The Killing Room Read Online Free Page A

paper.’
    ‘Paper.’ Carlos put his hand out palm up, then corrected himself, turning it palm down.
    Sophie made a V with her index and middle finger. ‘And this is scissors.’
    Again, Carlos followed the instructions. ‘Scissors.’
    ‘Okay. Do you remember what beats what?’
    Carlos nodded.
    ‘Ready?’ Sophie asked.
    ‘Ready.’
    Sophie put her hand behind her back. Carlos followed suit. Sophie said, ‘One, two, three .’
    As Sophie pulled her fist from behind her back, and said ‘rock,’ Carlos threw out his hand – index finger and thumb extended – and yelled, ‘Gun!’
    Sophie rolled her eyes, looked at her mother, back at her brother. ‘There is no gun, Carlos.’
    ‘No?’
    ‘No. The game is called rock, paper, scissors .’
    Carlos giggled. ‘Okay.’
    Sophie looked again at Jessica. Jessica just shrugged.
    ‘Boys,’ Sophie said.
    The Roundhouse, the police administration building at the corner of Eighth and Race Streets, was humming when Jessica walked in at just after 8 a.m. Thank God the humming in her ears had stopped. It would begin again, she imagined, whenshe next stepped into the ring, sometime in the next few days. She didn’t want to admit it, but she just didn’t bounce back like she did in her twenties.
    Still, she had stood her ground with a buff nineteen-year-old, and came out of it with just a bruise or two. And sore hands. And, if truth be told, it kind of hurt on the right side when she took a deep breath. Other than that …
    Maybe she was getting too old for this.
    The Homicide Unit was ninety detectives strong, working three tours. Although the murder rate in Philadelphia had dropped in the past few years, the violence had not. New trauma centers in urban areas had eased the number of fatalities, and victims who may have died in the past were now reaching emergency care more quickly. But, as the old saying went: a homicide is just an aggravated assault gone wrong.
    Somehow, with the three cases Jessica and Byrne had pending, St Michael – the patron saint of police – had smiled upon them, and they had three suspects in custody, with preliminary hearings spread out over the next two weeks.
    For this one glorious moment, their plate was clean.
    In most professions, that was a good thing. An empty outbox makes for a clear conscience on payday. In homicide work it meant that you were back up on the wheel. It meant that any minute someone in the City of Brotherly Love was going to pick up a gun or a knife or a bludgeon and visit violence on another human being, and it would then become your job to sort it all out, making sure the guilty party was apprehended and brought to justice, and that the loved ones of the victim were notified, their grief assuaged, their anger and rage corralled.
    With this in mind Jessica sat at a computer terminal. One of her cases was a double homicide in Juniata Park, and witness statements put a second man at the scene, gun in hand, although ballistics could only ID one weapon. With only a rough description of the second suspect, Jessica decided to begin with known associates of the man they had in custody. She scrolled through mug shots, six at a time. No one looked promising.
    After a few fruitless minutes the phone on the desk rang. Jessica looked longingly at her Spinach Florentine breakfast wrap from Così, the one she probably shouldn’t be eating, but somehow couldn’t resist. She hadn’t even got in a single bite.
    If this call was a new case, it would be hers. She picked up the phone, punched the button.
    ‘Homicide. Balzano.’
    At first it sounded like white noise, albeit white noise at the lower end of the spectrum, like the setting on sound conditioning machines that simulate rainstorms.
    Jessica waited. And waited. Nothing.
    ‘This is Homicide, Detective Balzano.’
    ‘One God,’ the caller said.
    The words were spoken in a soft whisper. The volume was so low that it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman