streets.
Before leaving the duty room Byrne checked the roster, more commonly known as The Wheel. He was near the top. Tomorrow was a new day, and he had no idea where it would lead him.
When he stepped into the parking lot behind the Roundhouse he glanced in the general direction of Wynnefield, the small northwestern Philadelphia neighborhood where Valerie Beckert’s house stood vacant.
For a brief, shivering moment he felt something pull him in that direction, something dark and foreboding, something he’d felt slither beneath his skin on that steamy August night ten years earlier.
Six children found.
Six children still lost.
What did you do with them, Valerie ?
3
Jessica Balzano looked at the two documents on her dining room table. They were similar in appearance – eight-and-a-half by eleven inch sheets of white paper, black ink, no staples, no folds.
As she sipped her first cup of coffee of the day, she looked out the kitchen window at the early morning commuters. It was usually her favorite time of day, so full of promise, the early morning light an armor against all the bad things the world could throw at you. She didn’t feel that way today.
She glanced back at the documents, thought for a moment about how many life-changing events were chronicled by such benign things: birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, laboratory test results, both good and bad. She had taken these two documents out of the file cabinet they kept in the tiny office off the living room of their South Philly row house. The cabinet held just about every touchstone of their lives, but at this moment, these were the only two that mattered to Jessica Balzano, her husband Vincent, and their children, Sophie and Carlos.
The document on the right was from Edward Jones, the brokerage firm at which they held their modest investments. A few municipal bonds, a money market account paying next to nothing, and some mutual funds that paid dividends.
The document on the left was a three page, double sided application form, an application she had read many times, but had yet to find the courage to fill out. At the top of the first page it read:
Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners Application
She’d gone to law school at Temple University, taking every available class at every available opportunity – mornings, evenings, weekends – judiciously spending all her accumulated vacation days in classrooms with people who, for the most part, were fifteen years younger than she. She’d gotten her degree in what she understood to be record time for Temple University, her alma mater where she’d gotten her undergraduate degree in criminal justice.
Getting through law school was supposed to be the hard part. From the beginning Jessica had her sights set on working in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. Indeed, this had been her goal since she was a young girl who would sometimes watch her father, Peter Giovanni, testify in Municipal Court.
Each year the DA’s office hired new assistant district attorneys from the same class of graduates from around the country. Weight was obviously given to freshly minted lawyers from the greater Philadelphia area, based on a number of factors, not the least of which was familiarity with the Pennsylvania Penal Code, as well as the knowledge of the people, the streets, and the struggles of the citizens of the City of Brotherly Love.
Jessica, having graduated top of her class, had inside knowledge that the job was all but hers for the asking.
She also knew that the salary of a new assistant district attorney was about half the pay of a veteran detective in the homicide unit, who were among the highest paid of all the gold badge detectives in the department. The debt load, in the end, she’d decided, had been simply too great. In addition to her huge student loan, there was their mortgage payment, private school tuition for both Sophie and Carlos, car payments on two
Before leaving the duty room Byrne checked the roster, more commonly known as The Wheel. He was near the top. Tomorrow was a new day, and he had no idea where it would lead him.
When he stepped into the parking lot behind the Roundhouse he glanced in the general direction of Wynnefield, the small northwestern Philadelphia neighborhood where Valerie Beckert’s house stood vacant.
For a brief, shivering moment he felt something pull him in that direction, something dark and foreboding, something he’d felt slither beneath his skin on that steamy August night ten years earlier.
Six children found.
Six children still lost.
What did you do with them, Valerie ?
3
Jessica Balzano looked at the two documents on her dining room table. They were similar in appearance – eight-and-a-half by eleven inch sheets of white paper, black ink, no staples, no folds.
As she sipped her first cup of coffee of the day, she looked out the kitchen window at the early morning commuters. It was usually her favorite time of day, so full of promise, the early morning light an armor against all the bad things the world could throw at you. She didn’t feel that way today.
She glanced back at the documents, thought for a moment about how many life-changing events were chronicled by such benign things: birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, laboratory test results, both good and bad. She had taken these two documents out of the file cabinet they kept in the tiny office off the living room of their South Philly row house. The cabinet held just about every touchstone of their lives, but at this moment, these were the only two that mattered to Jessica Balzano, her husband Vincent, and their children, Sophie and Carlos.
The document on the right was from Edward Jones, the brokerage firm at which they held their modest investments. A few municipal bonds, a money market account paying next to nothing, and some mutual funds that paid dividends.
The document on the left was a three page, double sided application form, an application she had read many times, but had yet to find the courage to fill out. At the top of the first page it read:
Pennsylvania Board of Law Examiners Application
She’d gone to law school at Temple University, taking every available class at every available opportunity – mornings, evenings, weekends – judiciously spending all her accumulated vacation days in classrooms with people who, for the most part, were fifteen years younger than she. She’d gotten her degree in what she understood to be record time for Temple University, her alma mater where she’d gotten her undergraduate degree in criminal justice.
Getting through law school was supposed to be the hard part. From the beginning Jessica had her sights set on working in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office. Indeed, this had been her goal since she was a young girl who would sometimes watch her father, Peter Giovanni, testify in Municipal Court.
Each year the DA’s office hired new assistant district attorneys from the same class of graduates from around the country. Weight was obviously given to freshly minted lawyers from the greater Philadelphia area, based on a number of factors, not the least of which was familiarity with the Pennsylvania Penal Code, as well as the knowledge of the people, the streets, and the struggles of the citizens of the City of Brotherly Love.
Jessica, having graduated top of her class, had inside knowledge that the job was all but hers for the asking.
She also knew that the salary of a new assistant district attorney was about half the pay of a veteran detective in the homicide unit, who were among the highest paid of all the gold badge detectives in the department. The debt load, in the end, she’d decided, had been simply too great. In addition to her huge student loan, there was their mortgage payment, private school tuition for both Sophie and Carlos, car payments on two
Similar Books
Gluten for Punishment
Nancy J. Parra
Atonement (The Atonement Series)
Elle Chardou
Conduct Unbecoming of a Gentleman
Wareeze Woodson
Sweetest Taste of Sin (Southern Sin)
Danica Avet
The Peoples King
Susan Williams
American Gangster
Max Allan Collins
Mourn The Living
Max Allan Collins
Hot Ice
Nora Roberts
Laura Abbot
Into the Wilderness
Scripted
Maya Rock