the money, words are exchanged, confidences are betrayed, and six days later he’s killed.’
‘Okay, but why wasn’t his place tossed?’ Jessica asked.
Byrne thought for a few moments. ‘Spitballing here. Let’s assume further, for the moment, that the killer wanted to make a point.’
‘Yeah,’ Jessica said. ‘But to whom?’
Byrne raised an eyebrow. ‘To
whom
? You sound like a lawyer.’
‘Get used to it.’
‘Of course, this would mean Freitag was connected to some criminal enterprise, or at least some very dangerous skullduggery.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as a guy who was mobbed up.’
Byrne picked up the pencil, rubbed a little more graphite on the page, gently blew it off. They saw nothing they hadn’t seen the first time.
‘How come this always works perfectly in the movies?’ Jessica asked.
‘Everything works perfectly in the movies. If it doesn’t, they just reshoot it.’
‘Cary Grant had no problems doing this in
North by Northwest
.’
‘I guess I’m no Cary Grant.’
‘Sure you are.’ Jessica took the pad from Byrne. Even with her Maglite, it was impossible to tell whether it was 10K or 10E. Now she was starting to doubt the JCD initials. She put the calendar back in the box. ‘I’m sure Hell will have an idea or two about this.’
Byrne glanced at his watch. ‘He’s gone for the day.’
Jessica knew what Byrne meant. Seeing as how this was a cold case, there could only be so many demands made on forensic personnel, especially as it related to overtime.
Jessica tapped the printout they’d gotten from Karen Jacobs. ‘Let’s run these names.’
11
Detective Joshua Bontrager was a veteran of nearly seven years in the PPD Homicide Unit. Before that, he had worked in the Traffic Unit. He had been called up to Homicide to work on a case that took investigators into his home county of Berks, a case that called upon Josh’s unique qualifications, credentials no other homicide detective in Philadelphia – or for that matter most of the world – could provide. Josh Bontrager had grown up in an Amish family.
And while he had left the church before entering the academy, in the time Jessica had known him he had transformed from a country boy into a street-wise detective, capable of holding his own with the hard realities of investigating homicides in a city like Philadelphia.
There was, however, one vestige of his former life that was hard for anyone in the squad to believe. In his entire time in the homicide unit, no one had ever heard Josh Bontrager swear. Not once. He’d come close a few times, switching over to
darn
or
heck
or
shoot
at the last second.
And if there was a record made to be broken, this was the one. A universal trait for law enforcement worldwide was the ability to curse creatively and at prodigious length. There had been a pool ongoing for years about when Josh Bontrager would utter his first
fuck
.
If you heard Josh Bontrager come close to swearing, but not pull the trigger, you had to add a dollar to the pot. The pool was over six hundred dollars, with no limit in sight. If you were in the room, and closest to the pot when it happened, you got the money, which would certainly be donated to your favorite charity, which, by default, was the Police Athletic League.
As Jessica and Byrne walked into the duty room they saw Josh Bontrager poring over a binder, lost in thought.
‘Joshua Bontrager!’ Jessica said.
Bontrager jumped a foot. ‘What?’
‘Are you growing a beard?’
Josh Bontrager was very fair, and his beard was sandy, almost blond. He turned a scarlet red. ‘It’s not a beard, it’s, you know, a goatee.’
‘Same thing, isn’t it?’
Bontrager reflexively stroked his chin. ‘Well, not really. Amish men grow beards.’
‘I thought you were Amish.’
‘Not technically. Not any more.’
Jessica gave him a few angles. ‘It looks really good. Really sexy.’
Another blush. With Josh Bontrager it was like flipping a light
Grace Slick, Andrea Cagan