“She didn’t know it was,” Matt said. “All she knew was that it came from Bryan Chenowith. It was not until I suggested to her that it might be the loot—”
“ ‘Might be the loot’? Jesus!”
“—from the banks Chenowith has been knocking off that this occurred to her. She was naturally—being a respectable citizen from a somewhat sheltered background—very distressed to consider that she had been used.”
“Matt, that’s not going to work. Christ, they’ve got film of her—you saw it—of her meeting with Chenowith in the Poconos!”
“We’re going to give it a shot, Jack,” Matt said.
“What I’m going to do right now—Christ, do you realize what a spot you’ve put me in with Davis?”
“What we’re going to do right now, Jack, is go arrest Jennifer Ollwood,” Matt interrupted.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“It means we’re going to arrest Jennifer Ollwood.”
“You know where she is?”
“I know where she’s going to be,” Matt said. “And once we have her in custody, I will lead the FBI to where Miss Reynolds has shown me we can find Mr. Chenowith and his pimply-faced sidekick.”
“If you think I’m going off with you, alone, to arrest that woman, you’re out of your mind.”
“Okay, then you stay here in your car and wait for me to bring her to you.”
Matt reached up and snatched the keys from the ignition switch.
“Don’t be childish!” Matthews said, as much in disgust as anger. “Give me the keys back!”
“I figure it will take you five minutes to find the police station, and another ten before you can find someone who will both believe the wild story you’re going to tell him and has enough authority to act on it, and another ten minutes—minimum—before they can locate an unmarked Plymouth. By that time, I’ll have the Ollwood woman in the back of my car.”
“And then what do you think is going to happen to you?”
“Then I will lead the FBI to Chenowith.”
“That’s not what I meant. And you know it. You’re going to go to jail, Matt.”
Susan inhaled audibly in the backseat.
“For what? For arresting somebody wanted on a murder rap? For stealing your car keys?”
“They call it obstructing justice,” Matthews said. “And interfering with a federal officer in the execution of his office, and—”
“On the other hand, you could go with me,” Matt said. “We grab Ollwood, take her to the locals, tell them who she is, and ask them do they want to grab Chenowith?”
“You mean not even call the Anti-Terrorist Group?”
“It would take them at least an hour, probably much longer, to get up here. No telling where Chenowith would be by then, particularly if Ollwood doesn’t come back when she’s supposed to.”
“That’s insane.”
“Ollwood has got another ‘package’ she wants Susan to keep for her,” Matt said.
“More bank loot.”
“What else? And you could grab that, too. Which do you think Walter Davis would prefer? That—presuming Chenowith and whatsisname, acne face?—”
“Edgar L. Cole,” Matthews furnished.
“—Cole aren’t long gone by the time they get up here—that those Anti-Terrorist clowns grab them, in his area of responsibility? Or that one of his own agents, seizing the moment, did?”
“Goddamn you, Matt!” Matthews said.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“Give me the damned keys,” Matthews said, putting his hand out for them.
“After you tell me where we’re going.”
“We’re going to go and play supercop, what did you think?”
“In three minutes,” Matt said.
“What?”
“Go on, Susan,” Matt said.
“ ‘Go on, Susan’?” Matthews parrotted.
“You don’t have to go, either of you,” Susan said. “Let me try to reason with her, Matt.”
“We’ve been all over that,” Matt said angrily. “It’s damned near seven. Get going!”
“Oh, God,” Susan said, but she got out of the car and trotted over to Matt’s Plymouth.
“What makes you think she’s going to do what you want her to do?” Matthews asked.
“She will,” Matt said as he watched Susan get in the car.
“Are you really involved with her, Matt?”
“I’m in love with her.”
“You poor son of a bitch!”
Susan started the car and drove out of the parking lot.
Matt handed the ignition keys to Matthews.
“Give it a minute, and then head up Route 611,” he said. “I didn’t want it to look, if Ollwood is already there, as if somebody was tailing Susan.”
