Special Operations

by W. E. B Griffin

  Matt chuckled when he saw it.

  That poor sonofabitch is in for a hell of a surprise when he goes tooling down the street tomorrow, and is suddenly surrounded by eight thousand cops, guns drawn, convinced they’ve caught the rapist.

  Matt’s attention didn’t linger long on the Ford van. There was another motor vehicle parked on the cobblestones he really found fascinating. It was a Buick station wagon, and if the decal on the windshield was what he thought it was, a parking permit for the Rose Tree Hunt Club, then it was the property of Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., which suggested that the saintly Amelia and the respectable Peter Wohl were up to something in the Wohl apartment that they would prefer not to have him know about.

  He walked to the station wagon and flashed his light on the decal. It was the Rose Tree decal all right.

  There were no lights on in the garage apartment. Wohl and Amy were either conducting a séance, or up to something else.

  What the hell, Wohl had no idea I’d bring this envelope. He thought either Jason would, or maybe a Highway car, neither of whom would pay a bit of attention to Amy’s car.

  What I should do is go up there and beat on the door until I wake him up or at least get his attention. “Hi, there, Inspector! Just Officer Payne running one more safe errand. My, but that lady looks familiar!”

  He discarded the notion almost as soon as it formed. Wohl was a good guy, and so, even if he wouldn’t want her to hear him say it, was Amy.

  He started up the stairs to Wohl’s door, intending to slip the envelope under the door. Maybe, later, he would zing Amy with it. That might be fun.

  He stopped halfway up the stairs.

  I saw movement inside that van.

  That makes two things wrong with that van: the grill was damaged. On the right side? Shit, I don’t know!

  His heart actually jumped, and he felt a little faint.

  Oh, bullshit. Your fevered imagination is running away with you. The van probably belongs to the superintendent here. Wohl certainly knows about it, and has checked it out even before we knew we were looking for a maroon Ford.

  He stopped for a moment, and then he heard the whine of a starter.

  If he’s been in there all this time, why is he just starting the engine now?

  Matt turned and ran down the stairs, fishing in his pocket for his badge.

  What do I say to this character?

  “Excuse me, sir. I’m a Police Officer. We’re looking for a murderer-rapist. Is there any chance that might be you, sir?”

  No. What I am going to wind up saying is, “I’m sorry to have troubled you, sir. We’ve been having a little trouble around here, and we’re checking, just to make sure. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  He didn’t get a chance to say anything. As he got between the Porsche and the van, the van headlights suddenly came on and it came toward him.

  Bile filled Matt’s mouth as he understood that the man was trying to run him down. He backed up, encountered the rear of the Porsche and scurried up it like a crab, terrified that his leg would be in the way when the van hit the Porsche.

  The impact knocked him off the Porsche. He fell to the right, between the car and the garage doors, landing painfully on his rear end, the breath mostly knocked out of him.

  He thought: I’m alive.

  He thought: Why the hell didn’t I wake up Wohl? He would know what to do.

  The van made a sweeping turn, didn’t make it, backed up ten feet, and started out the drive.

  He thought: Thank God, he’s going and is not going to try to kill me again.

  He thought: I’m a cop.

  He thought: I’m scared.

  He pulled the Chief’s Special from the ankle holster and got to his feet and ran to the end of the garage building. His leg hurt; he had injured it somehow.

  The van was almost up the driveway.

  He became aware that he was standing with his feet spread apart, holding the Chief’s Special in both hands, pulling the trigger and pulling it again, and that the hammer was falling on the primers of cartridges that had already been fired.

  The van was at the main house, seeming to be gathering speed.

  Jason told me, “If you can’t belt them in the head with a snub-nose, they’re out of range.”

  Shit, shit, shit, shit, I fucked this up, too!

  The van reached Norwood Street, crossed the sidewalk, entered the street, kept going, and slammed into a chestnut tree.

  A woman began to scream, bloodcurdlingly.

  Matt ran up the driveway. His leg was really throbbing now.

