The Rosary Girls (16 page)

Byrne and Jessica stood in the small digital imaging room in the crime lab.

The imaging specialist was working on enhancing the photographs of Nicole Taylor’s left hand. Most crime scene photographs were still taken on thirty-five-millimeter film and then transferred to digital format, after which they could then be enhanced, enlarged, and, if needed, prepared for trial. The area of interest in this photograph was the small, crescent-shaped indentations in the lower left portion of Nicole’s palm. The technician enlarged and clarified the area, and when the image became clear, there was a collective gasp in the small room.

Nicole Taylor had sent them a message.
The slight cuts were not random at all.
“Oh my God,” Jessica said, her first adrenaline rush as a homicide

detective beginning to hum in her ears.

Before she died, Nicole Taylor had used the fingernails on her right hand to begin spelling a word on her left palm, a dying girl’s plea in the final, desperate moments of her life. There could be no debate. The cuts spelled p a r.

Byrne flipped open his cell phone, called Ike Buchanan. Within twenty minutes, an affidavit of probable cause would be typed and submitted to the chief of the Homicide Unit at the district attorney’s office. Within an hour, with any luck, they’d have a search warrant for the premises of Brian Allan Parkhurst.

27

TUESDAY, 6:30 PM

Simon Close stared at the front page of
The Report,
sitting proudly on the screen of his Apple PowerBook.
who is killing the rosary girls?
Is there anything better than seeing your byline beneath a screamingly provocative headline?
Maybe one or two things, tops, Simon thought. And both of those things cost him money, rather than lining his pocket with it.
The Rosary Girls.
His idea.
He had kicked around a few others. This one kicked back.
Simon loved this part of the night. The preen before the prowl. Although he dressed well for work—always in a shirt and tie, usually a blazer and slacks—it was at night that his tastes ran to the European cut, the Italian craftsmanship, the exquisite cloths. If it was Chaps during the day, it was Ralph Lauren proper at night.
He tried on Dolce & Gabbana and Prada, but he bought Armani and Pal Zileri. Thank God for that semiannual sale at Boyds.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. What woman could resist? While there were a lot of well-dressed men in Philadelphia, few really carried off the European style with any panache.
And then there were the women.
When Simon had struck out on his own, after Aunt Iris’s death, he had spent some time in Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and New York City. He had even considered living in New York—albeit fleetingly—but within a few months he was back in Philadelphia. New York was too fast, too crazy.And while he believed that Philly girls were every bit as sexy as Manhattan girls, Philly girls had something going for them that New York girls never would.
You had a
shot
at Philly girls.
He had just gotten the perfect dimple in his tie when there was a knock at the door. He crossed the small flat, opened the door. It was Andy Chase. Perfectly happy, terribly disheveled Andy. Andy wore a backward, soiled Phillies cap and a royal blue Members Only jacket—
do they still make Members Only?
Simon mused—complete with epaulets and zippered pockets.
Simon gestured to his burgundy jacquard tie. “Does this make me look too gay?” he asked.
“No.” Andy flopped onto the couch, hoisting a copy of
Macworld
magazine, chomping a Fuji apple. “Just gay enough.”
“Piss off.”
Andy shrugged. “I don’t know how you can spend so much money on clothes. I mean, you can only wear one suit at a time. What’s the point?” Simon spun and walked across the living room, runway style. He pivoted, posed, vogued. “You can look upon me and still ask that question? Style is its own reward,
mon frère
.”
Andy affected a huge, mock yawn, then took another gnaw of his apple.
Simon poured himself a few ounces of Courvoisier. He opened a can of Miller Lite for Andy. “Sorry. No Beer Nuts.”
Andy shook his head. “Mock me all you want. Beer Nuts are a lot better than that
fwa gra
shit you eat.”
Simon made a grand gesture of covering his ears. Andy Chase offended at the cellular level.
They caught up on the day’s events. For Simon, these chats were part of the overhead of doing business with Andy. Penance given and said, it was time to go.
“So how is Kitty?” Simon asked, perfunctorily, with as much enthusiasm as he could fake.
The wee cow,
he thought. Kitty Bramlett had been a petite, nearly pretty cashier at Wal-Mart when Andy fell for her. That was seventy pounds and three chins ago. Kitty and Andy had settled into that childless, early-middle-age nightmare of marriage built on habit. Microwave dinners, birthdays at the Olive Garden, and rutting twice a month in front of Jay Leno.
Kill me first, Lord,
Simon thought.
“She is exactly the same.” Andy tossed the magazine and stretched. Simon caught a glimpse of the top of Andy’s trousers. They were safetypinned together. “For some reason she still thinks you should try to get together with her sister. As if she would have anything to do with you.” Kitty’s sister Rhonda looked like a distaff vision of Willard Scott, but not nearly as feminine.
“I’ll be sure to give her a call soon,” Simon replied.
“Whatever.”
It was still raining. Simon would have to ruin the entire look with his tasteful, yet drearily functional London Fog raincoat. It was the one piece that sorely needed updating. Still, it was better than rain spotting the Zileri. “No mood for your shite,” Simon said, making exit gestures.Andy got the hint, stood up, headed toward the door. He had left his apple core on the couch.
“You can’t harsh my vibe tonight,” Simon added. “I look good, I smell great, I have a cover story in the oven, and life is
dolce
.”
Andy pulled a face:
Dolce
?
“Good lord,” Simon said. He reached into his pocket, removed the hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to Andy. “Thanks for the tip,” he said. “Keep them coming.”
“Anytime, bro,”Andy said. He pocketed the bill, walked out the door, and headed down the stairs.
Bro,
Simon thought.
If this is Purgatory, I truly fear Hell.
He gave himself one last look in the full-length mirror inside the coat closet.
Perfect.
The city was his.

