The Killing Room (11 page)

‘And still you won’t fuck me.’

‘Not if you were the last dick in the Delaware Valley.’

Shane laughed. The best part of riding with Mortal Cyn was that she was openly gay, Shane was openly straight, so there was never any sexual tension between them. There was, and hopefully always would be, a lot of sexual banter.

Cyn flipped on the light, and silently counted him down.

Exactly thirty-one seconds later, wrapping up:

‘This is Shane Adams, Action News.’

In this follow-up piece about the councilman (who everyone in the city of Philadelphia believed was guilty of taking kickbacks), they had framed the shot of Shane’s stand-up carefully to include a portion of the neon sign for the Crooked Toad Tavern on the corner. The way they composed the shot, with the tavern’s sign at the right side of the screen, cut out most of it, leaving a single truncated word over Shane’s left shoulder while he was talking. A word written in bright yellow letters:

CROOK

Shane watched the playback on the camera’s LCD screen.

Perfect.

God
, he loved his job.

At home, Shane showered and ran an electric razor over his face. He followed with toner and moisturizer. Next to the bathroom mirror he always kept a life-size color photograph of his face, taken on the first of every month. He had these pictures going back nearly ten years. He had a file of more than one hundred of them. In this way he charted the changes to his face, which was his life. He’d never had any plastic surgery, not even a dermabrasion or single shot of Botox, but now that he was getting older he was already pricing various procedures.

Still in his robe, he sat at his iMac, launched his database application, clicked onto the file he needed. He then launched iPhoto, maneuvered over to the corresponding folder.

He had first noticed her coming out of her rowhouse on Fitzwater Street about six months ago, and had watched her a few times since. She was tall and leggy, had deep auburn hair (Clairol Dark Spice Natural Reddish Brown). She was well dressed (Nordstrom and Bluefly), and had what appeared to be an Imelda Marcos-sized shoe collection (mostly Zappos, with a
lot
of returns).

Shane had systematically gone through her trash every other week for the past three months, meticulously recording the details he might need, inputting it all into his ever-growing database.

For instance, he knew she subscribed to
Wine Spectator
and, according to three separate receipts from a Center City chi-chi eatery, had ordered a Barolo. She was also a fan of novelist Sue
Miller, having recently bought a copy of
The Good Mother
at
amazon.com
. Three of her recent emails – which she for some reason printed out and subsequently discarded – had recommended the book to friends.

She also ordered Mexican food from a delivery service, favoring tapas on Tuesday and frijoles on Friday nights.

Note to self: Write a Broadway lyric around this.

Shane closed his eyes, visualized the upcoming encounter. He had learned this technique from a shrink he had been forced to see as a result of a run-in with the PPD the first week he had been on the job in Philadelphia. The court had thought he might be unstable.

Little did they know.

Twenty minutes later he dressed in a Zegna sport coat, Seven For All Mankind jeans, along with an inexpensive white shirt from J. Crew, locked the two deadbolts on his door, and left the building.

After stopping at the Barnes & Noble at Rittenhouse Square, and making his purchase, Shane entered the lobby bar at Le Meridien at just after nine. There was only one seat open at the bar. A Sixers game was on the plasma.

He saw her at her favorite banquette with her overweight work friend – older woman, mid-forties, wearing a navy blue, off-the-rack Chico’s pantsuit. Shane knew this woman to be Arlene. He had found a Christmas and birthday card from her in the trash.

Shane took up a position a few seats down from them. He slipped in a pair of earbuds, but did not start any music on his iPod. He needed to be able to hear. He opened his brand new
copy of
The Good Mother
, began to read. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the woman look over, then look a second time a few seconds later, the way people do when they think they know someone, but they’re not sure in which world to place them. School, work, social, casual. Ever since Shane had become an on-air personality in Philly it had started. This worked in his favor, as well as against, in seemingly equal measure.

Tonight it was golden.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. As she said this, she reached over and touched his arm. He glanced at her wine glass. It was almost empty.

Perfect.

