'Ah, okay,' Byrne said. 'I'm sure you still have the receipts from when you purchased the equipment, yes? We may want to look at them.'
Novak remained stone-faced. 'I could probably find them.'
'Great,' Byrne said. 'That would help a lot.'
Jessica excused herself, stepped out of the interview room. She got on the phone to West Division detectives, made her request. A few minutes later she got a fax of the incident report. Novak was telling the truth. At least about the break-in. She stepped back into the interview room, handed the fax to Byrne. He read it, looked at Novak.
'It appears you were telling the truth,' Byrne said.
'Imagine that.'
Byrne put the fax into the binder, closed it. 'Yet you know what I find odd?'
'What is that?'
'With all your meticulous research into the Antoinette Chan case, you do not remember the name Kenneth Beckman. His name was in the papers — on television, too.'
Novak shrugged. 'I must have missed it.'
'Imagine that.'
'You can see why we might be interested here, Mr. Novak.' Byrne held up the bag with the paper sample. 'Here is an item belonging to you, and it was found at the scene of a homicide.'
'It was an item stolen from me,' Novak said. 'And while the injustice that was done to me pales in comparison to what was done to Mr. Beckman I am just as much a victim in this as he.'
Byrne took it all in, waited a few moments. 'Sounds positively operatic.'
For a few moments Novak said nothing. Then, almost on cue: 'I believe we have reached the point where I should contact my attorney.
Among other things, I'm sure he will be interested in the photographs you have of my personal and private property, and how they were obtained.'
Byrne looked at Jessica. She held up her iPhone so that Novak could see the screen. She tapped a few icons and a moment later they all watched the progress bar move left to right. The images had been deleted. Byrne looked back at Novak.
'What photographs?' Byrne asked.
The two men stared at each other for a few seconds.
'We're almost done here,' Byrne finally said. 'If you'll excuse us for a moment.'
Byrne stepped out of the room, closed the door, slid home the bolt. He bumped a fist with Jessica. They had, of course, printed the images from her iPhone before starting the interview. In addition, while holding up her iPhone in the interview room, she had also taken Joseph Novak's picture.
They met with Dana Westbrook in the coffee room. They watched Novak on the monitor.
'Unfortunately, this is not enough to hold him or get a search warrant,' Westbrook said.
'We have to consider his collage of murder stories, boss.'
'Not against the law last time I checked. If it was, I might be in jail myself. Last night I watched a double feature of Manhunter and The Silence of the Lambs.'' Westbrook checked her watch. They had to be careful about how long they kept Novak. They would soon have to charge him or let him go. They'd all had a refresher course in this recently with the Eduardo Robles fiasco. 'Plus, none of the snapshots would be admissible. No probable cause, and how they were obtained would certainly be explored by any defense attorney.'
Jessica looked back into the room. Novak had not moved a muscle. He sat with his eyes closed, his long legs crossed in front of him.
'Can we put him under surveillance?' Jessica asked.
Westbrook walked back to her office, returned. She had looked at the duty roster. 'I don't have a single warm body available. There may be someone on last-out tonight. I'll talk to the watch commander and see what I can do.'
Anything could happen between now and then, Jessica thought. Still, it was what it was.
'Cut him loose,' Westbrook said.
A few minutes later Jessica and Byrne stood in the duty room, watching Novak saunter toward the hallway that led to the elevators.
Before Novak rounded the corner he stopped, as if he'd forgotten something. A few seconds later he spun on his heels, walked briskly back, heading directly for Jessica and Byrne.
What the hell is this? Jessica wondered.
Chapter 34
As Novak approached, Byrne watched the man's hands. It was a habit he'd acquired as a rookie and he'd never forgotten it. Watch the hands, watch the man.
Novak stopped in front of them. He did not look at Jessica, just at Byrne.
'I just wanted to say I harbor no hard feelings,' Novak said.
