Matt Payne turned off Seventh Street into the parking lot behind the Roundhouse at the wheel of an almost new Plymouth Fury. Forty-five minutes before, he had picked it up at the Radio garage, and it was equipped with the full complement of radios prescribed for Special Operations by Staff Inspector Peter Wohl.
He knew the radio worked, because he had tried it.
"W-William Two Oh Nine," he had called on the Highway Band. "Out of service at Colosimo's Gun Store in the nine-hundred block of Spring Garden."
And Radio had called back, "W-William Two Oh Nine, is that the ninehundred block on Spring Garden?"
The Radio Dispatcher was Mrs. Catherine Wosniski, a plump, grayhaired lady of sixty-two who had been, it was said, a dispatcher since Police Dispatch had been a couple of guys blowing whistles from atop City Hall, long before Marconi had even thought of radio.
Mrs. Wosniski had been around long enough to know, for example, that:
Special units-and Special Operations was certainly a Special Unit-did not have to report themselves out of service as did the RPCs in the Districts. The whole idea of reporting out of (or back in) service was to keep the dispatchers aware of what cars were or were not available to be sent somewhere by the dispatchers. Dispatchers did not dispatch special unit vehicles.
Catherine Wosniski also knew about Colosimo's Gun Store. It was where three out of four cops in Philadelphia, maybe more, bought their guns. And she also knew that many of them stopped by Colosimo's to shop on a personal basis when they had been officially sent to the Roundhouse; that they shopped there, so to speak, on company time, almost invariably "forgetting" to call Police Radio to report themselves out of service.
So what she had here was a car that was not required to report itself out of service doing just that, and at a location where cars rarely reported themselves out of service, because supervisors, who also had radios, frowned on officers shopping on company time.
Although Mrs. Catherine Wosniski was a devout and lifelong member of the Roman Catholic Church, she was also conversant with certain phrases used by those of the Hebraic persuasion: What she thought was, there's something not kosher here.
"W-William Two Oh Nine," she radioed back. "Do you want numbers on this assignment?"
What she was asking was whether the officer calling wanted the District Control Number for whatever incident was occurring at Colosimo's Gun Store that he had elected to handle. A District Control Number is required for every incident of police involvement.
Officer Matthew Payne had no idea at all what she was talking about.
"W-William Two Oh Nine. No, thank you, ma'am, I don't need any numbers."
It had been at least two years since anyone had said thank you to Catherine Wosniski over the Police Radio; she could never remember anyone who had ever called her 'ma'am' over the air.
"W-William Two Oh Nine," she radioed, a touch of concern in her voice, "is everything all right at that location?"
"W-William Two Oh Nine," Officer Payne replied, "everything's fine here. I'm just going inside to buy a gun."
There was a pause before Mrs. Wosniski replied. Then, very slowly, she radioed, "Ooooooo-kaaaaaay, W-Two Oh Nine."
Everyone on this band thus knew that Mrs. Wosniski knew that she was dealing with an incredible dummy who hadn't the foggiest idea how to cover his tracks when he was taking care of personal business.
Blissfully unaware of the meaning of his exchange with Police Radio, and actually complimenting himself on the professional way he had handled the situation, Matt Payne got out of the car and went into Colosimo's Gun Store.
Thirty minutes after that, after equipping himself with a Smith amp; Wesson Model 37 Chief's Special Airweight J-Frame.38 Special caliber revolver and an ankle holster for it, he had called Radio again and reported W-William Two Oh Nine back in service.
Getting the pistol had been far more complicated than he had imagined. He had-naively, he now understood-assumed that since he was now a sworn Police Officer, and equipped with a badge and a photo identification card to prove it, buying a revolver would be no more difficult than buying a pair of shoes.
But that hadn't been the case. First there had been a long federal government form to fill out, on which he had to swear on penalty of perjury, the punishments for which were spelled out to be a $10,000 fine and ten years imprisonment, that he was not a felon, a drunk, or a drug addict; and that neither was he under psychiatric care or under any kind of an indictment. And when that was complete, the salesman took his photo identification to a telephone and called the Police Department to verify that there was indeed a Police Officer named Matthew Payne on their rolls.
But finally the pistol was his. He carried it out to the car and, with more trouble than he thought it would be, managed to fasten the ankle holster to his right ankle. Then, sitting in the car, he had gone through some actually painful contortions to take off his jacket and his shoulder holster.
He took the revolver from the holster, opened the cylinder, and dumped the six shiny, somehow menacing, cartridges into his hand. He loaded five of them, all it held, into theUndercover revolver's cylinder and put it back into the ankle holster. He slipped the leftover cartridge into his trousers pocket.
When he tried to put the service revolver and the shoulder holster in the glove compartment, it was full of shortwave radio chassis. He finally managed to shove it all under the passenger-side seat.
The ankle holster, as he drove to the Roundhouse, had felt both strange and precariously mounted, raising the very real possibility that he didn't have it on right.
As he looked for a parking place, other doubts rose in his mind. He had never been inside the Roundhouse; the closest he'd come was waiting outside while Inspector Wohl had gone inside to get Detectives Washington and Harris.
He had no idea where to go inside to gain access to a Xerox machine. And there was, he thought, a very good possibility that as he walked down a corridor somewhere, the ankle holster would come loose and his new pistol would go sliding down the corridor before the eyes of fifty Police Officers, most of them Sergeants or better.
He found a parking place, pulled the Fury into it, and almost immediately backed out and left the Roundhouse parking lot. He knew where there was a Xerox machine, and where to park the car to get to it. He picked up the microphone.
"W-William Two Oh Nine," he reported, "out of service at Twelfth and Market."
"Why hello, Matt," Mrs. Irene Craig, executive secretary to the senior partners of Mawson, Payne, Stockton, McAdoo amp; Lester, said. " How are you?"
"Just fine, Mrs. Craig," Matt said. "And yourself?"
His confidence in the ankle holster had been restored. He had walked, at first very carefully, and then with growing confidence through the parking building to the elevator, and it had not fallen off.
"What can I do for you?"
"I need to use the Xerox machine," he said.
"Sure," she said. "It's in there. Do you know how to use it?"
"I think so," he said.
"Come on," she said. "I'll show you."
When the fifth sheet was coming out of the Xerox machine, she turned to him.
"What in the world is this?"
"It's the investigation reports of the Northwest Philadelphia rapes," Matt said.
"What are you doing with them?" she asked. "Or can't I ask?"
"I'm working on them," Matt said, and then the lie became uncomfortable. "My boss told me to get them Xeroxed."
"Doesn't the Police Department have a Xerox machine?"
"Ours doesn't work," Matt said. "So they sent me down to the Roundhouse to have it done. And since I'd never been in there, I figured it would be easier to come in here."
"We'll send the city a bill." She laughed. And then, after a moment, she asked, "Is that what they have you doing? Administration?"
"Sort of."
"I didn't think, with your education, that they'd put you in a prowl car to hand out speeding tickets."
"What they would like to have done was put me in a paddy wagon, excuse me, EPW, but Denny Coughlin has put his two cents in on my behalf."
"You don't sound very happy about that," she said. Irene Craig had known Matthew Payne virtually all of his life, liked him very much, and shared his father's opinion that Matt's becoming a cop ranked high on the list of Dumb Ideas of All Time.
"Ambivalent," he said, as he started to stack the Xeroxed pages. "On one hand, I am, at least theoretically, opposed to the idea of special treatment. On the other hand-proving, I suppose, that I am not nearly as noble as I like to think I am-I like what I'm doing."
"Which is?"
"I'm the gofer for a very nice guy, and a very sharp cop, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl."
"He's the one who had his picture in the paper? The one they put in charge of this new-"
"Special Operations," Matt filled in.
"That sounds interesting."
"It's fascinating."
"I'm glad for you," she said.
Not really, she thought. I would be a lot happier if he was miserable as a cop; then maybe he 'd come to his senses and quit. But at least Denny Coughlin is watching out for him; that's something.
"I like it," Matt said. "So much I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"Stick around," she said, laughing. "It will. It always does."
"Thanks a lot," Matt said, chuckling.
"You want to see your father?"
"No," he said, and when he saw the look on her face, quickly added, " I've got to get back. He's probably busy; and I had breakfast with him this morning."
"Well, I'll tell him you were in."
"If you think you have to."
"You're a scamp," she said. "Okay. I won't tell him. How's the apartment?"
"I can't get used to the quiet," he said.
He had, two weeks before, moved into an attic apartment in a refurbished pre-Civil War building on Rittenhouse Square. His previous legal residence had been a fraternity house on Walnut Street near the University of Pennsylvania campus. Irene Craig knew that he knew his father had "found" the apartment for him, in a building owned by Rittenhouse Properties, Inc., the lower three floors of which were on long-term lease to the Delaware Valley Cancer Society. She wondered if he knew that eighty percent of the stock of Rittenhouse Properties, Inc., was owned by Brewster Cortland Payne II. Now that she thought of it, she decided he didn't.
"Maybe what you need is the patter of little feet to break the quiet," Irene Craig said.
"Don't eventhink things like that!" Matt protested.
When the Xerox machine finally finished, Irene Craig gave him thick rubber bands to bind the four copies together, and then, impulsively, kissed him on the cheek.
"Take care of yourself, sport," she said.
When Matt returned to the Highway Patrol building at Bustleton and Bowler, he stopped first at his car, double-parking the Fury to do so, and put his service revolver and shoulder holster under the driver's seat of his Porsche. Then he drove the Fury into the parking lot.
He gave the keys to Sergeant Frizell, who apparently had had a word with Inspector Wohl about Officer Payne's place in the pecking order of Special Operations.
Frizell handed him a cardboard box full of multipart forms.
"The Inspector said do as many of these as you can today," Frizell sad. "There's a typewriter on a desk in there."
"What are they?" Matt asked.
"The requisition and transfer forms for the cars, and for the extra radios," Frizell explained. "On top is one already filled out; just fill out the others the same way."
They were, Matt soon saw, the "paperwork" without which Good Old Ernie in the radio garage had been, at first, unwilling to do any work. Plus the paperwork for the cars themselves, the ones they had already taken from the motor pool, and blank forms, with the specific data for the particular car to be later filled in, for cars yet to be drawn, as they were actually taken from the motor pool.
The only word to describe the typewriter was "wretched." It was an ancient Underwood. The keys stuck. The platen was so worn that the keys made deep indentations in, or actually punched through, the upper layers of paper and carbon, and whatever the mechanism that controlled the paper feeding was called, that was so worn that Matt had to manually align each line as he typed.
He completed two forms and decided the situation was absurd. He looked at his watch. It was quarter to five. He went into the other room.
"Sergeant," he said. "I think I know where I can get a better typewriter. Would it be all right if I left now and did these forms there?"
"You mean, at home?"
"Yes, sir."
"I don't give a damn where you type them, Payne, just that they get typed."
"Good night, then."
"Yeah."
Matt took the carton of blank forms and carried it to the Porsche. At this time of day, he decided, he would do better going over to 1-95 and taking that downtown, rather than going down Roosevelt Boulevard to North Broad Street. He could, he decided, make better time on 1-95. There was not much fun driving a car capable of speeds well over one hundred if you couldn't go any faster than thirty-five.
Two miles down 1-95, he glanced in the mirror to see if it was clear to pass a U-Haul van, towing a trailer. It was not. There was a car in the lane beside him. It was painted blue-and-white, and there was a chrome-plated device on its roof containing flashing lights. They were flashing.
He dropped his eyes to the speedometer and saw that he was exceeding the speed limit by fifteen miles per hour. The police car, aHighway Patrol car, he realized with horror, pulled abreast of him, and the Highway Patrolman in the passenger seat gestured with his finger for Matt to pull to the side of the superhighway.
"Oh, Jesus!" Matt muttered, as he looked in the mirror and turned on his signal.
He had a flash of insight, of wisdom.
He broke the law. He would take his medicine. He would not mention that he was a fellow Police Officer, in the faint hope that he could beat the ticket. That way, there was a chance that it would not come to Staff Inspector Wohl's attention that on his very first day on the job, he had been arrested for racing down 1-95 somewhere between eighty and eighty-five miles per hour.
He stopped and went into the glove compartment for the vehicle registration certificate. The glove compartment was absolutely empty. Matt had a sudden, very clear, mental image of the vehicle registration. It, together with the bill of sale and the title and the other paperwork, was in the upper right-hand drawer of the chest of drawers in his room in the house in Wallingford.
He glanced in the mirror and saw that both Highway Patrolmen had gotten out of the car and were approaching his. He hurriedly dug his wallet from his trousers and got out of the car.
First one, and then three more cars in the outer lane flashed past him, so close and so fast that he was genuinely frightened. He walked to the back of the car and extended his driver's license to one of the Highway Patrolmen.
"I don't seem to have the registration with me," Matt said.
"You were going at least eighty," the patrolman said. "You had it up to eighty-five."
"Guilty," Matt said, wanly.
"You mind if we examine the interior of your car, sir?" the other Highway Patrolman said. Matt turned his head to look at him; he was at the passenger-side window, looking inside.
"No, not at all," Matt said, obligingly. "Help yourself."
He turned to face the Highway Patrolman who had his driver's license.
"My registration is at home," Matt said.
"This your address, 3906 Walnut?"
"No, sir," Matt said. "Actually, I just moved. I now live on Rittenhouse Square."
"Look what I got!" the other Highway Patrolman said.
Matt turned to look. The other Highway Patrolman was holding Matt's service revolver and his shoulder holster in his hand.
He didn't get a really good look. He felt himself being suddenly spun around, and felt his feet being kicked out from under him, and then a strong shove against his back. Just in time, he managed to get his hands out in front of him, so that he didn't fall, face first, against the Porsche.
"Don'tmove!" the Highway Patrolman behind him said.
He felt hands moving over his body, around his chest, his waist, between his legs, and then down first one leg and then the other.
"He's got another one!" the Highway Patrolman said, pulling Matt's right trousers leg up, and then jerking the Chief's Special from the ankle holster.
"I can explain this," Matt said.
"Good," the Highway Patrolman said.
Matt felt himself being jerked around again. A hand found his belt and pulled him erect. A handcuff went around his right wrist, and then his right arm was pulled behind him. His left arm was pulled behind him, and he felt the other half of the handcuff snapping in place. Then he was spun around.
"Have you a permit to carried concealed weapons, sir?" the Highway Patrolman said.
"I'm a policeman," Matt said.
"This one's brand new," the second Highway Patrolman said, shaking the cartridges from theUndercover revolver into his palm.
"I just bought it today," Matt said.
"You were saying you're a policeman?" the Highway Patrolman asked.
"That's right," Matt said.
"Where do you work? Who's your Lieutenant?"
"Special Operations," Matt said. "I work for Inspector Wohl."
"Where's that?" the Highway Patrolman asked, just a faint hint of self-doubt creeping into his voice.
"Bustleton and Bowler," Matt said.
"Where's your ID?"
"In my jacket pocket," Matt said.
The Highway Patrolman dipped into the pocket and found the ID.
"Jesus!" he said, then, "Turn around."
Matt felt his wrists being freed.
"What's this?" the second Highway Patrolman said.
"He's a cop," the first one said. "He says he works for Inspector Wohl."
"Why didn't you show us this when we pulled up beside you?" the second asked, more confused than angry.
Matt shrugged helplessly.
"You find anything wrong with the way we handled this?" the first Highway Patrolman asked.
"Excuse me?" Matt asked, confused.
"We stopped an eighty-five-mile-an-hour speeder, and found a weapon concealed under his seat. We asked permission to examine the car. We took necessary and reasonable precautions by restraining a man we found in possession of two concealable firearms. Anything wrong with that?"
Matt shrugged helplessly.
"Isn't that what this is all about? You were checking on us?" Matt suddenly understood.
"What this is all about is that this is my first day on the job," he said. "And I decided I'd rather pay the ticket than have Inspector Wohl find out about it."
They both looked at him. And both of their faces, by raised eyebrows, registered disbelief.
And then the taller of them, the one who had found the revolver under the seat, laughed, and the other joined in.
"Jesus H. Christ!" he said.
The taller Highway Patrolman, shaking his head and smiling with what Matt perceived to be utter contempt, handed him the Chief's Special and then the cartridges for it. The shorter one looped the shoulder holster harness around Matt's neck. Then, chuckling, they walked back to their car and got in.
By the time Matt got back in his car, they had driven off.
Officer Matthew Payne drove the rest of the way to his apartment more or less scrupulously obeying the speed limit.
It was after the change of watches when Peter Wohl returned to his office. The day-watch Sergeants had gone home; an unfamiliar face of a Highway Patrol Sergeant was behind the desk.
"I'm Peter Wohl," Peter said, walking to the desk with his hand extended.
"Yes, sir, Inspector," the Sergeant said, smiling. "I know who you are. We went through Wheel School together."
Wohl still didn't remember him, and it showed on his face.
"I had hair then," the Sergeant said, "and I was a lot trimmer. Jack Kelvin."
"Oh, hell, sure," Wohl said. "I'm sorry, Jack. I should have remembered you."
"You made a big impression on me back then."
"Good or bad?" Wohl asked.
"At the time I thought it was treason," Kelvin said, smiling. "You spilled your wheel, and I went to help you pick it up, and you said, ' Anybody who rides one of these and likes it is out of his fucking mind.' "
"I said that?"
"Yes, you did," Kelvin said, chuckling, "and you meant it."
"Well, under the circumstances, I'd appreciate it if you didn't go around telling that story."
"Like I said, that was a long time ago, and you'll notice that I am now riding a desk myself. You don't spill many desks."
