The Stolen Ones (17 page)

Jessica dreamed of warm sand, cool water. She was three years old, standing on the beach in Wildwood. She had a red plastic bucket in one hand, and was carefully shoveling small shells into the bucket with the other.

Nearby, her brother Michael was throwing a Frisbee with one of his friends. Her mother and father were sitting on a big blue beach towel. As always, her father was listening to a baseball game on his transistor radio while her mother had her nose stuck in a book, every few seconds looking up to make sure her little girl wasn’t being washed away to Europe.

Jessica felt the sun on her face, felt the water tickling her little toes. She heard the sea gulls, and tasted the salt water taffy lingering on her tongue.

She scooped some of the sand into her plastic shovel. But when she reached over to put the shells in her bucket, something was wrong.

It wasn’t shells in the pail.

It was dried white flowers.

Suddenly, there was noise behind her, a sound of metal on metal. It seemed to echo, as if she were now in a cave.

Then there was the sound of footfalls.

Jessica sat up, disoriented, her heart racing. She turned to see Vincent, Sophie and Carlos standing behind her.

As it turned out, she wasn’t down the shore. She was on the couch in her living room.

Jessica took a few moments, tried to calm herself. She rubbed the nap from her eyes, glanced at her watch. She wasn’t wearing a watch.

‘Was I snoring?’ she asked.

Vincent shrugged. ‘Not so you’d notice.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means not more than usual.’

‘What are you saying?’ Jessica asked. ‘You’re saying I
snore
?’

‘No, honey. I was joking.’ Vincent nudged Carlos. Carlos giggled.

Sophie pointed at the television. ‘Who’s winning, Mom?’

Apparently it was some sort of sporting event. ‘I don’t know.’

Sophie sat on the arm of the couch. ‘You don’t know who’s winning the game?’

Jessica reached around, hugged her daughter. ‘Sweetie, I don’t even know who’s
playing
.’ Jessica glanced back at the TV. It was the Sixers. ‘The basketball team is winning.’

It was Sophie’s turn to giggle.

‘How was practice?’ Jessica asked.

Sophie had recently lobbied to take up a musical instrument. At first she had wanted a cello, but the idea of scratchy string music around the house for a few years had been too much of a gamble. Not to mention the challenge of carting around an instrument that was as big as her daughter. After much discussion, they arrived at the flute. Sophie Balzano took to it surprisingly quickly.

‘It was good. We did duets. With a piano.’

‘That sounds great, honey.’ Jessica silently berated herself for missing this mini-milestone. There had been too many of late.

Vincent leaned over, kissed Jessica on the top of her head. ‘Did you eat?’

Jessica had to think about it. ‘I’m Italian, Vince. There’s a pretty good chance I did.’

‘Oh, that’s too bad.’ Vincent held up two big white plastic bags. He smiled.

‘Chickie’s and Pete’s?’ Jessica asked.

Her husband nodded.

‘Maybe just a little.’

An hour later Jessica found herself at the dining-room table, three of her textbooks open in front of her.

The last time she had formally studied a subject was when she’d gotten her undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice. She had always been a good student, all through grade school and high school, a quick study with most subjects.

Having grown up the daughter of a police officer, she knew that most of the skills she would need on the street would be taught by the older, more experienced cops in her squad, as well as by the mere performance of her duty. A classroom and a textbook could teach you things like methods of research in sociology and the basic tenets of victimology, but when it came time to take a six-foot-tall 250-pound man whacked out on PCP to the ground in a rainstorm, it helped to have on-the-job training.

Life plus lumps equals wisdom.

But now, in her second year of law school, she found one thing lacking that used to come to her so easily. The power to concentrate.

Her mind kept straying to the cases.

Sophie glanced up from her math homework, caught Jessica staring at her.

‘What, Mom?’

‘Nothing.’

‘
Mom
.’