28

TUESDAY, 7:00 PM

Brian Parkhurst wasn’t home. Nor was his Ford Windstar. The six detectives fanned out in the three-story Garden Court row
house. The first floor held a small living room and dining room, kitchen
at the back. Between the dining room and the kitchen, a steep set of stairs led to the second floor, which had a bathroom and a bedroom converted to office space. The third floor, which had once been two small bedrooms, had been renovated into a master suite. None of the rooms had dark blue nylon carpeting.
The furnishings were modern for the most part: leather sofa and chair, teak hutch and dining table. The office desk was older, probably pickled oak. His bookshelves spoke of an eclectic taste. Philip Roth, Jackie Collins, Dave Barry, Dan Simmons. The detectives noted the presence of
William Blake:The Complete Illuminated Books.
I can’t say I know very much about Blake,
Parkhurst had said during his interview.
A quick riffling through the Blake book showed that nothing had been cut out of it.
A scan of the refrigerator, freezer, and kitchen garbage produced no
evidence of leg of lamb. The
Joy of Cooking
in the kitchen was bookmarked
on caramel flan.
There was nothing unusual in his closets. Three suits, a pair of tweed
blazers, half a dozen pairs of dress shoes, a dozen dress shirts. All conservative and of good quality.
The walls of his office boasted his three certificates of higher education: one from John Carroll University and two from the University of
Pennsylvania. There was also a well-framed poster for the Broadway production of
The Crucible
.
Jessica took the second floor. She went through the closet in the
office, which seemed to be dedicated to Parkhurst’s sporting endeavors.
It appeared that he played tennis and racquetball, as well as engaging in a
little sailboarding. There was also an expensive wet suit.
She went through his desk drawers, finding all the expected supplies.
Rubber bands, pens, paper clips, Tic Tacs. Another drawer held LaserJet
toner cartridges and a spare keyboard. All the drawers opened with no
problem, except for the file drawer.
The file drawer was locked.
Odd, for a man who lived alone, Jessica thought.
A quick but thorough scan of the top drawer yielded no key. Jessica looked out of the office door, listened to the chatter. All the
other detectives were busy. She returned to the desk, quickly took out
her pick set. You don’t work in the Auto Unit for three years without
picking up
some
locksmithing skills. Within seconds, she was in. Most of the files were for household and personal business. Tax
records, business receipts, personal receipts, insurance policies. There
was also a stack of paid Visa bills. Jessica wrote down the card number. A
quick perusal of purchases yielded nothing suspicious. There was no
charge to a religious supply house.
She was just about to close and lock the drawer when she saw the tip
of a small manila envelope peeking out from behind the drawer. She
reached back as far as she could and pulled the envelope out. It had been
taped out of sight, but never properly sealed.
Inside the envelope were five photographs. They had been taken in
Fairmount Park during the fall. Three of the pictures were of a fully
clothed young woman, shyly posing in a faux-glamour pose. Two of them
were the same young woman posing with a smiling Brian Parkhurst. The young woman sat on his lap. The pictures were dated October of the pre
vious year.
The young woman was Tessa Wells.
“Kevin!” Jessica yelled down the stairs.
Byrne was up in a flash, taking four steps at a time. Jessica showed
him the photographs.
“Son of a
bitch,
” Byrne said. “We had him and we let him go.” “Don’t worry. We’ll get him again.” They had found a complete set of
luggage beneath the stairs. He wasn’t on a trip.
Jessica summed up the evidence. Parkhurst was a doctor. He knew
both victims. He claimed to have known Tessa Wells in a professional
sense, only as her counselor, and yet he had personal photographs of her.
He had a history of sexual involvement with students. One of the victims
had begun to spell his last name on her palm, just before her death. Byrne got on Parkhurst’s desk phone and called Ike Buchanan. He
put the phone on speakerphone and briefed Buchanan on what they had
found.
Buchanan listened, then uttered the three words for which Byrne and
Jessica were hoping and waiting: “Pick him up.”

