The Killing Room (Richard Montanari) - By Richard Montanari Page 0,8

Jessica decided to begin with known associates of the man they had in custody. She scrolled through mug shots, six at a time. No one looked promising.

After a few fruitless minutes the phone on the desk rang. Jessica looked longingly at her Spinach Florentine breakfast wrap from Così, the one she probably shouldn’t be eating, but somehow couldn’t resist. She hadn’t even got in a single bite.

If this call was a new case, it would be hers. She picked up the phone, punched the button.

‘Homicide. Balzano.’

At first it sounded like white noise, albeit white noise at the lower end of the spectrum, like the setting on sound conditioning machines that simulate rainstorms.

Jessica waited. And waited. Nothing.

‘This is Homicide, Detective Balzano.’

‘One God,’ the caller said.

The words were spoken in a soft whisper. The volume was so low that it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman speaking.

‘Excuse me?’ Jessica asked. ‘Could you speak up a bit?’

‘Seven churches.’

It sounded like the caller said seven churches. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand. Are you calling about a case?’

For a few seconds the caller said nothing. Jessica was just about to hang up when she heard:

‘You will find the first of the dead at Amber and Cumberland.’

Dead. First of the dead. This got Jessica’s attention.

She took out her notebook, started writing. ‘Amber and Cumberland, you say?’ Technically, this meant East Cumberland Street, but hardly anybody called it that. This told Jessica she was probably talking to a native Philadelphian. But not necessarily.

‘Beneath the dove,’ the caller whispered.

‘Okay. The dove. Got it. We’ll check it out. In the meantime, why don’t I –’

‘We will not speak again.’

The line went dead.

Jessica held the phone for a few seconds, trying to digest what she’d just heard. Crank call? Maybe yes, maybe no. The nutcases usually called 911. This was on a direct line.

First of the dead.

Jessica put the phone back in its cradle, her day suddenly changed.

The purview of the PPD Homicide Unit was to investigate every suspicious non-hospital, non-hospice death. Sometimes the jobs turned out to be suicides, sometimes they turned out to be hoaxes. Jessica had been on many of each.

She debated for a moment whether to take this to Dana Westbrook, the day work supervisor. After all, it wasn’t a citizen call to 911 that started this, it was a direct call to the Homicide Unit.

She had no choice. As she walked toward Sergeant Westbrook’s office, the siren call of her Così breakfast wrap grew cold, as did the sandwich itself.

*

‘And you couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman?’

‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘The voice was just a whisper.’

‘What did the caller say again?’

Dana Westbrook was in her early fifties, fit and toned and agile. Although she was easily four inches shorter than Jessica’s five-eight, she was by no means petite. And God help you if you crossed her, or shirked your duty.

Women in law enforcement worldwide knew that when you were in uniform you had to work twice as hard as men. It was a fact of life. At the command level it was double even that. Jessica did not envy Dana Westbrook’s rank, just as she knew she would never try for the position. Detective work was hard enough.

Jessica flipped a page in her notebook. ‘Whoever it was said One God, then something about seven churches.’

‘Seven churches?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Any idea what that means?’

‘Not a clue.’

Westbrook thought for a moment, tapping her pen. ‘Does that intersection mean anything to you? Anything that might be relevant to an open case?’

The thought had, of course, crossed Jessica’s mind. She hadn’t brought it up because she really didn’t want to follow up on this. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell, Sarge.’

‘And what was the other thing? The “first of the dead”?’

‘“First of the dead.” Then, “We will not speak again.”’

‘Will not? Not won’t?’

‘Will not.’

‘Precise,’ Westbrook said. ‘Not a contraction. Interesting.’

Shit, Jessica thought. She connected the dots, tried to look at it from her boss’s point of view. All things considered, it looked like Detective Jessica Balzano was going on this call whether she liked it or not.

Westbrook looked out the window for a few moments. She twirled her pen. Jessica recognized it as a technique used by cheerleaders. She’d never have the courage to ask Dana Westbrook – tough, ex-Marine, veteran of Desert Storm Dana Westbrook – whether or not she’d ever been a cheerleader.

‘Check it out,’ Westbrook said. ‘If it’s nothing, you get a nice visit to Kensington. I hear it’s beautiful this time of