Jessica took a moment, leaned forward, and once again picked up the dress's hem. Byrne crouched down, angled his head. He immediately looked away. "Shit," he said, standing up. "Shit."
In addition to having been strangled and left on a frozen riverbank, the victim's feet had been amputated. And it looked to have been done recently. It was a precise and surgical amputation, just above the ankles. The wounds had been crudely cauterized, but the black and blue trauma from the excisions ran halfway up the victim's pale, frozen legs.
Jessica glanced at the icy water below, then a few yards downstream. There were no body parts visible. She looked at Mike Calabro. He put his hands in his pockets, walked slowly back to the entrance of the crime scene. He was not a detective. He didn't have to stay. Jessica thought she had seen tears welling in his eyes.
"Let me see if I can redline the ME's office and CSU," Byrne said. He pulled out his cell, took a few steps away. Jessica knew that every second that went by before the Crime Scene Unit secured the scene, precious evidence might be slipping away.
Jessica looked closely at what was most likely the murder weapon. The belt around the victim's neck was about three inches wide, and appeared to be made of tightly woven nylon, not unlike the material used to manufacture a seat belt. She took a close-up photograph of the knot.
The wind churned, bringing a bitter chill. Jessica braced herself, waited it out. Before stepping away, she forced herself to look closely at the woman's legs one more time. The cuts looked clean, as if done with a very sharp saw. For the young woman's sake, Jessica hoped that it had been done postmortem. She looked back at the victim's face. They were now linked, she and the dead woman. Jessica had worked a number of cases in her time in homicide, and she was forever connected to each of them. There would not come a time in her life when she would forget the way death fashioned them, the way they silently asked for justice.
Just after nine o'clock Dr. Thomas Weyrich arrived with his photographer, who immediately began snapping away. A few minutes later, Weyrich pronounced the young woman dead. The detectives were cleared to begin their investigation. They met at the top of the slope.
"Christ," Weyrich said. "Merry Christmas, eh?"
"Yeah," Byrne said.
Weyrich lit a Marlboro, hit it hard. He was a seasoned veteran of the Philadelphia medical examiner's office. Even for him this was not a daily occurrence.
"She was strangled?" Jessica asked.
"At the very least," Weyrich replied. He would not remove the nylon belt until he got the body back to the city. "There's evidence of petechial hemorrhaging of the eyes. I won't know more until I get her on the table."
"How long has she been out here?" Byrne asked.
"I'd say at least forty-eight hours or so."
"And her feet? Pre- or post?"
"I won't know until I can examine the wounds, but based on how little blood there is on scene, I believe she was dead when she got here, and the amputation took place elsewhere. If she had been alive, she would've had to have been tied down, and I'm not seeing ligature marks on her legs."
Jessica walked back to the riverbank. There were no footprints on the frozen ground near the river's edge, no blood splatter or trail. A slight trickle of blood from the victim's legs etched the mossy stone wall in a pair of thin, deep scarlet tendrils. Jessica looked directly across the river. The jetty was partially obscured from the expressway, which might explain why no one had called in a report of a woman sitting motionless on the frigid riverbank for two full days. The victim had gone unnoticed-or that was the truth Jessica wanted to believe. She didn't want to believe the people of her city saw a woman sitting in the freezing cold and did nothing about it.
They needed to ID the young woman as soon as possible. They would begin a thorough grid search of the parking lot, the riverbank, and the area surrounding the structure-along with a canvass of nearby businesses and residences on both sides of the river-but with a carefully constructed crime scene such as this, it was unlikely they were going to find a discarded pocketbook with any ID in the vicinity.
Jessica crouched behind the victim. The way the body was positioned reminded her of a marionette whose strings had been cut, causing the puppet to simply collapse to the floor-arms and legs waiting to be reconnected, reanimated, brought back to life.
Jessica examined the woman's fingernails. They were short, but clean and painted with a clear lacquer. They would examine the nails to see if there was any material beneath them, but with the naked eye it didn't appear so. What it did tell the detectives was that this woman was not homeless, not indigent. Her skin and hair looked clean and well- groomed.
Which meant that there was somewhere this young woman was supposed to be. It meant that she was missed. It meant that there was a puzzle out there in Philadelphia, or beyond, to which this woman was the missing piece.
Mother. Daughter. Sister. Friend.
Victim.
5
The wind swirls off the river, curling along the frozen banks, bringing with it the deep secrets of the forest. In his mind, Moon draws the memory of this moment. He knows that, in the end, a memory is all you were left with.
Moon stands nearby, watching the man and the woman. They probe, they calculate, they write in their journals. The man is big and powerful. The woman is slender and pretty and clever.
Moon is clever, too.
The man and the woman may witness a great deal, but they cannot see what the moon sees. Each night the moon returns and tells Moon of its travels. Each night Moon paints a mind-picture. Each night a new story is told.
Moon glances up at the sky. The cold sun hides behind the clouds. He is invisible, too.
The man and woman go about their business-quick and clocklike and precise. They have found Karen. Soon they will find the red shoes, and this tale will be spun.
There are many more tales.
6
Jessica and Byrne stood near the road, waiting for the CSU van. Though only a few feet apart, each was adrift in their own thoughts about what they had just seen. Detective Bontrager was still dutifully guarding the north entrance to the property. Mike Calabro stood near the river, his back to the victim.
For the most part, the life of a homicide detective in a major urban area was about the investigation of garden-variety murders-gang slayings, domestics, bar fights that went one punch too far, robbery-homicides. Of course, these crimes were very personal and unique to the victims and their families, and a detective had to constantly remind himself of that fact. If you got complacent about the job, if you failed to take into account a person's sense of grief or loss, it was time to quit. In Philadelphia, there were no divisional homicide squads. All suspicious deaths were investigated out of one office, the homicide unit at the Roundhouse. Eighty detectives, three shifts, seven days a week. Philly had more than one hundred neighborhoods, and many times, based on where the victim was found, an experienced detective could all but predict the circumstance, the motive, sometimes even the weapon. There was always a revelation, but very few surprises.
This day was different. It spoke of a special evil, a depth of brutality that Jessica and Byrne had rarely experienced.
Parked in the vacant lot across the road from the crime scene was a food-service truck. There was only one customer. The two detectives crossed Flat Rock Road, retrieving their notebooks. While Byrne interviewed the driver, Jessica spoke to the customer. He was in his twenties, dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, a black knit cap.