God, she missed him.

“. . . the sopressata?”

Her father’s question yanked her back to the present. “I’m sorry. What did you say, Dad?”

“Did you try the sopressata?”

“No.”

“Out of this world. From Chickie’s. I’ll make you a plate.”

Jessica had never once left a party at her father’s house without a plate. Nor had anyone else for that matter.

“You want to tell me what’s wrong, Jess?”

“Nothing.”

The word fluttered around the room for a while, then took a nosedive, as it always did when she tried it with her father. He always knew.

“Right, sweetie,” Peter said. “Tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” Jessica said. “Just, you know, the usual. Work.”

Peter took a plate, dried it. “You nervous about the case?”

“Nah.”

“Good.”

“Way beyond nervous,” Jessica said, handing her father another dinner plate. “Scared to death is more like it.”

Peter laughed. “You’ll catch him.”

“You seem to be overlooking the fact that I’ve never worked a homicide in my life.”

“You’ll do fine.”

Jessica didn’t believe it, but, somehow, when her father said it, it sounded like the truth. “I know.” Jessica hesitated, then asked, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“And I want you to be completely honest with me.”

“Of course, honey. I’m a policeman. I always tell the truth.”

Jessica glared at him over the top of her glasses.

“Okay. Point taken,” Peter said. “What’s up?”

“Did you have anything to do with me getting into Homicide?”

“Not a thing, Jess.”

“Because, if you did...”

“What?”

“Well, you might think you’re helping me, but you’re not. There’s a very good chance I’m gonna fall flat on my face here.”

Peter smiled, reached over with a squeaky-clean hand, and grabbed Jessica’s cheek, the way he had since she was a baby. “Not this face,” he said. “This is an angel’s face.”

Jessica blushed and smiled. “Pa.Yo. I’m pushing thirty here. A little too old for the visa bella routine.”

“Never,” Peter said.

They fell silent for a little while. Then, as dreaded, Peter asked: “You getting everything you need from the labs?”

“Well, so far, I guess,” Jessica said.

“Want me to make a call?”

“No!” Jessica replied, a little more forcefully than she wanted. “I mean, not yet. I mean, I’d like to, you know...”

“You’d like to do it on your own.”

“Yeah.”

“What, we just met over here?”

Jessica blushed again. She could never fool her father. “I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll leave it up to you then. Somebody drags their feet, you call me.”

“I will.”

Peter smiled, gave Jessica a sloppy kiss on the top of her head, just as Sophie came tearing into the room with her second cousin Nanette, both little girls wild-eyed with all the sugar. Peter beamed. “All my girls under one roof,” he said. “Who’s got it better than me?”

WEDNESDAY, 11:25 A M

The little girl giggles as she chases the puppy around and around the small, crowded park on Catharine Street, weaving through the forest of legs. We adults watch her, hovering nearby, ever vigilant. We are shields against the evils of the world. If you think about all the tragedy that could befall such a

little one, the mind staggers.

She stops for a moment, reaches to the ground, retrieving some little-girl treasure. She examines it closely. Her interest is pure and untainted by greed or possession or self-indulgence.

What did Laura Elizabeth Richards say about purity?

“The lovely light of holy innocence shines like a halo ’round her bended head.”

The clouds threaten rain but, for the moment, a blanket of golden sunlight covers South Philadelphia.

The puppy runs past the little girl, turns, nips at her heels, perhaps wondering why the game had stopped.The little girl doesn’t run or cry. She has her mother’s toughness. And yet there is something inside of her that is vulnerable and sweet, something that speaks of Mary.

She sits on a bench, primly arranges the hem of her dress, pats her knees. The puppy leaps onto her lap, licks her face.

Sophie laughs. It is a marvelous sound.

But what if one day soon her little voice was silenced?

Surely all the animals in her stuffed menagerie would weep.

WEDNESDAY, 11:45 A M

Before she left her father’s house, Jessica had slipped into his small office in the basement, sat down at his computer, accessed the Internet, and navigated to Google. She found what she was looking for in short order, then printed it out.

While her father and aunts watched Sophie at the small park next to the Fleisher Art Memorial, Jessica walked down the street to a cozy café on Sixth Street called Dessert. It was much quieter than a park full of sugar-amped toddlers and Chianti-primed adults. Besides, Vincent had shown up and she really didn’t need the fresh hell.

Over a Sacher torte and coffee she perused her findings.

Her first Google search had been the lines from the poem she found in Tessa’s diary.

Jessica had her answer instantly.

Sylvia Plath. The poem was called “Elm.”

Of course, Jessica thought. Sylvia Plath was the patron saint of all melancholy teenaged girls, the poet who committed suicide in 1963 at the age of thirty.

I’m back. Just call me Sylvia.

What had Tessa meant by that?

The second search she performed was about the incident regarding the blood that had been thrown on the door of St. Katherine on that crazy Christmas Eve three years earlier. There wasn’t much about it in the archives of either the Inquirer or The Daily News. Not surprisingly, The Report had done the longest piece on it. Written by none other than her favorite muckraker, Simon Close.

It turned out that the blood had not been thrown on the door at all, but rather painted on with a brush. And it had been done while the congregation had been inside celebrating midnight mass.