Chapter One The dead girl sat inside the glass display case, a pale and delicate curio placed on a shelf by a madman. In life she had been beautiful, with fine blond hair and cobalt blue eyes. In death her eyes pleaded for benediction, for the cold symmetry of justice.  The last thing they had seen was a monster. Her tomb was a stifling basement in an abandoned building in the Badlands, a five- square- mile area of desolate terrain and destroyed lives in North Philadelphia, running approximately from Erie Avenue south to Girard, from Broad Street east to the river.  Her name was Caitlin Alice O'Riordan. On the day of her murder, the day her brief story came to a close, she was seventeen.  For Detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano of the Philadelphia Police Department's Hom i cide Unit, Caitlin's story was just beginning.  There are three divisions in Philly Homicide-- the Line Squad, which handles new cases; the Fugitive Squad; and the Special Investigations Unit, which handles, among other things, cold cases. To the detectives of SIU, all of whom were members of the Five Squad, an elite group of investigators handpicked by the captain based on their abilities, their closure rates, and their investigative skills, a cold case investigation represented a second chance to right a wrong, an ultimatum to the killers who arrogantly walked the streets of Philadelphia, a statement that said the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the City of Brotherly Love, were not done with them.  The Caitlin O'Riordan investigation was the first SIU case for Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano.  When the detectives arrived at the Eighth Street address there was no yellow tape ringing the property, no sector cars blocking traffic, none of the blue and white Crime Scene Unit vans, no officer guarding the entrance, crimescene log in hand. All this was long gone.  They had read the reports, seen the autopsy protocol, viewed the photographs and video. But they had not yet followed the path of the killer.  Both detectives believed that their investigation would truly begin the moment they stepped into the room where Caitlin O'Riordan had been found.  The building had been sealed four months earlier at the time of the initial investigation, the doors replaced and padlocked, the plywood over the windows secured with lag bolts. Originally a single- family row house, this corner building had been bought and sold many times. Its most recent incarnation was as a small grocery, a narrow, slipshod emporium hawking baby formula, chips, diapers, canned meats, magazines, lottery dreams. Its stock- in- trade, its lifeblood, had been the Holy Trinity of crack addiction: Chore Boy scouring pads, disposable plastic lighters, and individually packaged tea roses. The roses came in long, narrow glass tubes that, within a minute or two of leaving the store, became straight shooters, a fast and easy way to fire up a rock, the ashes from which were caught by the steel wool of the scouring pad. Every con ve nience store in the Badlands carried tea roses, which probably made this part of North Philly the most romantic place on earth. Hundreds of times a day someone bought a flower.  The bodega had closed more than three years earlier, and no tenant had moved in. The building's façade was still a Day- Glo green, with a strange sign painted over the front window:  open 24 hours. days 12 to 8 pm.  Jessica unlocked the padlock on the corrugated metal door, rolled it up. They stepped inside and were im Excerpted from Badlands: A Novel of Suspense by Richard Montanari All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.