The Stolen Ones (20 page)

In the hours since Dr Edward Richmond’s body had been found, a task force was formed, fully funded for all the overtime that would most likely be needed to investigate the four murders – Robert Freitag, Joan Delacroix, Edward Richmond and Dustin Green.

There were now eight detectives assigned to the task force. Calls had been made from high on high to all the science divisions involved in the cases – fingerprint, DNA, criminalistics, document – which were also authorized overtime.

The FBI had sent over their initial findings on the flowers found at all three murder sites. The white flower left in the hands of both Robert Freitag and Joan Delacroix, as well as placed in a circle at the feet of Edward Richmond, was called
anaphalis margaritacea,
more commonly known as Pearly Everlasting. It was a perennial flower indigenous to many areas of North America and, according to the FBI report, had been dried and finished using an over-the-counter hair spray. Any forensic possibilities beyond this were negated by the rain, which helped to as good as completely deteriorate the integrity of the evidence.

As to the little girl, two detectives from the Special Victims Unit had canvassed the area where Violet was found, and had spoken to all but a handful of the people who lived in the immediate area, showing a picture of the girl, with no results.

As a result, or despite a result, a picture of Violet had been broadcast on all the local television stations, and published in both the
Inquirer
and the
Daily News
. So far, no one had called DHS claiming to be a member of the little girl’s family.

Jessica knew that if no one came forward, Violet would be placed in emergency foster care by day’s end.

At just before noon John Shepherd walked into the duty room. He looked as if he hadn’t slept. Many times that was the case with a new homicide, certainly one discovered late in the afternoon or evening of the previous day.

‘Sorry about that kid,’ Byrne said.

Shepherd sat down on the edge of a desk. ‘Not as sorry as I am,’ he said. ‘Didn’t get anything out of him before he coded. No description of our boy. Except for white and thirty or forty.’

‘I take it that wasn’t just ecstasy he was on,’ Jessica said.

Shepherd shook his head. ‘Turns out the pills he had – the pills he said he got from the guy whose car he drove up to the park – were laced with potassium cyanide.’

‘Cyanide?’ Jessica said. ‘I haven’t heard of that in a while.’

‘Tox isn’t complete yet. It might have been a cocktail.’

‘So our guy got the kid to drive his car to the park, knowing the kid would take the tainted pills, and not be able roll on him if he was caught.’

‘Looks like it,’ Shepherd said. ‘He had to bank on the kid actually doing the job, not coding in the black car before he made it up to the park.’

‘How could he depend on that?’ Jessica asked.

‘Good question. Two ways, the way I see it. One, the kid hoped to do another job for the guy in the future. Or two, the guy scared the shit out of him.’

And with good reason
, Jessica thought.

‘How’s the boy doing?’ Byrne asked. ‘The victim’s son.’

‘He’s stable,’ Shepherd said. ‘I’m hoping to talk to him today.’

‘What about the place setting on Richmond’s table?’

Shepherd took out his phone, scrolled through the pictures. He stopped at one, tapped it to enlarge it, showed it to the other two detectives.

There, on the dining-room table of the victim’s house, was a large soup bowl with a mug turned upside down on it. Next to it, on a folded linen napkin, was a silver spoon.

Anthony Giordano looked significantly better than he had when they’d first met him sitting watch in his second-story window overlooking the alleyway behind Joan Delacroix’s house. He had trimmed his beard and even gotten his unruly eyebrows in check. Jessica wondered if he had used the Best Cuts coupon on his cork board.

‘Thanks for coming in,’ Byrne said. ‘How did you get here?’

‘Took the bus.’

‘We’ll get you a ride back.’

Tony gestured at Jessica, who was standing across the room, talking to John Shepherd. ‘She Italian?’

Byrne smiled. ‘She is.’

Tony glanced back at Jessica. ‘Man, if I was fifty years younger.’

‘Did I mention she’s married to a cop?’

Tony looked surprised. ‘She’s married?’

Byrne nodded.

‘She’s not wearing a ring.’

‘It’s a whole new world, my friend.’

Byrne pulled out a chair for the man. Tony sat down.

‘What I’d like to do is go through some possibilities to try to identify the car you saw the other day.’

‘You mean pictures?’

‘Yes,’ Byrne said. ‘We don’t have the pictures here, though. They’re on the internet.’

‘I hope you can find them. I don’t know the first damn thing about it.’

‘Not a problem.’

