Angel of Death [Paperback]

Unlike New York City, downtown Philadelphia slept after three a.m. All was quiet around the area of 8th and Race Streets. The Chinatown stores and restaurants were closed for the night, but would soon be awakened to the early morning sounds of merchants selling their wares. On Delaware Avenue the dance clubs were shutting down, cutting the lights that had earlier bathed the street in a wash of throbbing, pulsating neon. The masses of weekend merrymakers would be going home, some alone and some with a new friend. Some who had too much to drink would not be coming home at all. Manhole covers and steam vents spewed noxious clouds of heat from below. Homeless people huddled around them in the cold night air, trying to keep the November chill off their broken bodies. Some drank. Some were high from the drug of their choice. Some slept at the risk of never waking up. A few blocks away, the only lights that could be seen were coming from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, connecting Philadelphia to Camden, New Jersey. On the first floor of Police Headquarters, or the Roundhouse, as it was commonly called, Detective B. Angelo worked through the night. The Homicide unit, tucked away in the corner of the building in room 104, operated twenty-four-seven. Detective Angelo sat at her desk with a mountain of paperwork stacked high upon it. Anyone passing by may have thought her a very disorganized individual-far from it. Detective Angelo, also known as Bee, BA, or Bad Ass, for no one knew her first name, was the most organized and capable detective in the unit. Like a Germantown pit bull, once she sank her teeth into a case, she did not let it go.