She fluffed her hair, applied a bare minimum of lipstick, glanced at the clock. Running late again. So much for schedules. She crossed the hall, tapped on Sophie's door. "Ready to go?" she asked.
Today was Sophie's first day at a preschool not far from their twin row house in Lexington Park, a small community in the eastern section of Northeast Philadelphia. Paula Farinacci, one of Jessica's oldest friends and Sophie's babysitter, was taking her own daughter, Danielle.
"Mom?" Sophie asked from behind the door.
"Yes, honey?"
"Mommy?"
Uh-oh, Jessica thought. There was always a Mom/Mommy preamble whenever Sophie was about to ask a tough question. It was the toddler version of the perp-stall-the technique that knuckleheads on the street used when they were trying to cook an answer for the cops. "Yes, sweetie?"
"When is Daddy coming back?"
Jessica was right. The question. She felt her heart drop.
Jessica and Vincent Balzano had been in marriage counseling for almost six weeks and, although they were making progress, and although she missed Vincent terribly, she was not quite ready to allow him back into their lives. He had cheated on her and she was not yet able to forgive him.
Vincent, a narcotics detective working out of Central detectives division, saw Sophie whenever he wanted, and there wasn't the bloodletting there had been in those weeks after she'd introduced his clothing to the front lawn via the upstairs bedroom window. Still, the rancor remained. She had come home and discovered him in bed, in their house, with a South Jersey skank named Michelle Brown, a gap-toothed, saddlebag tramp with frosted hair and QVC jewelry. And those were her selling points.
That was nearly three months ago. Somehow, time was easing Jessica's anger. Things weren't great, but they were getting better.
"Soon, honey," Jessica said. "Daddy's coming home soon."
"I miss Daddy," Sophie said. "Awfully."
Me, too, Jessica thought. "Time to go, sweetie."
"Okay, Mom."
Jessica leaned against the wall, smiling. She thought about what a huge, blank canvas her daughter was. Sophie's new word: awfully. The fish sticks were awfully good. She was awfully tired. It was taking an awfully long time to get to Grandpa's house. Where did she get it? Jessica looked at the stickers on Sophie's door, her current menagerie of friends-Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet, Mickey, Pluto, Chip and Dale.
Jessica's thoughts of Sophie and Vincent were soon replaced with thoughts about the incident with Trey Tarver, and how close she had come to losing it all. Although she would never admit it to anyone- especially another cop-she had seen that Tec-9 in her nightmares every night since the shooting, had heard the crack of the slug from Trey Tar- ver's weapon hitting the bricks above her head in every backfire, every slammed door, every television show gunshot.
Like all police officers, when Jessica suited up before each tour, she had only one rule, one overriding canon that trumped all others: to come home to her family in one piece. Nothing else mattered. As long as she was on the force, nothing else ever would. Jessica's motto, like most other cops, was as follows:
You draw down on me, you lose. Period. If I'm wrong, you can have my badge, my weapon, even my freedom. But you don't get my life.
Jessica had been offered counseling but, seeing as it was not mandatory, she declined. Perhaps it was the Italian stubbornness in her. Perhaps it was the Italianfemale stubbornness in her. Regardless, the truth of the matter-and it scared her a little-was that she was fine with what happened. God help her, she had shot a man, and she was fine with it.
The good news was that in the ensuing week, the review board had cleared her. It was a clean shoot. Today was her first day back on the street. In the next week or so there would be the preliminary hearing for D'Shante Jackson, but she felt ready. On that day she would have seven thousand angels on her shoulder: every cop in the PPD.
When Sophie came out of her room, Jessica could see that she had another duty. Sophie was wearing two different-colored socks, six plastic bracelets, her grandmother's clip-on faux-garnet earrings, and a hot pink hooded sweatshirt, even though the mercury was supposed to reach ninety today.
While Detective Jessica Balzano may have been a homicide detective out there in the big bad world, in here she had a different assignment. Even a different rank. In here, she was still the commissioner of fashion.
She took her little suspect into custody and marched her back into her room. The Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department was sixty-five detectives strong, working all three tours, seven days a week. Philadelphia was consistently in the top twelve cities nationwide when it came to the homicide rate, and the general chaos and buzz and activity in the duty room reflected it. The unit was on the first floor of the police administration building at Eighth and Race streets, also known as the Roundhouse.
As Jessica pushed through the glass doors, she nodded to a number of officers and detectives. Before she could round the corner to the bank of elevators she heard: " 'Morning, Detective."
Jessica turned to the familiar voice. It was Officer Mark Underwood. Jessica had been in uniform about four years when Underwood came to the Third District, her old stomping grounds. Fresh-faced and fresh out of the academy, he had been one of a handful of rookies assigned to the South Philly district that year. She had helped train a few officers in his class.
"Hey, Mark."
"How are you?"
"Never better," Jessica said. "Still at the Third?"
"Oh yeah," Underwood said. "But I've been detailed to that movie they're making."
"Uh-oh," Jessica said. Everyone in town knew about the new Will Parrish flick they were shooting. That's why every wannabe in town was heading to South Philly this week. "Lights, camera, attitude."
Underwood laughed. "You got that right."
It was a pretty common sight in the past few years. The huge trucks, the big lights, the barricades. Due to a very aggressive and accommodating film office, Philadelphia was becoming a hub for movie production. Although some officers considered it a plum detail to be assigned to security for the duration of the shoot, it was mostly a lot of standing around. The city itself had a love-hate relationship with the movies. Quite often it was an inconvenience. But then there was Philly pride.
Somehow Mark Underwood still looked like a college kid. Somehow she was already over thirty. Jessica remembered the day he joined the force like it was yesterday.
"I heard you're in the Show," Underwood said. "Congratulations."
"Captain by forty," Jessica replied, inwardly wincing at the word forty. "Watch and see."
"No doubt." Underwood looked at his watch. "Gotta hit the street. Good seeing you."
"Same here."
"We're getting together at Finnigan's Wake tomorrow night," Underwood said. "Sergeant O'Brien's retiring. Stop by for a beer. We'll catch up."
"Are you sure you're old enough to drink?" Jessica asked.
Underwood laughed. "Have a safe tour, Detective."
"Thanks," she said. "You, too."
Jessica watched him square his cap, sheathe his baton, make his way down the ramp, skirting the ever-present row of smokers.
Officer Mark Underwood was a three-year vet.
Man was she getting old.
When Jessica entered the duty room of the Homicide Unit, she was greeted by the handful of detectives hanging on from the last-out shift, the tour that began at midnight. Rare was the shift that ran only eight hours. Much of the time, if your shift began at midnight, you managed to get out of the building around 10:00 AM, then head right over to the Criminal Justice Center, where you waited in a crowded courtroom until the afternoon to testify, then caught a few hours' sleep, then returned to the Roundhouse. It was for reasons like these, among many others, that the people in this room, this building, were your true family. The rate of alcoholism supported that fact, as did the rate of divorce. Jessica had vowed to become a statistic of neither.