  What the fuck am I going to do now? The revolver is empty and I don’t have any more shells for it.

  He reached the van, out of breath, his chest hurting almost as much as his leg. The van was moving, trying to push the tree out of the way, burning rubber. There was the smell of antifreeze sizzling on a hot block.

  He went to the front door and jerked it open.

  The driver was slumped over the wheel.

  There was a sickening bloody white mess on the windshield. A 168-grain lead projectile had penetrated the rear window of the van, and then the rear of the driver’s skull, with sufficient remaining energy to cause most of his brain to be expelled through an exit wound in his forehead.

  Matt reached inside and shut off the ignition. Then he ran around the front, went to the side door, and pulled it open. There was something on the floor of the van, under a tarpaulin. He jerked the tarpaulin away.

  Mrs. Naomi Schneider, naked, her hands bound behind her, looked at him out of wide eyes.

  “I’m a police officer,” Matt said. “You’ll be all right, lady. It’s all over.”

  Naomi started screaming again.

  Beep Beep Beep.

  Tiny Lewis opened his microphone and said, “Officer needs assistance. Shots fired. 8800 block of Norwood Street. Ambulance Required. Police by telephone.”

  The first response to the call was from a Fourteenth District RPC. The second was, “M-Mary One in on the shots fired.”

  The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, was returning to his Chestnut Hill home from a late dinner with friends. M-Mary One was the first car on the scene.

  Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, followed by Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., entered the Rittenhouse Square residence of Officer Matthew Payne. Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin was already there.

  “Here’s the newspapers. The Ledger and the Bulletin,” Wohl said. “I bought five of each.”

  “The Ledger? Why did you buy that goddamned rag?” Coughlin asked, surprised and angry.

  “I think I’m going to have the Ledger story framed,” Wohl said.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Coughlin asked as Wohl handed him a copy of the Ledger.

  There was a photograph of Miss Elizabeth Woodham on the front page, in her college graduation cap and gown, three columns wide, with the caption, “Rapist-Murderer’s Latest Victim.”

  * * *

  SCHOOLTEACHER

  STILL AT LARGE;

  PUBLIC CRITICISM OF POLICE

  BUBBLING OVER

  By Charles E. Whaley

  Ledger Staff Reporter

  Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick confessed tonight that while “everything that can be done is being done” the police have not arrested, or for that matter, even identified, the Northwest Philadelphia rapist-murderer whose latest victim’s mutilated body was discovered early today by State Police in Upper Bucks County.

  “Our Police Department is a disgrace, and we intend to force the mayor to do something about it,” said Dr. C. Charles Fortner, a University of Pennsylvania sociology professor, at a press conference at which he announced the formation of “The Citizens’ Committee for Efficient Law Enforcement.”

  “A recall election would be a last step,” Dr. Fortner said, “but not out of the question if the mayor proves unable or unwilling to shake up the Police Department from top to bottom. The people of
Philadelphia are entitled to better police protection than they are getting. We will do everything necessary to see that they get it. The kidnapping and brutal murder of Miss Woodham, and the Police Department’s nearly incredible ineptness in dealing with the situation, demands immediate action. We are not going to let them forget Miss Woodham as they have forgotten this psychopath’s other victims.”

  Dr. Fortner said that Arthur J. Nelson, publisher of the Ledger, has agreed to serve as Vice-Chairman of the committee, and that Nelson and “a number of other prominent citizens” would be with him when the new organization stages its first public protest today. Fortner said that the committee would form before the Police Administration Building at Seventh and Arch Streets at noon, and then march to City Hall, where they intend to present their demands to Mayor Jerry Carlucci.

  (A related editorial can be found on Page 7-A.)

  * * *

  “If they march,” Chief Coughlin said, “I’ll get a bass drum, and march right along with them.”

