At ten minutes to nine he slips into a narrow store. It is garishly lit, stocked floor to ceiling with ceramic figurines and rayon roses. Small, shiny balloons dance in the overheated air. An entire wall is devoted to greeting cards.

There is only one other patron in the store. He has been following her all evening, has seen the sadness in her eyes, the weight on her shoulders, the fatigue in her stride.

She is the Drowning Girl.

He eases next to her, selects a few cards from the glittering array, chuckles softly at each, returns them to the rack. He glances around. No one is watching.

It is time.

“You look a little confused,” he says.

She glances up. She is tall and thin, magnificently pale. Her ash blond hair is pinned in a messy fashion, held in place by white plastic barrettes. Her neck is carven ivory. She is wears a lilac backpack.

She doesn’t respond. He has scared her.

Walk away.

“There are too many choices!” she says animatedly, but not without caution. He expects this. He is, after all, an unknown piece on her game board of strangers. She giggles, chews on a fingernail. Adorable. She is about seventeen. The best age.

“Tell me the occasion,” he says. “Maybe I can help.”

A flash of distrust now—cat paws on an oven door. She peers around the room, at the publicness of it all. “Well,” she begins, “my boyfriend is…”

Silence.

He begs the conversation forward. “He’s what?”

She doesn’t want to say, then she does. “Okay… he’s not exactly my boyfriend, right? But he’s cheating on me.” She tucks a filament of hair behind an ear. “Well, not exactly cheating. Not yet.” She turns to leave, turns back. “Okay, he asked out my best friend, Courtney. The slut.” She reddens, a sheer crimson pall on her flawless skin. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

He is dressed casually this evening: faded jeans, black linen blazer, loafers, a little extra gel in his hair, a silver ankh around his neck, eyeglasses of a modern style. He looks young enough. Besides, he has the sort of bearing that invites faith. It always has. “The cad,” he says.

Wrong word? No. She smiles. Seventeen going on thirty.

“More like a jerk,” she says. “A total jerk.” Another nervous giggle.

He leans away from her, increasing the distance by mere inches. Important inches. She relaxes. She has decided he is no threat. Like one of her cool teachers.

“Do you think dark humor is appropriate for the occasion?”

She considers this. “Probably,” she says. “Maybe. I don’t know. I guess.”

“Does he make you laugh?”

Boyfriends—boys who become boyfriends—usually do. Even the ones who cheat on achingly beautiful seventeen-year-old girls.

“Yeah,” she says. “He’s kinda funny. Sometimes.” She looks up, making deep eye contact. This moment all but splinters his heart. “But not lately.”

“I was looking at this one,” he says. “I think it might be just the right sentiment.” He lifts a card from the rack, considers it for a moment, hands it over. It is a bit risqué. His hesitation speaks of his respect for the age difference, the fact that they’ve just met.

She takes the card, opens it, reads the greeting. A moment later she laughs, covering her mouth. A tiny snort escapes. She blushes, embarrassed.

In this instant her image blurs, as it always has, like a face obscured by rain on a shattered windshield.

“This is, like, totally perfect,” she says. “Totally. Thanks.”

He watches as she glances at the vacant cashier, then at the video camera. She turns her back to the camera, stuffs the card into her bag, looks at him, a smile on her face. If there was a purer love, he could not imagine it.

“I need another card, too,” she says. “But I’m not sure you can help me with that one.”

“You’d be surprised what I can do.”

“It’s for my parents.” She cocks a hip. Another blush veils her pretty face, then quickly disappears. “It’s because I’ve—”

He holds up a hand, stopping her. It is better this way. “I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

He smiles. “I was once your age.”

She parts her lips to answer, but instead remains silent.

“It all works out in the end,” he adds. “You’ll see. It always does.”

She looks away for a second. It is as if she has made some sort of decision in this moment, as though a great weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She glances back at him, smiles sadly, and says, “Thanks.”

Instead of responding, he just gazes at her with great fondness. The overhead lights cast golden highlights in her hair. In an instant, it comes to him.

He will keep her in the pantry.

Ten minutes later he follows her, unseen, into the parking lot, conscious of the shadow, the light, the carbon blue chiaroscuro of the evening. It has begun to rain, a light drizzle that does not threaten a downpour.

He watches as she crosses the avenue, steps into a shelter. Soon after, she boards the bus, a shuttle to the train station.

He slips a CD into the player. In seconds the sounds of “Vedrai, Carino” fill the car. It regales his soul—once again, exalting this moment, as only Mozart can.

He follows the bus into the city, his heart ablaze, the hunt renewed.

She is Emma Bovary. She is Elizabeth Bennet. She is Cassiopeia and Cosette.

She is his.

PART I

SHADOW

HOUSE

An echoing, garnish’d house

—but dead, dead, dead.

—WALT WHITMAN

ONE

THE DEAD GIRL sat inside the glass display case, a pale and delicatE curio placed on a shelf by a madman. In life she had been beautiful, with fine blond hair and cobalt blue eyes. In death her eyes pleaded for benediction, for the cold symmetry of justice.

The last thing they had seen was a monster.

Her tomb was a stifling basement in an abandoned building in the Badlands, a five-square-mile area of desolate terrain and destroyed lives in North Philadelphia, running approximately from Erie Avenue south to Girard, from Broad Street east to the river.

Her name was Caitlin Alice O’Riordan. On the day of her murder, the day her brief story came to a close, she was seventeen.

For Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Homicide Unit, Caitlin’s story was just beginning.

THERE ARE THREE DIVISIONS in Philly Homicide—the Line Squad, which handles new cases; the Fugitive Squad; and the Special Investigations Unit, which handles, among other things, cold cases. To the detectives of SIU, all of whom were members of the Five Squad, an elite group of investigators handpicked by the captain based on their abilities, their closure rates, and their investigative skills, a cold case investigation represented a second chance to right a wrong, an ultimatum to the killers who arrogantly walked the streets of Philadelphia, a statement that said the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the City of Brotherly Love, were not done with them.

The Caitlin O’Riordan investigation was the first SIU case for Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano.