Vittorio grabbed the pads, slowly slipped between the ropes. "You do your roadwork?" he asked. He refused to call it "cardio."
"Yeah," Jessica said. She was supposed to do six miles, but her over- thirty muscles were tired. Uncle Vittorio saw right through her.
"Tomorrow you do seven," he said.
Jessica didn't bother to deny it or to argue.
"Ready?" Vittorio slapped the pads together, held them up.
Jessica started slowly, jabbing at the pads, crossing with her right. As always, she fell into a rhythm, finding the zone. Her mind traveled from the sweaty confines of the gym, across town to the bank of the Schuylkill River, to the image of a dead young woman ceremoniously placed on the river's edge.
As she picked up the pace, her anger built. She thought of the smiling Kristina Jakos, the trust the young woman might have had in her killer, the faith that she would not be harmed in anyway, that the next morning would dawn and she would be that much closer to her dreams. Jessica's anger ignited and blossomed as she thought of the arrogance and brutality of the person they sought, the act of strangling a young woman and mutilating her body-
"Jess!"
Her uncle was shouting. Jessica stopped, the sweat pouring off her. She pawed it out of her eyes with the back of her glove, took a few steps back. The handful of other people in the gym stared at them.
"Time," her uncle said softly. He'd been here with her before.
How long had she been gone?
"Sorry," Jessica said. She walked over to one corner, then another, then another, circling the ring, catching her breath. When she stopped, Vittorio made his way over to her. He dropped the pads, helped Jessica wiggle out of her gloves.
"Tough case?" he asked.
Her family knew her well. "Yeah," she said. "Tough case."
Jessica spent the morning working the computers. She put a number of search strings into the various search engines. The results regarding amputation were meager, if incredibly gruesome. In medieval times it was not uncommon for a thief to lose a hand, or a Peeping Tom to lose an eye. Some religious sects still engaged in the practice. The Italian mob had been cutting up people for years, but they generally didn't leave the bodies in public and in broad daylight. They usually hacked folks up in order to fit them into a bag or a box or a suitcase so they could dump them in a landfill. Usually in Jersey.
She ran across nothing like what was done to Kristina Jakos on that riverbank.
The swim-lane rope was available from a number of online merchants. From what she could determine, it was similar to standard polypropylene stranded rope, but treated to resist chemicals such as chlorine. It was used primarily to hold together a line of floats. The lab had not detected any trace of chlorine.
Locally, between marine-supply and pool-supply retailers in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware, there were dozens of dealers who carried this type of rope. The minute Jessica had the final report from the lab, detailing a type and model, she would get on the phone.
At just after eleven, Byrne came into the duty room. He had the 911 tape of the call-in of Kristina's body. THE AUDIO VISUAL Unit of the PPD was located in the basement of the Roundhouse. Its main purview was to supply A/V equipment to the department as needed-cameras, video equipment, recording and surveillance devices-as well as monitor the local television and radio channels for important information the department could use.
The unit also aided in investigating surveillance tapes and audiovisual evidence.
Officer Mateo Fuentes was a veteran of the unit. He had been instrumental in cracking a recent case where a psychopath with a movie fetish had been terrorizing the city. In his thirties, precise and meticulous in his work, strangely scrupulous with his grammar, nobody in the AV unit was better at finding the hidden truth in an electronic recording.
Jessica and Byrne entered the control room.
"What do we have, Detectives?" Mateo asked.
"Anonymous 911 call," Byrne said. He handed Mateo the audiocas- sette.
"No such thing," Mateo replied. He slipped the cassette into a machine. "I take it there was no caller ID?"
"No," Byrne said. "It looks like it was a terminated cell."
In most states, whenever a citizen calls 911 they give up their proprietary right to privacy. Even if you have a block on your phone-which prevents most people who receive your calls from seeing your number on their caller ID-the police-department radio unit and dispatchers can still see your number. With a few exceptions. One of them is a 911 call from a terminated cell. When cell phones are turned off-for nonpayment, or perhaps because the subscriber has moved to a new number- the 911 capabilities remain. Unfortunately for investigators, the ability to trace the number does not.
Mateo hit PLAY on the tape machine.
"Philadelphia Police, Operator 204, how can I help you?" answered the operator.
"There's… there's a dead body. It's behind the old auto parts warehouse on Flat Rock Road."
Click. That was the extent of the recording.
"Hmmm," Mateo said. "Not exactly long-winded." He hit STOP. Then REWIND. He played it again. When it was finished, he rewound the tape and played it a third time, cocking his head to the speakers. He hit STOP.
"Man or woman?" Byrne asked.
"Man," Mateo replied.
"Are you sure?"
Mateo turned, glared.
"Okay," Byrne said.
"He's in a car or a small space. No echo, good acoustics, no background hiss."
Mateo played the tape again. He adjusted a few dials. "Hear that?"
There was music in the background. Very faint, but there. "I hear something," Byrne said.
Rewind. A few more adjustments. Less hiss. A melody emerged.
"Radio?" Jessica asked.
"Maybe," Mateo said. "Or a CD."
"Play it again," Byrne said.
Mateo rewound the tape, fed it into another deck. "Let me digitize it."
The AV Unit had an ever-expanding arsenal of audio forensic software with which they could not only clean up the sound of an existing audio file, but also separate the tracks of a recording, thereby isolating them for closer scrutiny.
A few minutes later Mateo was on a laptop. The 911 audio files were now a series of green and black spikes on the screen. Mateo clicked PLAY, adjusted the volume. This time the melody in the background was clearer, more distinct.
"I know this song," Mateo said. He played it again, adjusting slide controls, bringing the voice down to a barely audible level. Mateo then plugged in a pair of headphones, slipped them on. He closed his eyes, listened. He played the file again. "Got it." He opened his eyes, pulled off the headphones. "The name of the song is 'I Want You.' By Savage Garden."
Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance. "Who?" Byrne asked.
"Savage Garden. Australian pop duo. They were big in the late nineties. Well, medium-big. That song is from 1997 or 1998. Fair-sized hit then."
"How do you know all this?" Byrne asked.
Mateo glared again. "My life is not all Channel 6 Action News and McGruff videos, Detective. I happen to be a very social individual."
"What's your take on the caller?" Jessica asked.
"I'll need to run it some more, but I can tell you that this Savage Garden song doesn't get much airplay anymore, so it probably wasn't the radio," Mateo said. "Unless it was an oldies station."
"Ninety-seven is oldies?" Byrne asked.