Matthews nodded
“How far is Chenowith?” he asked.
“About fifteen miles out of town,” Matt said. “I checked the place out. You’ll have no trouble surrounding it. And there’s no other houses near.”
Matthews grunted, and started the engine.
“Jack, Susan got into this because she felt sorry for the Ollwood girl. She’s not part of that bunch of lunatics.”
“Oh, you poor son of a bitch! You really believe that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I believe it,” Matt said. “Okay. Here’s what’s going down. We’re going to the Crossroads Diner.”
“I know it.”
“Behind it is a bank of pay phones. At seven o’clock, Ollwood is going to call Susan on one of them, to see if she’s there. One of two things will happen then. Ollwood will either come to the restaurant, or she will tell Susan to meet her someplace else.”
“Maybe at Chenowith’s?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think Chenowith wants Susan to come to his house; otherwise, he would have just told her to. But someplace else, that’s possible. If that happens, we’ll have to play that by ear.”
Matthews put his Chevrolet in reverse, backed out of his parking slot, and drove slowly out of the parking lot.
“What if Ollwood is already at the restaurant, gives your girlfriend the package, and takes off?”
“That’s possible. When we get there, cruise the parking lot. We’re looking for an old Ford station wagon and/or a battered Volkswagen.”
“If Ollwood has taken off, then what, Matt?”
“This is as far as I’m going, Jack. We go to the locals and ask for their help.”
Susan was talking on one of the pay phones when Matthews drove around to the back of the Crossroads Diner.
So was a young, grossly obese young woman in overalls with a small child perched on her hip.
Susan gave no indication that she had seen Matthews’s car as they drove by her.
Matthews turned the corner of the building and stopped.
“I didn’t see a Bug or a station wagon,” Matthews said. “Did you?”
“No. What’s likely to happen is that Ollwood will come here and just give her the package. We don’t want her to get out of the parking lot.”
“Okay. You get out, see what Susan has to say, and I’ll start looking for Ollwood’s car. I’ll try to block it. If necessary, I’ll ram it.”
Matt jumped out of the Chevrolet, and Matthews began to turn his car around.
Matt entered the front of the restaurant, then looked out a window to see that Susan, now off the phone, was still at the bank of pay phones.
Then he went out the back door of the restaurant and made his way through the parked cars until he was across the lane from Susan.
He had to call “honey” twice before she saw him crouched low between the fenders of a Dodge and a Ford.
“She’s coming, right away, to pick me up,” Susan said.
The grossly obese young woman, in the act of counting change, looked at Susan curiously, and then even more curiously when she saw Matt.
Matt backed up and retraced his path through th
e restaurant.
Jack’s car was nowhere in sight, but a row of garbage cans had been placed across the road to block it.
Matt could see curious faces on people wearing cook’s whites looking out from the restaurant’s kitchen; Jack Matthews had obviously shown them his badge and explained what he was doing with the garbage cans.
And, as obviously, he planned to block the lane from the other end.
Matt walked quickly down the front of the restaurant, looking for Matthews’ Chevrolet. He found it and started to walk toward it, when he saw the battered Volkswagen turning into the parking lot.
He walked, as quickly as he could—without appearing to be running, just some guy going to his car—forcing himself not to look again at the Volkswagen, until he was parallel to where Susan stood at the bank of pay phones.
He got there just as the Volkswagen stopped.
Susan went to it and pulled the door open.
Matt ran to the Volkswagen and tried to pull the driver’s door open. He had decided the best way to restrain Jenny Ollwood was to jerk her out of the car and throw her on the ground.
He had solved the problem of having no handcuffs by “forgetting” to return the pair he had borrowed from Lieutenant Deitrich when they had arrested Calhoun. He would put the borrowed set on Jennifer Ollwood.
The Volkswagen driver’s-side door was locked.
“You are under arrest!” he shouted.
Jennifer Ollwood looked up at him, not in fear but fury. “Motherfucking pig!” she screamed.
The Volkswagen raced off.
Matt dropped to his knees to take his pistol from his ankle holster.
There was a burst of carbine fire, seven, eight, ten rounds. Matt looked down the lane.
Chenowith was standing in the center of it, trying to clear a jam.
“Drop the gun!” Jack Matthews shouted.
Chenowith turned to look at him.
Matthews, his issue .357 revolver held in the position prescribed, shot him twice, calmly and deliberately.
Matt, his pistol now in hand, ran after Jennifer’s Volkswagen.
She had apparently decided to ram her way past the garbage cans Matthews had placed in the lane. The one she had hit had wound up under the nose of the Volkswagen. Unsteerable, the Volkswagen had crashed into another parked car. Jennifer Ollwood now had the Volkswagen in reverse, trying to free herself. The Volkswagen’s tires were smoking, but the car was just barely moving.
Matt ran to the Volkswagen, smashed the window with the butt of his pistol, and then aimed it right at Jennifer Ollwood’s face.
She took her hands off the steering wheel, and the sound of the racing engine died.
Matt opened the door and then grabbed Jennifer’s sweater front and jerked her out of the car, tripped her, and threw her on her face on the lane.
She kicked and fought, and he hit her on the side of her head with the butt of his pistol. It didn’t knock her out, but it made her groggy enough so that he could pin her left arm behind her and, with his knee in her back, start to put the handcuffs on.
He heard a female voice say, indignantly, “He didn’t have to do that to her!”
And then he heard a baby start to howl.
He jerked Jennifer to her feet, looked in the back of the Volkswagen, and saw the baby.
Susan can handle the baby.
“My baby!” Jennifer screamed. “Somebody help my baby!”
Matt turned to look at the growing crowd of spectators.
“Nobody go near that car!” he ordered. “I’m a police officer, and I’m going to get someone to take care of the baby!”
“Goddamn cops!” the same indignant female voice muttered.
Matt propelled Jennifer around the corner of the building, back toward the bank of pay phones.
Jack Matthews saw him coming, and stepped into the lane. He held both hands up, as if stopping traffic, and there was a pained look on his face.
Matt saw the obese young woman sitting on the ground, screaming, and after a moment, saw that she was holding her bloody right leg.
“Matt, don’t come down here!” Jack called.
Matt had just enough time to wonder what the hell was wrong with Matthews, when he understood.
Susan was on the ground, too. Matt put his foot in front of Jennifer Ollwood and pushed her hard. She fell again to the pavement, and started to scream obscenities.
He ran to Susan. Jack tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t be stopped.
Susan was on her back, her mouth and her sightless eyes open. There was a small, neat hole just below her left eye. Her blond hair was in a spreading pool of blood.
“Oh, God!” Matt howled, and dropped to his knees and cradled her limp body in his arms.
“You wanted to see me, Mr. Mayor?” Inspector Peter Wohl asked, standing in the open door to the mayor’s private office in City Hall.
“You took your sweet goddamn time getting here, Peter,” Jerry Carlucci snapped.
“I didn’t think you wanted me to turn on the lights and siren, sir.”
“Don’t smart-mouth me, Peter!”
“No, sir.”
“Have you seen this?” Carlucci said, sliding the Philadelphia Bulletin across his massive desk toward Wohl.
Wohl glanced at it.
“I haven’t had a chance to read it, sir. I heard about it.”
“Read it. Improve your mind,” Carlucci said.
“Yes, sir.”
Wohl picked up the newspaper, and read the lead story:
“COLD-BLOODED TERRORIST” MURDERS FBI INFORMANT MOMENTS BEFORE HE FALLS TO FBI’S BULLETS IN BLOODY DOYLESTOWN GUN BATTLE; SPECTATOR WOUNDED IN HAIL OF GUNFIRE
by Michael J. O’Hara
Bulletin Staff Writer
Doylestown, Bucks County—Bryan C. Chenowith, described by the FBI as a “cold-blooded terrorist,” was shot to death shortly after 7:00 P.M. last night by FBI Agent John D. Matthews in the parking lot of the Crossroads Diner here moments after Chenowith machine-gunned to death Susan Reynolds, 27, of Camp Hill, Pa., who FBI officials described as a “public-spirited citizen” who had been assisting the authorities in their years-long, nationwide search for Chenowith and his associates.
Mrs. Deborah G. Dannmeir, 24, of Upper Black Eddy, who was using an outdoor pay telephone when the shooting erupted, was struck by one of the bullets fired from Chenowith’s fully automatic .30-caliber military carbine. She is reported in “satisfactory” condition at Bucks County Hospital.
Chenowith; his common-law wife, Jennifer Ollwood, who was apprehended by Philadelphia Detective Matthew M. Payne at the scene of the gun battle; Edgar L. Cole; and Eloise Anne Fitzgerald were indicted for murder following the bombing of the Biological Sciences building at the University of Pittsburgh, in which eleven people lost their lives. “The Chenowith Group” has been the target of an intense nationwide FBI search ever since.
Cole and Fitzgerald were arrested without incident at approximately 9:00 P.M. last evening at a remote Bucks County farmhouse to which Miss Reynolds, shortly before her death, had directed Detective Payne. Miss Reynolds, according to the FBI, had known the women at Bennington College, Vermont. She was an appeals officer with the Pennsylvania Department of Social Services in Harrisburg.
According to Walter Davis, Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia Office of the FBI, the Chenowith Group had turned to bank robbery, and said “there is incontrovertible evidence” that Chenowith, masquerading as a woman, had in the past few weeks robbed banks in Riegelsville, Pa., Clinton, N.J., and elsewhere.
“The Chenowith Group was armed with fully automatic weapons,” Davis said, “stolen from the National Guard at Indiantown Gap, and was clearly prepared to use them. Both Special Agent Matthews and Detective Payne knew this. It is clear proof of their courage and devotion to the public’s safety that they attempted to apprehend a criminal like Mr. Chenowith, disregarding the risk to their own lives.”
Davis went on to explain that
there had been no way, given the circumstances, that either Matthews or Payne could have requested assistance.
“I can’t, of course, go into the details leading up to this incident,” Davis said, “except that it was one more example of the close cooperation between the FBI and the Philadelphia Police Department.”
Inspector Peter Wohl, commanding officer of the Special Operations Division of the Philadelphia Police Department, to which Detective Payne is assigned, declined to comment on the shooting, or on Detective Payne’s performance, stating that the case was under review.
“Yes, sir?” Peter asked, looking at the mayor when he had finished.
“What’s the matter with you, Inspector, cat got your goddamn tongue?”
“Sir?”
“ ‘Inspector Peter Wohl declined to comment,’ ” Carlucci quoted in a high falsetto.
“What was I supposed to say?”
“Use your fertile imagination! Do you like the FBI grabbing all the credit for what was clearly our bust?”
“No, sir.”
“Payne got that dame to roll over on Chenowith, not that FBI agent,” Carlucci said. “You wouldn’t know that to read Mickey’s story.”
“No, sir,” Peter said. “You wouldn’t.”
“You’re not going to ask me how I know that?”
“Sir, how do you know that?”
“Detective Payne told me,” Carlucci said.
“You’ve seen Payne?”
“Did you see that thing on TV—goddamn, they shouldn’t put things like that on TV—I mean, Payne standing there soaked in that girl’s blood, watching them carry her body off?”
“Yes, sir, I saw it. It was pretty rough.”
“So I called up and asked what happened to him, and where he was, and then he told me he went from the restaurant to arrest the rest of those slime. And then, when I called Special Operations, Mike Sabara told me you had sent him home.”
“Actually, I placed him on administrative leave,” Wohl said.
“Yeah, that’s what Mike said, while it was decided whether or not charges would be brought against him.”
“Yes, sir.”
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