Busted. ‘I don’t know. This is just… nice, you know? You and I sitting here, both doing our homework.’ Now
there
was a sentence Jessica thought she would never utter.

‘What are you working on?’ Sophie asked.

Jessica glanced at her workbook. ‘Well, right now I’m studying the difference between partnerships, limited partnerships and limited liability partnerships.’

Sophie smiled. ‘We did that last year,’ she said. ‘You need any help?’

‘I might.’

Sophie put down her pencil. ‘I’m going to get some chocolate milk,’ she said. ‘Do you want some?’

‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘I’m okay.’

Sophie slid off her chair, walked into the kitchen. She soon returned with a large glass of chocolate milk and a coaster. Jessica noticed a few cookie crumbs on the front of her daughter’s sweater. She decided to give the kid a break on the after-dessert snacks.

Sophie sat down, knitted her fingers. This was a serious Sophie Balzano, all of a sudden. Jessica wondered what was coming.

‘Mom?’

Jessica put her finger on the workbook page. She’d read the same line four times now. ‘Yes, sweetie?’

‘Can I buy a CD?’

Jessica zoned. Her eleven-year-old daughter wanted to buy a certificate of deposit? ‘A CD?’

Sophie nodded. ‘I have my own money.’

Ah
, Jessica thought.
Music
. ‘What CD, honey?’

‘Adele.’

Jessica knew the name, but couldn’t place the music. Was it G? PG? PG-13? R? NC-17? ‘Which one?’

Sophie rolled her eyes. ‘I think she only has two, Mom.’

‘I know. Her first album was…’

Another eye roll. ‘It was called
19
?’

‘Like I didn’t know that, too,’ Jessica said. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you save your money and I’ll see if it’s at the library? I can look it up from right here on the computer.’

Sophie gave Jessica the fish eye. ‘You mean like rip the disc? Is that even legal?’

At this crucial moment in child-rearing, and law enforcement, Jessica’s cell phone rang. Saved by the ringtone. Jessica held up a finger, picked up her phone.

It was Byrne.

Jessica answered. ‘Hey.’

‘There’s another body.’

Jessica’s heart sank. It couldn’t be in the park. The park was covered. She asked anyway. ‘In Priory Park?’

‘Yeah,’ Byrne replied. ‘In Priory Park.’

‘I thought the park was under surveillance.’

‘It was. There were four cars on duty.’

Jessica decided not to ask the obvious question for the moment. ‘Are we going in?’

‘Yeah,’ Byrne said. ‘Boss wants us there. Can Vince watch the kids?’

‘Yeah. He’s home.’

‘I’ll be at your house in five minutes.’

As Jessica walked up the stairs to get ready to leave the house she put her phone on speaker. She placed it on the dresser. ‘Do we know what happened?’

‘I don’t have all the details yet. A body was found DOA in the northwest part of the park. Near that old chapel.’

Jessica slipped on her jeans, pulled a PPD hooded sweatshirt over her head. She took the lockbox from the shelf in her closet, unlocked it, slipped her service weapon into her holster. ‘Do we have an ID on the victim?’

‘We do,’ Byrne said. ‘We also have something else we didn’t have before.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We’ve got a suspect in custody.’

The path a detective takes to a gold badge in the homicide division of the Philadelphia Police Department is often nearly identical to the path taken by other detectives. Every detective, of course, begins their career as a patrol officer. At some point, usually after two or three years on the street, you ask yourself why you are doing this job, and whether you want to make a career out of it.

There are a number of reasons to enter the police academy. Some people join after a tour in the Armed Forces, finding the idea of the structure, the command strata and life in a paramilitary organization appealing. Some join out of a sense of inferiority or superiority, believing a badge and a weapon will nourish or overcome these character flaws. Some join because they really want to help people.

