Byrne slipped into the car, waited to pull out into traffic. He looked down at the passenger seat. There he saw a small white object, and had to smile.
It was an origami eagle.
Byrne drove to St Damian’s, parked across the street. The building was still a crime scene, still ringed with bright yellow tape.
I will give thee a crown of life.
These words had come to him the day they found the prayer card at St Adelaide’s. How had he known the crown referred to the bell tower? How had he known to send Josh to look there?
The truth was, he had not. Not with any certainty. It was a feeling he’d had, and it had been right.
But no feeling like this had come to him about St Damian’s. Not yet. For some reason he could not shake the notion that there was another clue inside this old stone church, a calling card telling them where to look next. He would come back to this place soon, he thought. Or maybe he would find himself here.
By the time Byrne reached Eighth Street, his pager vibrated for the fourth time. It was Jessica. He flipped his phone, speed-dialed her number. She answered in half a ring.
‘What’s up?’ Byrne asked.
‘We found the baby’s mother.’
‘How did you track her down?’
Jessica filled him in on her visit to the clinic.
‘Where are you?’ Byrne asked.
‘Twelfth and Lehigh.’
‘I’ll pick you up.’
As Byrne approached the corner of Twelfth and Lehigh he saw that Jessica was pacing. She only paced when she was upset. For Jessica it was like opening a steam valve. Byrne pulled over, Jessica got in.
Byrne pointed to the ramshackle building.
‘That’s the clinic?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ Jessica said. She told him about Ted Cochrane, and the rest of the details she had learned at the clinic.
‘This LPN treated the baby?’
‘He said that they suspected some kind of abuse, but they couldn’t be sure.’
‘What kind of abuse?’
‘The baby had a bruise on the back of one of her legs. It was hard to tell from the photograph.’
As they drove toward Fifth Street Jessica found that she had tightened her hands into fists. It had not gone unnoticed to Byrne. He put a hand on her forearm for a moment. She knew what he was trying to communicate. You go into an interview with anger and you come out with nothing.
‘When I got the mother’s name I called it in,’ Jessica said, trying to calm down. ‘Maria ran it.’
‘The mother’s got a sheet?’
‘No criminal record. But she has been institutionalized a few times for mental disorders.’
‘How bad?’
‘One time it was for more than a month.’
‘In other words …’
‘Yeah,’ Jessica said. ‘Bad.’
‘Why do you think it’s our baby?’
Jessica reached into her portfolio, took out the color photograph Ted Cochrane had given her. At a red light Byrne took it, studied it.
‘That’s her, isn’t it?’ Jessica asked.
‘Yeah,’ Byrne said. ‘That’s her.’
SEVENTEEN
The apartment building was a low-rise, brown-brick building on Fifth Street. Jessica and Byrne parked the car, entered. There was no security door through which they needed to be buzzed in. Jessica noted that many of the mailboxes in the lobby were pried and dented. An old Dymo label identified the Rollins apartment as number six.
As they rounded the corner on the second floor, heading to the last apartment on the left, they smelled it. It was unmistakable. The stench of death filled the hallway.
‘I’ll get the super,’ Byrne said.
Jessica bunched the collar of her coat over her nose and mouth and eased herself to the door of apartment number six. She knocked, listened. Nothing. She knocked again, announced herself.
No one came to the door.
Jessica again put her ear against the door and listened. From inside, faintly, she heard music. It was a child’s song, one that she remembered from her own childhood. Because it was so faint she could not quite put a name to it, even though it was familiar. She doubted that it was the radio. The sound was scratchy, like an old record from another era.
Other than this sound she heard nothing — no voices, no television, no footsteps moving around the apartment. She eased her hand onto the doorknob, gave it a slight turn. The door was locked. There were no deadbolts on the door, just the old skeleton-type key hole.
She glanced down the hallway. She was alone. Keeping the collar of her coat over her mouth and nose, she got down onto one knee and looked through the keyhole. She couldn’t see much, but putting her face this close to the small opening gave her a much stronger smell of decomposing flesh.
There was a dead body in this apartment.
A few seconds later Byrne came down the hallway with an older man whom Jessica assumed was the superintendent of the building. He wore a heavy coat and pilled woolen mittens. On his head was a filthy ball cap.
Jessica walked halfway down the hall to meet them.
‘Edward Turchek, this is my partner, Detective Balzano.’
The man grunted a greeting.
‘Can you tell us who lives in apartment number six?’ Jessica asked.
‘Just old Duke Rollins,’ Turchek said.
‘Alone?’
He shook his head. ‘Sometimes his granddaughter lives with him. When she’s not … you know.’
‘No, we don’t know,’ Jessica said. ‘Why don’t you tell us?’
‘Well, it’s just that she’s a little bit … you know.’ The man made a twirling motion by the temple on the right side of his head, the universal hand gesture meaning crazy.
‘This is Adria you’re talking about? Adria Rollins?’
‘Yeah,’ Turchek said. ‘That’s her name. Adria.’
‘And you’re saying she has some mental health issues?’ Jessica asked.
The man snorted a laugh. No one joined him. He cleared his throat. ‘Yeah. You could say that.’
‘And you say she is the man’s granddaughter? Not his great-granddaughter?’ Jessica asked.
‘Granddaughter, great-granddaughter, I don’t know. Duke is pretty old.’
‘Have any of the neighbors complained about the smell?’
Turchek pulled a face. ‘What smell?’
Jessica looked at Byrne, back. ‘When was the last time you saw anyone go in or out of this apartment?’
‘Not for a while, I guess. I pretty much mind my own business here.’
Jessica looked up at the peeling paint on the walls, the cracked and taped window at the end of the hall, the bootlegged electric and cable TV wires stapled to the ceiling, the uneven floorboards in the hallway.
I bet you do, Jessica thought.
‘Do you know if Mr Rollins or Adria are home now?’ Jessica asked.
‘No idea,’ the man said. ‘Did you knock?’
Jessica’s eyes burned a hole in the man’s forehead until he looked away.
‘We’re going to need to get into this apartment,’ she said. ‘Do you have a master key?’
The man ran a hand over his stubbled chin. ‘I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that.’
Byrne took a step toward the man, backing him to the wall.
‘I’m looking at a half-dozen building code violations, and that’s just the shit I can see from here,’ Byrne said. ‘Now, just based on the odor you don’t seem to be able to smell, we can take down that door. That’s plenty of probable cause. If you want to spend the rest of the day repairing the damage, then deal with L amp; I, who I’m going to contact right now, you are welcome to it. Your call.’
‘I got the key right here,’ the man said. But he didn’t move.
When Byrne stepped to the side the man all but ran down to the end of the hall. He put the key in the lock, turned it. He opened the door a few inches, slipped to the side.
Jessica and Byrne stepped up to the doorway. Jessica knocked again, this time on the jamb. No footsteps. Just the children’s song, which had started over again.