“If he was bringing these girls to his house, someone would have seen something, heard something, right?” Byrne added, “If he was bringing them to the building on Sixty-first Street, we would have found something.”

When they had searched the building, they had discovered a number of items, including a box of miscellaneous hardware that contained an assortment of screws, nuts, and bolts, none of which precisely matched the bolts used on the three victims. There was also a chalk box, the carpenter’s tool used for snapping lines in the rough-framing stage of construction. The chalk inside was blue. They had sent a sample to the lab, to see if it matched the blue chalk found on the victims. Even if it did, carpenter’s chalk could be found at every construction site in the city, and in half the home remodelers’ toolboxes. Vincent had some in his toolbox in the garage.

“But what about his call to me?” Jessica asked. “What about telling me that there are ‘things we need to know’ about these girls?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Byrne said. “Maybe there is something that they all have in common. Something that we’re not seeing.”

“But what happened between the time he called me and this morning?”

“I don’t know.”

“Suicide doesn’t exactly fit the profile, does it?”

“No. It doesn’t.”

“Which means there’s a good chance that...”

They both knew what it meant. They sat mute for a while, the cacophony of the busy office flowing around them. There were at least a half dozen other homicides being investigated, and those detectives inched and plowed forward. Byrne and Jessica envied them.

There are things you need to know about these girls.

If Brian Parkhurst was not their killer, then the possibility existed that the man they were looking for had murdered him. Perhaps for taking the spotlight. Perhaps for some reason that spoke to the basic pathology of his madness. Perhaps to prove to authorities that he was still out there.

Neither Jessica nor Byrne had as yet mentioned the similarity in the two “suicides,” but it permeated the air in the room like a noxious cloud.

“Okay,” Jessica broke the silence. “If Parkhurst was murdered by our doer, how did he know who he was?”

“Two ways,” Byrne said. “Either they knew each other, or he got his name off TV when he left the Roundhouse the other day.”

Score another one for the media, Jessica thought. They batted around the idea that Brian Parkhurst was another victim of the Rosary Killer for a while. But even if he was, it didn’t help them figure out what was coming next.

The time line, or lack of it, made the killer’s movements unpredictable.

“Our doer picks Nicole Taylor off the street on Thursday,” Jessica said. “He dumps her at Bartram Gardens on Friday, right around the time he picks up Tessa Wells, whom he holds until Monday. Why the lag time?”

“Good question,” Byrne said.

“Then Bethany Price was grabbed Tuesday afternoon, and our one and only witness saw her body dumped at the museum on Tuesday evening. There’s no cycle. No symmetry.”

“It’s almost like he doesn’t want to do these things on the weekend.”

“That may not be as far-fetched as you think,” Byrne said.

He got up, approached the white board, which was now covered in crime scene photos and notes.

“I don’t think our boy is motivated by the moon, the stars, voices, dogs named Sam, any of that shit,” Byrne said. “This guy has a plan. I say we learn his plan, we find him.”

Jessica glanced at her pile of library books. The answer was in there somewhere.

Eric Chavez entered the room, got Jessica’s attention. “Got a minute, Jess?”

“Sure.”

He held up a file folder. “There’s something you should see.”

“What is it?”

“We ran a background check on Bethany Price. Turns out she had a prior.”

Chavez handed her an arrest report. Bethany Price had been arrested as part of a drug sting operation about a year earlier, having been found with nearly a hundred hits of Benzedrine—the illicit diet pill of choice for overweight teenagers. It certainly had been when Jessica was in high school, and it remained so now.

Bethany pled out and received two hundred hours of community service and a year’s probation.

None of that was surprising. The reason Eric Chavez had brought it to Jessica’s attention was the fact that the arresting officer in the case was Detective Vincent Balzano.

Jessica absorbed this, considered the coincidence.

Vincent knew Bethany Price.

According to the sentencing report, it was Vincent who recommended the community service in lieu of jail time.

“Thanks, Eric,” Jessica said.

“You got it.”

“Small world,” Byrne said.

“I’d still hate to paint it,” Jessica replied, absently, reading the report in detail.

Byrne checked his watch. “Look, I’ve got to pick up my daughter. We’ll start fresh in the morning. Tear this all apart and start at the beginning.”

“Okay,” Jessica said, but she saw the look on Byrne’s face, the concern that the firestorm that had erupted in his career after the Morris Blanchard suicide might be igniting all over again.

Byrne placed a hand on Jessica’s shoulder, then slipped on his coat and left.

Jessica sat at the desk for a long time, looking out the window.

Although she didn’t want to admit it, she agreed with Byrne. Brian Parkhurst was not the Rosary Killer.

Brian Parkhurst was a victim.

She tried Vincent on his cell phone, got his voice mail. She called Central Detectives and was told that Detective Balzano was out on the street.

She didn’t leave a message.

51

WEDNESDAY, 4:15 PM

When Byrne brought up the boy’s name, Colleen went four shades of red.

“He is not my boyfriend,” his daughter signed.

“Uh, okay. Whatever you say,” Byrne signed back.

“He’s not.”

“Then why are you blushing?” Byrne signed, a huge smile on his face. They were on Germantown Avenue, heading to the Easter party at the Delaware Valley School for the Deaf.