Byrne sat down in front of the terminal, navigated to a site they sometimes used to ID cars. The site was divided by decades, starting with the 1930s.

‘Where do you want to start?’ Byrne asked.

Tony thought for a few moments. ‘I’m thinking the sixties,’ he said. ‘That’s when everything went to hell, and I stopped paying attention. I don’t think it was any older than that.’

‘Okay,’ Byrne said. ‘So you think it was a big car, right? A full-size sedan?’

‘Yeah.’

They began to scroll through the database of full-size sedans from the 1960s: DeSotos, Imperials, Newports, New Yorkers, Galaxies, Lincoln Continentals. Among them, Tony did not recognize any that looked like the car he had seen.

They moved on to the 1970s, this time scrolling past Eldorados, Impalas, Mercury Marquis, Monte Carlos. They were just about to move onto the 1980s when Tony sat up a little straighter in his chair.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s the one.’

Anthony Giordano was pointing at a 1977 Oldsmobile Toronado.

‘How sure are you that this is the car?’ Byrne asked.

‘Not one hundred per cent. Like I say, I usually only saw it from behind when it was parked on the street. Do you think we can find a shot of just the rear end, taken from above?’

‘It’s the internet. We can find anything.’ A few moments later, on Flickr, they found an overhead shot.

‘That sure as hell looks like it,’ Tony said.

‘Good deal,’ Byrne said. He hit a few keys, and began to print off some copies. While they were printing, Tony said: ‘Funny thing about cars. There’s that eight- or ten- or twelve-year period in your life – from, maybe, twelve to twenty years old, for boys, anyway – when you know every make and model, every change in the grill, every fender skirt, every fin, every taillight.’

‘What decade was yours?’ Byrne asked.

‘The forties.’

Byrne nodded. ‘What was your dream machine?’

‘Easy,’ Tony said. ‘It was a nineteen forty-one Buick Club Coupe. Three-speed manual on the column, Fireball straight eight.’

‘What color?’

‘Powder blue.’

‘Sweet.’

The two men stood up. ‘We really appreciate you coming in,’ Byrne said, helping the old man with his coat.

‘Happy to help,’ Tony said. ‘Got me out of the house.’

‘If you see that car show up again, you call me.’

‘Will do.’ He glanced across the room at Jessica, who was working at a computer terminal.

‘She’s married, huh?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘The good ones always are.’

‘Truer words,’ Byrne said. ‘Come on. I’ll walk you down.’

By the time Byrne got back to the duty room, Hell Rohmer was sitting on one of the desks. He wore a knee-length leather duster and a black porkpie hat. In his hands was a large brown envelope.

‘I come bearing gifts,’ he said.

‘Gifts are good,’ Byrne said. He got Jessica’s attention.

‘About those Polaroids,’ Hell began. ‘I managed to get only one of the pictures off the cardboard backing. The reason for that is as follows: the longer any kind of adhesive sits, the more it integrates with the fibers on both surfaces, making it essentially one surface.’

‘I always tell Kevin that,’ Jessica said. ‘Now maybe he’ll believe me.’

Hell smiled. ‘But first to this one.’ He held up one of the Polaroids – the one taken of the man sitting at the long table with dishes on it. Jessica saw where Hell might be going with this, and she found that her heart had begun to race.

Hell pointed at the dishes and silverware on the table.

‘I had this section enlarged,’ he said. ‘It took a little pixel manipulation, but after a few half-steps, I got it up to eight hundred per cent.’ He reached into the envelope, extracted a nine-by-twelve enlargement. He put it on the table. ‘There’s an engraving on the handle. It reads DVSH. It stands for —’

‘Delaware Valley State Hospital,’ Byrne said. ‘Cold River.’

The Delaware Valley State Hospital was euphemistically called Cold River because of its close proximity to the Delaware River. Over the almost one hundred years of its operation, many patients had wandered off the grounds, only to end up in the Delaware. The ones who didn’t drown or die of hypothermia had only one travel tip for fellow inmates upon their return to the institution: stay out of the water.

When Jessica was small – she imagined it was this way for half the kids who grew up in Philadelphia – her father would threaten her with the place.

‘Clean your room or I’m going to send you to Cold River,’ he would say. Cold River was the boogeyman place. It had been closed for a long time.

‘This is what Lenny Pintar was referring to,’ Jessica said. ‘The Big Place.’