  Matt was leaning on his desk, sipping at a glass dark with whiskey, looking down at the Bulletin’s front page. There was a four-column photograph on it, of Officer Matthew Payne and the Honorable Jerry Carlucci, who had an arm around Matt’s shoulder, and who was standing with his jacket open wide enough to reveal that His Honor the Mayor still carried his police revolver. The caption below the picture read, “Mayor Carlucci Embraces ‘Handsome Hero’ Cop.”

  When he heard Coughlin speak, he looked over at him.

  “What?”

  “You read the Bulletin first, Matty,” Coughlin said. “Then you’ll really enjoy the story in the Ledger.”

  Matt shrugged, and returned to reading the Bulletin.

  “Mickey O’Hara will do all right by you,” Denny Coughlin said. “He told me he thought you’d done a hell of a job. I’ll bet that’s a very nice story.”

  “So far it’s bullshit,” Matt replied.

  * * *

  NORTHWEST SERIAL RAPIST-

  MURDERER KILLED BY

  “HANDSOME” SPECIAL

  OPERATIONS COP AS HE

  RESCUES KIDNAPPED WOMAN

  By Michael J. O’Hara

  Bulletin Staff Writer

  Officer Matthew Payne, 22, in what Mayor Jerry Carlucci described as an act of “great personal heroism,” rescued Mrs. Naomi Schneider, 34, of the 8800 block of Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill, minutes after she had been abducted at knifepoint from her home by a man the mayor said he is positive is the man dubbed the “Northwest Serial Rapist.”

  The man, tentatively identified as Warren K. Fletcher, 31, of Germantown, had, according to Mrs. Schneider, broken into her luxury apartment as she was preparing for bed. Mrs. Schneider said he was masked and armed with a large butcher knife. She said he forced her to disrobe, then draped her in a blanket and forced her into the rear of his 1969 Ford van and covered her with a tarpaulin.

  “The next thing I knew,” Mrs. Schneider said, “there was shots, and then breaking glass, and then the van crashed. Then this handsome young cop was looking down at me and smiling and telling me everything was all right; he was a police officer.”

  Moments before Officer Payne shot the kidnapper and believed rapist-murderer, according to Mayor Carlucci, the man had attempted to run Payne down with the van, slightly injuring Payne and doing several thousand dollars’ worth of damage to Payne’s personal automobile.

  “Payne then, reluctantly,” Mayor Carlucci said, “concluded there was no choice but for him to use deadly force, and proceeded to do so. Mrs. Schneider’s life was in grave danger and he knew it. I’m proud of him.”

  Mayor Carlucci, whose limousine is equipped with police shortwave radios, was en route to his Chestnut Hill home from a Sons of Italy dinner in South Philadelphia when the rescue occurred.

  “We were the first car to respond to the ‘shots fired’ call,” the mayor said. “Officer Payne was still helping Mrs. Schneider out of the wrecked van when we got there.”

  Payne, who is special assistant to Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, commanding officer of the newly formed Special Operations Division, had spent most of the day in Bucks County, where the mutilated body of Miss Elizabeth Woodham, 33, of 300 East Mermaid Lane, Roxborough, had been discovered by State Police in a summer country cottage.

  Miss Woodham was abducted from her apartment three days ago by a masked, knife-wielding man. A Bucks County mail carrier had described a man meeting Mr. Warren K. Fletcher’s description, and driving a maroon 1969 Ford van identical to the one in which Mrs. Schneider was abducted, as being at a cottage where her body was discovered. Police all over the Delaware Valley were looking for a similar van.

  Payne, who had been assigned to work as liaison between ace Homicide detectives Jason Washington and Anthony Harris and Special Operations Division, had gone with Washington to the torture-murder scene in Bucks County.

  He spotted the van in the early hours of this morning as he drove to the Chestnut Hill residence of Inspector Wohl to make his report before going off duty.

  “He carefully appraised the situation before acting, and decided Mrs. Schneider’s very life depended on his acting right then, and alone,” Mayor Carlucci said. “She rather clearly owes her life to him. I like to think that Officer Payne is typical of the intelligent, well-educated young officers with which Commissioner Czernick and I intend to staff the Special Operations Division.”

