"I'm going to Homicide," Matt called back.
"Second floor," the cop said.
Matt nodded and got on the elevator.
The Homicide Division of the Philadelphia Police Department occupies a suite of second-floor rear offices.
Matt pushed the door open and stepped inside. There were half a dozen detectives in the room, all sitting at rather battered desks. None of them looked familiar. There was an office with a frosted glass door, with a sign, CAPTAIN HENRY C. QUAIRE, above it. Matt had met Captain Quaire, but the office was empty.
He walked toward the far end of the room, where there were two men standing beside a single desk that faced the others. Sitting at the desk was a dapper, well-dressed man in civilian clothing whom Matt surmised was the watch officer, the lieutenant in charge.
As he walked across the room he noticed that one of the two " interview rooms" on the corridor side of the room was occupied; a large, blondheaded man in a sleeveless T-shirt was sitting in a metal chair, his left wrist encircled by a hand-cuff. The other handcuff was fastened to a hole in the chair. The chair itself was bolted to the floor.
He saw Matt looking at him and gave him a look of utter contempt.
As Matt approached the desk at the end of the room the mustached, dark-skinned man sitting at it saw him coming and moved his head slightly. The other two men turned to look at him. Matt saw a brass nameplate on the desk, LIEUTENANT LOUIS NATALI, whom Matt surmised was the lieutenant in charge.
"My name is Payne, Lieutenant," Matt said as he reached the desk. "I was told to report here."
No one responded, and Matt was made uncomfortable by the unabashed examination he'd been given by all three men. The examination, he decided, was because of the dinner jacket, but there was something else in the air too.
"He's all yours," Lieutenant Natali said finally.
"Let's find someplace to talk," the smaller of the two detectives said, and gestured vaguely down the room.
There was an unoccupied desk, and Matt headed for it.
"Let's use this," the detective called. Matt stopped and turned and saw that the detective was pointing to the second, empty interview room. That seemed a little odd, but he walked through the door, anyway.
The two detectives followed him inside. One closed the door after them. The other, the one who had suggested the use of the interview room, signaled for Matt to sit in the interviewee's chair.
Matt looked at it with unease. There was a set of handcuffs lying on it, one of the cuffs locked through a hole in the chair.
"Go on, sit down," the detective said, adding, "Payne, my name is Dolan. Sergeant Dolan."
Matt offered his hand. Sergeant Dolan ignored it. Neither did he introduce the other detective.
"Where's your car, Payne?" Sergeant Dolan asked. "Outside? You mind if we have a look in it?"
"What?"
"I asked if you mind if we have a look in your car."
"I don't know where my car is right now," Matt replied. "Sorry. Why are you interested in my car?"
"What do you mean, you don't know where your car is?"
"I mean, I don't know where it is. I loaned it to somebody. "
"Somebody? Does somebody have a name?"
"You want to tell me what this is all about?"
"This is an interview. You're a police officer. You should know what an interview is."
"Hey, all I did was find the injured girl and the dead guy."
"What I want to know is two things. What were you doing up there, and where's your car?Three things: Why were you so anxious to get your car away from the Penn Services Parking Garage?"
"And I'd like to know why you're asking me all these questions."
"Don't try to hotdog me, Payne, just answer me."
Matt looked at Sergeant Dolan and decided he didn't like him. He remembered two things: that his mother was absolutely right when she said he too often let his mouth run away with him when he was angry or didn't like somebody; and that he was a police officer, and this overbearing son of a bitch was a policesergeant. It would be very unwise indeed to tell him to go fuck himself.
"Sorry," Matt said. "Okay, Sergeant. From the top. I went to the top of the garage because I wanted to park my car and there were no empty spots on the lower floors. When I got there, I found Miss Detweiler lying on the floor. Injured. The lady with me-"
"How did you know the Detweiler girl's name? You know her?"
"Yes, I know her."
"Who was the lady with you?"
"Her name is Amanda Spencer."
"And she knows the Detweiler girl too?"
"Yes. I don't know how well."
"How about Anthony J. DeZego? You know him?"
"No. Is that the dead man's name?"
"You sure you don't know him?"
"Absolutely."
Lieutenant Louis Natali had watched as the two Narcotics detectives led Payne into the interview room and closed the door. He opened a desk drawer and took a long, thin cigar from a box and very carefully lit it. He examined the glowing coal for a moment and then made up his mind. Whatever the hell was going on smelled, and he could not just sit there and ignore it.
He stood up, walked down the room, and entered the room next to the interview room. It was equipped with a two-way mirror and a loudspeaker that permitted watching and listening to interviews being conducted in the interview room.
The mirror fooled no one; any interviewee with more brains than a retarded gnat knew what it was. But it did serve several practical purposes, not the least of which was that it intimidated, to some degree, the interviewees. They didn't know whether or not somebody else was watching. That tended to make them uncomfortable, and that often was valuable.
But the primary value, as Natali saw it, of the two-way mirror and loudspeaker was that it provided the means by which other detectives or Narcotics officers could watch an interview. They could form their own opinion of the responses the interviewee made to the questions, and of his reaction to them. Sometimes a question that should have been asked but had not occurred to them, and they could summon one of the interviewers out of the room and suggest that he go back in and ask it.
And finally, as was happening now, the two-way mirror afforded supervisors the means to watch an interview when they were either curious or did not have absolute faith in the interviewers to conduct the interview, keeping in mind Departmental regulations and the interviewees' rights.
While Lieutenant Natali was happy to cooperate with the Narcotics Division, as he was now, he had no intention of letting Narcotics do anything in a Homicide interview room that he would not permit a Homicide detective to do. And there was something about this guy Dolan that Natali did not like.
"So if you had to guess, Payne, where would say your car is now?" Sergeant Dolan asked.
"Another parking lot somewhere. I just don't know."
"And your girlfriend?"
"I suppose she's back at the Union League having dinner."
"Why don't we go get her?"
"Why can't we wait until the party is over? Detective D'Amata, who was there when Lieutenant Lewis sent me to tell the Detweilers what happened, didn't say anything about getting her over here right away."
"Detective D'Amata has nothing to do with this investigation," Dolan said. "He's Homicide. I'm Narcotics. Let's go get your girlfriend, Payne."
"What the hell is this all about?" Payne asked. Natali saw that he was genuinely surprised and confused to hear that Dolan was from Narcotics. Surprised and confused but not at all alarmed.
"Come on, let's go," Dolan said.
Lieutenant Natali walked out of the small room as the other Narcotics detective came out of the interview room, followed by Payne and then Sergeant Dolan.