Free The Killing Room by Richard Montanari Page A

right. Maybe I will.’ He slipped on his coat. ‘Thanks, Jess.’
    He put his shoulders back and left the room, a spring in his step. A few minutes later a uniformed officer stepped in. ‘Detective Byrne?’
    Byrne turned from the monitor. ‘Yes?’
    The officer held up a pair of documents. ‘You just got this from latents.’
    Byrne crossed the room, thanked the officer, read the sheets. He came back to where Jessica was standing.
    ‘Looks like we have an ID,’ Byrne said. ‘Our victim’s name is Daniel E. Palumbo.’
    ‘He was in the system,’ Jessica said.
    ‘He was.’
    Jessica, recalling the needle marks on the victim’s arms, figured he had been processed at some point in his life. She looked back at the monitor, at the façade of the abandoned church. She now had a name to go with the horror that took place in that basement.
    ‘You ready for this?’ Byrne asked.
    ‘Now, see, that’s just payback for before.’
    ‘He was a cop.’
    Jessica was stunned. More than stunned. ‘ What? ’
    Byrne tapped the paper in his hands. ‘He was a patrol officer for eighteen months.’
    ‘Here in Philly?’
    ‘Here in Philly.’
    ‘Wait a minute,’ Jessica said. ‘He was only on the job for eighteen months? He was just a kid.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Why’d he retire?’
    ‘No idea,’ Byrne said. ‘But I’m really interested in finding that out. Aren’t you?’
    ‘Oh yeah.’
    Jessica and Byrne returned to the homicide duty room. Once there, Jessica sat down, rolled her chair over to a computer terminal, and entered the name in the database. In seconds shegot a hit. She compared the photo on the computer monitor to the one she had taken of the victim at the scene. In her photograph the victim’s face was so covered in blood and cuts, it hardly looked human. Still, prints never lie, and according to Judy’s expert work, the prints were an eight-point match.
    Daniel Palumbo had been twenty-three years old. He grew up in South Philadelphia, and became a police officer three years ago.
    Jessica looked again at the two photographs. The man they found bleeding out in a church basement now had a name: Daniel Elias Palumbo. Patrol Officer Daniel Elias Palumbo. They had a minimum amount of information about him.
    He had been arrested and convicted of possession of a controlled substance a few months after quitting the force, but had gotten off with time served and community service.
    They had a date of birth. They had a brief life story. Now they had a date of death.
    ‘We have a last known?’ Byrne asked.
    ‘Yeah, we do.’ Jessica grabbed her coat and keys. ‘His mother’s house. She still lives on Latona Street.’

NINE
    As they rode to South Philly Jessica scrolled through the pictures on her iPhone. She looked at the photos taken at the St Adelaide’s crime scene.
    The first three were of the basement room in which the victim was found. The condition of the room was horrific, but nothing compared to the condition of the body. She knew that there were all manner of religious sects that practiced self-flagellation and self-mutilation as part of their ceremony, but she had a hard time believing their victim had wrapped himself in barb wire. Even if he had, he definitely had help tying his hands behind his back.
    My Missal . Had the book belonged to the victim? It looked like a child’s edition. If it was, why was this grown man carrying it? Did it belong to him? Did it belong to the killer?
    Jessica also considered the X on the lamppost. If it was rendered in the blood of the victim they might be able to pullprints off the post, although the rusted surface of the metal might make that difficult.
    They stopped for a light. ‘What do you think?’ Jessica asked.
    ‘I think I need another day off already.’
    ‘Do you think this was a ritual killing?’
    ‘Well, the ritual killings we’ve investigated in the past have been just that, right? Killings. This guy was alive when we got there. I think he was