wondered if getting you in here, now, would help or hurt that. He also said he didn’t want you to get the idea he was doing it to make points with you about Matt. He asked me to think it over and get back to him. So I thought it over, and I got back to him, and told him I thought it was a good idea, and that I felt sure you would come to me, ask me about it, and I would tell you that.”
“Chief . . .”
“It’s a good idea, Peter,” Coughlin said.
“I didn’t want to put you on a spot,” Wohl said.
“I gave you the benefit of that doubt. So far I’ve seen no signs that you’re getting too big for your britches. But I think there are—I know there are—some people in the department who do, and will take you being in here as proof of that.”
He sliced off a piece of his lamb chop and put it in his mouth.
“Before you tell me what you want to tell me, Peter, did you hear this Chenowith character has got himself a sawed-off fully automatic carbine?”
Wohl nodded. “I heard.”
“Presumably Matty has been told?”
“He’s been told.”
“You think he’s going to obey his orders?”
“You read the riot act to him, I read the riot act to him, and Washington read the riot act to him. I’ve been telling myself we are the three people whose orders he’s most likely to obey.”
Coughlin nodded.
“He called Washington first thing this morning,” Wohl went on, “and told him he had just seen Officer Timothy J. Calhoun of Five Squad going into the safe-deposit box vault of the First Harrisburg Bank and Trust.”
“I . . . I was about to say I don’t think Calhoun’s about to take a shot at him, but remembering that telephone call to the Widow Kellog, maybe I shouldn’t. I’m more concerned about this Chenowith character. He knows he’s facing life anyway, so why worry about shooting a cop? And he’s crazy.”
“So far as I know, Matt is still trying to gain the Reynolds woman’s confidence. I think he understands the situation.”
“I hope you’re right. What happens next with Calhoun?”
“Matt’s supposed to call later with the name of the safe-deposit box number. Jason’s going to do everything about a search warrant but hand it to a judge for his signature.”
Coughlin nodded.
Wohl handed him the sheet of paper on which Dr. Martinez had written, “Miss Cynthia Longwood was stripped naked and orally raped by a policeman under circumstances that were themselves traumatic.”
Coughlin’s eyebrows went up, and he looked at Wohl for amplification.
“Amy gave me that this morning,” Wohl said.
Coughlin went off on a tangent.
“You’ve been seeing a lot of Amy, haven’t you?”
“How do you define ‘a lot’?”
“You know how to define ‘a lot,’ ” Coughlin said. “Does Amy believe this?”
Wohl nodded.
“This is a patient of hers?”
Wohl nodded again, and added, “And she’s Vincenzo Savarese’s granddaughter.”
“I heard his daughter had married a Main Line guy,” Coughlin said “but I didn’t make the connection until just now. Longwood is the builder, right?”
Wohl nodded.
“You think Savarese knows about this?”
“I think that message—it was phoned in to the hospital for Amy in the wee hours this morning—came from Savarese.”
“Savarese called the hospital?”
“More likely one of his goons. I talked to the doctor and the nurse who talked to them. Both agreed the guy on the phone didn’t use the kind of vocabulary in the message.”
“Anything else?”
“Amy is concerned about violating medical ethics, and when I told her I was going to talk to you about this, asked me to tell you this girl is about to get shoved off the cliff into schizophrenia, and please be careful.”
“That’s all?”
“She found traces of hard stuff in the girl’s blood, making her—and me—think there’s a drug connection.”
Coughlin grunted, read the message again, then raised his eyes to Wohl.
“You thinking what I’m thinking, Peter?”
“I hope so,” Wohl said.
Coughlin made a “give it to me” gesture with his hand. “There was a drug bust. That’s the ‘already traumatic circumstances.’ Then this animal did this to her, and let her go. What is she going to do? Walk into a district and tell the desk sergeant, ‘I was making a buy, and one of your cops’ . . . ?”
“You think Savarese has also figured that out?”
“No one has ever accused Savarese of being slow.”
“Anybody but you know about this?”
“Washington.”
Coughlin’s eyebrows rose in question.
“There’s a boyfriend. He has not called the hospital. I told Jason to find out who