She picked up the enlargement. The engraving on the spoon was clear, because when this photograph was taken the etching was new.

‘These are our spoons,’ she said.

‘Yes, they are,’ Byrne replied.

Hell looked up. ‘You have these spoons?’

‘Long story,’ Jessica said.

Hell got back to business. ‘Okay. About separating the photographs from the mounting cardboard. The good news is that, if you can get the two surfaces apart, the surface that originally held the adhesive becomes a virtual fingerprint tablet. Like a built-in Super Glue chamber.’

The Super Glue method of retrieving fingerprints, known as
cyanoacrylate fuming,
was a process where items suspected of containing latent fingerprints were put in a sealed chamber with hot water, a heating element, and a small amount of Super Glue. It was a fairly uncomplicated way of obtaining prints from a nonporous surface, but also carried the danger of over-processing, and losing the specimen for ever. Jessica had seen it happen more than once. Many times, you only had one shot in the Super Glue chamber.

Hell retrieved a final item from his envelope with a grand gesture. It was an enlargement of what looked to be a thumbprint.

‘This was on the back of this photograph?’ Jessica asked.

‘It was,’ Hell said. ‘And because I always wanted to grow up and be a detective, I took the initiative.’ At this he took a document from the inside pocket of his coat. ‘Cue the
CSI
theme music, please.’

‘Hell.’

‘Right.’ He handed the printout to Jessica. ‘The gentleman whose prints were on the back of that rather unpleasant Polaroid lives in North Philly. His name is Lucius Winter.’

Jessica sat down in front of a computer terminal. She ran a PCIC check on Lucius Winter. Moments later she had results.

Lucius Winter was a small-time criminal, twice convicted of misdemeanor assault, once tried and subsequently acquitted of armed robbery. The address was his last-known.

Jessica held up the Polaroid of the naked man sitting on the table next to the photograph on the computer screen. There was no doubt. The man in the photograph was Lucius Winter.

Byrne stepped forward, hit a key on the keyboard, scrolling down.

‘Jess.’

Jessica looked at the screen. She saw the stats. Her pulse spiked. Lucius Winter was a white male, six feet, 165, brown and brown. But none of those details leapt off the screen.

Lucius Winter owned a black 1977 Oldsmobile Toronado.

The target house was a dilapidated building on Fifth Street, near Diamond Avenue. They sat in an unmarked van three doors east, on the opposite side of the street.

The process of obtaining a warrant was as maddeningly slow as it was necessary. While the team deployed, Jessica stayed behind, typed out the affidavit of probable cause, then faxed it over to the district attorney’s office, where it had to be vetted by an ADA. Sometimes the process needed to involve the US Attorney’s office.

Once the affidavit was checked for anything that might cause the case to be jettisoned if it ever came to that, the ADA had to take it to a judge. Taking it to the right – and available – judge was always tricky. Once a judge signed it, the actual warrant need not be physically taken to the scene.

Until they got the warrant, all they could do was observe and wait. They could pursue an individual, but they could not enter the premises. Cars came and went. Pedestrians walked up and down the street. None of them was Lucius Winter.

Byrne tried the man’s number again. The phone just rang. No voicemail, no answering machine.

They waited.

Byrne got the call at just after three p.m. They had their warrant.

The back door of the unmarked van opened, and two SWAT officers exited the vehicle, crossed the road. They wore full urban tactical gear and carried SIG 556 rifles. They flanked the front door of the target house as one of the detectives from North, in body armor, brought a Stinger battering ram up the steps.

Byrne drew his weapon, deployed to the left of the door, John Shepherd to the right. Byrne counted down a silent three.

The detective drew back the Stinger, smashed it into the door, just above the lock. The door splintered off the jamb and crashed to the floor.

‘
Philadelphia Police! Search warrant!
’ one of the SWAT officers yelled as they breached the door.

Byrne and John Shepherd were next to enter.

In the dim light Byrne saw the layout of the small row house. A living room to the right, stairs left, hallway ahead leading to a kitchen. It was a typical layout, no more than ten feet wide.

‘First floor
clear
!’ one of the SWAT officers yelled. One of them went upstairs; the other, down.

The only furniture in the front room was two tables, both in front of the windows. On each table was a lamp, no shade. The lamps were plugged into old-school timers, then into the wall sockets. Each lamp had in it what was probably a 25 or 40 watt bulb.

‘Basement clear!’ came the shout from the lower level.

‘Second floor clear!’

