The Doll Maker by Richard Montanari Read Free Book Online Page B

window.
    Jessica could see that the victim was a white female, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old. She wore a dark skirt and a white blouse. There was a ligature of some sort around her neck. Her hands were tied around the wrists, resting in her lap.
    What made this scenario surreal was that the girl was simply sitting on a bench, as if waiting for a train that would never come. The bench was painted a pale yellow.
    Two young patrol officers, fresh-faced kids no more than a year or two out of the academy, stood guard. Their name tags identified them as P/O Sloane and P/O Kasky.
    They both nodded a greeting to Jessica and Byrne.
    ‘You took the call?’ Byrne asked.
    The two young men looked at each other, not knowing who should respond. Something in Sloane’s eyes told Kasky it should be him.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Kasky said.
    ‘What time was that?’
    ‘Right around seven-twenty.’
    ‘Where were you when you got the call?’
    Kasky pointed to the northeast. ‘We had a call in Roxborough. Over in Green Tree run.’
    Byrne wrote it down. ‘Who made the 911?’
    ‘Mrs Ann Stovicek. She was riding her bike.’
    Jessica looked over to see a woman in her late twenties, standing next to a rather expensive-looking bicycle carrier, the kind with a child seat in the front. In the pod was an adorable girl of about two.
    ‘What did you observe when you got here?’ Byrne asked.
    ‘We pulled up on Shawmont Avenue, parked at Nixon, then walked up the path. When we arrived here we saw the victim, then immediately called dispatch.’
    ‘Who else was here?’
    ‘Just Mrs Stovicek.’
    ‘No other joggers or cyclists?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘Did you preserve the scene?’ Byrne asked.
    Kasky cleared his throat. Jessica noticed that he was not looking at the victim.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I thought about pushing on the bench a little, just to see if she was still alive. But I didn’t want to touch the wood. The paint seemed a little …’
    The young officer trailed off. Byrne finished his sentence.
    ‘Fresh,’ Byrne said. ‘I agree. Good work, officer.’
    Those three words were what the young patrolman needed. A bit of color returned to his face. Jessica remembered such moments from her early days.
    ‘Has a train come by since you’ve been here?’ Byrne asked.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ P/O Kasky said. ‘Just one.’
    Jessica made the note to check on the SEPTA schedule for this line. If the ME was able to pin down a small enough window for the time of death, they could check with passengers who might have been on the train as it passed by the station.
    The good news was that there was a possibility of an eyewitness. The bad news was that a passing train all but compromised the integrity of any scientific data – blood, fingerprints, hair, fiber – that might be gleaned from the site.
    Jessica stepped away, walked a little closer to the building, which was literally just a few yards from the railroad tracks. The first story of the structure was a muted blue. On the side facing the tracks there were three windows, all boarded, as well as a single door. The door was padlocked.
    The second floor exterior had been scraped and sanded at some point in the last few years, but the project had been abandoned. There were four windows on the second story, all with shades drawn.
    Then there was the dead girl, sitting on a wooden bench, as if she belonged here.
    Carefully skirting the path the killer may have taken, staying as close as possible to the wall, Jessica knelt down and looked beneath the bench. There she saw that the bench had not been painted underneath.
    She also saw something else. Something that made her heart skip a beat.
    Taped to the underneath side of the bench was an envelope of some sort.
    As desperately as she wanted to take the envelope and rip it open, she had to wait. They needed the investigator for the Medical Examiner’s office to clear the victim, allowing the Crime Scene officers to begin their own