But after a few years of last-out shifts – the tour that usually runs from eleven p.m. to seven a.m. – and dealing with belligerent drunks, drugged-out zombies, crying children, strong-arm robbers and the scourge of domestic violence that seems to escalate with every passing year, there comes a moment when a decision needs to be made. Those who decide to pack it in, acknowledging that police work was not for them after all, retire from the force in their twenties, and move on to other jobs, other challenges, other certainly more financially rewarding careers.

Some of those who decide to stay set their sights on one crime. Homicide.

For many in law enforcement there was no higher calling than the work of the homicide detective.

In almost every instance, retiring from the homicide unit meant retiring from the life. Rare was the case where a homicide detective moved over to another squad. Rarer still was the homicide detective who retired, then came back to the force.

In all of Jessica’s experience she had run across this once. Detective John Shepherd had worked his way to the homicide division the hard way. He came up at a time when there were few black detectives in the squad. John Shepherd neither asked for nor received any quarter. Of his many abilities as a detective, his work ‘in the room’ was unparalleled. When detectives had a suspect in an interview room, a suspect who was shutting down, or about to call for a lawyer, detectives brought in John Shepherd.

Shepherd had retired a few years earlier, had bounced around in a few private security gigs, and landed a nice job as head of hotel security at the Sheraton Society Hill. But the challenge of stolen luggage, push-in artists and jammed room safes proved to be inadequate for him. Four months earlier he had come back to the squad and asked for his old job back. The homicide unit, with four open slots, was lucky to get him.

Now in his fifties, his hair mostly silver, he cut just as wide a path, perhaps even wider, than he had almost twenty years earlier.

Arriving at Priory Park, Jessica and Byrne found Shepherd standing behind a sector car on Chancel Lane, talking to a patrol officer. Because they worked different shifts, neither Jessica nor Byrne had run into Shepherd since his return.

‘Welcome back, John,’ Jessica said. They hugged. ‘We’ve missed you.’

‘Thanks, Jess.’ He gestured to the flashing lights, the CSU van. ‘I see that things haven’t changed that much.’

‘Are you back on day work?’

‘I am,’ Shepherd said.

Shepherd and Byrne shook hands. ‘Good to see you, Johnny.’

‘You losing weight?’ Shepherd asked.

Byrne smiled. ‘I’ll find it again.’ He pointed at the field. ‘What do we have?’

‘We have a DOA on the other side of the park. Male white, fifties. Looks like he may have been strangled. ME’s up there now.’

‘Who found him?’ Byrne asked.

Shepherd pointed at the young officer. ‘P/O Kenneth Weldon,’ Shepherd said. He got the young man’s attention, beckoned him over.

The officer was clearly shaken. He was short, no more than the minimum height for the department, and no more than twenty-one years old. Officer Weldon nodded to the three detectives.

‘Tell us what happened,’ Shepherd said.

The officer pointed in the general direction of his post. ‘I was parked at the northwest end of the park, in the parking lot near the boarded-up chapel. I heard the call go out on the radio that there was an individual walking through the park, heading south through the trees from the bottom of Ashlar Road.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I took the call,’ Weldon said. ‘Our orders were to detain anyone in the park after dark. I hit the lights, got back onto the avenue, drove down here to Chancel, then east. When I got here I met up with Dash.’

‘Dash?’

‘Sorry, sir. Officer Dasher. Unit 1814.’

‘What did you observe?’

‘When I got out of my vehicle I saw an individual, a white male. He was carrying something large on his shoulders.’

‘Where was he?’

Weldon pointed to an area in the middle of the field, about twenty yards away. ‘Right about there.’

Jessica looked in the direction. Even with the headlights of four cars and the CSU van, it was pitch black. The area was not far from the spot at which Robert Freitag had been found.

‘What did you do?’ Shepherd asked.

‘I ordered him to drop whatever he was carrying and get down on the ground.’

‘Did the individual comply?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Weldon said. ‘Without incident.’

‘And you’re saying he was observed coming through the trees from that direction?’ Shepherd pointed to the northeast end of the park. It was the end opposite from where the new body had been found.

