The Killing Room (Richard Montanari) - By Richard Montanari Page 0,81
old school. Every homicide unit has a lid man, and Dre Curtis seemed to have a hat for every occasion. On this day he was wearing a gray pork pie.
Before the meeting began Jessica and Byrne decided to hold off on what they had learned from Father Leone. At this point, it was still speculation.
The three churches were marked on the large map with red push pins. The material they had gotten from the archdiocese was overwhelming. There were sixty-seven churches that had closed in the past fifty years. Of those, six had been razed, thirty-one had been repurposed, leaving thirty buildings standing vacant across four counties. Watching them all was going to be an enormous task, involving dozens of personnel, not to mention a lot of overtime money that simply wasn’t there.
The third victim’s name was Martin David Allsop. He had been fingerprinted at the morgue and, like Daniel Palumbo, had a criminal record. Twice convicted of gross sexual imposition on a minor, he had spent eighteen months in Curran-Fromhold on a three-year sentence. He had no family in Philadelphia. Until recently he worked as a salesman at the Best Buy on Roosevelt Boulevard.
When everyone was settled, Jessica took the lead.
‘The first victim found was Daniel E. Palumbo, twenty-three, late of Latona Street in South Philly. As you all know, Daniel was once PPD. He was pronounced at St Adelaide’s Church. Cause of death was ruled exasanguination, due to a sharp object – in this instance a sharpened barb on a length of barb wire – cutting the carotid artery.
‘We have an eyewitness, Mara Reuben, whose mother lives across the street from St Adelaide’s. On the day before we received a call, directing us to the location, Ms Reuben witnessed a man in a long coat and pointed hood exit the alley next to the crime-scene building, and make a mark on the lamppost directly across the sidewalk from the entrance.’
Jessica taped a pair of photographs onto the whiteboard, one of them a still picture from the pole camera on the corner; the other was a close-up photo of the X on the lamppost.
‘This was taken from a pole cam, and seems to back up what Ms Reuben told us. The time code coincides with her recollection of events. Unfortunately, she could not give us a better description.
‘A few days later we questioned one of Daniel Palumbo’s known associates, one Thomas L. Boyce, who had one of the victim’s old knapsacks with him. We found no solid leads in there. I then began a series of interviews at free clinics, which led me to the St Julius Clinic at Twelfth and Lehigh. One of the nurses there, a man named Ted Cochrane, remembered treating our second victim, Cecilia Rollins.’
Jessica had decided to let Byrne brief the task force on Cecilia Rollins. Her level of rage about the murdered baby was still on the red line.
Byrne stood up, consulted his notes. ‘Although Daniel Palumbo’s body was the first to be discovered, the medical examiner has ruled that Cecilia Rollins was the first to die. He puts the date of her death around February sixth. Her body was found in the basement of St Damian’s.’
Jessica knew that Byrne knew he had to brief the team on how they got to St Damian’s in the first place. He wasn’t about to tell them that it came to him in one of his visions. The PPD brass, and even some of his fellow homicide detectives, were skeptical enough of Byrne’s methods the way it was.
‘After a search of St Adelaide’s, a portion of an old prayer card was found in the bell tower, an item we believe was deliberately left by the killer. It was a funeral card from 1966, issued by St Damian’s.
‘The child’s mother, Adria Rollins, nineteen, is severely mentally handicapped, and when I checked with DHS, they said they believed her great-grandfather – who signed forms claiming he was her grandfather – was competent enough as a guardian. When we went to question Adria, we found the old man deceased of natural causes, and Adria alone. We believe the baby was abducted from their apartment.’
‘Do we know anything about the baby’s biological father?’ Maria asked.
‘We do not. Ms Rollins is currently in the pysch ward at Temple. We’re awaiting word on whether or not she is well enough to be questioned. We checked the birth record, and the father is listed as unknown.’