Free The Doll Maker by Richard Montanari

recall which cab company it was?’
    Solomon thought for a moment. ‘No. Sorry. I don’t take them myself. They all kind of look alike to me.’
    ‘That’s okay,’ Byrne said. ‘We can get this information.’ Byrne flipped a few pages back. ‘Mr Solomon, how much did Nicole smoke?’
    The man looked slapped. ‘ Smoke? Nicole didn’t smoke.’
    ‘Are you certain of that, sir?’
    ‘Absolutely. She would never do a thing like that.’
    Jessica had never been a smoker, but she’d snuck a few puffs from someone else’s cigarette when she was Nicole’s age. Whether or not Nicole was a casual or heavy smoker – or a non-smoker like her father believed – would be easily determined when the autopsy was performed.
    ‘I need to show you something now, sir,’ Byrne said. ‘If I may.’
    Solomon looked apprehensive. It was understandable, under the circumstances. He nodded his assent.
    Byrne reached into his bag, took out the invitation they had found taped beneath the bench. It was now in a clear evidence bag.
    ‘Mr Solomon, have you ever seen this before?’
    Solomon reached into his pants pocket, took out a pair of reading glasses, slipped them on. He looked at the card, back at Byrne. ‘I don’t understand. What is this?’
    ‘This was in Nicole’s possession,’ Byrne said. It was not technically accurate. The possibility existed, albeit extremely slight, that the bench already had this taped to it.
    Solomon held it up. ‘This was?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Jessica watched the man’s eyes scan the text.
    ‘An invitation?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Byrne said. ‘Have you ever seen it before?’
    ‘I don’t … no I haven’t.’
    Jessica noticed that the man’s hands had begun to tremble. There was something about the card that spooked him.
    ‘Mr Solomon, do you have a recent photograph of Nicole?’ Byrne asked.
    ‘Of course,’ Solomon said. ‘Yes. I’m sure I have one.’
    Solomon looked to the two detectives to see if it was okay, suddenly thrust into a world of facts and procedures and protocol.
    ‘It’s just upstairs,’ he said. ‘I can get it for you now.’ Before he mounted the stairs he added: ‘I also have to make a phone call.’
    ‘Yes,’ Byrne said. ‘Of course. Take your time.’
    As Solomon went up the stairs, Jessica glanced at Adinah Solomon. The woman had not moved nor acknowledged the presence of two strangers in her house. Jessica then made eye contact with Byrne. A number of questions flowed silently between them.
    Question One: Was David Solomon telling the truth about all this? It seemed as if he had been. At least until he saw the invitation.
    Question Two: Was Nicole’s home life as stable and happy and normal as Solomon portrayed it? This was not quite as clear.
    Jessica heard Solomon open a door at the end of the hallway upstairs, then close it. Perhaps two minutes later she heard the door open again.
    Over the next few days, when Jessica thought of this case – the 306th homicide of the year in Philadelphia – she would think of the moment just after she heard the door open for the second time on the second floor.
    That was the moment when everything changed.
    In her experience, it sometimes happened. You thought the investigation was one thing, and it became something else.
    Rarely did it happen so soon.
    In that moment – the moment between a thought and a word, the distance that marks the chasm between life and death – a litany of remembrance and procedure rushed through Jessica’s mind.
    She recalled going to the firearms qualifying range on State Road with her father when she was ten years old. She recalled staying well back, wearing headphones, thinking about how there was a slight delay between the muzzle flash and the sound of the weapon being discharged.
    In this moment, sitting in the front room of a small row house in the Bella Vista neighborhood of South Philadelphia, a space now red with rage and grief and loss, it all came back to her.
    Jessica