Final Justice Part 23

Oh, my G.o.d!

Holy Christ, what happened in here?

She's buck f.u.c.king naked and she's tied to the bed!

He walked to the bed and looked down at Cheryl. Her eyes were open, but sightless.

Oh, my G.o.d, she's dead!

He turned. Mrs. McGrory was coming into the bedroom.

"I think you'd better get out of here," he said.

"Well, excuse me. I'm just trying to be neighborly."

"Get the f.u.c.k out of here, G.o.dd.a.m.n it!" Jack said, waited until she had fled, and then looked for Cheryl's telephone.

It wasn't on her bedside table. It was on the floor, and he could see the cord had been broken.

Jesus, I'll have to use the cell phone in the car.

What the h.e.l.l am I going to tell Mother?

As he went through the living room, he remembered that Cheryl had a second phone, mounted on the kitchen wall. He went to it, then stopped.

Maybe it's got fingerprints on it.

I better use my cell phone in the car.

f.u.c.k it!

He took the handset from its cradle with his handkerchief and, using his ballpoint pen, punched in 911.

"Police department, operator 178," a male voice answered on the second ring.

"Jesus!"

"May I help you, sir?"

"I'm . . . my sister's apparently been murdered," Jack Williamson said.

"And where are you, sir?"

"In her apartment. Second floor, right, 600 Independence Street. I let myself in, and found her-"

"And your name, sir?"

"Williamson, Jack Williamson."

"You just stay where you are, please, Mr. Williamson. I'll get police officers over there right away."

"Jesus Christ, she's tied to the G.o.dd.a.m.n bed!"

"Help will be there very shortly, Mr. Williamson."

Officer Roland Stone was twelve blocks from Cheryl's apartment-near the intersection of G.o.dfrey Avenue and Howard Street-when his radio went off.

"3514."

"3514," Stone replied.

"3514, take 600 Independence Street, second-floor apartment, right. Meet the complainant, report of a 5292. Use caution-the complainant is on the scene and states it is a possible homicide."

"3514, I have it," Stone said, and flipped on the light bar on the roof and the siren as he turned left onto Water Street.

"35A-Andy," Police Radio called next, to alert the supervisor-a sergeant-in the area.

"35A, I copied. I'm en route," Sergeant John J. Haley responded. He was three blocks away from Cheryl Williamson's apartment. This meant Haley had heard the initial call to 3514, and there was no need for the Police Radio operator to repeat the information.

Without really thinking about it, Sergeant Haley oriented himself with regard to where he was-at Franklin Street and Sixty-fifth Avenue North-and where he was going, took a quick look, made a U-turn, and stepped hard on the accelerator. He used neither the light bar nor the siren. They wouldn't be necessary.

When he got out of his car at the curb in front of 600 Independence and started inside, a white, middle-aged woman was standing on the walkway just off the porch.

"Up there," she said, gesturing inside. "Second floor, on the right."

Haley took the porch stairs, and then the interior stairs, two at a time.

The door to Cheryl Williamson's apartment was ajar.

There was a white, late twenties male sitting on a couch, his head bent.

"Police," Sergeant Haley said.

"In there," the man on the couch said, gesturing toward an interior door.

"What's happened here?"

"Some f.u.c.king perverted c.o.c.ksucker killed my sister, that's what happened here."

Sergeant Haley went into Cheryl's bedroom, stayed only long enough to determine that the naked female in the bed was dead-he had seen enough bodies to make that determination with certainty; he didn't feel for a pulse-and then stepped backward into the corridor and then went into the living room.

Looking at the guy who said he was the brother, Sergeant Haley squeezed the transmit switch on his lapel microphone.

"35A."

"35A," Police Radio responded.

"35A, notify Northwest Detectives, and Homicide. We have an apparent homicide. White female, no obvious cause of death, but there are signs of a possible rape. Hold myself and 14 car out at the scene."

Jack Williamson looked up at Sergeant Haley.

"She is dead, right?"

"I'm afraid so."

They both could hear the growing scream of Officer Stone's patrol car approaching.

EIGHT.

[ONE].

In the radio room-"room" doesn't do justice to the large area in which Police Radio is housed-in the Roundhouse, the radio operator who had taken Sergeant Haley's call then pressed a b.u.t.ton on his console that automatically dialed the number of the desk man at the Northwest Detectives Division.

Detective units operate on what is known as "The Wheel." It's actually a roster of the names of the detectives on duty at the moment, and it's designed to equitably distribute the workload. In most detective divisions, there is a detective a.s.signed to "man the desk." The "desk man" answers the telephone. When a job comes in, the desk man a.s.signs it to the detective "next up" on the wheel.

When the phone rang in the Northwest Detectives Division, it was answered by Detective O. A. La.s.siter, who was not the desk man but was filling in for Detective Len Ford, who was in the men's room "taking a personal," as a bathroom break is referred to on Police Radio. It also happened that Detective La.s.siter was next up on the wheel.

Detective La.s.siter was twenty-five years old, with 115 pounds distributed attractively around her five-foot-seven-inch frame. She had dark black hair, green eyes, long attractive legs, and had what her fellow detectives agreed- privately, very privately-were a magnificent a.s.s and bosom.

"This is Police Radio, operator number 178," the Police Radio operator began, then went into the details of the call he'd received from Sergeant Haley.

Detective La.s.siter wrote them down on a lined tablet and finally said, "Okay, we got it," then raised her voice to call out to Lieutenant Fred C. Vincent, "Hey, Lieutenant, we got one."

"What kind of job is it, La.s.siter?" Vincent asked.