‘Yes, sir.’

Shepherd took it all in. ‘Thank you, Officer,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to deploy at the eastern end of Chancel Lane for now. Redirect any non-essential traffic.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Jessica could see the relief in the young officer’s eyes. Even in a city like Philadelphia it was possible to spend an entire career on the streets without encountering a dead body. This kid was already a veteran.

The three detectives walked over to the idling sector car, unit 1814. John Shepherd nodded to the officer standing near the trunk, P/O D. Dasher. Dasher walked over to the rear passenger door, opened it. A few seconds later, the occupant got out.

To say the least, the suspect was not what Jessica had expected.

The kid was pale and drawn, no more than seventeen. His hair was dyed a raven black, cut into a modified Justin Bieber sweep, more than a few weeks since a shampoo, and he had what appeared to be a dozen silver rings in his right ear.

In the harsh light thrown by the headlights of the police car, Jessica could see the kid was on something. His eyes were glazed.

Shepherd approached him, produced his ID.

Jessica noticed immediately that the kid was trying to posture himself as a hard case, but she had the feeling that this façade would begin to dissolve in short order. A lot of people think they can sit in an interview room or be interviewed at a crime scene and throw down attitude, a belief certainly fostered by a few decades of TV cop shows. Whenever Jessica watched shows like
Law & Order
, and saw the soccer mom or the kid who delivered groceries or the guy who works at Baby Gap – all of whom were hauled in on suspicion of murder, no less – giving detectives a hard time, she had to laugh.

‘Just so you know, I’m the good cop, she’s the great cop,’ Shepherd said, pointing at Jessica. ‘If you and I don’t strike up a deep and meaningful relationship, we’ll send in the bad cop.’

‘Where’s the bad cop?’ the kid asked, with slightly less attitude than just a few seconds earlier.

Shepherd pointed to Byrne, who was leaning against the CSU van, arms crossed.

Shepherd took a step back from the kid, giving him a little room. He picked up a wallet from the hood of the patrol car, flipped it open, glanced at the license, the kid, back. ‘Dustin David Green,’ he said. ‘Do you still live at this address? On Tasker?’

‘Not really.’

Shepherd poked through the wallet, found nothing of interest. He tossed it back onto the hood of the car. He stepped in.

‘Now, you see, we’re off to a bad start. A
very
bad start. I asked you a simple question, one that required a simple yes or no answer. In fact, it was the simplest question I’m going to ask you all night. And I can see that we’re going to be together
all
night.’

The kid rocked side to side a little. ‘Okay, what I meant was, I
used
to live there. Now I kind of stay with friends.’

‘Better,’ Shepherd said. ‘Not nearly good enough, but better. Before we’re done I’m going to need all their names and addresses.’

Shepherd backed up, continued.

‘Now, tell me how you came to be in this place, at this time.’

The kid shrugged. ‘What do you want to know?’

Shepherd took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. He ran a hand over his chin. ‘Okay, let me see if I can lay this out for you so you’ll understand.’

The kid wobbled. Shepherd steadied him.

‘This is now officially a homicide investigation,’ Shepherd said. ‘There was a man killed here tonight. Do you understand me so far?’

The kid went even paler. ‘Somebody was killed?’

‘Yes, Dustin. Somebody was killed.’

‘For real?’

‘Yes, for real. Not like in
Modern Warfare 3
, or
Left For Dead
. For real.’

The kid just stared.

‘So, until I say differently, you are our number one suspect. If I say so, you will never go home again. Ever. Think about it. You go from here, to the station, to a courtroom, then to prison. For ever. And trust me, you are not going to do well in prison. You’ll be selling your ass for Nicorette within two days.’

Shepherd’s version of possible scenarios wouldn’t happen exactly the way he described, but Dustin Green didn’t seem to know that.

‘I don’t know anything anyone getting killed,’ the kid said.

‘Walk me through it, Dustin,’ Shepherd said. ‘Nice and slow, so even I can understand.’

The kid looked around, over one shoulder, then the other, as if his story might be on the way, being delivered to him like Chinese takeout. When he could no longer stall, he began. ‘All I know is, this guy said he’d give me five hundred bucks to drive his car up here. That’s it. I don’t know what else I can tell you.’

‘Where did this happen?’

‘Old City. On Second.’

‘Five hundred dollars and what else?’

The kid went squirrelly. ‘Just the five.’

Shepherd took a moment, then walked over to the sector car. He picked up a baggie off the hood, a twisted sandwich bag containing a few blue pills. He held it up to the light. ‘This was part of the payment, too, wasn’t it?’

‘Those aren’t mine, man.’

‘I see,’ Shepherd said. ‘So, you’re saying that someone put these in your front pants pocket?’

‘I was just holding them for someone.’

‘Who?’

‘My cousin.’

‘What’s your cousin’s name?’

‘Huh?’

Shepherd turned to look at Jessica. ‘Isn’t it amazing how they always go deaf on that question?’

It was true. That question caused hearing problems in just about everyone who spoke to the police. The world was full of no-name cousins.

John Shepherd closed the distance between himself and Dustin Green. He towered over the kid by five or six inches. Playtime was clearly over.

‘Let’s go,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’re going to book you for murder.’

‘Wait.’

‘Turn around and put your hands behind your back.’

‘
Wait
!’

Shepherd backed off, glanced at his watch. ‘You have one minute to tell me the entire story. Begin now.’

The kid started talking.

‘Okay, okay, okay. This guy, he gave me the money and the beans, and he told me to drive his car up here. I was supposed to park near that chapel, just off the avenue. He also told me to walk all the way over to the other side of the park, then come down this street here.’

‘Chancel Lane.’

‘Is that what it is?’

‘Why did this guy ask you to do this?’

‘I have no idea. Five
hundred
, man. I didn’t ask.’

‘It didn’t sound a little strange to you?’

The kid wavered again. ‘I don’t know. I guess.’

Shepherd pointed to the big plastic garbage bag on the ground behind the sector car. ‘What about the bag?’

‘He told me to carry that bag and leave it in the middle of the field. That’s it. I swear to God.’

‘Little early in the conversation for God,’ Shepherd said. ‘We’re going to go over this story many more times.
Many
more. You might want to save God for later.’ Shepherd held up the baggie. ‘What are these pills?’

‘They’re supposed to be some new kind of X.’

‘So, you decided you would pop some X, and then go to work?’

The kid went squirrelly again. This time, Jessica could see that he had begun to sweat. A lot. ‘No. This guy said if I did this job right there were more jobs on the horizon. I wasn’t going to screw this up by getting high before the job was done. This guy expressly told me not to take the beans until I delivered the car.’

‘So you popped the pills after you got to the park.’

The kid just nodded.

‘How many?’

He held up two fingers, like a peace sign.

Shepherd took the information in. ‘So who is this guy?’

‘Just some guy, man.’

‘You don’t know his name?’

The kid shook his head.

‘Where do you know him from?’

Another shrug. ‘I just see him around. We all just see him around.’

‘Who is
we
?’

‘Just us. The kids I hang around with on the street.’

‘These are kids you go to school with?’

The kid almost laughed. ‘Just street kids, man. We see this guy around sometimes. Older guy, but cool. Sometimes he lets us do jobs for him.’

‘You’ve done jobs for him before?’

‘Not me. But I know people who have.’

‘What’s his angle?’

Now the kid got very interested in his own shoes. He shuffled in place, licked his lips, continued to perspire. ‘I have no idea, man. He never tried anything with me, or any other of the kids I know.’

‘What does this guy look like?’ Shepherd asked. ‘Is he black, white, Hispanic?’