roof: detectives, supervisors, crime-scene technicians, investigators from the medical examiner's office. Photographs were taken, measurements recorded, surfaces dusted.
When Jessica and Byrne arrived, the other personnel deferred to them. This could only mean one thing. The homicide that had occurred here was clearly connected to their investigations.
When Jessica opened the flap on the plastic tent, she knew it to be true. She felt the gorge rise in her throat. In front of her was a girl, no more than seventeen, with long dark hair, deep hazel eyes. She wore a thin black sweater and blue jeans, a pair of sandals on her small feet. None of this made her much different from any of the other young murder victims Jessica had seen in her career. What set this girl apart, what tied her irrevocably to the case she and her partner were working on, was the manner in which she was killed.
Protruding from the girl's chest and abdomen were seven steel swords.
Jessica stared at the girl's pallid face. It was clear that in life she had been exotically pretty, but here, on a blistering rooftop in North Philadelphia, drained of all her blood, she looked almost mummified.
The good news, for the investigators, was that according to the ME's office this victim had been dead little more than twenty-four hours. It was the closest they had come to the Collector. This was no cold case. This time they could amass evidence unadulterated by time. The very scent and presence of the murderer lingered.
Jessica snapped on a pair of gloves, stepped closer to the body. She gently examined the girl's hands. Her nails had recently been manicured and painted. The color was a deep red. Jessica looked at her own nails through the latex, and wondered if she and the victim had been sitting in a manicurist's chair at the same time.
Even though she was seated, Jessica determined that the girl was about five-three, less than a hundred pounds. She sniffed the girl's hair. It smelled of mint. It had been recently shampooed.
Nicci Malone stepped onto the roof, saw Jessica.
'We've got an ID,' Nicci said.
She handed Jessica an FBI printout. The girl's name was Katja Dovic. She was seventeen. She had last been seen at her house in New Canaan, Connecticut, on June twenty-sixth.
Dr. Tom Weyrich approached.
'I take it this is not the primary scene,' Jessica said.
Weyrich shook his head. 'No. Wherever she was killed she bled out, and was cleaned up. The hearts stops, that's it. The dead don't bleed.' He paused for a moment. Jessica knew him to be a man not given to hyperbole or arch comment. 'And, as bad as that is, it gets worse.' He pointed to one of the slices in the girl's sweater. 'It looks like she was run through with these swords at the primary scene, they were removed, and reinserted here. This guy re-created the murder on this rooftop.'
Jessica tried to wrap her mind around the image of someone stabbing this girl with seven swords, removing them, transporting the body, and doing it all over again.
While Nicci went off to advise the other investigators on the ID, Byrne sidled silently next to Jessica. They stood this way while the mechanics of a murder investigation swirled around them.
'Why is he doing this, Kevin?'
'There's a reason,' Byrne said. 'There's a pattern. It looks random, but it isn't. We'll find it, and we'll fucking put him down.'
'Now there's three girls. Three methods. Three different dump sites.'
'All in the Badlands, though. All runaways.' Jessica shook her head. 'How do we warn these kids when they don't want to be found?' There was no answer.
FORTY-SEVEN
Lilly had started talking and she just couldn't seem to stop herself. When she stopped, she felt five pounds lighter. She also felt like crying. She probably did. She couldn't remember. It was kind of a fog.
Lilly had expected one of two reactions from the man. She expected him either to turn on his heels and walk away from her, or call the police.
He did neither. Instead, he was silent for a few moments.
He said he would help her, but only if this was something she really wanted to do. He told her to sleep on it, but only for one night. He said the best decisions in life are made after waiting twenty-four hours, never longer. He then gave her one hundred dollars and his phone number. She promised to call him one way or another. She never broke a promise.
She went back to the hostel. It was as good a place as any.
Despite the early hour, despite the insanity of her day, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she put her head down on a pillow and fell fast asleep.
FORTY-EIGHT
Jessica stood outside Eve Galvez's apartment. It was a small suite on the third floor of a nondescript, blocky brick building on Bustleton Avenue.
She stepped inside, and almost turned the lights on. But then she thought that doing so might be disrespectful. The last time Eve left these rooms she had every intention of returning.
Jessica danced the beam of the flashlight around the space. There was a card table in the dining area, one folding chair, a loveseat in the living room, a pair of end tables. There were no prints or framed posters on the wall, no houseplants, no area rugs. Black fingerprint powder claimed every surface.
She stepped into the bedroom. There was a double bed on a frame, no footboard or headboard. There was a dresser, but no mirror. Jimmy Valentine was right. Eve was a Spartan. The nightstand next to the bed held a cheap lamp and what looked like a photo cube. Jessica glanced in the closet: a pair of dresses, a pair of skirts. Black and navy blue. A pair of white blouses. They'd all been taken off the hangers, searched, and carelessly replaced. Jessica reached inside, smoothed the clothing, more out of habit than anything else.
The entire apartment was tidy, almost sterile. It seemed that Eve Galvez didn't so much live here as stay here.
Jessica crossed the bedroom, picked up the photo cube. There were pictures on all six sides. One photo showed a picture of Eve at five or so, standing next to her brother on a beach. There was another that had to be Eve's mother. They had the same eyes, the same cheekbones. One looked like Eve in, perhaps, eleventh grade. She was heavier in this snapshot than the others. Jessica turned it over, looked again at all sides. There were no photographs of Eve's father.
Out of habit, or training, or just nosiness that had at least something to do with her becoming a police officer to begin with, Jessica shook the cube. Something inside rattled. She shook it again. The rattle was louder. There was something inside.
