right portion of the front grill, all-weather tires mounted on the rear. Operator is a white male, twenty-five to thirty years of age, may be armed with a knife. Suspect is wanted for questioning in a rape-homicide and should be considered dangerous.'
There was a brief pause, then the beeps and the message were repeated.
Jesus, Matt thought, I'd like to spot that sonofabitch!
He did not do so, although he very carefully scrutinized all the traffic on Broad Street, and on the Roosevelt Boulevard Extension, and then down the parkway into downtown Philadelphia, looking for a maroon van.
He had difficulty finding a parking space at the Roundhouse, but finally found one. He unstrapped the casts and carried them into the building. A very stout lady with orange hair came rapidly out of the elevator as he prepared to board it, nearly knocking the casts out of his hands.
That, he decided, would not have surprised him at all. It would be the gilding of the lily. If he had dropped and destroyed the casts, he would have spent the rest of his natural life typing up Sergeant Frizell's goddamned multipart forms.
No, he thought, that's terribly clever, but it's not true. What would have happened if I had carelessly allowed the casts to be broken would be that I would have had to face the question I have been so scrupulously avoiding; whether or not I am, as Amy suggests, simply indulging myself walking around with a gun and a badge, pretending I'm a policeman because I was rejected by the Marines.
I'm not a policeman. I proved that today, both by the childish pleasure I took racing through traffic with the siren screaming and then again by passing out like a Girl Scout seeing her first dead rabbit when I saw that poor woman's mutilated body. And just now, again, when I was really looking for a dark red van, so I could catch the bad guy, and earn the cheers and applause of my peers.
What bullshit! What the hell would I have done if I'd found him?
Maybe it would have been better in the long run if that fat lady had knocked the casts from my hands; the cops, the real cops, are going to catch this psychopath anyway, and if I had dropped the damned things, I would have been out of the Police Department in the morning, which, logic tells me, ergo sum, would be better all around.
Officer Matthew Payne was not at all surprised to be treated as a messenger boy by the officers in the Forensic Laboratory when he gave them the casts, nor when he returned to Bustleton and Bowler to be curtly ordered by a Corporal he had never seen before to get his ass over to the Peebles residence.
'You're late,' the Corporal said. 'Where the hell have you been?'
'At the Roundhouse,' Matt replied.
'Oh, yeah, I heard,' the Corporal said. 'You have friends in high places, don't you, Payne?'
Matt did not bother to explain that he had been sent to the Roundhouse by Inspector Wohl, and that it had been in connection with police business. The Corpora! had just added the final argument in favor of resignation. He did have friends in high places.
Even if I wanted to, even if I had the requisite psychological characteristics necessary in a police officer, which I have proven beyond argument today that I do not, it would be impossible to prove myself a man, uncastrate myself, so to speak, with Uncle Denny Coughlin around, watching over me like a nervous maiden aunt, keeping me from doing what every other rookie gets to do, but rather sending me to a sinecure where, I am sure, the word is out to protect me. And where, I am obviously, and with justification, held in contempt by my peers.
I'll complete this tour of duty, because it would not be fair to expect McFadden and Martinez to take my duty in addition to their own, but in the morning, I will type out a short, succinct letter of resignation, and have it delivered out here by messenger.
He took the keys the Corporal had given him in exchange for the keys to Jason Washington's car and drove out to Chestnut Hill.
Charley McFadden had parked his car fifty yards away from the gate to the Peebles residence, on the opposite side of the street. Matt pulled in behind it, got out, and walked up to it.
'I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show up at all,' McFadden said, not critically. 'Where'd you go with Washington?'
'He went out to Bucks County, where they found the Woodham woman's body,' Matt said. 'He needed an errand boy.'
'Well, all those Homicide guys think they're hotshots,' McFadden said, not understanding him. 'Don't let it get you down.'
'What am I supposed to do here, Charley?'
'This is mostly bullshit,' McFadden said. 'Most of it is to scare the creep off. Wohl don't want another burglary here on the Overnight Report. And some of it is because he's pissed at me.'
'What for?'
'He somehow has the idea I took you out and got you shitfaced last night,' Charley said. He looked at Matt's face for a reaction, and then went on: 'Hay-zus thinks you told Wohl that.'
'No,' Matt said. 'I told Inspector Wohl thatI got drunk.'
'With me?'
'No,' Matt said. 'And if he formed that impression, I'll see that I correct it.'
'Fuck it, don't worry about it,' Charley said. 'Now, about here. I don't think this asshole will show up again. If he does, he's not stupid, he'll spot your car, and disappear. But if he does show up, and he is stupid-in other words, if you see somebody sneaking around the bushes, call for a backup. Don't try to catch him yourself. Highway cars will be riding by here every half hour or so, so what you'll do is sit here and try to stay awake until Hay-zus relieves you at midnight.'
'How do I stay awake?'
'You didn't bring a thermos?'
Matt shook his head.
'I should have said something,' Charley said. 'I'll go get you a couple of containers of black coffee before I leave. Even cold coffee is better than no coffee. Get out of the car every once in a while, and walk around a little. Wave your arms, get the blood circulating.
…'
'I get the picture,' Matt said.
'Every supervisor around is going to be riding past here tonight,' McFadden said. 'I wouldn't be surprised if Wohl himself came by. So for Christ's sake, don't fall asleep, or your ass will be in a crack.'
'Okay,' Matt said. 'Thanks, Charley.'
'Ah, shit,' McFadden said, and started his engine. 'You want something with the coffee? An egg sandwich, hamburger, something?'
'Hamburger with onions, two of them,' Matt said, digging in his pocket for money. 'They give me gas. Maybe that'll keep me awake.'
Two hamburgers generously dressed with fried and raw onions (Charley McFadden, not knowing Matt's preference, had brought one of each) and two enormous foam containers of coffee, while they produced gas, did not keep Officer Matthew Payne awake on his post.
Neither did half a dozen walks down the street and up the driveway of the Peebles residence. Neither did getting out of the car and waving his arms around and doing deep knee bends.
At five minutes after eleven, while he was, for the tenth or fifteenth time, mentally composing the letter of resignation he would write in the morning, striving for both brevity and avoiding any suggestion that he would entertain any requests to reconsider, his head dropped forward and he fell asleep.
Five minutes after that, he twisted in his sleep, and slid slowly down on the seat.
Five minutes after that, as Officer McFadden had predicted, a senior supervisor did drive by the Peebles residence. He spotted the car, but paid only cursory attention to it, for he had other things on his mind.
Captain David Pekach thought the odds were about twenty-to-one that he was about to make a complete fool of himself. He wasimagining that the fingers of Miss Martha Peebles had lingered tenderly and perhaps even suggestively on his when he had damned near dropped the Ludwig Hamner Remington rolling-blockSchuetzen, and
