"Quite the colorful headline, if a bit sensational," Washington replied. "I have put the arm out for Harris and Payne, Henry. They said they should be here any minute."
Quaire nodded as he sipped. "Good. We're going to need everything Tony and Matt have to put out this fire. And no doubt more. They're good, but this makes-what?-seven or eight unsolved pop-and-drops?"
While Tony Harris had a years-long history in Homicide, Matt Payne's tenure could be measured only in months. And if Quaire had had any say in it, Payne never would have gotten the job, certainly not ahead of three other sergeants who also wanted in and who Quaire felt were far more qualified.
It was customary for the Homicide chief to pick, or at the very least have veto power over, who got assigned to the unit. But Commissioner Mariana, looking for ways to encourage the best and brightest, had announced that the five officers with the highest scores on the promotion exams got the assignment of their choice in the department. And Matt Payne grabbed the brass ring by being not only in the top five scores, but number one on the list of those who'd earned promotion to sergeant. And Payne picked Homicide.
A less-than-excited Quaire had no say.
One thing Quaire worried about was how Payne would be received. He was only a five-year veteran and newly minted sergeant, and he was getting a supervisor position over guys who had served longer than five years in Homicide alone.
But when he brought that up to Lieutenant Jason Washington and Detective Tony Harris-among Homicide's most respected-they'd said that their experience with Matt Payne had been without problem. Both liked him and thought he was smart-"Smart enough to keep his eyes and ears open and learn how Homicide works," Washington said. And he had.
It didn't hurt, either, that he was well connected, starting with being the godson of Denny Coughlin, whom he was known to call "Uncle Denny."
Quaire did have absolute authority to choose which squad in the unit to assign Payne. And because Payne's score on the sergeant exam proved he was, as the commissioner would have put it, among the best and brightest, and because Harris and Washington already had worked with Payne, and clearly liked him, Quaire naturally put Payne in the squad led by Lieutenant Jason Washington.
"Here comes Coughlin now," Washington said, looking past Quaire.
Quaire turned and raised his china mug to acknowledge the first deputy police commissioner. Denny Coughlin, a ruddy-faced fifty-nine-year-old, had graduated from the Police Academy nearly forty years earlier. He was tall and heavyset, with a full mouth of teeth and full head of curly silver hair. He wore his usual well-tailored gray plaid double-breasted suit, but no tie.
Washington made the educated guess that Coughlin kept at least two extra neckties-and probably another suit-as backups in his big office on the third floor.
"Good morning, gentlemen," Coughlin said once he was in Washington's doorway. "Thank you for coming in."
"Good morning, sir," Washington and Quaire now said in unison.
"And good timing, Commissioner," Washington added as he nodded toward the far side of the office. "Here come Sergeant Payne and Detective Harris."
Both Matt and Tony wore the same clothing that they'd had on when they'd left Liberties Bar with Mickey O'Hara some six hours earlier. And with baggy eyes and five-o'clock beard shadows, both looked as if they'd just awakened from a very short sleep.
"Jesus, you two look like the walking dead," Coughlin said by way of greeting. "You especially look like hell, Matty."
"Just call me an overachiever, Uncle Denny," Payne replied dryly. "I was catching a nap in the car when the long arm of Lieutenant Washington reached out for us. After Tony and I left the scene in Old City, we went to check out a hunch. The dead guy, Reggie Jones, had a sort of to-do list in his coat pocket, and we wound up staking out his house in South Philly. Thought it was a long shot, and boy was it."
"And I thought," Coughlin said, his tone suddenly cold as his Irish temper flared, "that we all agreed you would stay the hell off the streets while all that Wyatt Earp of the Main Line business died, if you'll pardon my choice of words."
There had been a flurry of new stories-from print to TV to the Internet-after the Bulletin had run the photograph of the tuxedo-clad Payne holding his Colt.45 above the robber he'd shot in the parking lot of La Famiglia Ristorante. And then those were rehashed when the story broke about Payne's foot chase and shoot-out with the assassin who fled Temple University Hospital. The mayor, who wasn't displeased with Payne per se but was tired of constantly defending a good cop doing a good job, simply called Denny Coughlin and suggested Matt stay the hell out of sight-and stay out of the news.
And Coughlin had sent the order down the chain of command, after telling Matt himself.
Coughlin looked from Payne to Washington to Quaire. "Well?"
Quaire began, "I take-"
"It's my fault, sir," Detective Tony Harris interrupted. "I should have known better."
"The hell it is," Matt Payne said, looking at Tony. He turned to Coughlin and added, "I invited myself along. Me and Mickey O'Hara."
Coughlin's eyebrows went up. "What the hell was Mickey doing?"