29

TUESDAY, 8:15 PM

If Sophie Balzano was the most beautiful little girl in the world when she was wide awake, she was positively angelic in that moment when day became night, in that sweet twilight of half sleep.

Jessica had volunteered to take the first watch on Brian Parkhurst’s home in Garden Court. She was told to go home, get some rest. As was Kevin Byrne. There were two detectives on the house.

Jessica sat on the edge of Sophie’s bed, watching her.
They had taken a bubble bath together. Sophie had washed and conditioned her own hair. No help needed,
thank you very much
. They had dried off, shared a pizza in the living room. It was breaking a rule—they were supposed to eat at the table—but now that Vincent wasn’t around, a lot of rules seemed to be slipping by the wayside.
No more of that, Jessica thought.
As she got Sophie ready for bed, Jessica found herself hugging her daughter a little more closely, a little more often. Even Sophie had given her the fish eye, as if to say:
What’s up, Mom?
But Jessica knew what was up. The way Sophie felt at these times was her salvation.
And now that Sophie was tucked in, Jessica allowed herself to relax, to start to unwind from the horrors of the day.
A little.
“Story?” Sophie asked, her tiny voice riding on the wings of a big yawn.
“You want me to read a story?”
Sophie nodded.
“Okay,” Jessica said.
“Not the Hoke,” Sophie said.
Jessica had to laugh. The Hoke was Sophie’s bogeyman
du jour
. It all began with a trip to the King of Prussia mall, about a year earlier, and the presence of the fifteen-foot-tall inflatable green Hulk they had erected to promote the release of the DVD. One look at the giant figure and Sophie had immediately taken trembling refuge behind Jessica’s legs.
“What’s
that
?” Sophie had asked, lips aquiver, fingers clutching Jessica’s skirt.
“It’s only the Hulk,” Jessica had said. “It’s not real.”
“I don’t like the Hoke.”
It had gotten to the point where anything green and more than four feet tall inspired panic these days.
“We don’t have any Hoke stories, honey,” Jessica said. She’d figured that Sophie had forgotten about the Hoke. Some monsters died hard, it seemed.
Sophie smiled and scrunched down under the covers, ready for a Hoke-free dream.
Jessica went to the closet, got out the book box. She perused the current slate of toddler lit.
The Runaway Bunny; You’re the Boss, Baby Duck!; Curious George.
Jessica sat down on the bed, looked at the spines of the books. They were all for children two and under. Sophie was nearly three. She was actually too mature for
The Runaway Bunny
. Dear God, Jessica thought, she’s growing up way too fast.
The book on the bottom was
How Do I Put It On?,
a primer on getting dressed. Sophie could easily dress herself, and had been able to do so for months. It had been a long time since she had put her shoes on the wrong feet, or slipped her OshKosh overalls on backward.
Jessica decided on
Yertle the Turtle,
the Dr. Seuss story. It was one of Sophie’s favorites. Jessica’s, too.
Jessica began to read, chronicling the adventures and life lessons of Yertle and the gang on the island of Sala-ma-Sond. After a few pages she looked over at Sophie, expecting to see a big smile. Yertle was a laugh riot, usually. Especially the part where he becomes King of the Mud.
But Sophie was already fast asleep.
Lightweight,
Jessica thought with a smile.
She flipped the three-way bulb onto the lowest setting, bunched the covers around Sophie. She put the book back in the box.
She thought about Tessa Wells and Nicole Taylor. How could she not? She had the feeling that these girls would not be far from her conscious thoughts for a long time.
Had their mothers sat on the edges of their beds like this, marveling at the perfection of their daughters? Had they watched them sleep, thanking God for every breath in, and every breath out?
Of course they had.
Jessica looked at the photo frame on Sophie’s nightstand, the Precious Moments frame covered in hearts and bows. There were six photos displayed. Vincent and Sophie at the shore when Sophie was just over a year old. Sophie wore a floppy orange bonnet and sunglasses. Her chubby little legs were caked with wet sand. There was a picture of Jessica and Sophie in the backyard. Sophie was holding the one and only radish they got out of the container garden that year. Sophie had planted the seed, watered the plant, harvested her crop. She had insisted on eating the radish, even though Vincent had warned her she wouldn’t like it. Being a trouper, and stubborn as a little mule, Sophie had tasted the radish, trying not to make a face. Eventually her face went cabbage-patch with the bitterness, and she spit it into a paper towel. That marked the end of her agricultural curiosity.
The picture in the lower right-hand corner was of Jessica’s mother, taken when Jessica had been a toddler herself. Maria Giovanni looking spectacular in a yellow sundress, her tiny daughter on her knee. Her mother looked so much like Sophie. Jessica wanted Sophie to know her grandmother, although Maria was barely a lucid memory to Jessica these days, more like an image glimpsed through a glass block.
She flipped off Sophie’s light, sat in the dark.
Jessica had been on the job two full days, and it already seemed like months. The entire time she had been on the force, she had looked at homicide detectives the way many cops did: They only had one job to do. Divisional detectives handled a much broader range of crimes.As the saying goes, a homicide is just an aggravated assault gone wrong.
Boy, was she mistaken.
If this was only one job to do, it was enough.
Jessica wondered, as she had every day for the past three years, if it was fair to Sophie that she was a cop, that she put her life on the line every day when she left the house. She had no answer.
Jessica went downstairs, checked the front and the back door to the house for the third time. Or was it the fourth?
She was off on Wednesday, but she hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with herself. How was she supposed to relax? How was she supposed to go about her life when two young girls had been brutally murdered? Right now she didn’t care about the wheel, the duty roster. She didn’t know a cop who would. At this point, half the force would donate their overtime to take this son of a bitch down.
Her father always had his yearly Easter get-together on Wednesday of Easter Week. Maybe that would get her mind off things. She would go and try to forget about the job. Her father always had a way of putting things in perspective for her.
Jessica sat on the couch, ran through the cable channels five or six times. She turned the set off. She was just about to climb into bed with a book when the phone rang. She really hoped it wasn’t Vincent. Or maybe hoped it was.
It wasn’t.
“Is this Detective Balzano?”
It was a man’s voice. Loud music in the background. Disco beat.
“Who is calling?” Jessica asked.
The man didn’t answer. Laughter and ice cubes in glasses. He was in a bar.
“Last chance,” Jessica said.
“It’s Brian Parkhurst.”
Jessica glanced at the clock, noted the time on a notepad she kept near the phone. She looked at the screen on her caller ID. Private number.
“Where are you?” Her voice sounded high and nervous. Reedy.
Calm, Jess.
“Not important,” Parkhurst said.
“It kinda is,” Jessica said. Better. Conversational.
“I’m doing the talking.”
“That’s good, Dr. Parkhurst. Really. Because we’d really like to talk to you.”
“I know.”
“Why don’t you come to the Roundhouse? I’ll meet you there. We can talk.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Why?”
“I’m not a stupid man, Detective. I know you were at my house.”
He was slurring his words.
“Where are you?” Jessica asked a second time.
No answer. Jessica heard the music morph into a Latin disco beat. She made another note.
Salsa club.
“Meet me,” Parkhurst said. “There are things you need to know about these girls.”
“Where and when?”
“Meet me at
The Clothespin
. Fifteen minutes.”
Next to
salsa club
she wrote:
within 15 min. of city hall
.
The Clothespin
was the huge, Claes Oldenburg sculpture at the Center Square Plaza, right next to city hall. In the old days, people in Philly would say
Meet me at the eagle at Wanamaker,
the late, great department store with the mosaic of the eagle in the floor. Everyone knew the eagle at Wanamaker’s. Now, it was
The Clothespin
.
Parkhurst added: “And come alone.”
“Not gonna happen, Dr. Parkhurst.”
“If I see anyone else there, I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m not talking to your partner.”
Jessica didn’t blame Parkhurst for not wanting to be in the same room as Kevin Byrne at this point. “Give me twenty minutes,” she said.
The line went dead.
Jessica called Paula Farinacci who, once again came through for her. There was certainly a special place in Babysitter Heaven for Paula. Jessica bundled a drowsy Sophie into her favorite blanket and shuttled her three doors down. When she got back home, she called Kevin Byrne on his cell phone, got his voice mail. She called him at home. Ditto.
Come on, partner,
she thought.
I need you.
She put on jeans and running shoes, her rain slicker. She grabbed her cell phone, popped a fresh mag into her Glock, snapped on her holster, and headed into Center City.

Jessica waited near the corner of Fifteenth and Market Streets in the pouring rain. She decided not to stand directly beneath
The Clothespin
sculpture for all the obvious reasons. She didn’t need to be a sitting target.

She glanced around the square. Few pedestrians were out, due to the storm. The lights on Market Street formed a shimmering red-and-yellow watercolor on the pavement.

When she was small, her father used to take her and Michael to Center City and the Reading Terminal Market for cannoli from Termini’s. Granted, the original Termini’s in South Philly was only a few blocks from their house, but there was something about riding SEPTA downtown and walking to the market that made the cannoli taste better. It still did.

In those days they used to saunter up Walnut Street after Thanksgiving, window-shopping at all the exclusive shops. They could never afford anything they saw in the windows, but the beautiful displays had sent her little-girl fantasies adrift.

So long ago, Jessica thought.
The rain was relentless.
A man approached the sculpture, snapping Jessica out of her reverie.

He wore a green rain slicker, hood up, hands in pocket. He seemed to linger near the foot of the giant art piece, scanning the area. From where Jessica stood, he looked to be Brian Parkhurst’s height. As to weight and hair color, it was impossible to tell.

Jessica drew her weapon, kept it behind her back. She was just about to head over when the man suddenly walked down into the subway stop.
Jessica drew a deep breath, holstered her weapon.
She watched the cars circle the square, headlights cutting the rain like cat’s eyes.
She called Brian Parkhurst’s cell phone number.
Voice mail.
She tried Kevin Byrne’s cell phone.
Ditto.
She pulled the hood of her rain slicker tighter.
And waited.

