The Skin Gods Read Online Free PDF Page B

being attacked in an alleyway behind an abandoned movie theater in South Philadelphia. Byrne and Jimmy were eating dinner a block away and took the call. By the time they reached the scene, the alley was empty, but a blood trail led them inside.
     
     
When Byrne and Jimmy entered the theater, they found Gracie on the stage, alone. She had been brutally beaten. Byrne would never forget the tableau— Gracie’s limp form on the stage in that frigid theater, steam rising from her body, her life force departing. While the EMS rescue was on the way, Byrne frantically tried to give her CPR. She had breathed once, a slight exhalation of air that had gone into his lungs, the existence leaving her body, entering his. Then, with a slight shudder, she died in his arms. Marygrace Devlin lived nineteen years, two months, and three days.
     
     
The Crime Scene Unit found a fingerprint on the scene. It belonged to Julian Matisse. With a dozen detectives on the case, and more than a little intimidation of the low-life crowd with whom Julian Matisse consorted, they found Matisse huddling in a closet in a burned-out row house on Jefferson Street, where they also found a glove covered in Gracie Devlin’s blood. Byrne had to be restrained.
     
     
Matisse was tried and convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in the state penitentiary at Greene County.
     
     
After Gracie’s murder, Byrne walked around for many months with the belief that Gracie’s breath was still inside him, that her strength impelled him to do his job. For a long time, he felt as if it were the only clean part of him, the only piece of him that had not been sullied by the city.
     
     
Now Matisse was out, walking the streets, his face to the sun. The thought made Kevin Byrne sick. He dialed Paul DiCarlo’s number.
     
     
“DiCarlo.”
     
     
“Tell me I heard your message wrong.”
     
     
“Wish I could, Kevin.”
     
     
“What happened?”
     
     
“You know about Phil Kessler?”
     
     
Phil Kessler had been a homicide detective for twenty-two years, a divisional detective ten years before that, a loose cannon who more than once had put a fellow detective in jeopardy with his inattention to detail or ignorance of procedure or general lack of nerve.
     
     
There were always a few guys in the Homicide Unit who were not very good around dead bodies, and they usually would do whatever they had to do to avoid going out to a crime scene. They made themselves available to go get warrants, round up and transport witnesses, work stakeouts. Kessler was just this sort of detective. He liked the idea of being a homicide detective, but the actual homicide itself freaked him out.
     
     
Byrne had worked only one job with Kessler as his primary partner, the case of a girl found in an abandoned gas station in North Philly. It turned out to be an overdose, not a homicide, and Byrne couldn’t get away from the man fast enough.
     
     
Kessler had retired a year ago. Byrne had heard that the man had late-stage pancreatic cancer.
     
     
“I heard he was sick,” Byrne said. “I don’t know much more than that.”
     
     
“Well, the word is he doesn’t have more than a few months,” DiCarlo said. “Maybe not even that long.”
     
     
As much as Byrne didn’t like Phil Kessler, he didn’t wish such a painful end on anyone. “I still don’t know what this has to do with Julian Matisse.”
     
     
“Kessler went to the DA and told her that he and Jimmy Purify planted the bloody glove on Matisse. He gave a sworn statement.”
     
     
The room began to spin. Byrne had to steady himself. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
     
     
“I’m only telling you what he said, Kevin.”
     
     
“And you believe him?”
     
     
“Well, number one, it’s not my case. Number two, the Homicide Unit here is looking into it. And three, no. I don’t believe him. Jimmy was the most stand-up cop I ever knew.”
     
     
“Then why does this have