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friend or Internet acquaintance or boyfriend in Philadelphia. The detectives also interviewed a seventeen- year- old Millersville boy named Jason Scott. Scott said that when Caitlin went missing, they were casually dating, stressing the word “casually.” He said Caitlin had been a lot more serious about the relationship than he was. He also told them that, at the time of Caitlin’s murder, he was in Arkansas, visiting his father. Detectives confirmed this, and the case went cold.
    As of August 2008 there were no suspects, no leads, and no new evidence. Jessica turned the last page of the file, thinking for the hundredth time in the past two days, Why had Caitlin O’Riordan come to Philadelphia? Was it simply the allure of the big city? And, more importantly, where had she been for those thirty days?
    At just after 11:00 am, Jessica’s phone rang. It was their boss, Sgt. Dwight Buchanan. Byrne had finished his sketches of the basement and was catching some air on the sidewalk. He came back inside. Jessica put her cell phone on speaker.
    “What’s up, Sarge?”
“We have a confession,” Buchanan said.
“For our job?”
“Yes.”
“What are you talking about? How? Who? ”
“We got a call on the Tip Line. The caller told the CIU officer he
    killed Caitlin O’Riordan, and he was ready to turn himself in.”
    The Tip Line was a relatively new initiative of the Criminal Intelligence Unit, a community response program that was part of a Philadelphia Police Department project called Join the Resistance. Its purpose was to provide citizens of Philadelphia with the opportunity to covertly partner with the police without fear of being exposed to the criminal element. Sometimes it was used as a confessional.
    “All due respect, Sarge, we get those all the time,” Jessica said. “Especially on a case like this.”
“This call was a little different.”
“How so?”
“Well, for one thing, he had knowledge of the case that was never released. He said there was a button missing from the victim’s jacket. Third from the bottom.”
Jessica picked up two photographs of the victim in situ. The button on Caitlin’s jacket—third from the bottom—was missing.
“Okay, it’s missing,” Jessica said. “But maybe he saw the crimescene photos, or knows someone who did. How do we know he has firsthand knowledge?”
“He sent us the button.”
Jessica glanced at her partner.
“We got it in the mail this morning,” Buchanan continued. “We sent it to the lab. They’re processing it now, but Tracy said it’s a slam dunk. It’s Caitlin’s button.”
Tracy McGovern was the deputy director of the forensic crime lab. Jessica and Byrne took a second to absorb this development.
“Who’s this guy?” Jessica asked.
“He gave his name as Jeremiah Crosley. We ran the name, but there was nothing in the system. He said we could pick him up at Second and Diamond.”
“What’s the address?”
“He didn’t give a street address. He said we would know the place by its red door.”
“Red door? What the hell does that mean?”
“I guess you’ll find out,” Buchanan said. “Call me when you get down there.”
    TWO
J
essica thought, August is the cruelest month.
T. S. Eliot believed the cruelest month was April, but he was never a homicide cop in Philly.
    In April there was still hope, you see. Flowers. Rain. Birds. The Phillies. Always the Phillies. Ten thousand losses and it was still the Phillies. April meant there was, to some extent, a future.
    In contrast, the only thing August had to offer was heat. Unrelenting, mind- scrambling, soul- destroying heat; the kind of wet, ugly heat that covered the city like a rotting tarpaulin, coating everything in sweat and stink and cruel and attitude. A fistfight in March was a murder in August.
    In her decade on the job—the first four in uniform, working the tough streets of the Third District—Jessica had always found August to be the worst month of the