The house was empty. Byrne and Shepherd holstered their weapons, took a few moments to decelerate. Byrne walked over to one of the lamps, carefully put his hand over the bulb. It was warm. He checked the timer. The lamp was programed to turn on at three in the afternoon, and off at three in the morning.

While John Shepherd headed upstairs, Byrne went into the kitchen. Like the front room, the kitchen was devoid of any furniture. There was a thick layer of dust on all the counter tops and appliances. Byrne touched the burners on the stove. Stone cold. He opened the refrigerator. It was empty, unplugged.

A quick check of the cabinets showed nothing but shredded shelf paper and mouse droppings. Byrne turned to see Shepherd coming down the steps.

‘Anything upstairs?’ Byrne asked.

Shepherd shook his head. ‘There’s a bed frame in one of the bedrooms, no mattress. Nothing in the closets.’

The two men assessed what they had found here, which amounted to nothing. It was clear that no one lived in this house, but the timers on the lamps were there to give the impression that someone did.

‘I’m going to check the basement,’ Byrne said.

‘Okay,’ Shepherd replied. ‘I’ll call this in.’

Byrne walked down the narrow stairs. The basement layout mirrored the house above, long and narrow. There was an alcove for the furnace, which looked to be 1950s vintage. There were thick cobwebs in the open ceiling. Byrne ran his Maglite beam around the space. Dust, more shredded paper and droppings, an old card table folded against one of the walls.

No signs of life.

Byrne was just about to head back upstairs when something caught his eye on the basement wall that faced the street. Or, more accurately, something did not catch his eye.

He crossed the room, put his ear to the wall. He took a step back. This made no sense. He went back upstairs, out onto the sidewalk. He was right. The glass block windows at the level of the sidewalk had bars over them.

Byrne went back inside, stepped off the distance from the front door to the back door. He went downstairs and repeated the exercise. According to his rough calculation there was about three feet – a full stride for him – missing.

Byrne took out his phone and made the call.

‘Tell me about this place,’ Byrne said. ‘Who lives here?’

Someone had called the building’s landlord, a stout Ukrainian woman who had shown up with a snarling, one-eyed Rottweiler and a bad attitude. John Shepherd explained to the woman the wisdom of keeping the dog a good distance from the men with guns. She tied the dog to a railing three doors down, then returned.

‘Mr Winter lives here,’ she said.

‘Describe him.’

The woman shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen him in a while. Long time.’

‘He probably looks the same. What did he look like when you last saw him?’

‘White man. Ordinary. Little too skinny.’

‘How does he pay you?’ Byrne asked.

‘I get check every three months.’

‘A personal check?’

She thought about it. ‘No. Money order.’

‘Do you make copies?’

‘Who does copies? I deposit.’

‘How often does Mr Winter come and go?’

‘I never see him. He pays rent. Quiet. No problems.’

‘No red flags there?’

‘What flags?’ the woman asked.

‘Christ.’

The woman pointed at the splintered jamb. ‘Who’s paying for this?’

‘I’ll get you a money order,’ Byrne said. ‘We’ll let you know if we need anything else.’

The three dozen or so dogs under the command of the K-9 Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department were all male, all German shepherds. The dogs were trained in three disciplines – the detection of narcotics, cadavers or explosives. The cadaver dogs were sensitive to any and all human scents, not just those of the deceased.

At just after four p.m., Sergeant Bryant Paulson arrived with Papa, a seven-year-old shepherd who got his name first for having an unusual amount of gray hair on his snout, even as a puppy, and then had it bronzed due to his rather prodigious ability to sire large litters.

Papa was the best cadaver dog in the department. He wasn’t in the cellar more than five seconds before he sat down in front of the brick wall that faced the street, alerting his partner, Sergeant Paulson.

Byrne had been right. There were windows on the outside, but not the inside. The basement wall was false.

And there was something human behind it.

An hour later, two officers with CSU began work on the wall. The work was slow, because they were not there for the express purpose of demolition. After determining that the cement block wall was not load bearing, they began with a saw with a silicon carbide blade at the bottom joint of the top row of block. They then cut both vertical joints, tapping out the dried mortar as they went. After removing the top row of block, they made quick work of the rest, which was simply a matter of using cold chisels to tap out the mortar between the blocks.

When they removed the fifth course, and saw the first bone in the wall, Byrne knew who it was.

They had just met the shadowy Mr Lucius Winter.