The Vigilantes boh-10

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The Vigilantes boh-10 Page 11

by W. E. B Griffin


  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 block
s 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.

 

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