granite cliffs. On that morning, between the museum and boathouse row, under a thicket of azaleas, lay a young woman with her running suit muddied and half pulled off, her Nike cross trainer on one foot but without a partner, and her throat cut from ear to ear.
I was working with a Center City detective squad, low on the totem pole and “learning the craft,” according to my new lieutenant. We were on the first call out that morning.
It didn’t take long to identify the victim. Although she wasn’t carrying I.D. and the key she had strapped into a holder on the remaining shoe was unmarked, I recognized the store label on the running suit. It was a small specialty athletic place on Rittenhouse Square. It was five minutes away up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and over to Walnut. When we got there the store manager went slack-jawed when he saw the Polaroid we’d taken of the woman.
“Susan Gleason,” he said, turning away from the photo. She was a regular. A dedicated runner who lived across the historic square in a centuries-old building retrofitted into high- priced condos. He knew she ran from there down to the river and along the row early every morning. She went through a pair of shoes every twelve weeks. She was a very good customer.
We confirmed with the condo management. Gleason lived alone, a thirty-six-year-old stock analyst, loved the city and worked constantly. The running seemed her only outlet.
The blue lights were still spinning when we got back to the scene. The body and been removed and the other shoe had been found fifty yards away near a parking spot close to one of the rowing clubs along the river. Other members of the detective squad had interviewed several early morning runners. Some recognized the woman’s running suit. Some also knew the parking spot was often occupied at dawn by a late-model, beat- up Chevy Impala with one of those orange, city employee parking stickers.
“A big, odd-looking white guy would just sit there with the window down. He’s there every morning except on the weekend,” a runner said. “You can see the Fairmount Dam from there. I figured he was just enjoying the view before starting the day.”
The prints of a size thirteen work boot were found in the mud by the azaleas. The squad fanned out among city maintenance divisions in Center City. A supervisor at the City Hall—area subway division recognized a description of the Impala: Arthur Williams. “Yeah, big guy, kinda, you know, slow.”
Williams worked in the underground subway access tunnels, sweeping trash and cleaning graffiti from the walls. He was in his 40s. Quiet. Didn’t come in that day, which was unusual.
We got an address in North Philadelphia and another car went with us. An upper-class woman from Rittenhouse Square had been murdered while jogging in a popular park along the river. They weren’t sparing any manpower at the roundhouse to button this one down by the evening news.
The house in North Philly was in the middle of a worn- down block of tired homes. They all shared a creaking roofline and were all connected so you could stand on the front porch at one end of the block and see your neighbor eight doors down standing out on his. Only a spindled railing separated your porch floorboards from the next guy’s.
We were greeted by an elderly woman who talked through the screen door.
“Mrs. Williams?”
“No, sir. I am Fanny Holland. Mrs. Williams’ sister.”
“Is Arthur home, ma’am?”
She could see the other detectives moving about the Impala parked on the street.
“He’s not going to lose his job over this is he?” the old lady said as she let us in. “He has never missed a day before.”
Two detectives went up the narrow staircase. My partner and I went into the kitchen with Fanny Holland and sat her down at the table. She listened for sounds up through the cracked ceiling. The house was not unlike my own childhood home. It smelled of liniment and old cardboard, ancient comforters and soiled doilies. My mother had grown sick in such a place.
The others brought Arthur down. Big, docile, with a confused child’s look on his face. They found him in bed covered with three blankets. He still had on his work clothes, including a pair of huge, mud-caked boots. He stumbled with his thick wrists cuffed behind his back and kept repeating in a low whine, “She was too pretty to die. She was