‘Were there specific churches named?’ Byrne asked.
Father Leone looked up. ‘Are you asking if the person you’re looking for is targeting churches by name?’
‘I suppose I am.’
‘I would have to say no.’ Leone riffled the volume, put the red ribbon between the pages. ‘The meaning here is unclear. Christ was most likely referring to seven communities, not necessarily seven brick-and-mortar buildings.’
‘Why these seven?’
‘Christ believed these communities were failing in some way.’
Father Leone flipped a few more pages, found what he was looking for, put a finger between these pages. ‘Let me think about this for a day. My mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be.’
‘Of course, Father,’ Byrne said.
At this, the old man’s eyes seemed to go distant again.
‘Have they torn it down yet?’ Leone asked again. He had clearly forgotten that he’d asked the question before.
Byrne had told Jessica on the way up that St Gedeon’s was slated for demolition. It was on the list of closed churches they had gotten from the archdiocese. Jessica had never been inside, but she had been by it many times. It was an impressive structure with a high spire.
‘Not yet, Father,’ Byrne said. ‘Not for a few days.’
‘I want you to bring me a piece of it, okay?’
‘Sure.’
‘Nothing big. A small piece of stone.’
Byrne got down on one knee, brought himself face to face with the old man. ‘How do we stop this, Father?’
The question brought the priest back to the moment.
‘There have been three murders?’ Leone asked.
‘Yes. Three that we know of.’
At that moment there were investigators in four counties — city police, state police, county sheriffs — visiting all the closed churches on the list, methodically searching the premises.
‘There will be four more,’ Leone said.
The statement was uttered so calmly that a shiver plaited down Jessica’s back. Was the old priest saying the killings could not be stopped?
‘These churches,’ Byrne said. ‘Is there any way to know which one he’ll pick next?’
‘I don’t know. But there is something you might find interesting, and perhaps most relevant to your case.’
‘What would that be?’
Leone opened the book on his lap. ‘There was a church, one of the seven, that waited patiently. A community that endured, if you will.’
‘I don’t understand, Father.’
Leone turned the book to face them. One page contained a large color-plate illustration of seven churches floating in a golden sky. Father Thomas Leone tapped the lower right-hand side of the illustration, and said, ‘The sixth church of the Apocalypse is called Philadelphia.’
THIRTY
Over the next six hours a task force was assembled and coordinated at the Roundhouse. There had now been three murders — three bizarre murders, including the drowning of an infant — and it was no longer possible to keep a lid on the fact that there was a connection between them.
There was no talk among the detectives in the duty room of Byrne’s appearance on the news the night before, but everyone knew he was set to meet with the captain. They all gave him space on this, knowing it could have been any of them. The video clip had already fallen off the news cycle, but there was little doubt it would resurface in the next day or so when there was a new witness or talking head to plaster across the screen.
Meanwhile, they all had a job to do.
Although the Catholic Church was not the power it had once been in the city of Philadelphia, considering its large Italian and Irish population, it was still a mammoth financial and political force. There had no doubt been calls from the archdiocese to the mayor and district attorney.
The task force met at one end of the duty room. In attendance were Sergeant Dana Westbrook, along with Jessica, Byrne, Maria Caruso, Josh Bontrager, Bobby Tate, and Dre Curtis. Bobby and Dre had fallen into a partnership a few years earlier when they worked a series of robbery homicides in West Philadelphia. Both were fashion plates, but with different styles. Bobby was all about Valentino and Armani, where Dre Curtis was old school. Every homicide unit has a lid man, and Dre Curtis seemed to have a hat for every occasion. On this day he was wearing a gray pork pie.
Before the meeting began Jessica and Byrne decided to hold off on what they had learned from Father Leone. At this point, it was still speculation.
The three churches were marked on the large map with red push pins. The material they had gotten from the archdiocese was overwhelming. There were sixty-seven churches that had closed in the past fifty years. Of those, six had been razed, thirty-one had been repurposed, leaving thirty buildings standing vacant across four counties. Watching them all was going to be an enormous task, involving dozens of personnel, not to mention a lot of overtime money that simply wasn’t there.
The third victim’s name was Martin David Allsop. He had been fingerprinted at the morgue and, like Daniel Palumbo, had a criminal record. Twice convicted of gross sexual imposition on a minor, he had spent eighteen months in Curran-Fromhold on a three-year sentence. He had no family in Philadelphia. Until recently he worked as a salesman at the Best Buy on Roosevelt Boulevard.
When everyone was settled, Jessica took the lead.
‘The first victim found was Daniel E. Palumbo, twenty-three, late of Latona Street in South Philly. As you all know, Daniel was once PPD. He was pronounced at St Adelaide’s Church. Cause of death was ruled exasanguination, due to a sharp object — in this instance a sharpened barb on a length of barb wire — cutting the carotid artery.
‘We have an eyewitness, Mara Reuben, whose mother lives across the street from St Adelaide’s. On the day before we received a call, directing us to the location, Ms Reuben witnessed a man in a long coat and pointed hood exit the alley next to the crime-scene building, and make a mark on the lamppost directly across the sidewalk from the entrance.’
Jessica taped a pair of photographs onto the whiteboard, one of them a still picture from the pole camera on the corner; the other was a close-up photo of the X on the lamppost.
‘This was taken from a pole cam, and seems to back up what Ms Reuben told us. The time code coincides with her recollection of events. Unfortunately, she could not give us a better description.
‘A few days later we questioned one of Daniel Palumbo’s known associates, one Thomas L. Boyce, who had one of the victim’s old knapsacks with him. We found no solid leads in there. I then began a series of interviews at free clinics, which led me to the St Julius Clinic at Twelfth and Lehigh. One of the nurses there, a man named Ted Cochrane, remembered treating our second victim, Cecilia Rollins.’
Jessica had decided to let Byrne brief the task force on Cecilia Rollins. Her level of rage about the murdered baby was still on the red line.
Byrne stood up, consulted his notes. ‘Although Daniel Palumbo’s body was the first to be discovered, the medical examiner has ruled that Cecilia Rollins was the first to die. He puts the date of her death around February sixth. Her body was found in the basement of St Damian’s.’
Jessica knew that Byrne knew he had to brief the team on how they got to St Damian’s in the first place. He wasn’t about to tell them that it came to him in one of his visions. The PPD brass, and even some of his fellow homicide detectives, were skeptical enough of Byrne’s methods the way it was.
‘After a search of St Adelaide’s, a portion of an old prayer card was found in the bell tower, an item we believe was deliberately left by the killer. It was a funeral card from 1966, issued by St Damian’s.
‘The child’s mother, Adria Rollins, nineteen, is severely mentally handicapped, and when I checked with DHS, they said they believed her great-grandfather — who signed forms claiming he was her grandfather — was competent enough as a guardian. When we went to question Adria, we found the old man deceased of natural causes, and Adria alone. We believe the baby was abducted from their apartment.’