"We were at Liberties," Payne said, "when the news came in about the third dead guy. You know you can't tell Mickey 'no.'"
"Nor, apparently, you," Coughlin said to Matt, his ruddy face turning redder by the second. "When I give an order, I damn well expect it to be kept."
"Yes, sir," Matt said, his voice tired, its resigned tone sounding like that of a schoolboy who'd just been dressed down by the headmaster. Which, a dozen years ago, he had been on more than one occasion.
"And you, Detective Harris," Coughlin said.
"Yes, sir?"
"Same applies."
"Yes, sir. Of course, sir."
Coughlin nodded and, with a more gentle voice, added, "I do commend you, Tony, being the low man on the totem pole here, for trying to take the bullet for everyone else, guilty or not."
Harris shrugged, making his rumpled navy blazer look even worse.
"I do feel responsible, sir. I've seen Matt day in and day out at his desk up to his eyeballs with mostly paperwork from the other pop-and-drops. I wanted him to see a fresh crime scene. That thought had occurred to me earlier last night, when the scene for the first two guys who were pop-and-dropped was being worked. But for whatever reason I didn't call him. Then, when the news came about the third one, and we were having drinks at Liberties, it just made sense for him to come along and see the scene. It's a helluva lot better than reading statements, sir."
Coughlin considered that a long moment. He looked between them, then back to Harris, and nodded. "From a homicide investigation standpoint, I do see your point."
Everyone in the room knew well that, among the many other assignments he'd held, then-Captain Coughlin had been the chief of the Homicide Unit, and Detective F. X. Hollaran had been his right-hand man even back then.
He looked at his wristwatch.
"Okay, Matty, you have ten minutes. Tell me what I need to know before going upstairs to face the wrath of the bosses."
Payne nodded.
"All of the dead," he began, looking at Coughlin, then the others, "have been adult males, both the earlier pop-and-drops and the three found last night. That's where that thread ends.
"Of the first five, all were shot at point-blank range in the head. The ballistics tests on the only two bullets recovered-every other round passed through their bodies-showed them to be 9 millimeter and.45 caliber. Three were black males, one a white male, and one a Hispanic male. And all were wanted on outstanding warrants, either for parole violation or for jumping bail, for sex crimes committed on kids or women. They got popped somewhere other than where they were dropped."
"How do you know that for sure?" Frank Hollaran asked. "Is that an assumption due to lack of evidence?"
Payne shook his head and said, "Because they were all dropped, one per week beginning back on September sixteenth, at the nearest police district HQ. Correction. At a police district HQ. 'Nearest' is speculative on my part. Reason being: Why would you drive around with a dead body farther than necessary?"
There were chuckles.
"Stranger things have occurred, Matthew," Jason Washington offered.
Payne nodded. "I know. Anyway, the other consistency among these first five pop-and-drops is that they each had their Wanted poster attached to them."
"Their Wanted poster?" Coughlin repeated.
"Yes, sir. Like the ones we post on the police department website? Nice color mug shot with their full name and aliases, last known address, crimes committed, et cetera."
Coughlin nodded, motioning with his hand for Matt to go on.
Payne said: "Two of the five-both rapists-were printed from our Special Victims Unit page on the Internet. The rest were from the listing of Megan's Law fugitives on O'Hara's CrimeFreePhilly-dot-com."
"That's Mickey's?" Coughlin asked, his face brightening.
"That's where he went after he quit the Bulletin," Payne said.
"It's had some growing pains," Coughlin said, "but what I've seen I've mostly liked. Anyway, continue."
For a moment, Payne was impressed that Coughlin paid attention to the Internet. But then he realized it shouldn't have come as such a surprise. Coughlin was smart as hell, and while he could be old school, he was also always embracing whatever might aid him in his duties.
With maybe one exception: Denny Coughlin had told Matt he wasn't crazy about carrying the new department-issued Glock 17 semiautomatic 9-millimeter pistol. Mariana had successfully lobbied the city for the cops to have more firepower than the.38-caliber revolvers they'd carried almost since the Ice Age-Philly's first foot patrol began in the late 1600s.
And he said Coughlin needed to carry the Glock "to set an example."
Denny, who had never drawn his service weapon his entire career, didn't think he needed on his hip what he called "a small cannon"-and especially not one of the Alternative Service Weapons, Glock models chambered for.40-caliber and.45-caliber rounds that were more powerful than the 9 millimeter. But he followed the order nonetheless.
Payne went on: "Each dead guy had his rap sheet stapled to him. Usually to the clothing. But on one bad guy-a really despicable bastard, on the run from a charge of raping a ten-year-old girl-the doer stapled the Wanted poster multiple times to the guy's wang."
