The Killing Room by Richard Montanari Page A

moment. ‘Yes. It had that rhythm, you know? Like in the old Latin mass. Are you Catholic?’
    ‘I was raised Roman Catholic, yes.’
    ‘It sounded like it might have been Latin he was speaking,’ she continued. ‘I can’t be certain, though.’
    ‘Are you sure he came out of that building?’
    ‘Well, I was until you asked me that. I couldn’t swear to it. Sorry.’
    ‘That’s okay. We want you to be sure. Is there anything else you can remember?’
    ‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Nothing I can think of right now. To be honest, I didn’t think anything of it at the time. You know better than I do that Philly has its share of characters. I just locked the locks, got in my car, and drove away.’
    ‘Okay. This has been very helpful. If you –’
    The woman held up a finger. ‘Wait. I do remember something else. When I drove away I looked in the rearview mirror, and it looked like he was touching the post. I do remember that.’
    ‘The lamppost in front of the building?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Jessica made a note to expedite the lab test on the substance they found on the lamppost, as well as the latent prints, if any. This woman might have seen the man painting the X on it.
    ‘And you say you’re down here every night at ten?’ Jessica asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘May I ask what brought you back down here this morning?’
    ‘Well, like I said, I’m pretty paranoid, my mother having had two break-ins this month. I was just going to drive by, then I saw all the police cars and I freaked.’
    ‘That’s understandable.’ Jessica handed the woman a card. ‘If you think of anything else, no matter how trivial it might seem, please call me.’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘And if it’s any consolation,’ Jessica added, ‘your mother’s house should be okay for the next few days. There are going to be police all over the place around here for awhile.’
    The woman offered a faint smile. ‘Yeah, well, I’m still going to use this to get her to move in with me.’
    There was no response to this. There were good areas and bad areas of the city. Jessica had investigated homicides in penthouses and flophouses. Nowhere was safe from violence.
    Ten minutes later Jessica stood on the corner, across from the crime scene. She tried to imagine the street when it was empty, as it had been at ten o’clock the previous night. She tried to imagine a man standing there, clad in a long black coat and a pointed hood, speaking aloud.
    In Latin.
    She glanced at the police pole camera on the corner. If theywere going to get lucky on this one – and, considering how they’d struck out completely on the neighborhood interviews, they were going to need luck – the camera would be operational, and they would have an image.

SEVEN
    Byrne knew the moment he walked into the building. The feeling settled first on the surface of his skin, a damp sensation of dread that seemed to bleed from these walls, stone that had stood witness to a hundred years of secrets, and before that the history of the land from which it had been quarried. Byrne all but heard the hooves on wet sod, the fading heartbeats of the fallen.
    Here, in this place where the stone had long ago been keyed and weighted, this place where murder was done, the walls protected its ghosts.
    The Boy in the Red Coat.
    Byrne had not thought of the boy in many months, a long time considering his history with the case. The Boy in the Red Coat was one of the more famous, and lurid, unsolved crimes in Philadelphia’s history. Byrne had gotten a call from the pastor of St Gedeon’s, the South Philadelphia church of his youth. When he arrived the church was empty save for a dead boy in the last pew, a child clad in a bright red jacket.
    Byrne secured the scene, waited for the divisional detectives. That was where and when his official involvement with the case ended. In the years since, many detectives, including Byrne himself, had looked at the files, tried to track down fresh leads. The case remained