This isn't over, Byrne thought. You might change your mind about that.
Novak extended his hand.
Byrne had learned a lesson from his father many years earlier, and that was never to refuse to shake a man's hand, even if you think he is the most despicable person on earth. The reason, Paddy Byrne explained to his young son, was that if at some point in the future you needed to take that man down, he would never see you coming.
Byrne reached out.
The two men touched, and Byrne saw…
… the house bathed in darkness, light coming in the high windows, milk of an autumn moon painting everything in a sulfurous blue.
Four people here. Music plays in the background. Lilting, familiar music, soon buoyed by screams of terror and agony. Now the smell of blood in the air. Blood and jasmine.
At midnight three people stand over a dead body, blood spreading on the white tile, glossy crimson clouds reflecting faces that…
… Byrne could not see. Not yet. He held Joseph Novak's hand for an uncomfortable second too long. The gesture was not lost on Novak, who turned quickly and walked out of the duty room.
Byrne had one question circling the disturbing vision in his mind, one question to which he did not really want the answer.
Was this Joseph Novak's memory, or my own?
Chapter 35
They met in the boss's office. In the room, besides Dana Westbrook, were Russell Diaz, Nicci Malone, Nick Palladino, Josh Bontrager and Dennis Stansfield.
Byrne drew two triangles on the white board. On the first triangle he wrote a name at the top. Antoinette Chan. At the bottom left he wrote Kenneth Beckman. Bottom right, Sharon Beckman.
'Let's start with Antoinette Chan,' Byrne said. 'Let's say for the sake of argument that Beckman killed her. And let's say that Sharon Beckman was his accomplice, in that she set fire to their house to destroy any evidence. Kenneth Beckman's body was found at the original Chan crime scene. Sharon Beckman's was found on Antoinette Chan's grave. Killer, accomplice and victim, all joined in this triangle, each point completed.'
Byrne moved over to the second triangle. At the top he put a question mark. At the lower left he wrote John Doe. At the lower right, another question mark.
'Now, if our bad boy is some kind of vigilante, righting old wrongs, and his MO is to take out the lead suspect in an unsolved homicide and leave the body at the original crime scene, then move on to an accomplice and dump that body on the grave of the original victim, I think we can extrapolate a bit here.'
Byrne pointed at the bottom left of the second triangle.
'Because our John Doe was found on the street, we can assume that he was someone who our guy believes was responsible for a homicide that took place at that location. Who the victim was, and who the accomplice was, we won't know until we track down the original crime. We have to start here. Unless we can turn up a witness, it's the only move.'
Byrne turned to Nicci. 'Nothing on the John Doe's prints yet?'
Nicci shook her head. 'The guy was a crackhead. His fingers are so burned we couldn't get a good print. Still working on it, though.'
Byrne nodded. 'Okay, then we'll have to find a homicide committed at the corner of Second and Poplar.'
There were audible moans around the room. This was going to be a paper chase.
Six detectives pored over homicide binders for cases from the past thirty years. Unfortunately, there was no way to search the electronic databases based on where a homicide had been committed, or by status. I
t all had to be done by hand. It was tedious work, having to read each file. Not all of them had been filled out properly or even legibly. It was almost a peer review of the detectives who had worked in the unit over the past three decades.
Jessica flipped through the books covering 2003 to 2007. Case after case her eyes jumped from the name of the victim to the date, to the crime-scene location. Case after case took her on a grotesque tour of her city, its crimes of violence, its victims and perpetrators. It occurred to her more than once that she had been to virtually all these places, many times, often with her family as a child, or with Sophie and Vincent, blissfully unaware that someone in her city's past had been murdered there.
Every so often Jessica got up and fetched herself a fresh cup of coffee, hoping to keep on mission. The names and addresses all started to blend together, and the danger of finding herself daydreaming carried with it the hazard that she would have no idea how long she had been drifting and therefore no idea how far she needed to go back.
