| THIRTEEN |

THEY SAT IN THE PARKING LOT AT THE ROUNDHOUSE, ENGINE IDLING, windows up, AC maxed out to Burger King meat locker. The city was paying for the air conditioning, and they were going to use it.

Kevin Byrne glanced over at his partner. Jessica had her eyes closed, her head back on the seat. It had been a long day for both, but as tired as Byrne was, he felt it was probably worse for Jessica than for him. All Byrne had to do was drive home, drag himself up two flights of stairs, open a bottle of Yuengling, flop onto the couch, and order a pizza.

Jessica had to drive to the Northeast, pick up her daughter, make dinner for her family, put her daughter to bed, take a shower and then maybe, maybe, sleep would find her, just a few hours before she had to get up and start it all over again.

Byrne didn’t know how she did it. If she was a dental hygienist or paralegal it would be hard enough. Add the stresses and dangers of this job, and the demands had to be off the charts.

Byrne checked the dashboard clock. It was just after 9:00 PM. He had lost track of how long they had been sitting there in the parking lot, not saying a word. His partner finally broke the silence.

“I hate this part,” Jessica said.

“Me too.”

They were in the doldrums between clue and fact, between suspicion and reality, between idea and truth. Byrne was just about to further lament this fact aloud when his cell phone rang.

Jessica turned to look at him, opened one eye. If she had opened two it would have been overtime. It was that late in the day. “Don’t you ever turn that friggin’ thing off?”

“I thought I did.”

Byrne pulled out his phone, glanced at the caller ID, frowned, flipped it open. It was their boss. Jessica looked over again, both eyes open now. Byrne pointed a finger upward, at the windows of the Roundhouse, telling her all she needed to know. She closed her eyes again.

“Hey, Sarge,” Byrne said. “How are you?”

“Like Rosie O’Donnell in a cold bubble bath.”

“Okay,” Byrne said, not having the slightest idea what his boss meant. But he was fine with that. The visual image was enough to prevent any further inquiries. “What’s up?”

A rhetorical question. In this job, if you were on day work, your boss didn’t call you after nine o’clock unless it was bad news.

“We’ve got a body. Fairmount Park.”

“We’re up on the wheel?” Byrne asked. The “wheel” was the roster of detectives. Whenever you got a new case, you went to the bottom, and steadily moved up the list until it was your turn again. Clearing all your cases before you got a new one was every detective’s dream. It never happened in Philly.

“No,” Buchanan said. “I need you to back up Nicci and John.”

Buchanan was talking about Detectives Nicolette Malone and John Shepherd. Whenever there was a large public crime scene, more than two detectives were called to the site.

“Where?” Byrne replied, pulling out his notebook. He glanced at Jessica. She was listening, but not looking.

Buchanan gave Byrne the location.

THE EVENING WAS A steam bath. White heat shimmered off the streets, the sidewalks, the buildings. Lightning flashed in a deep indigo sky. No rain yet. Soon, though, the radio said. It was going to rain soon. They promised.

Byrne put the car in reverse, then drove across the lot, turned onto Eighth Street. Jessica sighed. Their tour was over, but Philadelphia didn’t care.