‘Can I ask what happened over there?’ she asked.
‘Right now it looks like there was a homicide in that building,’ Jessica said.
The woman covered her mouth. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘Ma’am, if you think you saw something, no matter how insignificant, it might be very helpful. Everything you tell me will be confidential.’
The woman took a few seconds. ‘Okay. Well. In that case, maybe I do have something you might find useful.’
Jessica flipped to a fresh page in her notebook.
‘I came down here last night, around ten o’clock, just to check on things,’ the woman said. ‘I picked up the newspaper, unlocked the door — there are three dead bolts, so it takes awhile — then stepped inside. I did a quick check of the windows and the back door, and around ten minutes later I was ready to leave. I stepped out and accidentally dropped my keys next to the steps, and had to walk around. As I was picking them up, I thought I heard someone talking across the street.’
‘You heard a conversation?’
‘No, not really a conversation. I saw a man standing over there. In front of that closed-up building.’
‘A man,’ Jessica said. ‘One man.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he was talking?’
‘Yes.’
‘To whom?’
‘Well, to himself, I guess.’
‘Was he on a cell phone?’
‘I don’t think so. I mean, he didn’t have a phone up to his ear. He might have had on one of those earphone headset thingies, but I didn’t see it.’
‘Did you get a good look at him?’
‘Not really,’ the woman said. ‘I couldn’t see too clearly. It was dark.’
‘And this was about ten after ten last night?’
‘Yes. I’m usually down here every night at that time. Just to check on things.’
‘Can you describe anything about the man you saw?’
‘Well, like I said, it was dark, but I’m pretty sure he was wearing a long black coat, and he had on a hood.’
‘A hood?’ Jessica asked. ‘Like a hoodie? A hooded sweatshirt?’
‘No, more like a pointed hood.’
Jessica wrote down: pointed hood?
‘About how tall was he?’ she asked.
‘Not sure. On the tall side though.’
‘By tall side, what do you mean?’
‘I saw you talking to that man in front of the building. How tall is he?’
‘About six-three,’ Jessica replied.
‘Maybe six feet then. Perhaps a little less.’
‘Do you recall what he was doing?’
The woman shrugged. ‘He wasn’t doing anything, really. Just standing there talking to himself.’
Jessica glanced down the street. There was no bus stop. Whatever the man was doing, he wasn’t waiting for SEPTA.
‘Can you characterize the sound of his voice?’ Jessica asked.
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Was he whispering, shouting, mumbling?’
‘He wasn’t shouting, that’s for sure. It sounded more like — this is going to sound weird.’
Jessica just waited.
‘It sounded more like a prayer. Like an old chant or something.’
‘A chant?’
Mara Reuben closed her eyes for a moment, as if she were listening to the sound, as if reliving the moment. ‘Yes. It had that rhythm, you know? Like in the old Latin mass. Are you Catholic?’
‘I was raised Roman Catholic, yes.’
‘It sounded like it might have been Latin he was speaking,’ she continued. ‘I can’t be certain, though.’
‘Are you sure he came out of that building?’
‘Well, I was until you asked me that. I couldn’t swear to it. Sorry.’
‘That’s okay. We want you to be sure. Is there anything else you can remember?’
‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Nothing I can think of right now. To be honest, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. You know better than I do that Philly has its share of characters. I just locked the locks, got in my car, and drove away.’
‘Okay. This has been very helpful. If you — ’
The woman held up a finger. ‘Wait. I do remember something else. When I drove away I looked in the rearview mirror, and it looked like he was touching the post. I do remember that.’
‘The lamppost in front of the building?’
‘Yes.’
Jessica made a note to expedite the lab test on the substance they found on the lamppost, as well as the latent prints, if any. This woman might have seen the man painting the X on it.
‘And you say you’re down here every night at ten?’ Jessica asked.
‘Yes.’
‘May I ask what brought you back down here this morning?’
‘Well, like I said, I’m pretty paranoid, my mother having had two break-ins this month. I was just going to drive by, then I saw all the police cars and I freaked.’
‘That’s understandable.’ Jessica handed the woman a card. ‘If you think of anything else, no matter how trivial it might seem, please call me.’
‘I will.’
‘And if it’s any consolation,’ Jessica added, ‘your mother’s house should be okay for the next few days. There are going to be police all over the place around here for awhile.’
The woman offered a faint smile. ‘Yeah, well, I’m still going to use this to get her to move in with me.’
There was no response to this. There were good areas and bad areas of the city. Jessica had investigated homicides in penthouses and flophouses. Nowhere was safe from violence.
Ten minutes later Jessica stood on the corner, across from the crime scene. She tried to imagine the street when it was empty, as it had been at ten o’clock the previous night. She tried to imagine a man standing there, clad in a long black coat and a pointed hood, speaking aloud.
In Latin.
She glanced at the police pole camera on the corner. If they were going to get lucky on this one — and, considering how they’d struck out completely on the neighborhood interviews, they were going to need luck — the camera would be operational, and they would have an image.
SEVEN
Byrne knew the moment he walked into the building. The feeling settled first on the surface of his skin, a damp sensation of dread that seemed to bleed from these walls, stone that had stood witness to a hundred years of secrets, and before that the history of the land from which it had been quarried. Byrne all but heard the hooves on wet sod, the fading heartbeats of the fallen.
Here, in this place where the stone had long ago been keyed and weighted, this place where murder was done, the walls protected its ghosts.
The Boy in the Red Coat.
Byrne had not thought of the boy in many months, a long time considering his history with the case. The Boy in the Red Coat was one of the more famous, and lurid, unsolved crimes in Philadelphia’s history. Byrne had gotten a call from the pastor of St Gedeon’s, the South Philadelphia church of his youth. When he arrived the church was empty save for a dead boy in the last pew, a child clad in a bright red jacket.
Byrne secured the scene, waited for the divisional detectives. That was where and when his official involvement with the case ended. In the years since, many detectives, including Byrne himself, had looked at the files, tried to track down fresh leads. The case remained open. But Byrne had never forgotten the sensation of walking into that huge, empty cathedral that day, seeing the dead child.
It was the same feeling he had walking into the dank basement on this day, seeing the young man so barbarously wired to the chair, his body bathed in scarlet.
In his time as a homicide detective Byrne had borne witness to every imaginable violence, every conceivable way for one human to cause the death of another. Since he’d had his own near-fatal experience many years earlier — an incident where he was pronounced dead, only to come back to life a full minute later — he had been both blessed and cursed with this vision, this sight. It wasn’t as if he could see into the future, or the past, or had any sixth sense that made him special. He felt special by no means. It was, instead, more of a sense of presence, a sense of being, an incarnation of the men and women who had occupied these rooms before him. Many times he walked into a crime scene, a place fresh from the murderer’s touch, and felt as if he walked in the killer’s skin for a fleeting instant. It was an ugly, sickening sensation, to feel even for a moment a soul devoid of compassion, a heart bereft of sorrow.