"Why these particular dresses?" Buchanan asked. "Are they from a play? A movie? A famous picture?"
"Working on it, Sarge."
"Walk me through it," Buchanan said.
Jessica went first. "Two victims, both white women in their twenties, both strangled, both left on the bank of the Schuylkill. Both victims had a drawing on their bodies, a detailed painting of the moon rendered in semen and blood. Both crime scenes had a similar drawing painted on a wall nearby. The first victim had her feet amputated. These body parts were recovered on the Strawberry Mansion Bridge."
Jessica flipped her notes back. "First victim was Kristina Jakos. Born in Odessa in the Ukraine, moved to the United States with her sister Na- talya and brother Kostya. Parents deceased, no other relatives in the States. Until a few weeks ago Kristina lived with her sister in the Northeast. Kristina recently moved to North Lawrence with her roommate, one Sonja Kedrova, also from the Ukraine. Kostya Jakos is pulling a ten-year stretch in Graterford for aggravated assault. Kristina recently got a job at a Center City gentlemen's club called Stiletto, where she worked as an exotic dancer. On the night she went missing she was last seen at the All-City Launderette at approximately 11 PM."
"Do you think there's any connection to the brother?" Buchanan asked.
"Hard to say," Park said. "Kostya Jakos's victim was an elderly widow from Merion Station. Her son is in his sixties, no grandchildren in the area. It would be a pretty brutal payback if that was the case."
"What about something he stirred up inside?"
"He hasn't been a model prisoner, but nothing jumps over the wall as a motive to do this to his sister."
"Have we gotten DNA back on this blood-moon drawing on Jakos?" Buchanan asked.
"DNA on Kristina Jakos's drawing is in," Tony Park said. "The blood is not hers. The workup on the second victim is still out."
"Have we run it through CODIS?"
"Yes," Park said. The FBI Laboratory's Combined DNA Index System enabled federal, state, and local crime labs to exchange and compare DNA profiles electronically, thereby linking crimes to each other and to convicted offenders. "Nothing yet on that front."
"What about some crazy son of a bitch from the strip club?" Buchanan asked.
"I'm talking later today or tomorrow to some of the girls from the club who knew Kristina," Byrne said.
"What about this bird that was found at the Shawmont site?" Buchanan asked.
Jessica glanced at Byrne. Found was the word that stuck. No one had mentioned that the bird had flown away due to Byrne's prodding open the victim's hands.
"The feathers are at the lab," Tony Park said. "One of the techs is an avid birder, and he says he is not familiar with it. He's on it right now."
"Good," Buchanan said. "What else?"
"It looks like the killer used a carpenter's handsaw on the first victim," Jessica said. "Trace of sawdust was found in the wound. So, maybe a boat- builder? Dock builder? Dockworker?"
"Kristina had been working on building sets for a Christmas play," Byrne said.
"Have we interviewed people she worked with at the church?"
"Yeah," Byrne said. "No one of interest."
"Any mutilation of the second victim?" Buchanan asked.
Jessica shook her head. "Body was intact."
At first they had entertained the possibility that their killer was taking body parts as souvenirs. It looked less likely now.
"Any sexual angle?" Buchanan asked.
Jessica wasn't sure. "Well, despite the presence of the semen, there was no evidence of sexual assault."
"Similar murder weapon in both cases?" Buchanan asked.
"Identical," Byrne said. "Lab thinks it's the type of rope they use to separate the lanes in a swimming pool. However, they haven't found any trace of chlorine. They're running some more tests on the fibers now."
There were plenty of industries linked to the water trades in Philadelphia, a city that had two rivers to nurture and exploit. Sailing and powerboating on the Delaware. Sculling on the Schuylkill. Each year there were a number of events on both rivers. There was the Schuylkill Sojourn, a seven-day float up the entire length of the river. Then there was the Dad Vail Regatta, the largest collegiate regatta in the United States, with more than one thousand athletes taking part in the event, held the second week of May.
"The dump sites on the Schuylkill indicate that we are probably looking for someone with a pretty good working knowledge of the river," Jessica said.
Byrne thought of Paulie McManus, and his Leonardo da Vinci quote. In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes.
What the hell was coming? Byrne wondered.
"What about the sites themselves?" Buchanan asked. "Any significance?"
"Plenty of history in Manayunk. Same with Shawmont. So far, nothing has clicked."
Buchanan sat down, rubbed his hands over his eyes. "One singer, one dancer, both white and in their twenties. Both public abductions. There's a connection between these two victims, detectives. Find it."
There was a knock on the door. Byrne opened it. It was Nicci Malone.
"Got a minute, boss?" Nicci asked.
"Yeah," Buchanan said. Jessica thought she had never heard anyone sound quite so exhausted. Ike Buchanan was the link between the unit and the brass. If it happened on his watch, it came through him. He nodded to the four detectives. It was time to get back to work. They exited the office. Just as they were leaving, Nicci poked her head back through the doorway.
"There's someone downstairs to see you, Jess."
46
"I'm Detective Balzano."
The man waiting for Jessica in the lobby was in his mid-fifties-rust flannel shirt, tan Levi's, duck boots. He had thick fingers, bushy eyebrows, a complexion that complained of too many Philly Decembers.
"My name is Frank Pustelnik," he said, extending a callused hand. Jessica shook it. "I own a restaurant supply business on Flat Rock Road."
"What can I do for you, Mr. Pustelnik?"
"I've been reading about what happened at the old warehouse. And then of course I've seen all the activity over there." He held up a video- cassette. "I have a surveillance camera on my lot. The lot that faces the building where… you know."
"That's a surveillance tape?"
"Yes."
"What's on it, exactly?" Jessica asked.
"I'm not really sure, but I think there's something you may want to see."
"When was the tape recorded?"
Frank Pustelnik handed Jessica the cassette. "It's from the day the body was found."
They stood behind Mateo Fuentes in the editing bay of the AV Unit. Jessica, Byrne, and Frank Pustelnik.
Mateo popped the tape into a time-lapse VCR. He forwarded the tape. The images sped by. Most surveillance video machines recorded at a much slower speed than a regular VCR, so when they were played back on a consumer machine they were far too fast to watch.
The static, nightimages rolled. Finally the picture got a little lighter.
"Right about there," Pustelnik said.
Mateo stopped the tape, hit PLAY. It was a high-angle shot. The time code indicated 7:00 AM.
In the far background was the parking lot of the crime-scene warehouse. The image was fuzzy, sparsely lighted. On the left side of the screen, near the top, was a small, light-colored blur near the area where the parking lot sloped down to the river. The image sent a shiver through Jessica. The blur was Kristina Jakos.
At the 7:07 AM mark, across the top of the screen, a car entered the parking lot. It moved right to left. It was impossible to tell the color, let alone the make or model. The car pulled around the back of the building. They lost sight of it. A few moments later a shadow lurched across the top of the screen. It appeared that someone was crossing the lot, heading toward the river, toward Kristina Jakos's body. Soon after, the dark shape blended into the darkness of the trees.