The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor) - By W.E.B. Griffin Page 0,33
the other cases is that someone’s shooting fugitives in the head or chest and dumping their bodies. Further, the dead guys—and they’re only guys, so far—are wanted on outstanding warrants. A couple of them jumped bail, the others violated parole, for sex crimes against women and children. Involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, rape, aggravated indecent assault. These shits get popped point-blank, then dumped at a district station, one we assume is closest to where they got nabbed.”
“None dumped at the Roundhouse?”
“None. At least not yet. That’d be an interesting situation.”
O’Hara nodded as he took all that in.
“Now, the difference between those dumped at the districts and these two tonight is that tonight there was no ‘paperwork’—printouts of the bad guys’ Wanted info downloaded from the Internet. All the others had their paperwork stapled to them.”
“Stapled? Like to their clothes?”
Payne nodded. “Usually. But one bastard who’d raped a ten-year-old girl had his sheet stapled clean through his prick. Multiple times.”
“Ouch!” O’Hara said, instinctively crossing his legs.
Payne then said, “You know, it’s funny, because your website is one place from where more than one of the Wanted posters has been downloaded. You can tell because the line at the foot of the page shows the date the page was printed and its source URL.”
“That’s great to know,” O’Hara said. “That means that CrimeFreePhilly is working!”
“Only,” Payne said dryly, “to create more crime, it would appear. As far as I know, as much as a miserable dirty rotten shit Danny Gartner was, he had no criminal record.”
O’Hara shrugged. “Chalk it up to collateral damage. You associate with swine, you’re going to get muddy, too.”
“Jay-Cee,” Harris put in, “had charges against him of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse and rape of an unconscious or unaware person in one case that Gartner got tossed.”
Payne nodded, then took a swallow of his single-malt and glanced at his watch.
“I need to get the hell out of here. I’m trying to have a life outside of work,” he said, then looked at O’Hara. “Okay, Mick. That’s all we know at this point. Now tell me what you know.”
O’Hara raised his glass. “Not a goddamn thing, Matty. That’s why you’re called the confidential source close to the Roundhouse, and I’m called the reporter.”
O’Hara took a sip of his drink as Payne gave him the finger.
“Sorry, pal. I really wish I had something for you. You know that eventually I will. And when I do, it’s yours.”
They all then stared into their glasses, quietly thinking.
After some time, O’Hara suddenly said, “So, Matty, what do you think are the chances of solving this?”
“Seriously?”
O’Hara nodded. “Seriously.”
“Hell, I don’t know. Right now, I’d say that the odds are about as high as the number of ‘r’s in ‘fat fucking chance.’ Zilch. Which is maybe slightly better than, say, finding all those fifty thousand fugitives.”
Harris said, “Hey, you got Fort Festung. He was in the wind.”
“Whoopie! One down, another forty-nine thousand nine-ninety-nine, give or take, to go. And don’t forget that he took almost twenty years.”
Tony Harris’s cell phone then chimed once and vibrated. He pulled it from the plastic cradle on his belt and glanced at the LCD screen.
“It’s Jenkins,” he said as his thumb worked the BB-size polymer ball to navigate the phone’s screen. He rolled and clicked to where the text messages were stored. “He’s working the Wheel.”
The Homicide Unit had a system called “the Wheel,” basically a roster that listed the detectives on the shift. At the top of the roster was the detective currently assigned to “man the desk.” When a call came in with a new murder, the “desk man” got assigned to the case. The detective listed below him on the roster—who was said to be “next up on the wheel”—then became the next “desk man.”
Harris pushed again, then saw the message and exclaimed, “Holy shit!”
O’Hara looked at Payne and casually inquired, “How come you don’t get ‘holy shit!’ texts from the Wheel guy? You’re a sergeant. That outranks a lowly detective like Harris.”
Tony handed Matt the phone for him to read the text message.
“Correction,” Payne said. “I’m a sergeant assigned to a desk. Tony gets the fun job of working the streets.”
He looked at the screen.
“Holy shit!” Payne repeated, rereading the message as he said, “Well, Mickey, do you want an exclusive for CrimeFreePhilly?”
“Sure. What?”
Matt handed the phone back to Tony, then his eyes met Mickey’s.
“Minutes after the last Crime Scene Unit drove off from Lex Talionis,” Matt said, “another body got dumped there. Someone walking by thought