“Okay, I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t drag you in and out of every exhibit, but there is one I want to see that I read about in the paper. It’s at the Old City Art Gallery.”

“I don’t think so.”

She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to face her. Before he knew it, he was once again lost in her eyes.

“If you’re too embarrassed to be seen with me…”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Good. I’ll meet you outside on the corner of Eighth and Race at five o’clock,” she said.

Coletti opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him by placing a finger against his lips.

“I promise you’ll like the exhibit,” she said, her tone low and convincing. “It’s called Confessions.”

Chapter 2

Sergeant Sandy Jackson was on her way to spend the morning as she’d often done in recent weeks—studying at the diner at Seventeenth and Chancellor, just blocks from where she used to walk a beat.

She liked to go to the diner before reporting for her three-thirty shift, because being there spurred memories that made her study harder.

For her first two years on the force, Jackson had spent nearly every warm-weather sunrise conducting a tragic street opera between the old money in nearby Rittenhouse Square and the homeless who languished in the shadows of wealth.

The first act always began with a predawn call from a doorman near the park, whose fountain and copper statues punctuated Center City’s most exclusive neighborhood. The final act frequently began with crass male supervisors sending Jackson and her female partner to investigate.

The calls most often involved homeless men bathing in the fountain or drug-addicted prostitutes turning tricks on the benches. Having been admonished about leaving pornographic pictures in plain view of their female coworkers, the frat-boy complement of the ninth police district decided that sending women to roust naked men was the next best thing.

Such harassment forced Jackson’s partner to take a stress-related medical leave, but it pushed Jackson to succeed. In just her fifth year on the force, she’d already passed the corporal’s and sergeant’s exams with the highest grades in the department. As a result, she’d been promoted to shift supervisor. Her radio moniker was 9A. She no longer took orders from men. It was she who decided what happened on the street.

In two weeks, she’d be taking the lieutenant’s exam, and just as she’d done prior to the other two exams, she engaged in a ritual that served to keep the memories fresh. She walked the concrete path that wound through the grassy park and stopped at the fountain that she’d long ago rid of the homeless. Then she walked to the diner where her favorite waitress knew what she wanted.