"I've found that you can get in more trouble riding a desk than you can a wheel," Wohl said. "Did anything turn up on the abduction?"
"No, sir," Kelvin said. "Chief Coughlin called a couple of minutes ago and asked the same thing."
"Did he want me to call him back?"
"No, sir, he didn't. He asked that you call him in the morning."
"Anything else?"
"Sergeant Frizell said to tell you that your driver took the vehicle and radio requisition forms home to fill out," Kelvin said. When Wohl looked at him curiously, Kelvin explained. "Frizell said he didn't like the typewriter here."
Wohl nodded. He understood about the typewriters. It was generally agreed that the only decent typewriters in the Police Department were in the offices of Inspectors,full Inspectors, and up.
"He's a nice kid," Wohl said. "Just out of the Academy. He is-was?how do you say this? Dutch Moffitt was his uncle."
"Oh," Kelvin said. "I heard that Chief Coughlin sent him over, but I didn't get the connections."
"Chief Coughlin also sent over the two Narcotics plain-clothesmen who found Gerald Vincent Gallagher," Wohl said. "Until I decide what to do with Payne, I'm going to have him follow them around, and make himself useful in here. He's not really my driver."
"You're entitled to a driver," Kelvin said. "Hell, Captain Moffitt had a driver. It may not have been authorized, but no one said anything to him about it."
"Did Captain Sabara? Have a driver, I mean?"
"No, sir," Kelvin said. "After Captain Moffitt was killed, and Sabara took over, he drove himself."
"Every cop driving a supervisor around is a cop that could be on the streets," Wohl said. "Matt Payne is nowhere near ready to go on the streets."
Kelvin nodded his understanding.
"Jason Washington called. Homicide detective? You know him?"
"Special Operations," Wohl corrected him. "He transferred in today."
"He didn't mention that," Kelvin said. "He called in and asked that you get in touch when you have time to talk to him."
"Where is he?"
"He said he was having dinner in the Old Ale House."
"Call him, please, Jack, and tell him that when he finishes his dinner, I'll be here for the next hour or so."
"Yes, sir," Kelvin said. "Captain Sabara left word that he's going to work the First and Second District roll calls for volunteers, and then go home. Captain Pekach left word that he's going to have dinner and then ride around, and that he'll more than likely be in here sometime tonight."
Wohl nodded. "Payne was supposed to have Xeroxed some stuff for me. You know anything about it?"
"Yes, sir. I left it on your desk. I'd love to know where he found that Xerox machine. The copies are beautiful."
"Knowing Payne, he probably waltzed into the Commissioner's office and used his," Wohl said. He put out his hand again. "It's good to see you, Jack," he said. "And especially behind that desk."
"I'm glad to see you behind your desk, too, Inspector."
He meant that, Wohl decided, flattered. It wasn't just polishing the apple.
Wohl went into his office and examined the Xeroxed materials. Kelvin was right, he thought, the copies were beautiful, like those in the Xerox ads on television, not like those to be expected from machines in the Police Department.
He took the original file back out to Sergeant Kelvin and told him to have a Highway Patrol car run it back to Northwest Detectives, and to make sure that it wound up in Lieutenant Spanner's hands, not just dumped on the desk man's desk in the squad room.
Then he sat down and took one of the Xerox copies and started, very carefully, to read through it again.
Fifteen minutes later, he sensed movement and looked up. Jason Washington was at the office door, asking with a gesture of his hand and a raised eyebrow if it was all right for him to come in.
Wohl gestured that it was. Washington did so and then closed the door behind him.
"How was dinner?" Wohl asked.
"All I had was a salad," Washington said. "I have to watch my weight."
"What's on your mind, Jason?"
"Is that the Xerox you said you would get me?"
Wohl nodded, and made a gesture toward it.
Washington took one of the files, then settled himself in an armchair.
"I saw the Flannery girl," he said.
"How did that go?"
"Not very well, as a matter of fact," Washington said. "She wasn't what you could call anxious to talk about it again. Not to anyone, but especially not to a man, and maybe particularly to a black man."
"But?"
"And,"Washington said, "I told you Hemmings was a good cop. It was a waste of time. I didn't get anything out of her that he didn't. And then I talked to him. He's pissed, Peter, and I can't say I blame him. Putting me on this job was the same as telling him either that you didn't think he had done a good job, or that he was capable of doing one."
"That's not true, and I'm sorry he feels that way."
"How would it look to you, if you were in his shoes?" Washington asked reasonably.
