“We’re still collecting trace evidence from the boxes, but there is something else I wanted to show you.”

Tracy walked across the lab, returned with a large paper evidence bag. “I didn’t work on this last time, so I thought I’d give it a look.”

She reached in the evidence bag and removed Caitlin O’Riordan’s backpack.

“Detective Pistone emptied the bag on scene, brought everything back in pieces, I’m afraid. I hate to speak ill of the retired, but it was sloppy work. The exterior got dusted, the interior vacuumed and cleared, and then it got stuck on a shelf. We’ve reprocessed the bag for prints only,” Tracy said. “The only exemplars belong to Miss O’Riordan. We’ll get on hair and fiber again later today.”

Tracy unzipped the bag.

“I went poking around inside,” she said. “There’s a plastic insert on the bottom that flips up.”

Tracy turned the backpack inside out. The inside flap was torn along one edge. “I looked inside here and found something. It was a section of a magazine cover.”

“It was underneath?” Jessica asked.

“It was slid inside along this tear,” Tracy said, pointing to the seam. The plastic lining had come away from the hard cardboard insert. “I’m inclined to believe Miss O’Riordan may have put it in there for safekeeping.”

“Where is the magazine cover now?” Jessica asked.

“It’s being processed for prints.” Tracy took out two photocopies of photographs, front and back of the evidence.

The images were of about a third of a page of a magazine cover, torn diagonally. It was Seventeen Magazine, the May 2008 issue. Written on the back was a phone number. The last five numbers were obscured, perhaps with water damage, but the area code was clear enough.

“Has Hell Rohmer seen this?” Jessica asked.

“He gets it next,” Tracy said. “He’s already pacing upstairs.”

Jessica picked up the photocopy, angled it toward the light.

“Eight-five-six area code,” she said.

“Eight-five-six,” Byrne echoed. “Camden.”

THE FINGERPRINT LAB found three distinct sets of prints on the glossy surface of the magazine cover. One belonged to Caitlin O’Riordan. One exemplar was not in the system. One set—thumb and forefinger—were ten point exemplars. They ran the prints through a local database, as well as AFIS. The Automated Fingerprint Identification System was a national database used to match unknown prints against known, using either the newer Live Scan technologies—which employed a laser scanning device—or the old method of prints taken in ink.

The third set rang every bell in the system. It belonged to a man named Ignacio Sanz. The detectives checked his name on PCIC and NCIC and found that Ignacio had a long sheet, had twice been arrested, tried, and convicted for gross sexual imposition and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He had done two stretches at Curran-Fromhold, the last being eighteen months, a sentence ending this past April.

Jessica glanced at Byrne as they read the sheet. They were definitely of the same mind: Ignacio Sanz was a creep, a deviant, and he was on the street right around the time Caitlin O’Riordan was murdered in May.

Byrne got on the phone, reached out to Sanz’s parole officer. Within an hour they had a home address and a work address.

THIRTY-EIGHT

THE SHRIMP DOCK was a seafood take-out restaurant in east Camden, New Jersey, a slanted grease-box scaled in salmon-colored tile and torn, sea green awnings, nestled between a boarded-up Dunkin’ Donuts and a Dominican barber shop.

Jessica and Byrne walked in, scanned the restaurant, then the area behind the counter. There was no sign of Ignacio Sanz. He wasn’t working the register, nor was he bussing tables or sweeping up.

The service window was double-thick security plastic. Behind it stood a pretty young Hispanic girl in a blue and red tricot uniform and hat, looking about as bored as a human being could look and still register a pulse. She snapped her gum. Byrne showed her tin, even though it was unnecessary.

“Ignacio around?” Byrne asked.

The girl didn’t answer. That would’ve required the expending of energy. Instead, she nodded to a door next to the counter, the one marked EM YE S ON Y.

Twenty seconds later, sufficient time to remind Byrne and Jessica just where they were, the girl buzzed them back.

IGNACIO SANZ WASN’T on anybody’s list of babysitters. Now in his late twenties, a two-time loser, he was allegedly on the path to respectability. The state had gotten him a job working the fry baskets at the Shrimp Dock, and a room at a halfway house nearby.

When Jessica and Byrne stepped into the back room of the restaurant, the first thing they noticed was that the door was wide open. The second thing they noticed was that a man—without question, Ignacio Sanz—was running across the back parking lot, full tilt.

Jessica, who had dressed in one of her better suits—a nice two-button Tahari she had gotten from Macy’s—looked at her partner.

Byrne pointed to his right leg. “Sciatica.”

“Ah, shit.”

By the time Jessica tackled Ignacio Sanz, he was halfway to Atlantic City.

THEY WERE IN A SMALL, cramped space at the rear of the Shrimp Dock, in what passed for an employee break room. On the walls were curling posters for the tempting bill of fare: light blue haddock, gray coleslaw, hoary fries.

Iggy was short and spindly, with a caved chest and acne-pitted cheeks. He seemed to be coated in a slick film of fish grease, giving his skin an unnatural sheen. He also had the smallest feet Jessica had ever seen on a grown man. He wore neon aqua cross-trainers and black silk dress socks. Jessica wondered if he was wearing women’s shoes.

He also sported the same red and blue tricot smock the girl out front was wearing, but instead of a hat he wore a hairnet that reached down to just over his eyebrows. All of which was now covered with dust and gravel, due to his recent visit to the ground, courtesy of the Philadelphia Police Department.

Byrne sat across from him. Jessica stood behind him. This did not sit well with Ignacio. He was afraid of Jessica. With good reason.

“My name is Detective Byrne. I’m with Philly Homicide.” He pointed over Ignacio’s shoulder. “This is my partner, Detective Balzano. You may remember her. She’s the one who bodychecked you against that Chevy van.”

Ignacio sat stock-still.

“I want you to give her twenty dollars,” Byrne said.

Iggy looked punched. “What?”

“You owe her a pair of pantyhose. Give her twenty dollars.”

Jessica looked down. When she flipped Iggy onto the ground she tore a big hole in the right knee of her hose.

“Pantyhose cost twenty dollars?” Iggy asked.

Byrne stuck his face an inch from Iggy’s face. Iggy shrunk measurably. “Are you saying my partner doesn’t deserve the best?”

Trembling, without another word, Iggy dug around in his pockets, came up with a wad of damp bills, counted them out. Fourteen dollars. He flattened them on the table, stacked them, then handed them to Jessica, who took them without hesitation, even though she wondered where the hell they had recently been.

“You could, you know, come back for the rest later,” Iggy said. “I get paid today. I’ll have the rest later.”

“Come back?” Byrne said. “What makes you think you’re not coming with us?”

This had not occurred to Iggy. “But I didn’t do nothing.”

Byrne laughed. “You think that matters to someone like me?”

This also had not occurred to him. But the implications were far more serious. Iggy stared at the floor, remained silent.

“Now, my partner is going to speak to you,” Byrne said. “I want you to give her your full attention and your full respect.”

Byrne stood up, held the chair. Jessica sat down, her right knee poking through her torn pantyhose, thinking, Does anything look skankier than this?