There were groans.
"Jesus!" Hollaran exclaimed.
Coughlin, now somber-faced, shook his head. "Could've been worse. I worked a case maybe two decades ago where a guy who thought that he quietly-and successfully-had ratted out a mobster was found dead on his front porch for all the world to see."
"That's worse?" Payne said.
"In his mouth, looking like a droopy third eye, was his severed penis."
There was a mix of grunts and chuckles from the group.
"So," Payne then said, "those are the ones I've been trying to connect the dots on. I have more details on each one."
"Not for now, thanks," Coughlin said.
Payne looked at Harris and said, "Tony knows about last night's batch."
Coughlin said, "Detective, it appears you have the floor." He looked at his watch. "And a little less than ten minutes."
"Yes, sir. As Matt said, all the dead are male adults. We got the call on the first two-Danny Gartner and his longtime client?"
Coughlin grunted derisively. "I know who Gartner was. No great loss to mankind there."
Harris went on: "That call came in at precisely ten-oh-two last night, and the call on the third guy at twelve-twelve this morning.
"Both Gartner-white male, age fifty-five-and John 'Jay-Cee' Nguyen-Asian male, age twenty-five-were shot point-blank at the base of the skull"-Tony mimed the shooting with his hand again, as he'd done at Liberties Bar-"with a large-bore round. We believe it was a Glock.45 caliber, as a shiny spent casing-with '.45 GAP' for Glock Automatic Pistol stamped on the base-was found behind Gartner's office. Cause of death, though, may not be by gunshot. Both men had their mouth and nose wrapped with clear plastic packing tape, and both also had a plastic garbage bag covering the head and taped tightly at the neck. The same tape was used to bind both men at their ankles and wrists."
"No Wanted posters like the others?" Coughlin asked.
Tony thought, How did he know that?
Simple answer: Because he didn't become the second most important white shirt in the building by being a lazy cop.
The uniform shirt for all ranks sergeant and above was white, thus the expression "white shirt"; those in ranks of corporal down to police recruit wore blue shirts, and were referred to accordingly.
Now, his well-honed investigative mind has been putting together the pieces, and one piece is that Gartner wasn't wanted for any crime.
"No, sir," Tony Harris said after a moment. "None of the three last night."
"Tell them about the piss," Payne said.
"What?" Hollaran blurted.
Everyone looked at Matt, then at Tony.
"When we got the search warrant for Gartner's office-outside of which was parked Nguyen's motorcycle-we found no obvious signs anybody'd been whacked inside. But we did find piss poured all over the place."
"Tony said it had to be gallons," Payne added lightly. "We're guessing some animal's. I mean, four-legged animal."
Coughlin shook his head in wonder.
"Doesn't matter if it turns out to be from a human," Quaire said. "Urine is mostly worthless for our purposes."
"Really?" Payne said.
"Uh-huh," Quaire said. "I thought you knew it doesn't have enough traceable DNA to make it useful. It's just… well, piss."
There were chuckles.
"At the risk of repeating myself, Matthew," Jason Washington offered, "we do come across strange things in our business."
Coughlin then said, "Okay, and what about the third guy?"
"One Reginald 'Reggie' Jones. Black male, age twenty. A great big boy, maybe goes two-forty, two-fifty. And with one of those round baby faces. Well, before he got beaten up. Someone kicked the living shit out of him. Brutal beating. He could have died from that, or from strangulation. Two of those plastic zip ties-two short ones put end to end to make one long one-were cinched tight around his throat."
He paused as they considered that.
Then Harris said, "Jones was a small-time dealer. What he had was more of a consumption habit. But he did have a couple busts for selling coke. He was on probation for possession. Word is that… this is not exactly PC-"
"Oh, no," Payne gasped dramatically, "we've never heard something that was politically incorrect uttered in the Roundhouse!"
There were grins, including Tony's.
"Say it, Tony," Coughlin said, his face serious. "We need to know e verything."
"Reggie Jones was backward."
"Backward?"
"More or less retarded," Tony said.
"And now he's deceased," Payne said, "making him number eight."
"No warrants?" Coughlin went on.
His investigator's mind is still on high speed.
"No, sir. Not on the deceased. His brother, however, is in the wind."
"How's that?"
"Kenneth J. 'Kenny' Jones, black male, age twenty-two, skipped out on a charge of possession with intent to distribute. Jumped his two-thousand-dollar bail after getting picked up in Germantown. Like his brother Reggie, Kenny's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Tried to sell crack cocaine to a couple of our guys working an undercover task force."
Coughlin snorted, thought a moment, then said, "Maybe the doer popped the wrong brother by mistake?"
"Possible."
"And the others who'd been pop-and-dropped all had some sexual crime component?"
"Yes, sir. All but the lawyer. And all the others had been shot."
"But not the Jones boy? He was strangled."
Harris nodded. "Correct."
Coughlin looked at Hollaran. "You're thinking what I'm thinking?"
Frank Hollaran had worked with Denny Coughlin so many years he could finish his sentences.
"That it's possible?" Hollaran asked. "Sure, boss. If somehow they'd heard about the pop-and-drops. But I doubt it's happened in this case. Not enough time has elapsed. It can happen, probably will happen, especially with the cash rewards being offered."
"What're we talking about?" Payne asked.
"Copycats. Folks who mimic crimes they see in the news. That fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol talked about."
Quaire, gesturing again at the newspaper on Washington's desk, put in: "And now we have-cue the dramatic music-the Halloween Homicides."
Payne offered: "Playing devil's advocate, maybe it's not so much a copycat as it is someone taking up Frank Fuller on the hefty bounty he offers for-what's his phrase?-the evildoers."
"Think that through, Matthew," Washington said. "Who is going to claim those rewards? At least for the dead critters? They'd be admitting to murder."
Payne shrugged.
"Regardless," Coughlin said, "Jerry Carlucci is going to want to know what we're doing about the problem. He's planning on having a press conference at noon in the Executive Command Center. What he talks about depends on what he hears from us. And I'm sure he will denounce Fuller's bounty."
"Isn't denouncing the bounty a bit hypocritical?" Payne asked.
"In what way?" Coughlin said.
"The Philadelphia Police Department is in bed with, for example, the FBI and the DEA, which do offer big rewards for fingering bad guys. And that nationwide Crimestoppers program pays five or ten grand for information leading to a conviction-just call their toll-free number. It pays up even if you remain anonymous. It'd make my job a helluva lot easier if someone called with something on these pop-and-drops."
"We do ask for tips on catching criminals, Matty," Coughlin said reasonably, "but we don't encourage killing. There's a difference, one somebody needs to point out to Frank Fuller." He sighed deeply. "But good point. Carlucci will have to spin it in a positive way."
He glanced at his watch. "Okay, everyone follow me upstairs. This was just the dress rehearsal."
Payne didn't move, causing Coughlin to raise an eyebrow in question.
" 'Everyone' as in everyone?" Matt asked. "Am I allowed to leave the office?"
Coughlin, his voice taking an official tone, then said, "As of this moment, Sergeant Payne, assuming you can at some point soon get a decent shower and shave, I hereby order your release from desk duty."
Coughlin looked around the office.
"Everyone think they can follow that order?"
There was a chorus of "Yes, sir." [FOUR] 5550 Ridgewood Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 9:35 A.M. There were three official emergency vehicles parked at the curb in front of the Bazelon's row house, all with various doors open and the red-and-blue light bars on their roofs flashing. Two were white Chevy Impala squad cars assigned to the Twelfth District, and the third was a somewhat battered white Ford panel van that had a blue-and-gold stripe running the length of the vehicle and blue block lettering that spelled out MEDICAL EXAMINER.
On the wooden front porch of the row house, two Philadelphia Police Department blue shirts were on either side of a rocking chair, one a male standing and writing notes and the other a female down on one knee. The young woman cop was speaking softly to eighteen-year-old Sasha Bazelon, who sat in the rocker, her face in her hands, her body visibly shaking as she sobbed.
Standing nearby on the sidewalk was a small crowd of fifteen people, mostly adult men and women holding Bibles, all watching with looks of deep sadness or abject helplessness. A couple of the women were dabbing at their cheeks with white cotton handkerchiefs. They wore what Mrs. Joelle Bazelon would have said was their Sunday Go-to-Meeting Clothing.
Any other week, Joelle Bazelon also would have been in her church clothes, usually a dark-colored billowing cotton dress, joining the group as it made the regular walk to worship at the Church of Christ three blocks over, at Warrington and South Fifty-sixth Street.
This morning, however, the sixty-two-year-old widow's cold dead body, clad in a rumpled housecoat, was about to be removed from her living room couch and placed inside a heavy-duty vinyl bag by two technicians from the Medical Examiner's Office.
The techs were dressed alike in black jeans, white knit polos, and stained, well-worn white lab coats that were thigh-length with two big patch pockets on the front. They had transparent blue plastic booties covering their black athletic shoes. Their hands wore tan-colored synthetic polymer gloves.
The body bag was on a heavy-duty, metal-framed gurney that had been positioned alongside the couch, its oversize rubber wheels locked to prevent it from rolling.
