She glanced at the sun, squinted. She looked back down, spun the glass in her hands a few times. "Gracie's dress. The one we buried her in. It was lavender."
Byrne nodded. He hadn't known this. Grace's service was closed- casket.
"Nobody got to see it, because she was… you know," Melanie said. "But it was very pretty. One of her favorites. She was fond of lavender."
Suddenly it occurred to Byrne that Melanie knew why he was there. Not exactly why, of course, but the tenuous thread that bound them- the death of Marygrace Devlin-had to be the reason. Why else would he stop by? Melanie Devlin knew that this visit had something to do with Gracie, and probably felt that if she talked about her daughter in the gentlest of manners, it might ward off any further pain.
Byrne carried that pain in his pocket. How was he going to find the courage to take it out?
He sipped his lemonade. The silence became awkward. A car rolled by, its stereo blasting an old Kinks song. Silence again. Hot, empty, summer silence. Byrne shattered it with what he had to say. "Julian Matisse is out of prison."
Melanie looked at him for a few moments, her eyes stripped of emotion. "No he's not."
It was a flat, even statement. For Melanie, saying it made it so. Byrne had heard it a thousand times. It wasn't as if the person had misunderstood. It was a stall, as if making the statement might cause it to be true, or, given a few seconds, the pill might become coated or smaller.
"I'm afraid so. He was released two weeks ago," Byrne said. "His conviction is being appealed."
"I thought you said that-"
"I know. I'm terribly sorry. Sometimes the system…" Byrne trailed off. There really was no explaining it. Especially to someone as scared and angry as Melanie Devlin. Julian Matisse had killed this woman's only child. The police had arrested the man, the courts had tried him, the prisons had taken him and buried him in an iron cage. The memory of it all-although never far from the surface-had begun to fade. And now it was back. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
"When is he going back?" she asked.
Byrne had anticipated the question, but he simply did not have an answer. "Melanie, a lot of people are going to be working very hard on that. I promise you."
"Including you?"
The question made the decision for him, a choice with which he'd been wrestling since he'd heard the news. "Yes," he said. "Including me."
Melanie closed her eyes. Byrne could only imagine the images playing out in her mind. Gracie as a little girl. Gracie in her junior high school play. Gracie in her casket. After a few moments, Melanie stood up. She seemed unhooked in her own space, as if she might float away at any second. Byrne stood up, too. It was his cue to leave.
"I just wanted to make sure you heard it from me," Byrne said. "And to let you know that I'm going to do everything I can to get him back where he belongs."
"He belongs in hell," she said.
Byrne had no argument to answer this.
They stood facing each other for a few uncomfortable moments. Melanie put out her hand to shake. They had never hugged-some people simply didn't express themselves that way. After the trial, after the funeral, even when they said goodbye on that bitter day two years earlier, they had shaken hands. This time, Byrne decided to chance it. He did it as much for Melanie as himself. He reached out and gently pulled her into his arms.
At first, it appeared as if she might resist, but then she fell into him, her legs all but quitting her. He held her closely for a few moments-she sits in Gracie's closet with the door closed for hours and hours on end she talks baby talk to Gracie's dolls she has not touched her husband in two years- until Byrne broke the embrace, a little shaken by the images in his mind. He made his promises to call soon.
A few minutes later, she walked him through house to the front door. She kissed him on the cheek. He left without another word.
As he drove away, he looked in the rearview mirror one last time. Melanie Devlin stood on the small front stoop of her row house, watching him, her heartache born anew, her cheerless yellow outfit a cry of anguish against a backdrop of callous red brick.
He found himself parked in front of the abandoned theater where they had found Gracie. The city flowed around him. The city didn't remember. The city didn't care. He closed his eyes, felt the icy wind as it cut across the street that night, saw the fading light in that young woman's eyes. He had grown up Irish Catholic, and to say he was lapsed was an understatement. The destroyed human beings he had encountered in his life as a police officer had given him a deep understanding of the temporary and brittle nature of life. He had seen so much pain and misery and death. For weeks he had wondered if he was going to go back on the job or take his twenty and run. His papers were on the dresser in the bedroom, ready to be signed. But now he knew he had to go back. Even if it was for just a few weeks. If he wanted to clear Jimmy's name, he would have to do it from the inside.
That evening, as darkness embraced the City of Brotherly Love, as the moonlight crested the skyline, and the city wrote its name in neon, Detective Kevin Francis Byrne showered and dressed, slid a fresh magazine into his Glock, and stepped into the night.
6
Sophie Balzano, even at the age of three, was a bona fide fashion maven. Granted, when left to her own devices and given free rein over her clothes, Sophie was likely to come up with an outfit that ran the entire spectrum from orange to lavender to lime green, from checks to plaid to stripes, fully accessorized, all within the same ensemble. Coordinates were not her strong suit. She was more of a freewheeling kind of gal.
On this sweltering July morning, the morning that was to begin an odyssey that would take Detective Jessica Balzano into the mouth of madness and beyond, she was late, as usual. These days, mornings in the Balzano house were a frenzy of coffee and cereal and gummy bears and lost little sneakers and missing barrettes and mislaid juice boxes and snapped shoelaces and traffic reports on KYW on the twos.
Two weeks earlier, Jessica had gotten her hair cut. She'd worn her hair at least to her shoulders-usually much longer-ever since she was a little girl. When she had been in uniform, she had tied it in a ponytail almost constantly. At first, Sophie had followed her around the house, silently evaluating the fashion move, giving Jessica the eye. After a week or so of intense scrutiny, Sophie wanted her hair cut, too.
Jessica's short hair had certainly helped in her avocation as a professional boxer. What began as a lark had taken on a life of its own. With what seemed like the whole department behind her, Jessica had a record of 4–0 and was starting to get some good press in the boxing magazines.
What a lot of women in boxing didn't understand is, you have to keep your hair short. If you wear your hair long, and keep it in a pony- tail, every time you even get tapped on the jaw your hair flies, and the judges give your opponent credit for landing a clean, hard shot. Plus, long hair has the potential to come loose during the fight and get in your eyes. Jessica's first knockout came against a girl named Trudy "Kwik" Kwiatkowski who, in the second round, paused for a second to brush the hair from her eyes. The next thing Kwik knew, she was counting the lights on the ceiling.
Jessica's great-uncle Vittorio-who acted as her manager and trainer-was negotiating a deal with ESPN2. Jessica didn't know if she was more scared of getting in the ring or getting on television. On the other hand, she didn't have JESSIE BALLS on her trunks for nothing.
As Jessica got dressed, the ritual of retrieving her weapon from the hall closet lockbox was missing, as it had been for the past week. She had to admit that she felt naked and vulnerable without her Glock. But it was standard procedure for all officer-involved shootings. She had been on the desk for nearly a week, on administrative leave pending an investigation of the shoot.