Fresh cup, a quick stretch, and back at it. Mid-2004. The page on which she had stopped told a charming little tale of a man who had shot his wife eleven times for having an affair with the UPS man. Jessica wondered if the guy delivered.
You're getting loopy, Jess.
She flipped a page.
'Here it is!' she shouted, almost before she knew it.
The other five detectives got up, all but ran over to her.
'June 21, 2004. DOA found in a Dumpster near Second and Poplar. Victim's name was Marcellus Palmer.'
A quick scan of the page told them the basics. Marcellus Palmer had been indigent, forty-one years old. He was found bludgeoned to death, his pockets turned inside out, his shoes missing. Jessica made a mental note, as she assumed Byrne did as well, that the COD was the same as for Antoinette Chan. Bludgeoned. Perhaps the connection was there.
They would have to go to Record Storage to get the full file, but they had made a start.
Jessica looked at the photo clipped to the summary. The new crime scene was literally a few feet from where Palmer's body had been found. It was one of Kevin Byrne's old stomping grounds as a patrolman.
'What's the status?' Bontrager asked.
'Open case,' Jessica said.
'Suspects?'
'The main suspect, also homeless, was a man named Preston Braswell, thirty-one at the time. Never charged.'
Nicci Malone sat down at a computer terminal, typed in the name. A few seconds later she had a hit. And a picture. 'That's him. Preston Braswell is our John Doe.'
The other detectives crowded around the terminal. The photograph on the screen was that of a younger, cleaner version of the John Doe. A positive match.
They now had two separate cases where the original suspect in a homicide case was found murdered and had been dumped in the precise same spot as the original homicide. One of the cases had the accomplice dumped on the grave site of the original victim. They had every reason to believe it was about to happen again. If it hadn't happened already.
Nicci sprang to her feet. Dino helped her with her coat, put on his own. 'We're off to Record Storage,' Dino said. 'Stand by.'
As Nicci and Dino left, Jessica and Byrne returned to the white board. Byrne erased the question mark at the top of the triangle on the right, then replaced it with the name Marcellus Palmer. He then erased the question mark at the lower left, replaced it with the name Preston Braswell.
Jessica took a step back, looked at the growing mountain of evidence connected with these three cases. There were three binders on the desk, each with a thickening group of folders within. She glanced at Byrne.
He was staring at something else.
He was staring at the final question mark on the board.
Twenty minutes later they got a call from Nicci Malone. She had the box of files on the 2004 murder of Marcellus Palmer. She was just about to fax over the suspect and witness list. Jessica put the phone on speaker.
'How bad is it?' Jessica asked.
'Put on your Nikes. The initial list has seventy-one names.'
'Seventy-one?'
'Yeah. The homeless are a social group,' Nicci said. 'But it looks like there were four men besides Preston Braswell who we liked more than the others. They were all questioned and released. I think we should try to track them down first.'
Before our killer does, Jessica thought.
A few minutes later they received the fax with the four names. Jessica found them all in the system and printed off what information they had on the men, including the most recent photographs.
Because there was no information on where Marcellus Palmer was buried they would have to start on the street.
For years, and with no small sense of irony, many homeless had huddled in the park directly across from the police administration building, in what is known as Franklin Square. In general, the homeless congregate where they are fed. Not much had changed in the past twenty-five years.
The detectives divvied up the names and photographs of the four men, as well as the locations of the shelters. They would work these interviews solo, as there were too many places to visit in teams, and time was short.
Jessica would take Old City.
Chapter 36
The area beneath the Ben Franklin Bridge, at the interchange with 1-95, had long been a refuge for Philadelphia's homeless. For years the police referred to it as The Condos. Jessica parked, found a break in the chain-link fence, made her way beneath the overpass. There were a few dozen people congregated there. Stacked against the fence were stuffed cardboard boxes, bursting plastic bags. Nearby was a stroller with only three wheels. Cups, bottles, milk cartons, fast-food trash. No aluminum cans, of course. Cans were currency.