The tech who was lifting the body by holding the lower legs-just above the swollen and bruised ankles-was Kim Soo. A small-bodied man with short spiked black hair and puffy round facial features, he'd been born in Philly twenty-eight years earlier to parents from South Korea who became naturalized Americans.
Soo had spent the last two hours carefully photographing the row house with a big, bulky, professional-level Nikon digital camera, its body badly scratched and dinged. He'd moved through the residence fluidly with the camera, documenting the scene. The strobe had been so intense that its pulsing flashes were easily seen by the small crowd on the sidewalk.
Soo's face was stonelike as he looked at the lead technician, Javier Iglesia. Soo had known Iglesia going back to South Philly High, where Kim had been two grades behind him.
Iglesia, a beefy but fit thirty-year-old of Puerto Rican ancestry, was normally a very talkative sort, always ready with an opinion on anything. Now, however, holding the body at the shoulders, Iglesia was being unusually quiet.
Finally, Iglesia said, "I knew being a tech for the ME wasn't going to be all glory, Kim. But days like this, when it gets personal, I honest to God genuinely hate this damned job."
Iglesia looked at Soo, who said, "I know."
After getting a stronger grip on the housecoat, Iglesia said, "Ready? On three. One, two, three…"
The lifting took considerable exertion, and they both grunted with effort as the body began to budge. The "lift" was actually more of a slide off the couch, then a slight drop to the black vinyl body bag that was positioned on the gurney.
The big-boned, obese body made for a fairly tight fit in the body bag. It also made the bag more or less droop over the gurney's tubular frame.
"Principal Bazelon was a good and decent woman," Javier said then. "I remember the year before she retired-it was my first year at Shaw Middle School. This woman was so strict, but also so kind."
Soo nodded, his face looking sympathetic.
"I'll tell you," he went on, "she was a major influence on me back then. And so many others. She taught me a lot. 'A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.' That's Shakespeare. She got me reading him."
He looked down at the body in the bag. "And now this?"
"I'll tell you something," Iglesia said, then glanced around to see if anyone could be listening. He went on in a softer voice: "What I think is, she didn't just die in her sleep, is what I think." He paused. "No, I know she didn't. Just look at her wrists and ankles. Bruised and swollen from something. Tied with something, some rope, something that's been taken off. And that's called tampering with evidence." He paused again, then nodded as he added, "Mitchell will make it. He misses nothing."
The medical examiner, their boss, was Dr. Howard H. Mitchell, a very busy bald man with a dark sense of humor. He was usually found in a well-worn rumpled suit and tie, either performing an autopsy or dealing with the paperwork of a place that had to deal with an average of a murder a day, plus the questionable deaths, such as that of Mrs. Joelle Bazelon.
Iglesia shook his head, then closed the top flap and began working the web straps over the bag that would secure the load to the gurney.
That done, he and Soo grabbed the tubular handles at each end of the height-adjustable gurney and lifted, once again grunting under the weight. They raised the top of the gurney to about the level of their waists. They wanted it high enough to have better control while wheeling it, but not so high that the center of gravity could cause the gurney to become ungainly and top-heavy and dump onto its side.
Kim Soo unlocked the rubber wheels, and he pushed as Javier Iglesia began pulling the gurney toward the open front door.
As they went, Javier shook his head and quietly said, "I was there when they threw Principal Bazelon's big retirement go-away thing. It was a big deal, it was. She was a big deal. And whatever happened to her, this just isn't right. What I think is that girl of hers isn't saying what really happened." After Iglesia and Soo had first arrived at the house and were processing the scene before preparing to remove the deceased, Javier had overheard a good bit of what Sasha Bazelon had been telling the two blue shirts.
Iglesia had been impressed with her-at eighteen, she was a year younger than his baby sister-and while she was just shy of hysterical, it was clear that on any other day, the slender, light-brown-skinned young woman would be absolutely beautiful.
The five of them had all been in the living room, the two cops interviewing the girl while the techs did their work.
Officer Geoffrey Pope, nineteen years old, was a rail-thin five-nine with closely cropped blond hair and a youthful face. Javier knew he had exactly one year on the Philadelphia Police Department.
Corporal Charlene Crowe was a black, stout thirty-year-old with a friendly face and warm smile. She stood a head shorter than Sasha, and she had to look up at the girl while asking questions. The shoulder patches of Crowe's blue uniform shirt had two blue chevrons outlined in silver.
In fits and starts, interspersed with crying jags, Sasha had told Corporal Crowe, "I came home late last night from my friend's house down the street. Grammy was sound asleep on the couch, snoring. So I quietly went to my room. When I came downstairs this morning, she was still there. But no longer breathing. When I checked for a pulse, her body felt cold and hard."