  Payne, who is a bachelor, recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He declined to answer questions from the press.

  * * *

  “This is going to thrill them in Wallingford,” Matt said, when he had finished reading. “When they sit down to read the morning paper.”

  “Dad already knows,” Amy said. “I called him and told him.”

  “That was smart!” Matt snapped.

  “I wanted Dad to know before Mother,” Amy said, unrepentant. “Matt, do you want me to give you something…”

  “I’ve got it, thanks,” he said, picking up his glass. Then he looked around at all of them. “Doesn’t anyone but me care that the whole article is bullshit?”

  “You’ve undergone a severe emotional trauma,” Amy said.

  “Tell me about it,” Matt said. “But we were—I was—talking about bullshit.”

  “I can give you something to help you deal with it,” Amy persisted. “Liquor won’t help.”

  “That’s what you think,” Matt said. “You are talking about the bullshit?”

  “I’m talking about the shock you’ve suffered,” Amy said.

  “I’m talking about bullshit,” Matt said. “I damned near killed that peroxide-blond woman,” Matt said. “I didn’t know she existed until I heard her screaming. I shot that sonofabitch because he tried to run me over. I was not the calm, heroic police officer. I was a terrified and enraged child who had a gun.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “You’re right, Amy,” Matt said. “I am not cut out to be a cop.”

  “You don’t want to make a decision like that right now, Matty,” Dennis Coughlin said.

  “Nobody’s listening to me,” Matt said. “If there is one thing I learned from this is that I am not my father’s—my blood father’s—son.”

  “Matty!” Dennis Coughlin said.

  “I was afraid out there,” Matt said. “Terrified. And insane.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable under the circumstances,” Dennis Coughlin said.

  “I almost killed that woman!” Matt said, angrily. “Doesn’t anybody understand that?”

  “You didn’t,” Wohl said. “You didn’t. You kept her alive.”

  “Did you know I fell asleep on the job tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Did Washington tell you I fainted when I saw the Woodham body?”

  “So what?” Wohl asked.

  “Matty,” Dennis Coughlin said. “Listen to me.”

  Matt looked at him.


  “I admit, Mickey and the mayor laid it on a little thick,” Coughlin said. “That it was, excuse me, Amy, bullshit. But so was the story in the Ledger. So you’re not a hero. But neither is the Police Department as incompetent as Arthur J. Nelson wants the people to think it is. What he’s trying to do to us has nothing to do with the truth about the Police. That’s pretty rotten. So the bottom line here is you took this critter down. He’s not going to rape or murder anyone else. A lot of single young women around town are going to get to sleep tonight. That’s all we try to do on the cops, Matty, try to fix things so people can sleep at night. And if they read in the newspapers that we’re all stupid, or on the take, or just can’t be trusted…Am I getting through to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said.

  “And as far as your father—your blood father, as you call him—is concerned. He was my best friend. And I know he would be proud of you. I am. You were scared, but you did what had to be done. And there’s something else about your father, Matty. They have his picture and his badge hanging in the lobby of the Roundhouse. He’s a hero, an officer who got killed in the line of duty. But—I was his best friend, so I can say this—he didn’t do his duty. He let that critter kill him. And before we caught him, he killed three civilians. You didn’t let this critter kill you. That psychopath isn’t going to get to hurt somebody else. In my book that makes you a better cop than your father. That’s the bottom line, Matty. Protecting the public. You think about that.”

  Matt looked at Coughlin for a moment, then at Wohl, who nodded at him, and then at his sister.

  “Matt,” Amy said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be a cop. But now is not the time for you to make that decision.”

  “Jesus!” Matt said. “From you?”

  There was a knock at the door. Wohl went to it and pulled it open.

  Charley McFadden was standing there, a brown bag in his hand.

  “What do you want, McFadden?” Wohl asked.

  “It’s all right, Peter,” Chief Coughlin said, “I sent for him.”