Broken Angels by Richard Montanari Read Free Book Online Page B

at Eighth and Race streets, where the homicide unit occupied part of the first floor—Jessica ran an NCIC and PDCH check on David Hornstrom. Clean as an operating room. Not even a moving violation in the past ten years. Hard to believe, considering his taste in fast cars.
    She then entered the victim’s information into the Missing Person database. She didn’t expect much.
Unlike television cop shows, there was no twenty-four-to-fortyeight-hour waiting period when it came to missing persons. Usually, in Philadelphia, a person called 911 and an officer went to the house to take the report. If the missing person was ten years old or under, police immediately began what was called a “tender age search.” The officer directly searched the residence and any other residence at which the child lived, in the event of shared custody. Then each sector patrol car would be given the description of the child and began a grid method search for him or her.
If the missing child was eleven to seventeen years old, a report with description and photo was taken by the first officer, and that report was taken back to the district to be put into the computer and sent to a national registry. If a missing adult was mentally challenged, the report was also quickly put into the computer, and sector searches were done.
If the person was a regular Joe or Jane and just didn’t come home— as was probably the case with the young woman found on the riverbank—the report was taken, given to the detective division and the case was looked at again in five days, then again in seven days.
And sometimes you got lucky. Before Jessica could pour herself a cup of coffee, there was a hit.
“Kevin.”
Byrne hadn’t even gotten his coat off yet. Jessica held the digital camera’s LCD screen next to the computer screen. On the computer screen was a missing person report with a photograph of a pretty blond woman. The picture was a little fuzzy, a driver’s license or state ID photo. On Jessica’s camera was a close-up of the victim’s face. “Is that her?”
Byrne looked closely, from the computer screen to the camera, back. “Yeah,” he said. He pointed to the small beauty mark above the right side of the young woman’s upper lip. “That’s her.”
Jessica scanned the report. The woman’s name was Kristina Jakos.

8
    Natalya Jakos was a tall, athletic woman in her early thirties. She had dove gray eyes, smooth skin, and long, elegant fingers. Her dark hair was tipped with silver, cut into a pageboy style. She wore pale tangerine sweats and new Nikes. She had just returned from a run.
    Natalya lived in an older, well-kept brick twin row house on Bustleton Avenue in the Northeast.
Kristina and Natalya were sisters, born eight years apart in Odessa, the coastal city in the Ukraine.
Natalya had filed the missing person report.
    they met in the living room. On the mantel over the bricked-in fireplace was a number of small, framed pictures, mostly slightly out of focus, black-and-white snapshots of a family, posed in snow, on a sadlooking beach, around a dining table. One was of a pretty blond girl in a black-and-white checked sunsuit and white sandals. The girl was clearly Kristina Jakos.
    Byrne showed Natalya a close-up photograph of the victim’s face. The ligature was not visible. Natalya calmly identified her as her sister.
“Again, we are terribly sorry for your loss,” Byrne said.
“She was killed.”
“Yes,” Byrne said.
Natalya nodded, as if she had been expecting the news. The lack of passion in her reaction was not lost on either detective. They had given her a bare minimum of information on the phone. They had not told her about the mutilation.
“When was the last time you saw your sister?” Byrne asked.
Natalya thought for a few moments. “It was four days ago.”
“Where did you see her?”
“Right where you are standing. We argued. As we often did.”
“May I ask what about?” Byrne asked.
Natalya shrugged. “Money. I had