And then came the waterworks.
And then she'd basically repeated what she'd said.
And then came the waterworks again.
Javier found it curious that Sasha almost never looked Corporal Crowe in the eyes, and when she did it was for only a split second-then she'd bury her face in her hands and sob.
It wasn't that he felt the tears were not authentic.
The girl was clearly in deep emotional distress, and damn near inconsolable.
She's shaking to her core, she's crying so much.
But… there's something that's just not right, something that's missing, not being said.
Yet when asked if anything at all suspicious had happened in the last days, weeks, even months, she'd said there'd been nothing.
She said, "Grammy got sick a lot, mostly from her diabetes. And her weight. I guess… I guess her heart just couldn't take it anymore." Kim Soo and Javier Iglesia rolled the gurney out the front door and the wooden boards of the porch creaked under all the weight. The two uniforms talking with Sasha Bazelon looked over their shoulders and made eye contact with the medical examiner techs.
Sasha looked up from her hands, saw the packed body bag strapped to the gurney, and let out a wail.
"Officer Pope," Javier Iglesia said, "when you get a moment?"
Javier dipped his head once sideways, in the direction of the white Ford panel van.
Pope nodded. Soo and Iglesia wheeled the gurney past the small crowd, trying to remain professional and not make eye contact. But then a tiny, ancient-looking black lady-Javier thought she easily could be in her nineties-held her Bible up to her forehead and cried, "Go with God, sweet Joelle. Rest in peace. Praise be the Lord!"
Javier saw that she was clearly upset, but unlike the other younger women had her crying under control.
A strong and brave lady, Iglesia thought as they made eye contact, and with sad eyes and thin pensive lips, he nodded. Far braver than I.
"Amen," he said softly to her. As Kim swung open the two rear doors of the white Ford panel van, Javier said, "You know, this and South Philly have been my home all my life. And it's all changing. It's all slowly going to shit."
"Mine, too. The whole city is," Kim replied. "So, what's your point?"
"My point is, good people are getting hurt. And someone needs to step up, is my point. I mean, I know we did pot and stuff at South Philly High. But now dealers are selling to middle schoolers, and not just pot, but bad stuff like candy smack."
"Candy smack?"
"Yeah. I mean black tar heroin, is what I mean. Cheap deadly shit from Mexico, mixed with sugar. And other junk. And then the kids get hooked, then need money to go score more, so then they go rob some old lady, maybe tie her up and kill her. That's what I mean, man!"
Kim Soo looked wide-eyed at Javier Iglesia.
"You don't know that's what happened to her," Soo said, glancing at the body bag.
Iglesia glanced up at the row house porch, then turned and stared Soo in the eyes and said, "I know two things. One, that girl knows something that she isn't telling about Principal Bazelon. And two, I'm not going to sit around while my neighborhood goes to hell."
He gazed down the block. Across the street, three houses down, he noticed that another group had gathered. Five boys. They were sitting on a short brick wall and watching the activity at the Bazelon house. They looked to be teenagers, a couple maybe a little older, and in their baggy jeans, oversize gangster jackets, and hoodie sweatshirts, they did not appear to be on their way to church.
The only thing they worship is trouble.
"See these punks?" Iglesia said as he nodded at the group. "I guarantee you they're up to no good. Ten bucks says they're using, five says selling. And who knows whatever the hell else."
Kim Soo turned to look, then faced Iglesia and said, "Aw, hell, Javier. You don't know that. A lot of kids do that gangsta-from-the-'hood look. We used to hang out in high school wearing tough looks, too."
"Uh-uh," Iglesia said, shaking his head. "It's different now, is what it is."
Soo shrugged his shoulders.
After a moment, Iglesia added, "You see any of the speech that Ben Franklin rich guy gave last night on the news? While Jimmy's team was at the Old City scene of the first two pop-and-drops?"
"Pop-and-drops?"
"Yeah, that's what a sergeant I know in Homicide says they're calling them. There was five to start. Now there's eight. And they're all stacked up in the meat locker, waiting for Mitchell and his buzz saw. The Homicide sergeant came by the office one day and took a look at them."
"Yeah, I saw that eye-for-an-eye guy's speech right before I hit the sack. He's paying ten grand for anyone bagging a bad guy-'evildoers,' he called them!"
"Yeah!" Javier Iglesia said, his face lighting up.
Soo realized that Javier was quickly getting his talkativeness back.
Javier went on: "Now, that's what I'm talking about! I mean, someone has finally had enough of the city going to hell and they're stepping up to help fix it, is what I mean. Ten large per 'evildoer' is some seriously high stepping up."