"When I was a new sergeant in Homicide, Jason," Wohl replied, "Matt Lowenstein took me off a job because I wasn't getting anywhere with it. The wife in Roxborough who ran herself over with her own car. He put the best man he had on the job, a guy named Washington."
"I told Hemmings that story," Washington said. "I don't think it helped much."
After a moment, Wohl said, "Thank you, Jason."
Washington ignored that.
"You read that file?"
"I was just about finished reading it for the third time."
"The one time I read it," Washington said, "I thought I saw a pattern. Our doer is getting bolder and bolder. You see that, something like that, too?"
"Yes, I did."
"If we get the abducted woman back, alive, I'll be surprised."
"Why?"
"That didn't occur to you?" Washington asked.
"Yes, it did, but I want to see if we reached the same conclusion for the same reasons."
"The reason we don't have a lead, not a damned lead, on this guy is because we don't have a good description on him, or his van. And the reason we don't is that, until the Flannery thing, he wasn't with the victims more than fifteen, twenty minutes, and he did what he did where he found them. In the Flannery job, he put her in his van, but in such a way that it didn't give us any better picture of him than we had before. He never took that mask off-by the way, it's not a Lone Ranger-type mask; the Lone Ranger wore one that just covered his eyes."
"I picked up on that," Wohl said.
"That was the one little mistake that Dick Hemmings made, and when I mentioned it to him, he admitted it right away; said that he'd picked up on that, too, and doesn't know why he put it in the report the way he did."
"Go on, Jason."
"In the Flannery job, he put her in his van and drove away with her. I think that convinced him he can take his victims away, and keep them longer. That's what he's really after, I think, having them in his power. That's more important to him, I think, than the sexual gratification he's getting; there's been no incident of him reaching orgasm except by masturbation."
"I agree," Wohl said, "that he's after the domination; the humiliation is part of that."
"So he now knows he can get away with taking the women away from their homes; he proved that by taking the Flannery woman to Forbidden Drive. And since that was so much fun, he took the next victim away, too. Maybe to his house, maybe someplace else, the country, maybe."
"And the longer he keeps them, the greater the possibility… that his mask will fall off, or something…"
"Or that the victim will look around and see things that would help us to find where she's been taken," Washington continued. "And this guy is smart, Peter. It is going to occur to him sooner or later, if it hasn't already, that what he's got on his hands is someone who can lead the cops to him; and that will mean the end of his fun."
Not dramatically, but matter-of-factly, Jason Washington drew his index finger across his throat in a cutting motion.
"And he might find that's even more fun than running around in his birthday suit, wearing a mask, and waving his dong at them," Washington added.
"That's the way I see it," Wohl said. "That's why I wanted you over here, working on it. I want to catch this guy before that happens."
"Dick Hemmings, if you'd have asked him, could have told you the same thing."
"It's done, Jason, you're here. So tell me what we should be doing next."
"Tony Harris has come up with a long list of minor sexual offenders," Washington said. "If I were you, Peter, I'd get him all the help he needs to ring doorbells."
"I don't know where I can get anybody," Wohl said, thinking aloud.
"You better figure out where," Washington said. "That's all we've got right now. Tony's been trying to get a match, in Harrisburg, between the names he's got and people who own any kind of a van. So far, zilch."
"Sabara's got some people coming in," Peter said. "Probably some of them will be here in the morning. I'll put them on it. And maybe I could get some help from Northwest Detectives, maybe even tonight."
"I wouldn't count on that," Washington said. "I think they're glad you've taken this job away from them."
"I didn't take it away from them," Wohl flared. "It was given to me."
"Whatever you say."
"Jason, it's been suggested to me that we might find a psychiatric profile of the doer useful."
"Don't you think we have one?" Washington said, getting to his feet. "Whose suggestion was that? Denny Coughlin's? Or Czernick himself?"
Wohl didn't reply.
"I'm going home, It's been a long day."
"Good night, Jason," Wohl said. "Thanks."
"For what, Peter?" Washington said, and walked out of his office.
Wohl felt a pang of resentment that Washington was going home. So long as Elizabeth J. Woodham, white female, aged thirty-three, of 300 East Mermaid Lane in Roxborough, was missing and presumed to have been abducted by a known sexual offender, it seemed logical that they should be doing something to find her, to get her back alive.
And then he realized that was unfair. If Jason Washington could think of anything else that could be done, he would be doing it.
There was nothing to be done, except wait to see what happened.
And then Wohl thought of something, and reached for the telephone book.