The Killing Room

by Richard Montanari

  Sophie rolled her eyes, looked at her mother, back at her brother. ‘There is no gun, Carlos.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. The game is called rock, paper, scissors.’

  Carlos giggled. ‘Okay.’

  Sophie looked again at Jessica. Jessica just shrugged.

  ‘Boys,’ Sophie said.

  The Roundhouse, the police administration building at the corner of Eighth and Race Streets, was humming when Jessica walked in at just after 8 a.m. Thank God the humming in her ears had stopped. It would begin again, she imagined, when she next stepped into the ring, sometime in the next few days. She didn’t want to admit it, but she just didn’t bounce back like she did in her twenties.

  Still, she had stood her ground with a buff nineteen-year-old, and came out of it with just a bruise or two. And sore hands. And, if truth be told, it kind of hurt on the right side when she took a deep breath. Other than that …

  Maybe she was getting too old for this.

  The Homicide Unit was ninety detectives strong, working three tours. Although the murder rate in Philadelphia had dropped in the past few years, the violence had not. New trauma centers in urban areas had eased the number of fatalities, and victims who may have died in the past were now reaching emergency care more quickly. But, as the old saying went: a homicide is just an aggravated assault gone wrong.

  Somehow, with the three cases Jessica and Byrne had pending, St Michael – the patron saint of police – had smiled upon them, and they had three suspects in custody, with preliminary hearings spread out over the next two weeks.

  For this one glorious moment, their plate was clean.

  In most professions, that was a good thing. An empty outbox makes for a clear conscience on payday. In homicide work it meant that you were back up on the wheel. It meant that any minute someone in the City of Brotherly Love was going to pick up a gun or a knife or a bludgeon and visit violence on another human being, and it would then become your job to sort it all out, making sure the guilty party was apprehended and brought to justice, and that the loved ones of the victim were notified, their grief assuaged, their anger and rage corralled.

  With this in mind Jessica sat at a computer terminal. One of her cases was a double homicide in Juniata Park, and witness statements put a second man at the scene, gun in hand, although ballistics could only ID one weapon. With only a rough description of the second suspect, 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 year.’

  Jessica smiled, ever the cheerful and loyal centurion. ‘You got it, Sarge.’

  Ten minutes later Jessica walked out of the office, grabbed her coat and car keys, along with a two-way radio out of the charging station. On the way she stopped by the secretary’s desk, wrote the location down on a separate page from her notebook – along with the bit about the dove – tore it out, handed it to the secretary. ‘Let’s get a sector car started to this address,’ she said. ‘Might be something, might be nothing.’

  On the way to the elevator she ran into Byrne.

  As they drove to Kensingt
on, Jessica filled her partner in on the details of the phone call.

  ‘Sound like a suicide reach out?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Could be. But why call homicide? Why not call the suicide hotline?’

  ‘Now where’s the drama in that?’

  This was true. ‘On the other hand it was a direct-line call.’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘Not good.’

  The direct-line numbers into the Homicide Unit were not published anywhere – not in a brochure, not in a directory, certainly not in any phone book. If someone had any of the direct line phone numbers of the homicide unit they most likely got them from a business card. All other calls were routed from police radio.

  ‘And you didn’t recognize the voice?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘No. But I didn’t hear much of it. It was pretty much a whisper.’

  ‘And what was the line about the dead? “First of the dead”?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Also not good.’

  ‘Who the hell says “of the dead”?’

  It was a rhetorical question. Neither detective really wanted to find out.

  ‘Did the caller say your name?’ Byrne asked.

  Jessica had to think about this. She really couldn’t remember. Unlike calls that come in to 911, direct calls to homicide were not automatically recorded and logged, so there was no audio record. ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Did you hear anything in the background? TV? Radio? Music of any kind?’

  ‘No,’ Jessica said. ‘But to be honest, I wasn’t paying all that much attention. The call came out of the blue.’

  Byrne went quiet for a while, processing it all.

  ‘Hey, I forgot to ask. Did you ever do that Philly Brothers thing?’ Jessica asked.

  Byrne did not answer immediately. Jessica had known the man a long time, and knew that whatever she was about to hear was only going to be part of the story. She also knew she would get the entire story when Byrne was ready to tell her.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it went okay, I guess. Kid’s eleven. It’s like talking to an alien.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘Father was a ghost, mother walked the streets, died of an overdose. Gabriel’s older brother swallowed a gun.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘The kid’s a walking gang recruitment poster.’

  ‘No tats or scars,’ Byrne said. ‘None I could see anyway.’

  ‘You think he’s at risk?’

  ‘They’re all at risk these days. Hard to tell with him, though. He seems pretty smart, but that’s just an impression. I don’t think he said fifty words the whole time I was with him.’

  ‘You guys going to get together again?’

  Another hesitation. Another half-story coming up. ‘I brought it up, but all I got was his thousand-yard stare. I’m going to call him though, give it a shot.’

  They stopped at the light at Eighth and Spring Garden. A cold blast of wind buffeted the car. Jessica kicked up the heat a notch.

  ‘On the other hand, I’m probably not his ideal Philly Brother, you know?’ Byrne added. ‘Big middle-aged white cop. I don’t think he’s going to bring me in for show and tell any time soon.’

  ‘What are you talking about? You’re a total catch.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You are. In fact, I heard that Philadelphia Magazine is going to do another one of its “Philadelphia’s Sexiest Bachelor” issues. I’m going to submit your name.’

  Byrne smiled. ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘Oh, yes I am.’

  ‘Make sure you tell them I live in a three-room apartment and keep my socks and underwear in a file cabinet.’

  ‘Babes will line up around the block for that. I’m seeing crowd control issues.’

  ‘And don’t forget to mention that I once mixed up a can of furniture polish with my deodorant.’

  Jessica laughed. ‘I thought you smelled kind of lemony fresh that day.’

  Kensington was a neighborhood in the lower northeast section of the city. It was at one time a bustling shipbuilding district, before giving way to manufacturing and mill work. When the mills began to close, Kensington fell on hard times, becoming one of the most depressed areas of the city, an era of decay and desolation from which it was still struggling to emerge.

  Because Amber Street was one-way, Jessica and Byrne drove down to York first, then cut back. As they neared the address Jessica saw a sector car parked on Amber, its lights flashing. On a street like this, the longer the bar flashed, the more likely it would be to draw people out of their houses. Right now they didn’t need a crowd. In fact, unless the perpetrator stood at the front in an orange jumpsuit with a sign around his neck confessing to the crime, they never needed a crowd.

  The patrol officer was a Hispanic woman in her twenties.

  Before getting out of the car Jessica studied the scene. The address was a freestanding, two-story, red-sandstone building. Buildings such as these were common in Kensington, structures rehabbed and repurposed over the years. While many had been torn down over the past three decades, as Kensington and neighboring Harrowgate, West Kensington, and Fishtown attempted to gentrify, many remained, sandwiched between blocks of rowhouses and commercial buildings.

  The two front windows of this building were barred. To the right was an alleyway. Above the entrance was a low bell tower.

  Jessica and Byrne exited the car, crossed the street. They clipped their badges onto their coats. Before they reached the curb Byrne got Jessica’s attention. He nodded at the high wall of the old warehouse next to their address. On it someone had painted a mural with a large gray dove perched on an olive branch.

  You’ll find the first of the dead at Amber and Cumberland. Beneath the dove.

  The young patrol officer paced nervously near her car. As they got closer Jessica could see the officer’s eyes. Something was very wrong. The officer looked like she had seen a monster. Her nametag identified her as P/O A. MARTINEZ.

  ‘Good morning,’ Byrne said.

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘What can you tell me?’

  Officer Martinez took a deep breath. When she exhaled the air came out in short, frosty blasts. She pointed at the building behind her, explained how she had taken the call, searched the alleyway, found nothing. She said she’d then remembered the ‘beneath the dove’ detail she’d gotten from dispatch. It was then she noticed the mural on the wall, and that the door to the building was ajar.

  ‘I entered the premises, found a white male, twenties, in the basement. Whole lotta blood, sir. Whole lotta blood.’

  Jessica and Byrne looked at each other. It wasn’t a prank call after all.

  ‘DOA?’ Byrne asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did you check vitals?’

  The officer looked everywhere but Byrne’s eyes. In other words, no. Martinez knew she had to answer, and do so truthfully. She did. ‘No, sir. But he’s –’

  ‘So you’re not sure he’s dead?’

  Another pause. ‘No, sir. But there’s –’

  ‘Did you call for backup, clear the building?’

  Martinez cleared her throat. ‘I cleared the basement.’

  ‘By yourself?’

  The look on Martinez’s face said that she was ready to turn in her badge, even if this wasn’t a firing offense. It appeared that whatever she had seen inside this old stone building was worth throwing away her time at the academy. Jessica had seen the look many times. She imagined she had looked this way to more than a few detectives during her rookie year. It was a look that said: I didn’t sign on for this.

  Byrne put a comforting hand on the young woman’s shoulder. ‘Where exactly is the body?’

  Martinez pulled it together. ‘Down the stairs, hard right, under the steps.’

  Byrne pointed to the door. ‘Is this where you gained entry?�
�

  Martinez nodded.

  ‘Did you announce yourself?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Byrne looked at the building, back. ‘Call for two more units,’ he said. He pointed at the sector car. ‘And kill the lights.’

  If Martinez looked embarrassed before, she looked mortified now. ‘Yes, sir.’

  P/O A. Martinez took a few steps away, keyed her shoulder microphone, officially a veteran first-responder to what was probably her first homicide. She opened the car door, reached in, turned off the flashing bar lights.

  Jessica glanced at the building. She was not looking forward to entering, considering how this young patrol officer had reacted. But this was what she had signed on for, and she was going inside, whether she liked it or not.

  The second sector car arrived a few minutes later. These officers were veteran patrolmen with whom Jessica and Byrne had worked before. Byrne instructed them to clear the first and second floors of the structure, along with the tower. It may have been a typically small, converted commercial space – probably no more than 2,000 square feet total – but there were lots of places to hide, and they had no idea what they were walking into.

  After the two officers cleared the first floor, and moved on to the second floor and tower, Jessica and Byrne walked up the crumbling cement steps, entered the building. As they did Jessica ran her Maglite along the doorjamb. The wood around the deadbolt was freshly splintered. This had probably been the initial point of entry.

  Inside was a large square room with a crudely constructed and braced partition in the center. What had once been large windows on either side had long ago been bricked in. What natural light there was came from a pair of small windows placed high on the back wall. On the face of the false wall in the center of the room was a faded painting of a crucifix, with clouds in an unnaturally blue sky above, along with a heavenly golden light radiating from the bottom.

  A pair of old wooden chairs stood in the center of the space, facing each other. Next to them was an overturned milk crate, dotted with spent matches and balls of charred aluminum foil.

  The rest of the room was empty of furniture and fixtures, but littered with damp magazines, newspapers, fast-food trash. In the corner was an old portable TV on its side, the glass screen shattered, knobs dangling.