Gauntlett rose from the table, a little unsteadily. Byrne wanted to help him, but he knew that Gauntlett was a proud man. Gauntlett found his balance. “I will call you.”
The two men embraced again.
When he got to the door, Byrne turned, found Gauntlett in the crowd, thinking: A dying man knows his future.
Kevin Byrne envied him.
WEDNESDAY, 2:00 A M
“Is this Mr. Amis?” the sweet voice on the phone inquired. “Hello, love,” Simon said, pouring on the North London. “How are
you?”
“Fine, thanks,” she said. “What can I do for you tonight?” Simon used three different outcall services. For this one, StarGals, he was Kingsley Amis. “I’m frightfully lonely.”
“That’s why we’re here, Mr. Amis,” she said. “Have you been a naughty boy?”
“Terribly naughty,” Simon said. “And I deserve to be punished.” While he waited for the girl to arrive, Simon looked at a tearsheet of the front page of the next day’s Report. He had the cover, as he would have until the Rosary Killer was caught.
A few minutes later, as he sipped his Stoli, he imported the photos from his camera into his laptop. God, he loved this part, when all of his equipment was synched up and working.
His heart beat a little faster as the individual photos popped up on the screen.
He had never used the motor drive function on his digital camera
before, the feature that allowed him to take a rapid series of photographs
without resetting. It worked perfectly.
In all, he had six photographs of Kevin Byrne coming out of that
vacant lot in Gray’s Ferry, along with a handful of telephoto shots at the
Rodin Museum.
No back alley meetings with crack dealers.
Not yet.
Simon closed his laptop, took a quick shower, poured himself a few
more inches of Stoli.
Twenty minutes later, as he prepared to open the door, he thought
about who would be on the other side.As always, she would be blond and
leggy and slender. She would be wearing a plaid skirt, navy blazer, white
blouse, knee socks, and penny loafers. She would even carry a book bag. He was a very naughty boy, indeed.
WEDNESDAY, 9:00 A M
“Whatever you need,” Ernie Tedesco said.
Ernie Tedesco owned Tedesco and Sons Quality Meats, a small meatpacking company in Pennsport. He and Byrne had formed a friendship years earlier when Byrne had solved a series of truck hijackings for him.
Byrne had gone home with the intention of showering, grabbing something to eat, and rousting Ernie out of bed. Instead, he showered, sat on the edge of the bed, and the next thing he knew it was six o’clock in the morning.
Sometimes the body says no.
The two men gave each other the macho version of a hug—clasp hands, step forward, strong pat on the back. Ernie’s plant was closed for renovations. When he left, Byrne would be alone there.
“Thanks, man,” Byrne said.
“Anything, anytime, anywhere,” Ernie replied. He stepped through the huge steel door and was gone.
Byrne had monitored the police band all morning. The call had not gone out about a body found in an alley in Gray’s Ferry. Not yet. The siren he had heard the night before was another call.
Byrne entered one of the huge meat storage lockers, the frigid room where sides of beef were hung from hooks, and attached to ceiling tracks.
He put on gloves and moved a beef carcass a few feet from the wall.
A few minutes later, he propped open the outside door, went to his car. He had stopped at a demolition site on Delaware, where he had taken a dozen or so bricks.
Back inside the processing room, he carefully stacked the bricks on an aluminum cart, and positioned the cart behind the hanging carcass. He stepped back, studied the trajectory.All wrong. He rearranged the bricks again, and yet again, until he had it right.
He took off the wool gloves and put on a pair of latex. He took the weapon out of his coat pocket, the silver Smith & Wesson he had taken off Diablo the night he brought in Gideon Pratt. He gave another quick glance around the processing room.
He took a deep breath, stepped back a few feet, and assumed a shooting stance, his body bladed to the target. He cocked the weapon, then squeezed a shot. The blast was loud, ringing off the stainless steel fixtures, caroming off the ceramic tile walls.
Byrne approached the swinging carcass, examined it. The entry hole was small, barely noticeable. The exit wound was impossible to find in the folds of fat.
As planned, the slug had hit the stacked bricks. Byrne found it on the floor, right near a drain.
It was then that his handheld radio crackled to life. Byrne turned it up. It was the radio call he had been expecting. The radio call he had been dreading.
The report of a body found in Gray’s Ferry.
Byrne rolled the beef carcass back to where he had found it. He washed off the slug first in bleach, then in the hottest water his hands could stand, then dried it. He had been careful to load the Smith and Wesson pistol with a full-metal-jacketed slug. A hollow point would have brought fiber with it as it passed through the victim’s clothing, and there was no way Byrne could have duplicated that. He wasn’t sure how much effort the CSU team was going to put into the murder of another gangbanger, but he had to be careful nonetheless.
He took out the plastic bag, the bag in which he had collected the blood the night before. He tossed the clean slug inside, sealed the bag, collected the bricks, scanned the room one more time, then left.
He had an appointment in Gray’s Ferry.
WEDNESDAY, 9:15 A M
The trees bordering the bridle trail that snaked its way through Pennypack Park were straining at their buds. It was a popular jogging path, and this brisk spring morning had brought runners out in droves.
While Jessica jogged, the events of the previous night ran through her mind. Patrick had left a little after three. They had taken their encounter about as far as two consenting adults could without making love, a step for which they both wordlessly agreed they were not ready.
Next time, Jessica thought, she might not be so adult about the whole thing.
She could still smell him on her body. She could still feel him on her fingertips, her lips. But these sensations were overruled by the horrors of the job.