Page 3 of Lion & Lamb

Unless you were in a helicopter.

Parks had been right about local TV news always keeping an ear on police radio. An overnight staffer chained to the assignment desk at the local NBC affiliate heard the wordMaseratiand had a cop friend run the license plate on a whim—maybe some local CEO or sports figure had been involved in an embarrassing traffic accident.

But when the Maserati’s owner’s name popped up, the staffer knocked over his Diet Coke in his scramble to get to the assignment editor.

That station’s news chopper was kept at Penn’s Landing, which was thirty minutes from any location in the city. The art museum was so close, however, that the chopper was circling overhead within five minutes. A minute after it arrived, the station was interrupting the local broadcast to go live with footage from the air.

Until they had official word from the Philly police brass—that meant a captain or higher—the station couldn’t confirm exactly who was in the powder-blue Maserati.

But the word was already out, and distraught fans on the street knew the truth.

Philadelphia would never be the same.

Four

1:02 a.m.

HOMICIDE DETECTIVEMickey Bernstein, forty-three, was the son of a Philly PD homicide legend, Arnold “Arnie” Bernstein.

Dad was famous for working the city’s most violent cases and resolving them with lightning speed, usually thanks to his hunches and gut feelings. He nailed gangsters (the guys who blew up Leo “Chicken Man” Caranchi) and serial killers (coed slayer Herman “the Guru” Bludhorn). Every administration since the early 1960s loved Arnie—he got results. Nobody questioned him. Ever.

Arnie’s only son operated in much the same way—except Mickey had a degree from UPenn under his belt and extensive forensic training to back up his hunches, so he got even more respect than his famous father.

What was not to love? He was a street-smart cop with an Ivy League degree who knew how to talk to TV and print journalists.Philadelphiamagazine had run a fawning profile on him a few years back, and the cover still hung in his parents’ retirement home in Margate, Florida.

If you were doing a true-crime doc about something that happened in Philly and youdidn’tcheck in with Mickey Bernstein, you were just not doing your job.

So when Mickey climbed out of his glossy black Audi A3, murmurs rippled through the crowd, and TV reporters started fighting their way to him. Mickey pushed past them and made a beeline for the crime scene.

The detective was easily identifiable—six foot three with the kind of handsome, chiseled face that you see on coins. The looks, people assumed, came from his mother, a statuesque Atlantic City showgirl back in the day. (Arnie was many things, but attractive wasn’t one of them.) In a city starved for celebrities, Mickey Bernstein would probably have been a star even if he weren’t police royalty.

Parks saw the detective approaching and hurried over to meet him. The sooner she could put this scene in Bernstein’s hands, the better.

“Well, this isn’t how I imagined spending my Sunday morning,” Bernstein said with a sly smile. “Are you the one who caught this?”

“Yeah, me and Sheplavy. He’s my partner.”

Bernstein assessed him in about two seconds. “Rookie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You made the ID?”

“My partner recognized him right away.”

Bernstein raised an eyebrow. “And you didn’t?”

“Not really a sports fan.”

“Heresy, Officer Parks!” Bernstein exclaimed with fake outrage, clutching his chest. “How can you call yourself a Philadelphian?”

Ordinarily this kind of comment out of a detective’s mouth would have rubbed Parks the wrong way. And throughout the brief conversation, most of his attention was on the scene. But something about Bernstein’s delivery—that boyish smile and deadpan sarcasm—made it okay.

The detective crouched down by the corpse as if he were about to have a little chat with him.So what happened here, buddy? Looks like somebody punched your ticket real good.“Something’s missing, Parks.”

“What’s that, Detective?”

“Anyone else come near this crime scene after you arrived?” Only now did Mickey Bernstein give Parks his full attention. He studied her face for tells. His eyes were ice blue and didn’t miss a thing.

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