car, started it up, and reached for the microphone in the glove compartment, realizing only then that was the wrong radio. He put the microphone back, and fumbled around on the seat for the microphone that would give him access to the Highway Band.
He became aware that a car had pulled parallel to him and stopped. He turned to look, and found a pair of Highway Patrolmen looking at him from the front seat of an unmarked Highway car.
He waved and smiled. There was no response from either cop, but the car moved off.
They either didn't recognize me, or they did and aren't in a particularly friendly mood toward the sonofabitch who took Highway away from Good Ol' Mike and gave it to Dave Pekach.
He picked up the microphone, and as he did, smiled.
'Highway One, this is S-Sam One.'
'Highway One,' Pekach came back immediately. Wohl was not surprised that Pekach was up and riding around. Not only was he new to the job, and conscientious, but Pekach was used to working nights; it would take him a week, maybe longer, to get used to the idea that the Commander of Highway worked the day shift.
'I'm on Rittenhouse Square, David. Where are you? Where could we meet?'
Wohl chuckled. The brake lights on the unmarked Highway car flashed on, and the car slowed momentarily. In what he was sure was an involuntary reflex action, the driver had hit the brakes when he heard the New Boss calling Highway One. He was sure he could read the driver's mind:I thought that was him. Now what's the bastard up to?
'I'm on the expressway about a mile from the Manayunk Bridge,' Pekach said. 'You name it.'
'You know where I live?'
'Yes, I do.'
'I'll meet you there,' Wohl said, and laid the microphone down.
Pekach, in full uniform, complete to motorcyclist's boots and Sam Browne belt festooned with shiny cartridges, was leaning on a Highway blue-and-white on the cobblestones before Wohl's garage apartment when Wohl got there.
I wouldn't be surprised if he was working the expressway with radar for speeders,Wohl thought, and was immediately sorry. That was both unkind and not true. What David Pekach was doing was what he would have done himself in the circumstances, making the point that Highway could expect to find the boss riding around at midnight, and the second, equally important point, that he was not sneaking around in an unmarked car, but in uniform and in a blue-and-white.
Wohl pulled the nose of the LTD up to the garage and got out.
'Let me put this away, David,' he called. 'And then I'll buy you a beer. Long night?'
'I thought it was a good idea to ride around,' Pekach said.
'So do I,' Wohl said, as he unlocked the doors and swung them open. ' But it's after midnight.'
He put the car in the garage, and then touched Pekach's arm as he led him up the stairs to the apartment.
'You seen the papers?' Pekach said.
'No, should I have?'
'Yeah, I think so. I brought you theBulletin and theLedger. '
'Thank you,' Wohl said. 'It wouldn't take a minute to make coffee.'
'I'm coffeed out; beer would be fine.'
'Sit,' Wohl said, pointing to the couch beneath the oil painting of the voluptuous nude, and went to the refrigerator and came back with two bottles of Schlitz. 'Glass?'
'This is fine,' Pekach said, 'thank you.'
'Nothing on Elizabeth Woodham?' Wohl asked. 'I expect I would have heard…'
David Pekach shook his head.
'Not a damn thing,' he said. 'I was so frustrated I actually wrote a speeding ticket.'
'Really?' Wohl chuckled.
'Sonofabitch came by me at about eighty, as if I wasn't there. I thought maybe he was drunk, so I pulled him over. He was sober. Just in a hurry.'
'It's been a long time since I wrote a ticket,' Wohl said.
'When he saw he was going to get a ticket,' Pekach said, 'he got nasty. He said he was surprised a captain would be out getting people for something like speeding when we had a serial rapist and a kidnapped woman on our hands.'
'Ouch,' Wohl said.
'I felt like belting the sonofabitch,' Pekach said. 'That was just before you called.'
'I had a disturbing session just before I called you,' Wohl said. ' With a psychiatrist. You've seen that kid hanging around Bustleton and Bowler? Payne?'
'He's Dutch's nephew or something?'
'Yeah. Well, his sister. I let her read the files and asked her for a profile.'
'And?'
'Not much that'll help us find him, I'm afraid. But she said-the way she put it was 'slippery slope'-that once somebody like this doer goes over the edge, commits the first act, starts to act out his fantasies, it's a slippery slope.'
'Huh,' Pekach said.
'Meaning that he's unable to stop, and starts to think of himself as invincible, starts to think, in other words, that he can get away with anything. Worse, that to get the same charge, the same satisfaction, he has to get deeper and deeper into his fantasies.'
'Meaning, she doesn't think we're going to get the Woodham woman back alive?'
'No, she doesn't,' Peter said. 'And worse, that because he's starting to think he's invincible, that he's not going to get caught, that he' ll go after somebody else, a new conquest, more quickly than he has before.'
'I'm not sure I understand that,' Pekach said.
'What she said is that the first time, after he'd done it, he was maybe ashamed and afraid he would get caught. And then when he didn't get caught, he stopped being afraid. And he remembered how much fun it was. So he did it again, got into his fantasies a little deeper, and was a little less frightened, and a lot less ashamed.'
'Jesus!'
'What she, Dr. Payne, said was that it'evolves into frenzy.'
'She meant he loses control?'
'Yeah.'
'You think she knows what she's talking about?'
'I'm afraid she does,' Wohl said.
'What can be done that isn't being done?' Pekach asked.
'Tony Harris is working minor sexual offenders,' Wohl said. 'He thinks this guy may have a misdemeanor arrest or two for exposing himself, soliciting a hooker, you know. Mike has been out recruiting people, and as soon as they start coming in, in the morning, I'm going to put them to work ringing doorbells for Harris.'
'If there was a van, any kind of van, in Northwest Philly tonight that got away with not coming to a complete stop, or whose taillights weren't working, you know what I mean, I would be very surprised,' Pekach said. 'But we just can't stop every goddamned van in town, looking for a hairy white male, no further description available.'
'I know,' Wohl said.
'I went to the roll call tonight,' Pekach said, 'and reminded Highway that if we catch this scumbag, it might get the goddamned newspapers, especially the goddamnedLedger, off our backs. Not that they wouldn't be trying to catch this scumbag anyway.'
'I know,' Wohl said.
'Czernick on your back, Peter? Coughlin? The mayor?'
'Not yet,' Peter said. 'But that's going to happen.'
'What do they expect?'
'Results,' Wohl said. 'I'm wide open to suggestion, David.'
'I don't have any, sorry,' Pekach said.
'What did you decide after tonight?' Wohl asked.