There were ten or twelve people on the north side of the encampment, mostly men. They glanced up at Jessica, not reacting in any way. Two reasons. One, she was a woman. Two, even though she was clearly a police officer, or at least a representative of the system, she was not coming in all guns blazing, with the obvious intention of uprooting them.
There were three distinct camps, with a few men off on their own. Jessica approached the first group, showed them the photographs. No one admitted recognizing anyone. The same with the second and third groups of men.
As Jessica walked away from the third group, one of the men called out to her. Jessica turned around. It was one of the older guys. He was lying on a thick bed of cardboard.
'Say, darling, you ever been with a homeless man?' He smiled his keyboard grin, broke into a phlegmy cough. The other two men in his posse chuckled. 'Guaranteed to change your life. You interested?'
'Sure,' Jessica said. 'All you have to do is take a shower and get a job.'
The man looked shocked. He got back under his blanket, turned on his side. 'You ain't all that.''
Jessica smiled, made her way back around the camp, asking the same questions, receiving nothing. The last man pointed to a man on the other side of the embankment, someone Jessica hadn't noticed before. As she approached she saw that the man — who was surrounded by carefully placed trash bags — had his legs covered with what appeared to be a new blanket. As Jessica got closer she saw that it still had its price tag.
The man was propped against the fence, reading a paperback. Its cover was missing but Jessica could read the spine. Great Expectations.
'Excuse me. Sir?'
He looked up. He was black, somewhere between fifty and seventy. He wore a tattered brown corduroy blazer and a yellowed shirt. His tie, like the blanket, looked new. Jessica wondered if there was a price tag on that, too. His eyes were bright and intelligent.
'Madam.'
'May I ask your name?'
'Abraham Coltrane.'
Jessica believed the Abraham part. 'Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?' Jessica held up her badge. The man scanned it.
'Not at all.'
Jessica held up three of the photographs. 'Do you know any of these men?'
Co
ltrane scanned the pictures. 'I do not. Are they men of leisure, such as myself?'
'They are.'
Abraham Coltrane nodded. Jessica held up the final picture, a photograph of the fourth man believed to have been involved with the
2004 murder of Marcellus Palmer. The man's name was Tyvander Alice. 'What about this man?'
Coltrane looked again. This time Jessica saw the slightest flicker of recognition. 'Again,' he said. 'My regrets.'
'This picture was taken a few years ago.'
'I remember everyone I have ever met, madam.'
She believed he did, which was why she didn't believe the part about him not knowing Tyvander Alice. She took out a five-dollar bill, making sure that the man saw it.
'Nice blanket,' she said.
'It provides.'
Jessica lifted the price tag. 'You have a receipt for this, Mr. Coltrane?'
'It was a gift from one of my many admirers.'
'They gave you a gift with the price tag still on it?'
Coltrane shrugged. 'The young have but a nodding acquaintance with custom, I fear.'
'Thank God the court system still does,' Jessica said. 'They're really big on it. Indictment, prosecution, conviction, incarceration. You might say they are sticklers for tradition.'
Coltrane stared at her for a moment. Jessica saw the man's will begin to fade. 'May I see that photograph again?'
'Of course.' Jessica showed him. He studied it for a moment, rubbing his stubbled chin.
'Now that I've had a moment to reflect, I believe I have made the acquaintance of this gentleman.'
'Is this Tyvander Alice?'
'Tyvander?' he asked. 'No. I knew him by another name. I know him as Hoochie.'
'Hoochie?'
'Yes. An unfortunate and undignified sobriquet based on his love of the lesser vintages, I believe.'
Jessica handed Coltrane the five. The man touched it to his forehead, sniffed it, then spirited it away under his blanket.
Before Jessica could ask another question she saw the blanket move. A few seconds later a Jack Russell terrier poked his snout out.
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