TUESDAY, 8:55 PM
He is drunk.

That will make my job easier. Slower reflexes, diminished capacity, poor depth perception. I could wait for him outside the bar, walk up to him, announce my intentions, then cut him in half.

He wouldn’t know what hit him.
But where’s the fun in that?
Where is the lesson?
No, I think it is best for people to know. I realize that there is a good chance

I will be stopped before I can complete this passion play. And if I am, one day, walked down that long corridor, and into an antiseptic room, and strapped to a gurney, I will accept my fate.

I know that I will be judged by a much greater power than the commonwealth of Pennsylvania when my time comes.
Until then, I will be the one sitting next to you in church, the one who offers you a seat on the bus, the one who holds the door for you on a windy day, the one who bandages your daughter’s scraped knee.
That is the grace of living in God’s long shadow.
Sometime the shadow turns out to be nothing more than a coat tree.
Sometimes the shadow is everything you fear.

TUESDAY, 9:00 PM
Byrne sat at the bar, oblivious to the music, the din of the pool table. All he heard, for the moment, was the roar in his head. He was at a run-down corner tavern in Gray’s Ferry called Shotz, the farthest thing from a cop bar he could imagine. He could’ve hit the hotel bars downtown, but he didn’t like paying ten dollars a drink.

What he
really
wanted was a few more minutes with Brian Parkhurst. If only he could take another run at him, he would know for sure. He downed his bourbon, ordered one more.

Byrne had turned off his cell phone earlier, but he had left his pager on. He checked it, seeing the number of Mercy Hospital. Jimmy had called for the second time that day. Byrne checked his watch. He’d stop by Mercy and charm the cardiac nurses into a brief visit. There are never any visiting hours when a cop is in the hospital.

The other calls were from Jessica. He’d call her in a little while. He just needed a few minutes to himself.
For now, he just wanted the peace of the noisiest bar in Gray’s Ferry.
Tessa Wells.
Nicole Taylor.
The public thinks that when a person is murdered, cops show up at the scene, make a few notes, then go home to their lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because the unavenged dead never stay dead. The unavenged dead
watch
you. They watch you when you go to the movies or have dinner with your family, or lift a few pints with the boys at the corner tavern. They watch you when you make love. They watch and they wait and they question.
What are you doing for me?
they whisper in your ear, softly, as your life unfolds, as your kids grow and prosper, as you laugh and cry and feel and believe. Why are you out having a good time? they ask. Why are you living it up while I’m laying here on the cold marble?
What are you doing for me?
Byrne’s solve rate was one of the highest in the unit, partially, he knew, because of the synergy he’d had with Jimmy Purify, partially due to the waking dreams he’d begun having, courtesy of four slugs from Luther White’s pistol and a trip beneath the surface of the Delaware.
The organized killer, by nature, believed himself superior to most people, but especially superior to the people tasked with finding him. It was this egotism that drove Kevin Byrne, and in this case, the Rosary Girl case, it was becoming an obsession. He knew that. He had probably known that the moment he had walked down those rotted steps on North Eighth Street and seen the brutal humiliation that had befallen Tessa Wells.
But he knew it was as much a sense of duty as it was the horror of Morris Blanchard. He had been wrong many times earlier in his career, but it had never led to the death of an innocent. Byrne wasn’t sure if the arrest and conviction of the Rosary Girl killer would expiate the guilt, or if it would square him once again with the city of Philadelphia, but he hoped it would fill an emptiness inside.
And then he could retire with his head held high.
Some detectives follow the money. Some follow the science. Some follow the motive. Kevin Byrne trusted the door at the end of his mind. No, he couldn’t predict the future, nor divine the identity of a killer just by laying hands. But sometimes it
felt
like he could, and maybe that was what made the difference. The nuance detected, the intention discovered, the path chosen, the thread followed. In the past fifteen years, ever since he had drowned, he had only been wrong once.