He paused and looked down at the body bag.
"Too damn bad it's too late for Principal Bazelon."
Javier then softly repeated, "Rest in peace. Praise be the Lord."
He shoved the gurney, causing its framework to collapse as it rolled up and inside the rear of the van. Then he gently, respectfully, closed the left door, then the right one.
Police Officer Geoffrey Pope was standing on the curb, behind where the right door had been open, making Javier wonder how long he'd been there and how much he'd heard.
"Hey, Geoff," Javier said to him. "You standing there long?"
"Long enough to hear the news flash that the city's going to hell. And your short prayer for the deceased." He paused, then added, "You don't look too good, Javier."
"I'm-"
He stopped as he glanced at the small crowd on the sidewalk. A few were watching the conversation between the cop and the tech with rapt interest.
"Step around here," Javier said, walking around to the far side of the van to block the view of the curious.
Javier pulled out his wallet and from it extracted a business card. He held it out to Officer Pope.
"Here's my card, Geoff. It's got my cell phone number on it. I live eight blocks away, the other side of Warrington, over where the middle school is."
"Yeah, and?"
"And if there is anything I can do to help get this girl to talk, as a citizen, as a concerned neighbor, whatever, you let me know."
"I'm not sure I should share anything-"
"Who the hell am I going to tell anything?"
Pope held up his hands chest high, palms out. "Hold up, Javier. I'm just-"
"Look, Geoff. My baby sister is her age, and I know when she's holding something back. And I'm telling you, that poor girl is holding something back."
"You don't think she did it, do you? What'd be her motive?"
"Maybe she gets the house?"
"That banshee cry of hers is deep. It's not contrived."
"Whatever it is, she's lying."
Pope shrugged.
Javier said, "I mean, I don't think it's a malicious lie, I don't. But there's something not being said."
"There always is, Javier. Welcome to police work."
V
[ONE] 2620 Wilder Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 9:02 A.M. Will Curtis drove the rented white Ford Freestar minivan up onto the cracked South Philly sidewalk, braking to a stop in front of the tiny, run-down, two-story row house.
He studied it and thought, Hope this sonofabitch is in there.
I can't believe that last sonofabitch's address was so old the house was completely gone, burned to the damn ground.
Don't want two dead ends to start my day.
Curtis wore his Federal Express uniform, complete with the grease-smeared FedEx cap. The driver and front passenger doors of the minivan each had a three-foot-square polymer sign displaying the red-and-blue FedEx logotype and the words HOME DELIVERY. He knew his makeshift package delivery van wouldn't pass muster with anyone back at the distribution warehouse, but so far it had looked like the real deal to everyone else.
Curtis got out from behind the steering wheel and glanced around the neighborhood.
It wasn't that early in the morning, but the street was quiet. There were only the sounds of dogs yapping down the block and, not too far off in the distance, the horn blare from a SEPTA light-rail train.
He saw a skinny, mangy gray cat across the street. It was eating Halloween candies that had been dropped and squashed on the sidewalk.
Probably stolen from some poor kid.
But who'd go door to door for candy in this dump of a place?
For drugs, sure. Which is why it's quiet now.
Damn lowlifes up all night chasing ass and doing dope.
But catching them now all good and sleepy will be some sort of justice.
He reached back inside the door of the minivan. There was a stack of He reached back inside the door of the minivan. There was a stack of six thin white paperboard envelopes on the dashboard, and he pulled the top one off the stack. Each of the envelopes bore the distinctive FedEx logotype, as well as a clear plastic pouch holding a bill of lading.
Stepping carefully, Curtis carried the envelope toward the front door of the row house. Parts of the crumbling sidewalk were broken down to bare dirt, and there were knee-high dead weeds in the cracks.
The house itself, built of masonry blocks with a front facade of red brick, was also in really bad shape. There were several holes in the wall where bricks were completely missing. The house hadn't been painted in far too many years, leaving bare wood that had rotted in places. Racks of rusty burglar bars covered the solid metal front door and the four doublewindows-two upstairs and two at street level-and the first-floor windows were fitted with poorly cut pieces of weather-warped plywood.
To the right of the concrete steps, on the sidewalk and up against the foot of the house, Curtis saw five or six black trash bags. They were packed full, piled high, one on the bottom with a big torn hole. They looked to have been there for some time, easily days if not weeks.
Curtis went up the flight of four concrete steps leading to the battered front door. He saw out of the corner of his eye what at first he thought were two black cats. They'd been along the wall behind the trash bags. Then they'd bolted away, running behind some weeds in front of the small wood-framed window of the basement.
Those aren't cats. They're goddamn rats!
