“How much did Kevin tell you?” Jocelyn asked.
Knox stared straight ahead. “Enough,” he said. “Hey, this isn’t the way to your office.”
Jocelyn turned from Pechin Street onto Green Lane, where Olivia’s preschool was located. “I know. I have to drive past my daughter’s school.”
She expected a quip or sarcastic comment like, “What? To make sure it’s still there?” but all Knox said was, “Okay.”
A moment passed, Jocelyn growing twitchier in her seat. She slowed in front of the school. The kids were inside, locked up securely. Sometimes she could spot Olivia if the children were out playing in the fenced-in area. She relaxed slightly and turned left onto Ridge Avenue. Although she owed Knox no explanation, she said, “It’s been hard for me. Since what happened last year. Sometimes I need to check that she’s okay.”
She chanced a look at him. His hands were folded in his lap, a small, pained smile on his face. “When my daughter was little, I wasn’t at ease unless she was with me. The only thing that might have made me feel better while she was at school would have been a Secret Service detail.”
“Puh,” Jocelyn said. “I wouldn’t even trust them.”
They both laughed. Relief coursed through her. He understood her special brand of crazy, borne of violence and years on the job bearing witness to the very worst things human beings could do to one another.
Jocelyn and Anita had chosen an office on Ridge Pike, just outside of the city. They’d both had enough of Philadelphia’s inner city to last a lifetime. The women had met a decade earlier when Jocelyn was still a patrol cop and Anita was a prostitute in one of Philadelphia’s most dangerous areas. Over the years, they’d struck up an unlikely friendship. Eventually, Anita had gotten clean and gone straight, holding down a job as a receptionist. When her mother got cancer, she went back to prostitution, this time as an escort, finding her johns online rather than on the street. That was how the men, The Schoolteacher Attackers, had targeted and assaulted her. Jocelyn had helped crack Anita’s case—but at great cost. After the case closed, Jocelyn retired early from the Philadelphia Police Department, and the two women opened a private investigation firm.
Rush & Grant Investigations was run out of a squat, flat-roofed building that Jocelyn was sure used to be a butcher shop, although the realtor had assured them it was previously occupied by an insurance broker. Behind it, to the rear of their small parking lot, was a vacant two-story home that Jocelyn had hoped to move into, but her daughter was adamantly opposed to moving out of their Roxborough row house. So many things had changed for Olivia in the past year that Jocelyn had given up on moving—at least for now.
Olivia had been locked in her bedroom the year before when Jocelyn was attacked. She understood that Jocelyn had been hurt, but she had no idea what had really happened and thus, had no negative associations with their home. Their tiny row house was the only home Olivia had ever known, and Jocelyn had filled it with great memories for her daughter. She was grateful for that, grateful beyond measure. She would just have to find a renter for the new house.
Knox ambled into the office behind her. From behind her desk, Anita smiled at him, one brow raised. “So,” she said. “You found her anyway.”
Knox tilted his head, almost apologetically. Anita sighed and pointed to a box beside her desk. “That’s his,” she told Jocelyn.
Jocelyn picked it up. It had some weight to it. “You carried this?”
Knox looked at his feet. “Uh, no.”
“He had it Fed Ex’ed,” Anita put in. “It came about an hour before he did.”
“I didn’t mean to be presumptuous,” Knox said. “I just—I have enough trouble carting around this damn oxygen tank.”
Jocelyn smiled. “It’s fine. Let’s go back to the conference room.”
Anita and Knox took seats at their large conference table while Jocelyn remained standing, rifling through the box. She pulled a few photos from the files inside. They showed a black female lying facedown in grass, beneath a tree. She wore a dark purple sports bra, but she was naked below the waist. Her head was covered by what looked like a small pair of blue running shorts. Bullet holes in the back of her right thigh and her lower and middle back oozed blood. Her right arm extended over her head, as though she were reaching for something or someone. Perhaps she had tried to pull herself up.
Jocelyn glanced up at Knox. “This looks like official police evidence.”
He folded his hands over his stomach. He didn’t quite meet her eyes. “I made copies of everything. I know, I know, it’s against policy and all that, but . . . let’s just say that I—well, I just didn’t give a damn.”
“How long were you on homicide?” Jocelyn asked.
“Twenty-seven years.” He met her eyes and motioned to the box. “It was my case.”
Jocelyn held his gaze as she passed the photos across the table to Anita. Anita studied them stone-faced, in spite of the horrific nature of the photos. Although the two of them had started out on opposite sides of the law, just like Jocelyn, Anita had seen and experienced enough gruesome crimes that few things shocked her.
Jocelyn saw Knox’s eyes wander to Anita’s hands and linger there. Everyone stared at the damn scars. “Yeah, her too,” Jocelyn said, drawing a sheepish look from Knox. “Both hands.”
“I’m sorry,” Knox said to Anita. “I didn’t mean to stare.”
Anita shrugged. “Everybody stares.”
“So tell me,” Jocelyn said to Knox. “About your case.”
Knox cleared his throat as if he were about to address a room full of people. “The victim was Sydney Adams. She was seventeen years old, a track and field star for Franklin West High School. She was a senior there.”
“The charter school over by Drexel University?” Anita asked. “The one where they had that shooting in 2006?”
“Yeah, that one,” Knox answered. “Sydney was only a month or so from graduating. She left her grandmother’s house around seven in the evening for her nightly run through Fairmount Park. She always ran the same route. She didn’t get very far that night, so I think she was killed close to seven-thirty, although I was never able to get the medical examiner to say so. He would only give us a four-hour range. He said Syd died sometime between seven and eleven.”
“Where in the park?” Jocelyn asked. Fairmount Park was really a collection of outdoor parks that covered over 9,000 acres in the city.
“She started her run around the athletic field on Boxer’s Trail. Not too far from her house.”
“She lived in Strawberry Mansion?”
“Yeah, over by 31st and Dauphin. Anyway, she was shot in the back three times at close range. There was a bullet lodged in the tree, so there were four shots in all. .22s. There were no shell casings, so we think the killer picked them up and took them.”
“Or the killer used a revolver,” Jocelyn offered.
“I thought of that,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse. “But I still think the shooter was someone she knew.”
Knox braced his hands against the edge of the table as he fought for the next few breaths. Anita and Jocelyn exchanged a look. Anita pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, ready to call 911, Jocelyn assumed. But Knox regained his composure. Slowly, he folded his hands in his lap and gave them a tight smile.