‘You mean the Homicide Unit?’
‘Yeah. The clock never stops, does it?’
Jessica thought back to her first harrowing days in the unit. If it hadn’t been for Byrne she probably wouldn’t have lasted six months. Who was she kidding? More like six weeks. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It really doesn’t.’
‘I worked a case, three months ago. The kid on that playground in Point Breeze.’
Jessica knew the case. A nine-year-old boy was the victim of a drive-by shooting. ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘That was a bad one.’
‘Oh, yeah. I had to do the notification. It was my first. I was a total wreck.’
Jessica recalled her first notification as a homicide detective. The victim’s name was Tessa Ann Wells. ‘I’m sure you did just fine.’
‘I don’t know about that. The mother went absolutely crazy. I mean, it’s understandable and everything — she’d just lost her boy. But I kept thinking that if I had worded it a little differently, or taken another approach, maybe it would have gone a little better.’
‘There are only so many words,’ Jessica said. ‘All you can do is be there for them.’
Maria looked out the window for a few moments. ‘I wasn’t there when they arrested the kid who did the shooting. Fugitive squad took him down.’ Maria toyed with the string that hung from her hoodie. ‘I heard they had to draw their weapons. Not sure how I would have handled that.’
Jessica thought about the times she had pointed her weapon at another human being. Most people — with the aid of more than fifty years of television police shows — thought the process was easy, or at least not that difficult. Many believed a police officer could wound or kill a person, then go out to dinner, take a shower, watch a little TV, then hit the sack. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was life-changing. She’d known officers — stable, psychologically sound, family men — who never came back after firing their weapons.
‘You make the call, and remember your training,’ Jessica said. ‘It’s all you can do.’
As soon as the words left her mouth Jessica realized what she sounded like. She sounded like the grizzled old veteran giving words of advice to the fresh young rookie.
When the hell had that happened?
At ten o’clock they rotated to the third church on their list, St Simeon’s on Germantown Avenue. A large gothic brownstone with a soaring spire, St Simeon’s had been closed for five years. According to their information, the building had recently been sold to a developer from San Diego.
A number of streetlights were out on this stretch of Germantown, which provided the detectives with a small amount of cover. Jessica and Maria parked a half-block away from the church, cocooned in shadow. From their vantage point they could see the south side and rear of the building.
Since the widespread media coverage of the murders had begun, the AV Unit had installed, or was in the process of installing, new pole cameras near the closed churches. It was a slow and expensive undertaking.
Because of his prowess with all things AV, Sergeant Mateo Fuentes was heading up the task force within the task force. He and two other officers from AV were dedicated to monitoring these cameras. They had a dozen in place, with more than a dozen to go. Teams were going to work all night.
Ten minutes after the detectives set up position a car pulled to the curb a half-block behind them. Inside a figure settled in, and watched the watchers.
FORTY-SEVEN
The Egg’s Nest was a cop bar in the northeast, located on Roosevelt Boulevard and Revere Street. The crowd was sparse, mostly married cops and state troopers with their girlfriends, eyes flicking to the front door every time it opened.
Byrne took a high-top at the back, ordered a double Bushmills straight. He thought about what brought him to this place, and what he was about to do.
At ten o’clock Vincent Balzano walked in wearing a leather jacket, black T-shirt, jeans, motorcycle boots. He shared a few pleasantries and laughs with the cops at the bar. Vincent then leaned in and gave his order to the barmaid, made his way back.
‘Thanks for coming, Vince.’
‘Any time, brother.’
The waitress brought Vincent’s beer, and a second Bushmills for Byrne. The two men clinked glasses.
‘Slainte,’ Byrne said.
‘Better days,’ Vincent said. He sipped from his beer, put it down, interlaced his fingers. ‘How can I help?’
Byrne glanced around at the other patrons. They were mostly cops, but even so he had to be careful with what he had to say. ‘You know a dealer named DeRon Wilson?’
‘Know him? We’ve been trying to bury that motherfucker for five years.’
‘You heard about my little problem on the news?’
‘I did.’
Byrne told him the specifics, including the detail that it was Wilson he had braced.
‘I had no idea it was him,’ Vincent said. ‘Sorry to hear you’re jammed up over that piece of shit.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What do you need?’
Byrne lowered his voice. ‘I need to find him.’
Vincent Balzano was a veteran detective, not only of the streets, but specifically North Philadelphia. If you were a narcotics cop, there were few places in the country tougher to work.
‘I’m not going to ask you why, but I need to know what I’m calling in,’ Vincent said.
‘I understand.’
Byrne told Vincent about Gabriel Hightower. He showed him the picture on his cell phone.
Vincent took a few seconds to rein back his anger. He drained his beer. ‘I know all of his KAs, but I don’t think they’re going to give him up,’ he said. ‘He’s got a few stash houses, though. Let me make a call.’
Vincent took his cell from his jeans, stepped out of the bar. Five minutes later he was back. He didn’t sit down. ‘Nobody’s saying where DeRon is holed up, but I reached out to a detective in North. He said he thinks DeRon has been staying with his girlfriend. He’s got triplets with her.’
‘Jesus. There’s three more of him?’
Vincent laughed. ‘I think they’re girls. Word is this girlfriend lives in Juniata Park, but nobody knows exactly where. The good news is that DeRon’s brother Carter is going to make a drop tonight.’
‘Do we know where?’
‘I’m waiting on that text right now.’
‘And this Carter is going to give his brother up?’
‘Carter likes to pose, but he’s no hardass,’ Vincent said. ‘If we find him, I’ll turn him.’
Byrne downed his shot, looked over both shoulders. Even though there was no one in earshot, he still lowered his voice. ‘You might need to go off the reservation here, Vince.’
‘How far off?’
‘Like, maybe, Cleveland.’
Vincent’s phone buzzed. He checked the text, zipped his jacket, grabbed his car keys, and said, ‘I’ve always liked Cleveland this time of year. Let’s do this thing.’
FORTY-EIGHT
Shane Adams sat watching the two women in the car, his heart racing.
He had changed the tire in short order — he had learned to change a tire as a boy out of necessity, his mother didn’t know a lug wrench from a pipe wrench — and was back on the road in fifteen minutes.
He had to hand it to Detective Balzano. She was sharp. He should have known that he was getting played. He had spent only an hour or so going through the trash behind their rowhouse in South Philly. He knew that both Jessica and her husband Vincent were cops, which meant that there were probably a half-dozen weapons in the house, and he didn’t fancy getting shot to death in a pile of garbage.
He did learn a few things from Jessica Balzano’s trash. He learned that Jessica’s daughter went to Sacred Heart of Jesus, and he had hoped this might be a point of entry for him. He’d found the picture of an eight-year-old in someone’s trash a year earlier, having no idea if or how he was going to use it. He’d then found a picture of Sacred Heart online and, with a little bit of effort, was able to PhotoShop the girl in front of it. It was a passable ruse behind the scuffed plastic laminate in his wallet.