"This is Stephanie and her mother?" Byrne asked, pointing to the photo on the desk.
"Yes."
"Have you ever met her mother?"
"No," Andrea said. She reached for a tissue from Stephanie's desk. She dabbed at her eyes.
"Did Stephanie have a bar or a restaurant she liked to go to after work?" Byrne asked. "Anywhere she frequented?"
"Sometimes we'd go to the Friday's next to the Embassy Suites on the parkway. If we felt like dancing we'd go to Shampoo."
"I have to ask this," Byrne said. "Was Stephanie gay or bi?"
Andrea almost snorted. "Uh, no."
"Did you go down to Penn's Landing with Stephanie?"
"Yes."
"Did anything unusual happen?"
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"Was anybody bothering her? Following her?"
"I don't think so."
"Did you see her do anything out of the ordinary?" Byrne asked.
Andrea thought for a few moments. "No. We were just hanging around. Hoping maybe to see Will Parrish or Hayden Cole."
"Did you see Stephanie talking to anyone?"
"I wasn't really paying attention. But I think she did talk to a guy for a while. Men were always coming on to her."
"Can you describe the guy?"
"White guy. Flyers cap. Sunglasses."
Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance. This fit with Little Jake's recollection. "How old?"
"No idea. I really didn't get that close."
Jessica showed her a picture of Adam Kaslov. "Could this be the guy?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I just remember thinking that the guy wasn't her type."
"What was her type?" Jessica asked, flashing back to Vincent's routine. She imagined everyone had a type.
"Well, she was pretty picky about the men she dated. She always went for the well-dressed guy. Chestnut Hill types."
"Was this guy she was talking to part of the crowd, or was he part of the production company?" Byrne asked.
Andrea shrugged. "I really don't know."
"Did she say she knew this guy? Or maybe that she gave him her number?"
"I don't think she knew him. And I'd be really surprised if she gave him her phone number. Like I said. Not her type. But then again, maybe he was just dressed down. I just didn't get a really close look at him."
Jessica made a few more notes. "We'll need the names and contact information for everyone who works here," she said.
"Sure."
"Would you mind if we looked through Stephanie's desk?"
"No," Andrea said. "It's okay."
While Andrea Cerrone drifted back into the reception area, afloat on her wave of shock and grief, Jessica snapped on a pair of latex gloves. She began her invasion of Stephanie Chandler's life.
The left-hand drawers held hanging files, mostly press releases and press clippings. A few folders were stuffed with proof sheets of black- and-white press photos. The photos were mostly of the stab-and-grab variety, the type of photo op where two people pose holding a check or a plaque or a citation of some sort.
The middle drawer held the nutrients of office life: paper clips, pushpins, mailing labels, rubber bands, brass brads, business cards, glue sticks.
In the top right-hand drawer was the urban survival kit of the young single workingwoman: a small tube of hand lotion, lip balm, a few samplers of perfume, mouthwash. There was also a spare pair of panty hose, a trio of books: The Brethren by John Grisham, Windows XP for Dummies, and a book titled White Heat, the unauthorized biography of Ian Whitestone, the Philadelphia-native director of Dimensions. Whitestone was directing the new Will Parrish movie, The Palace.
There were no notes, no threatening letters, nothing to tie Stephanie to the horror of what had happened to her on the videotape.
It was the picture on Stephanie's desk of her and her mother that had already begun to haunt Jessica. Not the fact that, in the picture, Stephanie was so vibrant and alive, but rather what the picture represented. A week earlier it was an artifact of a life, the proof of a living, breathing young woman, a human being with friends, ambition, sorrows, thoughts, and regrets. A human being with a future.
Now it was a document of the dead.
24
Faith Chandler lived in a plain but well-maintained brick-front row house on Fulton Street. Jessica and Byrne met with the woman in her small living room overlooking the street. Outside the window, a pair of five-year-olds played hopscotch under the watchful eyes of their grandmothers. Jessica wondered what the laughing children sounded like to Faith Chandler on this, the darkest day of her life.
"I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Chandler," Jessica said. Even though she had had occasion to say these words a number of times since joining the Homicide Unit in April, it appeared that it was not going to get any easier to say them.
Faith Chandler was in her early forties, a woman who had the creased look of late nights and early mornings, a working-class woman who suddenly found herself the statistic of another demographic, that of victim of violent crime. Old eyes in a middle-aged face. She was employed as a night waitress at the Melrose Diner. In her hands was a scratched plastic tumbler with an inch of whiskey. Next to her, on a TV tray, was a half-full bottle of Seagram's. Jessica wondered how far into the process the woman was.
Faith didn't respond to Jessica's offer of condolence. Perhaps the woman thought that, if she didn't respond, if she didn't acknowledge Jessica's offer of sympathy, it might not be true.
"When was the last time you saw Stephanie?" Jessica asked.
"Monday morning," Faith said. "Before she left for work."
"Was there anything unusual about her that morning? Anything different about her mood or her routine?"
"No. Nothing."
"Did she say that she had plans for after work?"
"No."
"When she didn't come home Monday night, what did you think?"
Faith just shrugged, dabbed at her eyes. She sipped her whiskey.
"Did you call the police?"
"Not right away."
"Why not?" Jessica asked.
Faith put her glass down, knitted her hands in her lap. "Sometimes Stephanie would stay with friends. She was a grown woman, independent. I work nights, you see. She works days. Sometimes we really didn't see each other for days on end."
"Did she have any brothers or sisters?"
"No."
"What about her father?"
Faith waved a hand, snapping back to the moment, by way of her past. They'd hit a nerve. "He hasn't been part of her life for years."
"Does he live in Philadelphia?"
"No."
"We learned from her coworkers that Stephanie had been dating someone until recently. What can you tell us about him?"
Faith studied her hands again for a few moments before answering. "You have to understand that Stephanie and I were never close that way. I knew she was seeing someone, but she never brought him around. She was a secretive girl in a lot of ways. Even when she was small."
"Is there anything else you can think of that might help?"
Faith Chandler looked at Jessica. In Faith's eyes was that burnished look Jessica had seen many times, a shell-shocked look of anger and pain and grief. "She was kind of a wild girl when she was a teenager," Faith said. "Right through college."
"Wild how?"
Faith shrugged again. "Willful. Ran with a pretty fast crowd. Lately she had settled down, gotten this good job." Pride battled sorrow in her voice. She sipped her whiskey.
Byrne caught Jessica's eye. He then quite deliberately directed his gaze at the entertainment center, and Jessica followed the line of sight. The unit, which stood in one corner of the living room, was one of those entertainment-center-cum-armoires. It looked like expensive wood- rosewood, perhaps. The doors were slightly ajar, and it was obvious from across the room that inside was a flat-screen TV; above it, a rack of expensive-looking audio and video equipment. Jessica glanced around the living room while Byrne continued to ask questions. What had struck Jessica as tidy and tasteful when she'd arrived was now clearly tidy and expensive: A Thomasville dining room set and living room suite, Stiffel lamps.