“Give Detective Payne a peek, would you?”
Payne thought: I don’t want to see what’s left of his damn- Javier Iglesia slipped his hand under the bag, at the point just under the back of the dead man’s neck, and lifted.
– Oh, Jesus!
Payne felt the lightness rise in his stomach again. It went away when Iglesia pulled back his hand and the neck wound closed.
“Go on, Javier,” Harris egged him on, “tell him.”
Iglesia looked at Payne and, clearly pleased with himself, said, “The dickhead got himself circumcised.”
Then he unceremoniously flipped the body bag’s top flap back in place and rolled the gurney to the back bumper of the van. He aligned it there, and with a shove collapsed its undercarriage and slid it in beside the other gurney holding the other body bag.
Watching Iglesia close the van’s back doors, Matt suddenly thought: … forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.
Jesus. Where did that come from?
Where else? From years of reciting the Lord’s Prayer-sitting in the same sanctuary as Becca.
Then he thought: How bad can Becca be?
Matt looked at Harris and said, “Was Becca, the girl in the Mercedes-”
Tony Harris shook his head.
“Nothing like that, Matt. Curiously, what hurt her is also what saved her from something worse. When the windshield blew inward and struck her, it appears to have also acted like a shield that deflected the brunt of the blast.”
They walked back to the window. As they surveyed the scene, Harris put down his coffee and pulled out his notepad, flipping to a fresh page.
“Matt, how about giving me that information you said you have? You asked about the Mercedes. Do you know the Benjamin girl well?”
“Yeah, fairly well. We grew up in Wallingford. Went to the same church. And she was two years behind me at Episcopal Academy.”
Harris started writing on his pad, then said, “Any reason to believe she’s involved with running drugs, specifically meth?”
“No reason at all. And I sure as hell hope she’s not. Her boyfriend, however, is another case…”
“What about the boyfriend?”
“I haven’t seen Skipper Olde since we graduated from Episcopal Academy.”
“ ‘Skipper’?” he said, and spelled the last name aloud as he wrote.
“Right. J. Warren Olde,” Matt furnished, “initial J-Juliet, though I have no idea what it stands for. Also known as Skipper. He’s my age, twenty-seven.”
“Was he into drugs back then?”
Matt shook his head. “Not that I know of. Mostly beer and whiskey, and a lot of it. He led Becca Benjamin, who’s a couple years younger, down that path. Not that she maybe wouldn’t have gone down it on her own. Just sure as hell not so far and so fast.”
Harris nodded, then asked, “Is Olde the same as-”
“Yeah. Olde and Sons, the McMansion custom home builders. Philly, Palm Beach, Dallas. His old man J. Warren Olde, Sr.”
“Oh boy.”
Matt heard something in Harris’s tone that suggested more than mere annoyance at the mention of another wealthy family name.
“What ‘oh boy,’ Tony?”
Harris didn’t respond directly. He looked inside the motel room, and Payne followed his eyes.
“What in the hell happened here, Tony?” Payne then said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“On the assumption that that wasn’t a rhetorical question, I thought I told you-a meth lab. They’re volatile as hell.”
“But is that all that this is about?”
Tony Harris shrugged, then said, “I don’t know if it’s ‘all,’ but it’s certainly a large component.”
Payne nodded. “So were those two crispy critters in the body bags running the lab, and selling to Skipper? Or was it Skipper’s lab? Or had he come to throw them out of his motel? I cannot understand why he’d bring Becca, in Becca’s Mercedes that screams everything that this place is not, here…”
“Well, as you point out, there’re a number of possible scenarios. My money’s on the one that says your prep school pal-”
“He’s not my pal,” Payne interrupted. “Becca, however, I do like.”
“-okay, this Skipper guy, then, was in the illicit drug manufacture and distribution trades, specifically crystal meth. Maybe the girl, too. But we won’t know until we can talk to them. If we can talk to them. He was unconscious after he collapsed. And she was in and out of consciousness when the boys wheeled her out of here in the meat wagon.” Harris heard what he’d just said. “Sorry, Matt. No offense.”
Matt motioned with his hand in a gesture that said, None taken.
“Till then,” Harris went on, “any other pieces to the puzzle you can fill in…”
Payne thought, If anyone can figure this out, it’s Tony.
He then told him everything that Chad Nesbitt had said in the diner.
Harris finished writing that in his notes and said, “You were right. You’re really close to this. Anything else?”
Matt Payne made eye contact with Tony Harris.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Yeah, there is, Tony. I want in on this job.”
“And I’d like to have you. But I thought you were going-”
“No. That’s not happening. I’m a cop.”
“No, you’re not,” Harris said.
What-? Payne thought.
Harris went on: “Matt, at the risk of inflating what already might be an oversize ego, you were a damn good detective. Now you’re a sergeant-a supervisor. And I sure could use you on this job-if, that is, I get it.”
Payne nodded once. “Thanks, Tony. That means a lot coming from you.” He paused, then added, “Bari’s going to get this job?”
Harris shrugged.
Harris then watched as Payne reached for his cellular phone, scrolled the list of names, then hit CALL.
“Good morning, Captain Hollaran,” Matt said when the call was answered. “Matt Payne. How are you, sir?”
Captain Francis X. Hollaran was assistant to First Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, the second in command of all of the Philadelphia Police Department. Commissioner Coughlin had been the one to order the overworked and overstressed Sergeant Matthew M. Payne, who was his godson, “Matty, you’re taking some time off. Thirty days. You’ve earned it, you deserve it-and you need it.”
Payne said into his cell phone: “Thank you, Captain. I appreciate it. I do feel better. Would it be possible to speak with the commissioner when he gets in?”
He glanced at his wristwatch, then said: “He’s in already? Then yes, please. Tell him I’m on my way to the Roundhouse, and I need ten minutes of his time.”
Payne paused to listen, then, making eye contact with Tony Harris, added, “Of course you can give him a heads-up what it’s about. Tell him my thirty-day R and R officially ended with a boom a few hours ago. I’m coming back to work.”
[THREE] Reading Terminal Market Center City, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 7:45 A.M.
In a crush of rush-hour commuters, twenty-one-year-old Juan Paulo Delgado stepped off the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s R1 “Airport Line” railcar at the Market East Station. He followed a half-dozen of the commuters as they one by one passed through the Eleventh Street exit’s revolving door. On the sidewalk, El Gato pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, covering his head against the rain that was starting. Two women in business attire and sharing an umbrella walked past, and he trailed them to Filbert Street, then into the Reading Terminal Market.
El Gato had boarded the SEPTA regional railroad at the Thirtieth Street Station, which was about a mile to the west, just across the Schuylkill River. And it had been into that dark river, from the tree-lined eastern shore under the Thirty-fourth Street bridge, that thirty minutes earlier he’d unceremoniously dumped the headless body of Ana Maria Del Carmen Lopez.