The Murder Room by Michael Capuzzo Read Free Book Online Page A

left alone at markets. The famous one was Steven Damman, whose mother left him with a stick of licorice to watch the baby at a Long Island grocery store; when she came out the stroller and the baby were there, but Steven and his licorice were gone, and never seen again.
    Billy wasn’t afraid. He was older than Damman and could take care of himself, and he loved the trip to the market. He’d lose himself savoring the perfumed air of apples, pears, oranges, and potatoes stacked high on the counters; he’d forget where he was. It was “the greatest smell in the world” because it reminded him of his grandfather Sol, Philadelphia’s largest potato and onion wholesaler. Billy’s grandfather was his best friend, an oasis of love and safety.
    Sol’s full name was Solomon Tredwell, but everyone called him “Smiling Jim, the Potato King.” Sol was a gregarious character who had taken the nickname “Smiling Jim” from a handsome Philadelphia mounted policeman who patrolled the city’s parks. He figured the policeman’s popularity would shine like a halo over him and his business. “My grandfather loved the police,” Billy said, “and he loved me. A policeman couldn’t leave his warehouse store without a free five-pound bag of potatoes.”
    Now the boy’s eye caught a poster on a wall near the front of the store. It intrigued him; from a distance it looked like a portrait of three heads. He walked toward it and, up close, froze in fear.
    A ghostly, shrunken face stared at him with lifeless blue eyes.
    It was a pale, bloodless face—the face of a dead boy. On either side of the ghastly face were profile photographs of the child; the side of the head, like the face, was blistered in bruises and cuts. But the emotionless blue eyes held him fast.
    He looked at the eyelids, frail and broken as the crushed wings of a butterfly. PHILADELPHIA POLICE DEPARTMENT, INFORMATION WANTED, the poster said. The print underneath said the unknown child had been brutally murdered and found two weeks ago in the woods of Fox Chase. Police were looking for the boy’s name, and his killer . NOTIFY HOMICIDE UNIT, DETECTIVE HEADQUARTERS, CITY HALL, PHILADELPHIA, AT ANY TIME, DAY OR NIGHT, IN PERSON OR TELEPHONE, MUNICIPAL 6-9700.
    For an instant the left eye seemed to glow yellow.
    Billy had never seen a dead person. He hadn’t heard the prayer to the Blessed Judge of Truth, the rabbi’s wisdom that men were mortals and can’t understand, can only accept God’s will. His father had not prepared him; no one could have prepared him. Death whispers uniquely to each man, but its overture to Billy was beyond the understanding of midtwentieth-century adults, no less a child. In the limpid eye he had seen a glimpse of the darkest evil known to humankind.
     
    The boy lay on a cold metal table in the city morgue. Outside the windowless chamber the night was dark and bitterly cold, but now the boy was bathed in warm bright light. The medical examiner measured him at forty inches long, thirty pounds. He looked so small.
    Bill Kelly prepared his inks, rollers, and clean white paper. As the police department’s principal fingerprinter, he was one of death’s numberless attendants. He was trained to stoically touch the cool flesh of the dead, but this boy looked just like the fingerprinter’s four-year-old son. His little feet fit into Kelly’s palm. The fingerprinter bowed his head and quietly asked the Blessed Mother for strength and guidance.
    The head of the Philadelphia police identification unit, Kelly was twenty-nine years old, a tall Irishman and devout Roman Catholic with shining blue eyes that reflected compassion rather than mirth. The fingerprinter was a devoutly religious man who believed children were a gift from God. He was a father of two with a third on the way; he and Ruth Ann dreamed of having as many as the Almighty would provide. To feed the extra mouths he was picking up work as a wedding photographer, a joyful interlude