"Homicide, possible rape, white female, twenty-three years old. Her brother found her inside her apartment, tied to the bed. He's still at the scene."

"You better take somebody with you," Vincent said. "I'll get over there as soon as I can."

"Yes, sir," Detective La.s.siter said, and then, raising her voice, called out, "Charley, you loose enough to go with me?"

"What's the job?" Detective Charley Touma, a plump forty-four-year-old, asked.

"That's not an answer, Charley, that's another question," Lieutenant Vincent answered for Detective La.s.siter.

"I am at your disposal, Detective La.s.siter," Touma said. "What's the job?"

"Homicide, possible rape, young white female," Detective La.s.siter said, as she opened the drawer of her desk, took from it her Glock 9-mm semiautomatic pistol, and slipped it into its holster.

Lieutenant Vincent was pleased that Detective Touma would be working with Detective La.s.siter. Touma was a good man, a gentle man. The job was probably going to be messy, and although he knew he wasn't supposed to let feelings like this intrude in any way in official business, the truth was that Lieutenant Vincent looked upon Detective La.s.siter as, if not a daughter, then as a little sister.

Immediately after talking to the desk man at Northwest Detectives, the Police Radio operator pushed the b.u.t.ton that automatically dialed the number of the man on the desk in the Homicide Unit, which was, physically, almost directly under him in the Roundhouse.

Detective Joe D'Amata, a slightly built, natty, olive-skinned forty-year-old, who was next up on the Homicide wheel, answered the phone: "Homicide, D'Amata."

"This is Radio," the operator said, and then proceeded to repeat almost verbatim what he'd reported to Detective La.s.siter at Northwest Detectives. And Detective D'Amata, as Detective La.s.siter had done, carefully wrote everything down, then said, "Got it, thanks."

He looked around for Lieutenant Jason Was.h.i.+ngton and saw that he was in his office talking with-almost certainly telling him the way things worked-Sergeant Matt Payne.

The only problem Joe D'Amata had with Payne as a sergeant in Homicide was that it made him reconsider the decision he'd made years before, when he'd been in Homicide a year, and there was a sergeant's exam coming up, and he had decided not to take it.

It was pretty clear by then that he'd cut the mustard and wouldn't be asked to "consider a transfer." He realized that he would much rather be a Homicide detective than a sergeant, or a lieutenant, or even a captain, somewhere else. For one thing, with all the overtime, he was taking home as much-or more-dough as an inspector. But the money wasn't all of it. He liked Homicide.

Homicide was special, and it paid well. Who needs to be a sergeant?

So he hadn't taken the exam, and hadn't thought about getting promoted since. And he knew that many-perhaps most-of the Homicide detectives had made the same decision at some time in their careers.

Another trouble with taking the exam and making sergeant was that he'd have to leave Homicide, the personnel theory there being it was bad policy to have somebody who last week was one of the boys this week be their supervisor. Even if he went to a regular detective district-South, for example-as a sergeant, he wouldn't be doing any investigations himself, just supervising detectives who were investigating retail thefts, stolen autos, and the occasional more exciting aggravated a.s.saults, or bank robberies. And, if you turned up a good suspect on a bank job, the FBI would immediately take over. If he were sent to a uniform district, a very distinct possibility in today's "career-development-minded" department, then he would be devoting his investigatory skills to "Disturbance, House" calls.

There were exceptions, of course. There were exceptions to everything. Jason Was.h.i.+ngton had taken the lieutenant's exam with the understanding that if he made it, he would stay in Homicide. And the word was out that with a couple of belts in him, after he'd heard Payne was coming to Homicide, Tony Harris had gone to Was.h.i.+ngton and asked if he couldn't do the same thing, and Was.h.i.+ngton said he would work on it.

There was something else, too. The reason Payne was the new sergeant was the nutty "First Five Get Their Choice of a.s.signment" decision Commissioner Mariani had come up with.

That could have come out worse. Payne was a youngster, but he was a good cop. He'd been doing in critters from the time he'd come on the job. Denny Coughlin had gotten him a.s.signed as Peter Wohl's administrative a.s.sistant to keep him out of trouble until he realized that rich kids from the Main Line really shouldn't be cops just because their father and uncle got blown away as cops.

He had been working for Wohl hardly any time at all when he'd popped the Northwest serial rapist and taken him permanently off the streets without putting the Commonwealth to the expense of a trial.

Maybe it was in his blood. Who the h.e.l.l knew? But the point was Payne was a good cop. What if the Number One guy had been somebody else? Some d.i.c.khead out of Community Relations, some other candya.s.s good at taking exams but who, on the street, couldn't find his b.u.t.t with both hands and who would p.i.s.s his pants if he had to stare down some critter? What then?

Joe D'Amata pushed himself out of his chair and walked to Lieutenant Was.h.i.+ngton's door. He waited until he had Was.h.i.+ngton's attention.

"We got one, Jason," he said. "White female, twenty-three, probably involved with a rape."

"Dare I hope the culprit is in custody?" Was.h.i.+ngton asked.

D'Amata shook his head.

"No. Thirty-fifth District uniform is holding the scene," he said.

"Sergeant Payne will accompany you to the scene," Was.h.i.+ngton said, smiling broadly, "checking to make sure everything you know has to be done is done. You will explain each step in the procedure to him, so that he will be a.s.sured you know what you're doing."

In other words, show the rookie the ropes.

"Anytime you're ready, Sergeant," Joe said.

"Let me know what happens, Sergeant," Was.h.i.+ngton said.

"Yes, sir."

Matt got up and followed D'Amata into the outer room.

"What I usually do first, Sergeant," D'Amata said, "is secure my replacement on the wheel."