He now noticed that the basement window was open, pulled inward from the top. The rats had disappeared into it.
Curtis shook his head in disgust.
As he reached the bar-covered metal door, a breeze blew past, bringing with it a vile stench. He gagged.
He looked at the garbage bags.
Jesus! Whatever it is has to be in there.
It's worse than raw chicken-or maybe dead rats-that's gone bad.
He looked to the window where the rodents had run inside.
Or… could it be coming from the basement?
What a shithole!
He pulled back his sleeve, testing the air. The breeze had stopped and the stench had subsided.
For now.
I need to see who's home, then get the hell out of here…
There was no doorbell-just a crude little hole where it had once been mounted-so he balled his fist, reached between the bars, and pounded on the metal door.
As he waited for some kind of life to wake up inside-other than the vile vermin-he glanced at the FedEx envelope in his hand.
Its bill of lading had a return field that read:
United States Department of the Treasury 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500
Will grinned. He knew that was the address of the White House, and had listed it as an inside joke. He had no idea where the hell the U.S. Treasury had its main office-and didn't give a damn, because he knew the "recipient" wouldn't know, either.
The field for "Recipient" read:
Kendrik Mays 2620 Wilder Street Philadelphia, PA 19147
Also on the bill of lading was a bold black X in the box beside the line that stated: GOVERNMENT-ISSUED ID amp; PERSONAL SIGNATURE OF RECIPIENT REQUIRED FOR DELIVERY.
After knocking again and waiting another few minutes, he'd yet to hear anything moving inside the house.
Dammit! Not even another rat.
Another dead end.
Move this one to the bottom of the stack with the other dead end.
Maybe try again later. At least there's a house at this address.
Just as he turned to go down the steps to the minivan, he saw movement in the left downstairs window, where he noticed a knothole in the warped wood.
So you use that as a peephole, eh?
Nervously, he readjusted the.45-caliber Glock that he had stuck under the waistband of his pants, right behind the buckle of his heavy leather belt.
This morning's work wasn't wasted after all…
Curtis turned back to the door. At five o'clock that morning, Will Curtis had awakened and gone downstairs to the kitchen to make his coffee, just as he'd done every day for as long as he could remember, easily twenty years.
All the while careful not to wake up his wife.
Not even a week after Wendy had been attacked, Linda had moved into her old bedroom. It was on the back side of the row house's first floor. It had not exactly been left as a shrine after Wendy had moved out and gotten her first apartment-if only because Wendy had needed a lot of the furniture and other items to kick-start her new independence-but it still had a lot of her personal items from growing up, things like the many trophies she had won playing soccer in junior and senior high school. And the walls were practically covered solid with framed and pushpinned photographs of Wendy and her countless gal pals, from birthday parties to summer trips at the Jersey shore, all from various points of her teen years.
A lot of memories for Linda to recall as she lay there. And, ever more the recluse, she spent more and more time in Wendy's old bed. (They'd told Wendy that a new life required a new bed, and among the apartment-warming gifts they'd given her had been a queen-size bed-the one she'd been attacked on.)
I don't know who's going to take care of Linda when I'm gone, but I do know she won't want for anything.
Especially with the house being paid off and the fat payout from my life insurance policy coming.
Which is damn convenient, because she's barely holding on to her teller job.
And I'm feeling worse every day.
As the coffee brewed, Will Curtis went down into the basement.
Shortly after moving into the house, he'd begun converting the basement into a recreation room. It had a pair of soft, deep sofas that faced a monster flat-screen plasma TV. In the corner was a freestanding bar he'd built himself. And just about every nook and cranny was filled with Philadelphia Eagles memorabilia-he'd started the collection in his youth and later had help from Wendy, who'd grown into a genuine fan, too.
And, in the corner of the rec room, his desk held a desktop computer.
Every morning, by the time he'd finished checking his e-mail, the pot of coffee would have finished brewing. He'd then go up and pour a big cup to bring back down and drink while catching up on e-mails and then reading phillybulletin.com, the online edition of the Philadelphia Bulletin. Up until a couple years ago, he would go out to the front stoop and pick up the paper version that he'd subscribed to forever. But, as it had never arrived until at least six in the morning-and, on rainy days, arrived wet-he'd let the subscription lapse after getting in the habit of reading the news online.
And not just news.
Lately, he'd started following a new website, the name of which he really liked: CrimeFreePhilly.com. It had news articles, but also a lot of information about crime and criminals. And so, in the last month, it had become an indispensable tool for Curtis.
Now, a cup of freshly brewed coffee in his left hand, he used his right hand to click onto CrimeFreePhilly.
The morning's lead headline was: