Blood Money by Laura M Rizio Page A

once stood. The city had demolished them making way for weeds and empty bottles. The tires of her white Taurus crunched over broken glass and empty beer cans. It was ten p.m. and dark with few if any working street lights. It was eerie, but Celia had become used to it. Living in the drug center of Philadelphia was no picnic. But it was still her neighborhood where her friends and family lived. She had fixed up her house—taken it from a burned-out shell to a neat, clean, simply furnished residence. She owned it free and clear and she wasn’t about to move. Her kids were savy about the neighborhood. They knew where their friends lived in case some creep was following them. Plus the doors were bolted and iron bars protected every window. No man could get in—that is, unless he was invited,
    Tonight she thought that the lot was better than trying to find a parking space on the darkened street and possibly having to walk four or five blocks to her house. Besides it was cold and the wind was up.
    She came to a stop, put the car in park, and reached into her purse, feeling for her house keys. Celia always took them out before leaving the safety of her car. She also carried a small flashlight, which she used to help her navigate the debris covered pavements. She didn’t want to fall and cut herself; that’s all she needed. There were used syringes all over the place. She opened the car door and shone the light on the ground as she stepped over the trash. She touched the button on her car keys, and the car doors automatically locked. Her heart was pounding as it always did when she left her car at night. She began to carefully walk through the litter towards her home. There it was. She could see it in the light of her flashlight.
    The city had neglected this part of town for more years than she could remember, leaving it to the gangs and narcs to fight over. It had become a battleground. Suddenly Celia saw a long, dark object on the ground in front of her. She wasn’t sure what itwas. Could it be a dog? A large dead animal possibly? Celia shone the flashlight on it but still couldn’t tell. She gave it a wide berth. She felt better when she was past it. Whatever it was, it would still be there in the morning, she thought.
    The object moved as soon as she passed it. It rolled over and then sat up. Then it stood. It was a figure, dressed in black to match the night. The figure silently trotted up behind her. It grabbed her long hair and yanked her head back, and then slit her throat. Before she could scream, she was dead. It was clean and quick as usual. Celia was gone, and so was Rudi.
    Detective Ralph Kirby of the Philadelphia Police Homicide Division had completed his routine questioning of neighbors along the block of Butler street where Celia Lopez had lived. Four other detectives had spread out over four blocks from Sixth to Tenth streets. They covered the small side streets adjacent to Butler, checking auto license plates and talking to shop owners, bartenders, and relatives of the victim. Her daughters, Carmen and Lily, were not able to answer questions about their mother or her whereabouts in the preceding twenty-four hours. Carmen, the older sibling, was purposely silent, and the younger, Lily, couldn’t stop crying. All that Kirby and the others were able to ascertain was that Celia was a hardworking single mother who loved her two daughters, Carmen aged thirteen and Lily, nine.
    Celia had no boyfriends. She kept to herself. She was clean and respectable, though not terribly religious. She only went to mass on Christmas and Easter. She was friendly, but not overly so, and she loved her job. She would often stay late or go in on a Saturday to return calls the attorneys did not care to make, or to help with extra typing when necessary. She had no criminal record. She voted. She had fifty thousand dollars in CDs in a safe-deposit box in the local branch of the Columbia National Savings Bank. The people who had known her