The skin Gods jbakb-2 Read online

  Melanie Devlin stoked the briquettes on the grill, closed the lid. She poured them both a glass of lemonade, sat on the tiny wrought-iron chair opposite him. Someone a few houses down was listening to a Phillies game. They fell silent for a while, feeling the punishing heat of the afternoon. Byrne noticed that Melanie was not wearing her wedding ring. He wondered if she and Garrett had divorced. They certainly wouldn't be the first couple ripped apart by the violent death of a child.

  "It was lavender," Melanie finally said.

  Excuse me?

  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 retr
ieving 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.

  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 tes
tify, 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.

  Sergeant Dwight Buchanan was one of the day-watch supervisors, a thirty-eight-year veteran of the PPD. He wore every minute of it on his badge. After the incident in the alley, Buchanan had arrived on the scene and taken Jessica's weapon, directing the mandatory debriefing of an officer involved in a shooting, running liaison with Internal Affairs. Although he was not on duty when the incident occurred, he had gotten out of bed and rushed down to the scene to look out for one of his own. It was moments like this that bound the men and women in blue in a way most people would never understand.

  Jessica had worked the desk for nearly a week and was glad to be back on the Line Squad. She was no house cat.

  Buchanan handed her back her Glock. "Welcome back, Detective."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Ready for the street?"

  Jessica held up her weapon. "The question is, is the street ready for me?"

  "There's someone here to see you." He pointed over her shoulder. Jessica turned around. There was a man leaning against the assignment desk, a big man with emerald-green eyes and sandy hair. A man with the bearing of someone stalked by powerful demons.

  It was her partner, Kevin Byrne.

  Jessica's heart fluttered for a moment as their eyes met. They had only been partnered a few days when Kevin Byrne had been shot this past spring, but what they had shared that terrible week was so intimate, so personal, that it went beyond something even lovers felt. It spoke to their souls. It appeared that neither of them, even over the course of the past few months, had time to reconcile these feelings. It was unknown whether Kevin Byrne was going to return to the force and, if he did, whether or not he and Jessica would be partnered again. She had meant to call him in the past few weeks. She had not.