Richard Montanari: Play dead

"Go ahead, sir."

"I killed her."

At this point there was a quick intake of breath. It wasn't clear if it was the caller or the officer. Jessica would bet it was the officer. You could be a cop forty years, investigate thousands of cases, and never hear those words. "And when did you do this, sir?" "It was in May of this year." "Do you remember the exact date?" "It was the second of May, I believe." "Do you recall the time of day?" "I do not." I do not, Jessica thought. No contractions. She made a note. "If you doubt that I am telling the truth, I can prove it to you." "How will you do that, sir?" "I have something of hers." "You have something?"

"Yes. A button from her jacket. Third from the bottom. I have sent it to you. It will come in the mail today." "Where are you right now, sir?"

"I will get to that in a second. I just want to have some assurances."

"I can't promise you anything, sir. But I'll listen to whatever it is you have to say."

"We live in a world in which a person's word is no longer valid currency. I have seven girls. I fear for them. I fear for their safety. Do you promise me no harm will come to them?"

Seven girls, Jessica thought.

"If they are in no way responsible for this or any other crime, they will not be involved. I promise you."

One final hesitation.

"I am at a location near Second and Diamond. It is cold here."

It is cold here, Jessica thought. What does that mean? The temperature had already topped ninety degrees.

"What's the address?"

"I do not know. But you will know it by its red door."

"Sir, if you'll stay on the line for-"

The line went dead. Josh Bontrager hit STOP.

Jessica glanced at her partner. "What do you think?"

Byrne gave it a few moments. "I'm not sure. Ask me when we get the full report back from the lab on that button."

It was common practice to run a PCIC and NCIC check on anyone who called in with information, especially those who called in to confess to a major crime. According to the boss, there was no record of a Jeremiah Crosley-criminal, DMV, or otherwise-in the city of Philadelphia. His Queen Village address turned out to be nonexistent. There was no Dodgson Street.

"Okay," Jessica finally said. "Where to?"

"Let's go back to the Eighth Street scene," Byrne said. "I want to recanvass. Let's bring the cassette and see if anyone around there recognizes our boy's voice. Maybe after that we can take another ride to Millersville."

A day earlier they had gone to Millersville to speak with Robert and Marilyn O'Riordan. Not to conduct a formal interview-the original team had done that twice-but to assure them that the investigation was moving forward. Robert O'Riordan had been sullen and uncooperative, his wife had been nearly catatonic. They were two people all but incapacitated by the torment of grief, the black hole of an indescribable loss. Jessica had seen it many times, but each time was a fresh arrow in her heart.

"Let's do it." Jessica grabbed the cassette player. "Thanks for bringing this down, Josh."

"No problem."

Before Jessica could turn and head to the car, Byrne put a hand on her arm.

"Jess."

Byrne was pointing at a dilapidated refrigerator against the brick wall of the music store. Or what was left of the refrigerator. It was an ancient model from the 1950s or 1960s, at one time a built-in, but the side paneling had long ago been stripped away. It appeared the appliance had originally been a powder blue or green, but age and rust and soot had darkened it to a deep brown. The refrigerator door hung at a crooked angle.

Along the top, on the skewed freezer door, was a logo. Although the chrome letters were long gone, the discolored outline of the brand name remained.

Crosley.

The brand dated back to the 1920s. Jessica recalled a Crosley fridge in her grandmother's house on Christian Street. They weren't that common anymore.

My name is Jeremiah Crosley.

"Could this be a coincidence?" Jessica asked.

"We can only hope so," Byrne replied, but Jessica could tell he didn't really believe it. The alternative led them down a path nobody wanted to follow.

Byrne reached out, opened the refrigerator door.

Inside, on the one remaining shelf, was a large laboratory specimen jar, half-filled with a filmy red fluid. Something was suspended in the liquid.

Jessica knew what it was. She had been to enough autopsies.

It was a human heart.

Whilethey waited for the crime scene unit to arrive and begin processing the scene, Josh Bontrager took digital photographs; of the lot, the graffiti on the shanty wall, the refrigerator, the neighborhood, the gathering rubberneckers. Jessica and Byrne played the recording three more times. Nothing leapt out to identify the caller.

And while there were many things they did not yet understand about what they had just found, they knew these human remains did not belong to their victim. Caitlin O'Riordan had not been mutilated in any way.

It's cold here, Jessica thought. He had been talking about the refrigerator.

"Guys." Bontrager pointed behind the refrigerator. "There's something back here."

"What is it?" Jessica asked.

"No idea." He turned to Byrne. "Give me a hand."

They got on either side of the hulking appliance. When the fridge was a few feet from the wall, Jessica stepped behind it. Years of dust and grunge coated the area where the compressor once was.

In its place was a book of some sort; chunky, with a black cover, no dust jacket. Watermarks dotted the linen finish. Jessica put on a latex glove, gently retrieved the book. It was a hardbound edition of The New Oxford Bible.

Jessica checked the front and back of the book. No inscriptions or writing of any kind. She checked the bottom edge. A red ribbon marked a page, splitting the book in half. She carefully lifted the ribbon. The book fell open.

The Book of Jeremiah.

"Ah, shit," Byrne said. "What the fuck is this?"

Jessica squinted at the first page of the Book of Jeremiah. The print was so small she could barely see it. She fished her glasses from her pocket, put them on.

"Josh?" she asked. "You know anything about this part of the Old Testament?"

Joshua Bontrager was the unit's go-to guy for most things Christian.

"A little," he said. "Jeremiah was kind of a doom and gloom fella. Predicted the destruction of Judah, and all. I remember hearing some of his writings quoted."

"For instance?"

" 'The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.' That was one of his biggies. There are a lot of translations of that passage, but that's one of the more popular ones. Nice outlook, huh?"

"He wrote about the heart?" Jessica asked.

"Among other things."

Jessica flipped a page, then another, then another. At Chapter 41, the page had a series of marks on it-three small squares drawn with different pens, yellow, blue, and red. It appeared that one word was highlighted, along with two sets of two numbers each.

The highlighted word was Shiloh. Beneath it, along the left hand side of the columns, were two numbers, forty-five and fourteen.

Jessica flipped carefully through the Book of Jeremiah, and glanced through the rest of the Bible. There were no other bookmarked pages, or highlighted words or numbers.

She looked at Byrne. "This mean anything to you?"

Byrne shook his head. Jessica could already see his wheels turning.

"Josh?"

Bontrager looked closely at the Bible, eyes scanning the page. "No. Sorry." He looked a little sheepish. "Don't tell my dad, but I haven't picked up the Good Book in a while."

"Let's run this by Documents," Jessica said. "We were supposed to find this, yes?"

"Yes," Byrne echoed. He sounded none too happy about it.