35

When Jessica got back to the Roundhouse, before she could get her coat off and sit down, her phone rang. The duty officer in the lobby of the Roundhouse told her that someone was on the way up to see her. A few minutes later a uniformed officer entered with Will Pedersen, the brick mason from the Manayunk crime scene. This time Pedersen was dressed in a three-button blazer and jeans. His hair was neatly combed, and he wore tortoiseshell glasses.

He shook hands with both Jessica and Byrne.

“What can we do for you?” Jessica asked.

“Well, you had said that if I remembered anything else, I should get in touch.”

“That’s correct,” Jessica said.

“I was thinking about that morning. The morning we met in Manayunk?”

“What about it?”

“Like I said, I’ve been down there a lot lately. I’m pretty familiar with all the buildings. The more I thought about it, the more I realized something was different.”

“Different?” Jessica asked. “Different how?”

“Well, with the graffiti.”

“The graffiti? On the warehouse?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“Okay,” Pedersen said. “I used to be a bit of a tagger, right? Ran with the skateboard boys in my teenage years.” He seemed a bit reluctant to talk about this, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.

“I think the statute of limitations may have run out on that,” Jessica said.

Pedersen smiled. “Okay. I’m still kind of a fan though, you know? With all the murals and things around town, I’m always looking, taking pictures.”

The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program had started in 1984 as a plan to eliminate destructive graffiti in the poorer neighborhoods. In its effort, the city reached out to graffiti writers in an attempt redirect their creative urges into making murals. Philadelphia had hundreds, if not thousands, of murals.

“Okay,” Jessica said. “What does this have to do with the building on Flat Rock?”

“Well, you know how you see something every day? I mean, you see it, but you don’t really look at it closely?”

“Sure.”

“I was wondering,” Pedersen said. “Did you take pictures of the south side of the building by any chance?”

Jessica sorted through the photographs on her desk. She found a picture of the south side of the warehouse. “What about it?”

Pedersen pointed to an area on the right side of the wall, next to a large red and blue gang tag. With the naked eye it looked like a small white smudge.

“See this here? That was not there two days before I met you guys.”

“So you’re saying it might have been painted the morning the body was put on the riverbank?” Byrne asked.

“Maybe. The only reason I noticed it was because it was white. It kind of stands out.”

Jessica glanced at the photo. The picture had been taken with a digital camera, at a fairly high resolution. The print, however, was small. She would send her camera down to the AV unit and have them make an enlargement from the original file.

“Do you think it might be important?” Pedersen asked.

“It might,” Jessica said. “Thanks for bringing this to our attention.”

“Sure.”

“We’ll give you a call if we need to speak to you again.”

When Pedersen left, Jessica got on the phone to CSU. They would dispatch a tech to collect a paint sample from the building.

Twenty minutes later, an enlarged version of the JPEG file was printed and sitting on Jessica’s desk. She and Byrne looked at it. The painted image on the wall was a larger, cruder version of the one found on Kristina Jakos’s abdomen.

The killer had not only posed his victim on the bank of the river, but he had taken the time to tag the wall behind him with a symbol, a symbol meant to be seen.

Jessica had wondered if the telltale gotcha was in one of the crime-scene pictures.

Maybe it was.

WHILE WAITING FOR the lab report on the paint, Jessica’s phone rang again. So much for the Christmas break. She wasn’t even supposed to be there. Death goes on.

She punched the button, answered. “Homicide, Detective Balzano.”

“Detective, this is PO Valentine, I work out of the Ninety-second.”

Part of the Ninety-second District bordered the Schuylkill River. “What’s up, Officer Valentine?”

“We’re on the Strawberry Mansion Bridge right now. We found something you should see.”

“Found something?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

When you’re in homicide, the call is usually about a somebody, not a something. “What is it, Officer Valentine?”

Valentine hesitated a moment. It was telling. “Well, Sergeant Majette asked me to give you a call. He says you should get down here right away.”