Jessica, this has nothing to do with your abilities as a detective . . . That talk never happened.

She turned off the engine.

What had Brian Parkhurst wanted to tell her? He hadn’t said that he

wanted to tell her what he’d done, but rather that there were things about these girls that she needed to know.

Like what?

And where was he?

If I see anyone else there, I’m leaving.

Had Parkhurst made Nick Palladino and John Shepherd as cops?

Not likely.

Jessica got out, locked the Jeep, and ran to the back door, splashing in puddles along the way. She was soaked. It seemed as if she had been soaked forever. The light over the back porch had burned out a few weeks earlier, and as she fumbled for her house key she chided herself for the hundredth time for not replacing the bulb.Above her, the branches of the dying maple creaked. It really needed to get trimmed before those branches smashed into the house. These things had generally been Vincent’s job, but Vincent wasn’t around, was he?

Get it together, Jess.You are mom and dad for the time being, as well as cook, repairman, landscaper, chauffeur, and tutor.

She got her house key in hand and was just about to open the back door when she heard a noise above her, the scrape of aluminum twisting, shearing, moaning under an enormous weight. She also heard leathersoled shoes scrape across the floor, saw a hand reach for her.

Draw your weapon Jess—

The Glock was in her purse. Rule number one never keep your weapon in your purse—

The shadow formed a body. A man’s body.

A priest.

He closed his hand around her arm.

And pulled her into the darkness.

The scene around the Rodin Museum was a madhouse. Simon hung at the back of the gathering crowd, rubbernecking with the unwashed. What was it that drew ordinary citizens to scenes of misery and chaos like flies to a pile of dung, he wondered.

I should talk, he thought with a smile.

Still, in his own defense, he felt that, in spite of his penchant for the dreadful and predilection for the morbid, he still hung on to a scrap of dignity, still guarded closely that morsel of grandeur regarding the work he did, and the public’s right to know. Like it or not, he was a journalist.

He worked his way toward the front of the crowd. He pulled his collar up, slipped on his tortoiseshell glasses, brushed his hair over his forehead.

Death was here.

So was Simon Close.

Bread and jam.

It was Father Corrio.

Father Mark Corrio was the pastor of St. Paul’s when Jessica was growing up. He was newly installed as pastor when Jessica was around nine, and she remembered how all the women swooned over his dark good looks at the time, how they all commented on what a waste it was that he had entered the priesthood. The dark hair had gone ice gray, but he was still a good-looking man.

On her porch, in the dark, in the rain, however, he was Freddie Krueger.

What happened was, one of the gutters over the porch was perched precariously overhead, about to break off under the weight of a waterlogged branch that had fallen from a nearby tree. Father Corrio had grabbed Jessica to get her out of harm’s way.A few seconds later, the gutter had ripped free of the gutter board and crashed to the ground. Divine intervention? Perhaps. But that didn’t prevent Jessica from being scared shitless for a few seconds.

“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” he said.

Jessica almost said, I’m sorry I almost punched your freakin’ lights out, Padre.

“Come on inside,” she offered instead.

Dried off, coffee made, they sat in the living room and got the pleasantries out of the way. Jessica called Paula and told her she’d be there shortly.

“How is your father?” the priest asked.

“He’s great, thanks.”

“I haven’t seen him at St. Paul’s lately.”

“He’s kind of short,” Jessica said. “He might be in the back.” Father Corrio smiled. “How do you like living in the Northeast?” When Father Corrio said it, it sounded like this part of Philadelphia

was a foreign country. On the other hand, Jessica thought, to the cloistered world of South Philly, it probably was. “Can’t get any good bread,” she said.

Father Corrio laughed. “I wish I had known. I would have stopped at Sarcone’s.”

Jessica remembered eating warm Sarcone’s bread as a little girl. Cheese from DiBruno’s, pastries from Isgro’s. These thoughts, along with the proximity of Father Corrio, filled her with a deep sadness.

What the hell was she doing in the ’burbs?

More important, what was her old parish priest doing up here?

“I saw you on television yesterday,” he said.

For a moment, Jessica almost told him that he must be mistaken. She was a police officer. Then, of course, she remembered. The press conference.

Jessica wasn’t sure what to say. Somehow she knew Father Corrio had stopped by because of the murders. She just wasn’t sure if she was ready for a homily.

“Is that young man a suspect?” he asked.

He was referring to the circus surrounding Brian Parkhurst’s departure from the Roundhouse. He had walked out with Monsignor Pacek, and—perhaps as an opening salvo in the PR wars to come—Pacek had deliberately and dramatically declined comment. Jessica had seen the

the Rosary girls 205

constant replay of the scene at Eighth and Race. The media managed to get Parkhurst’s name and plaster it all over the screen.

“Not exactly,” Jessica lied. To her priest, yet. “We’d sure like to talk to him again, though.”

“I understand he works for the archdiocese?”

It was a question and a statement. The sort of thing priests and shrinks were really good at.

“Yes,” Jessica said. “He counsels students from Nazarene, Regina, and a few others.”

“Do you think he is responsible for these...?”

Father Corrio trailed off. He clearly had trouble saying the words.

“I really don’t know for sure,” Jessica said.

Father Corrio absorbed this. “This is such a terrible thing.”

Jessica just nodded.