There was no one standing on the corner waiting for them.

They had already walked two blocks in three directions, then back. The only path left to explore was south on Second.

“Why are we doing this again?” Jessica asked.

“Boss says go, we go, right?”

They walked a half block south on Second Street. More shuttered stores and derelict houses. They passed a used-tire stand, a burned car, a step van on blocks, a Cuban restaurant.

The other side of the street offered a colorless quilt of battered row houses, stitched between hoagie shacks, wig shops, and nail boutiques, some open for business, most shuttered, all with fading, hand-lettered signs, all crosshatched with rusting riot gates. The upper floors were a tic-tac-toe of bedsheet-covered windows with busted panes.

North Philly, Jessica thought. God save North Philly.

As they passed a vacant lot fronted by a shanty wall, Byrne stopped. The wall, a listing barrier made of nailed-together plywood, rusted corrugated metal, and plastic awning panels, was covered in graffiti. On one end was a bright red screen door, wired to a post. The door looked recently painted.

“Jess,” Byrne said. “Look.”

Jessica took a few steps back. She glanced at the door, then back over her shoulder. They were almost a full block from Diamond Street. “This can’t mean anything. Can it?”

“Sarge said the guy said ‘near Second and Diamond.’ And this is definitely a red door. The only red door around here.”

They walked a few more feet south, glanced over a low section of the wall. The lot looked like every other vacant lot in Philadelphia—weeds, bricks, tires, plastic bags, broken appliances, the obligatory discarded toilet.

“See any killers lurking?” Jessica asked.

“Not a one.”

“Me neither. Ready to go?”

Byrne thought for a few moments. “Tell you what. We’ll do one lap. Just to say we went to the fair.”

They walked to the corner and circled around behind the vacant lot. At the rear of the property, facing the alley, was a rusted chain-link fence. One corner was clipped and wrestled back. Overhead, three pairs of old sneakers, tied together by their laces, looped over an electrical wire.

Jessica glanced around the lot. Against the wall of the building on the west side, which had once housed a well-known music store, were a few stacks of discarded brick pallets, a stepladder with only three rungs, along with a handful of broken appliances. She resigned herself to getting this over with. Byrne held up the fencing while she ducked underneath. He followed.

The two detectives did a cursory sweep of the parcel. Five minutes later they met in the middle. The sun was high and melting and merciless. It was already past lunchtime. “Nothing?”

“Nothing,” Byrne replied.

Jessica took out her cell phone. “Okay,” she said. “Now I’m hooked. I want to hear that hotline call.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER DETECTIVE Joshua Bontrager arrived at the scene. He had with him a portable cassette player.

Josh Bontrager had been in the homicide unit less than eighteen months, but had already proven himself a valuable asset. He was young, and brought a young man’s energy to the street, but he also had what just about everyone in the department considered to be a unique and oddly effective background. No one in the PPD’s homicide division—or probably any homicide division in the country—could claim it.

Joshua Bontrager had grown up in an Amish family.

He had left the church many years earlier, coming to Philadelphia for no other reason than that’s what you did when you left Berks or Lancaster County seeking fortune. He joined the force, and spent a number of years in the traffic unit, before being transferred to the homicide unit to assist on an investigation that led up the Schuylkill River into rural Berks. Bontrager was wounded in the course of that investigation, but recovered fully. The bosses decided to keep him on.

Jessica remembered the first time she met him—mismatched pants and suit coat, hair that looked like it had been cut with a butter knife, sturdy, unpolished shoes. Since that time Bontrager had acquired a gold-badge detective’s swagger, a Center City haircut, a couple of nice suits.

Still, as urbane as he had become, Josh Bontrager would forever be known throughout the unit as the first Amishide cop in Philadelphia history.

Bontrager put the cassette player on top of a rusted grill made from a fifty-gallon drum, an abandoned barbecue sitting in the middle of the vacant lot. A few seconds later he had the tape cued up. “Ready?”

“Hit it,” Jessica said.

Bontrager hit PLAY.

“Philadelphia Police Department Hotline,” the female officer said.

“Yes, my name is Jeremiah Crosley, and I have information that might be helpful in a murder case you are investigating.”

The voice sounded white male, thirties or forties, educated. The accent was Philly, but with something lurking beneath.

“Would you spell your last name for me please, sir?”

The man did.

“May I have your home address?”

“I live at 2097 Dodgson Street.”

“And where is that located?”

“In Queen Village. But I am not there now.”

“And which case are you calling about?”

“The Caitlin O’Riordan case.”

“Go ahead, sir.”

“I killed her.”

At this point there was a quick intake of breath. It wasn’t clear if it was the caller or the officer. Jessica would bet it was the officer. You could be a cop forty years, investigate thousands of cases, and never hear those words.

“And when did you do this, sir?”

“It was in May of this year.”

“Do you remember the exact date?”

“It was the second of May, I believe.”

“Do you recall the time of day?”

“I do not.”

I do not, Jessica thought. No contractions. She made a note.

“If you doubt that I am telling the truth, I can prove it to you.”

“How will you do that, sir?”

“I have something of hers.”

“You have something?”

“Yes. A button from her jacket. Third from the bottom. I have sent it to you. It will come in the mail today.”

“Where are you right now, sir?”

“I will get to that in a second. I just want to have some assurances.”

“I can’t promise you anything, sir. But I’ll listen to whatever it is you have to say.”

“We live in a world in which a person’s word is no longer valid currency. I have seven girls. I fear for them. I fear for their safety. Do you promise me no harm will come to them?”

Seven girls, Jessica thought.

“If they are in no way responsible for this or any other crime, they will not be involved. I promise you.”

One final hesitation.

“I am at a location near Second and Diamond. It is cold here.”

It is cold here, Jessica thought. What does that mean? The temperature had already topped ninety degrees.

“What’s the address?”

“I do not know. But you will know it by its red door.”

“Sir, if you’ll stay on the line for—”

The line went dead. Josh Bontrager hit stop.

Jessica glanced at her partner. “What do you think?”

Byrne gave it a few moments. “I’m not sure. Ask me when we get the full report back from the lab on that button.”

It was common practice to run a PCIC and NCIC check on anyone who called in with information, especially those who called in to confess to a major crime. According to the boss, there was no record of a Jeremiah Crosley—criminal, DMV, or otherwise—in the city of Philadelphia. His Queen Village address turned out to be nonexistent. There was no Dodgson Street.

“Okay,” Jessica finally said. “Where to?”

“Let’s go back to the Eighth Street scene,” Byrne said. “I want to recanvass. Let’s bring the cassette and see if anyone around there recognizes our boy’s voice. Maybe after that we can take another ride to Millersville.”