Shane looked up, made eye contact. He felt a shiver of excitement. He imagined that it was the same feeling that prosecutors get when they trap a witness in a lie, or that of a marlin fisherman when he feels that unmistakable pull on the line.

He took the earbuds out, smiled. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ she said. Her full name was Danica Evelyn Dooley. Twenty-six, five-nine, 120 give or take. Mostly give lately. She’d been putting away a few bags of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies a week. She worked at Progressive Insurance, drove a Ford Focus, had two brothers named William and Thaddeus. She liked Versace
Crystal Noir
perfume. She was wearing it tonight. ‘I know you from somewhere.’

Shane smiled even more broadly. ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’d certainly remember you.’

She blushed. ‘My name is Danica. This is my friend –’

Arlene
, Shane wanted to blurt out, just to keep things moving. He did not.

‘– Arlene,’ Danica said.

‘My name is Shane.’ He reached out, shook hands with both women, lingering a split second longer with Danica’s hand. The gesture was not lost on anyone. ‘Delighted to meet you both.’

Not entirely true.

Danica pointed at Shane’s book. ‘I can’t believe you’re reading that. I just finished it. It has to be one of my favorite books of all time.’

Shane put his earbuds away, committing to the conversation, then held up the new paperback. ‘Well, I’m on my third read,’ he said. ‘Had to buy a new copy. I lent mine out, never got it back.’ He had read all the
amazon.com
reviews of the book before leaving the house, of course, and with his nearly eidetic memory, remembered them word for word. If pressed, he could more than hold his own in a book discussion with Danica. ‘Every time I read it I find something new.’

The waiter approached the table. ‘What can I get you, sir?’

Shane looked at the wine list, even though he didn’t have to. He had this memorized, too. ‘I think I’ll have a glass of the Barolo.’

‘This is amazing,’ Danica said. ‘Barolo is my favorite.’

‘Anything else for the ladies?’ the waiter asked.

Danica and her friend made instant eye contact, the way friends do at a moment like this, and Arlene got the message. She looked at her watch.

‘Nothing for me, thanks,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get going.’

The waiter turned to Danica. She tapped the rim of her wine glass. ‘I’ll have the same.’

Perfect.

Danica and Arlene made their goodbyes. Shane politely shook the other woman’s hand. When she was gone, he took up position on the other side of the table, opposite Danica Dooley. She really was beautiful. A symmetrical face, soft features, a minimal amount of makeup and jewelry.

When the waiter left, they clinked glasses, sniffed, swirled, sipped. A few seconds later Shane found Danica staring at him, smiling. ‘
Now
I know who you are,’ she said. ‘You’re on the
news
.’

‘Yes.’

She fluffed her hair, smoothed a cheek. She seemed a little star-struck, or maybe it was the second glass of Barolo. Shane preferred star-struck.

Danica pointed to the wine and the copy of
The Good Mother
.

‘I can’t believe we have exactly the same tastes.’

You have no idea
, Shane thought.

He left Danica’s apartment around 3 a.m. When he got home he showered again, prepared everything he needed for the morning, a day that was going to begin in just three hours.

Before crawling into bed, he opened the database, put the red
X
in the field next to Danica’s name, looked at the next few entries on the list. It was a list that had grown to seventy entries.

Shane fell asleep to the sound of the intermittent crackling of the police scanner he kept next to his bed. He had gone to sleep this way for many years. Although Shane might be loath to admit it to anyone outside the business, he could no longer sleep without it.

Soon he drifted off, the sound of swirling water filling his dreams, as it had every night since he was five years old, the sound of the baptismal waters engulfing him, filling his mind.

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart
, came the phantasm of his mother’s voice.

On the good nights the sound of the waters lulled him to sleep.

On the bad nights he drowned.

ELEVEN

In the days following the discovery of Daniel Palumbo’s body in the basement of the North Philadelphia building that once housed St Adelaide’s, the Homicide Unit interviewed more than three dozen people who either knew Palumbo, or had been in the neighborhood at the time.

Ultimately, they learned nothing about Danny Palumbo’s movements the day he either voluntarily went, or was led, to the abandoned church where ten days later he would die.

The medical examiner performed an autopsy on the victim, and the official cause of death was ruled exsanguination, meaning Palumbo had bled to death. A toxicology report was also filed, and concluded that, in addition to small traces of heroin and Ativan, an anti-anxiety drug, there was also trace of a drug called Pavulon.

Jessica had run into the drug Pavulon once before. It was a neuromuscular blocking agent, essentially a paralytic. It was used for general anesthesia during surgery as an aid to intubation or
ventilation. In higher doses it would completely paralyze the muscles, though have no pain-numbing effect.

Jessica considered Danny Palumbo in that chair, unable to move, the barbed wire wrapped around his body and neck. When he finally
could
move, his head fell forward from fatigue, and the sharpened barb cut into his carotid.

As to the crime scene, there were enough partial prints in that building to keep the latent print division busy for months, and that was not going to happen. In a building that old, the number of people who had passed through the space, touching those surfaces most likely to retain full prints – doors and jambs, handrails, window panes – numbered in the hundreds. In time, dust and soot formed a layer on everything, reducing the viability of the surfaces to yield clean, identifiable prints.

A half-dozen partial exemplars had been run, yielding no hits. The only good prints belonged to the victim, fingerprints in blood on the back of the wooden chair in which he was bound.

There were no eyewitnesses, and no other blood types were found on the victim or at the scene. They had not found anyone in the PCIC system named Boise.

The barbed wire used to wrap Danny Palumbo’s body – essentially, the murder weapon, their only lead at this point – was unremarkable in every way. The firearms unit determined that the wire was anywhere from five to fifteen years old. It was made of galvanized mild steel, a type used primarily in agriculture, and would not, if left unaltered, be sharp enough to accomplish what their killer so clearly wanted to accomplish. That was why one of the barbs had been honed to a razor-
sharp tip and carefully placed against Daniel Palumbo’s carotid artery.

Finding where the barbed wire was acquired was nearly impossible. If a length of concertina wire had been stolen from a Philadelphia business, and reported to police, they would have something to go on. Because the wire used to wrap the victim was agricultural, it left only a million acres of Pennsylvania farmland to investigate.

Ligature marks were found on the victim’s cheeks, as were cotton fibers, indicating Danny Palumbo had probably been gagged the whole time.

CSU found trace evidence of metal filings on Danny’s right shoulder.

On the final night of Danny Palumbo’s life, had the hooded figure they had seen on the street returned, and shaved down that barb to make it sharper? Had that person backed off on the paralytic drug so that Danny Palumbo could move his head, and thereby deliver the fatal wound?

The thought gave Jessica a chill.

But, if this were the case, why had the killer left Danny in there for ten days? Why not just do it and have done with it? Was the amount of time significant?

It had to be.

Jessica had put in a call to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, and received a rather terse fax in reply, stating the obvious and expected: that since the building had not housed a Catholic church in more than seventy years, they had no information relevant to the recent crime. The fax referred Jessica and the PPD to Licenses and Inspections, which, of course, was where Jessica’s inquiries began.

The Crime Scene Unit had collected its physical evidence and removed the tape. A secure padlock had been put on the door and, for all intents and purposes, to anyone walking or driving by, nothing bad had ever happened at that address.

The crime lab was a state-of-the-art facility at Eighth and Poplar Streets, often shorthanded as the FSB – Forensic Science Bureau. It housed many of the department’s scientific divisions, including the fingerprint lab, the drug lab, the Firearms Unit, the DNA lab, and the document section.

The head of the document section was a man named Sergeant Helmut Rohmer. Jessica and Byrne had worked with Rohmer – who preferred to be called Hell – on a number of cases.

A giant of a man at six-four, Hell was a sight to behold, with his spiky white-blond hair and huge, but gentle hands. Since getting married to another one of the techs at the lab, a young criminalist named Irina Kohl, he had put on an extra twenty or so pounds. Despite the extra girth, it seemed that married life agreed with him. He was a bit calmer than he had been, but no less thorough. At least he was eating well.