W.E.B Griffin - The Murderers

She snorted.

“If I gave you the name of a staff inspector in Internal Affairs whom I can personally vouch for…”

Helene Kellog stood up.

“I guess I should have known better than to come here,” she said, on the edge of tears. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” She turned to Martha Washington. “Thank you.”

“Mrs. Kellog, there’s really nothing I can do to help you. I have nothing to do with either Homicide or Narcotics or Internal Affairs.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry I wasted your time,” she said. “That’s the way out, right?”

“I’ll see you to the door,” Washington said, and went with her.

At the door, she turned to him.

“Do me one favor, all right? Don’t tell Wally that I came to see you.”

“If you wish, Mrs. Kellog.”

She turned her back on him and walked down the corridor to the elevator.

Martha was waiting for him in the living room.

“I’m sorry about that, honey,” he said.

“I think she was telling the truth.”

“She believed what she was saying,” Jason said after a moment. “That is not always the same thing as the whole truth.”

“I felt sorry for her.”

“So did I.”

“But you’re not going to do anything about what she said?”

“I’ll do something about it,” he said.

“What?”

“I haven’t decided that yet. I don’t happen to think that Wally Milham had anything to do with her husband’s murder; he’s not the type. I saw him tonight, by the way. That’s where I was.”

“Excuse me?”

“I went to see Matt. We tried to go to the Rittenhouse Club for a drink, but it was closed, so we took a walk, and walked up on a double homicide. On Market Street. And we got involved in that. Wally Milham had the job.”

“You mean, you were involved in a shooting?”

“No. We got there after the fact.”

“What was so important that you had to see Matt at midnight?” Martha asked. “And be warned that ‘police business’ will not be an acceptable reply.”

He met her eyes, smiled, and shook his head.

“We’re conducting a surveillance. Earlier tonight, the microphone we had in place on a hotel window was dislodged. I learned from Tony Harris that Matt climbed out on a ledge thirteen floors up to replace the damned thing.”

“My God! At the Bellvue? When he was here, he was wearing a Bellvue maintenance uniform.”

Jason ignored the question.

“I wanted to bawl him out for that. And alone.”

“So you went to the bar at the Rittenhouse Club?”

“That was after I bawled him out.”

“After you bawled him out, you felt sorry for him?”

“I felt sorry for myself. I wanted a drink, and he didn’t have anything.”

“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Martha said, “and accept that story.”

“Thank you.”

“Do want something to eat? Coffee? Another drink?”

“If I told you what I really want, you’d accuse me of…”

“Oddly enough, I was thinking along those lines myself,” Martha said. “Why don’t you get one of those champagne splits from the fridge, while I turn off the lights.”

When Detective Wallace J. Milham walked into the Homicide Division, he saw Detective Matthew M. Payne sitting at an unoccupied desk reading the Daily News. When Payne saw him, he closed the newspaper and stood up.

Wally beckoned to him with his finger and led him into one of the interview rooms, remembering as he passed through the door that he had the previous morning given a statement of his own in the same goddamn room.

Milham sat down in the interviewee’s chair, a steel version of a captain’s chair, firmly bolted to the floor, with a pair of handcuffs locked to it through a hole in the seat.

He motioned for Payne to close the door.

Payne handed him two sheets of typewriter paper.

“I didn’t know how you wanted to handle this,” Payne said. “But I went ahead and typed out this.”

Milham read Matt’s synopsis of what had happened at the Inferno Lounge. It wasn’t up to Washington’s standards, but he was impressed with the clarity, organization, and completeness. And with the typing. There were no strike-overs.

Why the hell am I surprised? He works for Washington.

“What do you do for Washington?” he wondered aloud.

Payne looked uncomfortable.

“Whatever he tells me to do,” he said. “That wasn’t intended to be a flip answer.”

He doesn’t want to talk about what he does for Washington. That shouldn’t surprise me either. I don’t know what they’ve got Jason doing, but whatever it is, somebody thinks it’s more valuable to the Department than his working Homicide. And this guy works for him.

“Payne, I’m sorry I jumped on your ass at the Inferno. I had a really bad day yesterday, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

“No. I was out of line. You were right.”

There was a knock at the door. Wally pushed himself out of the steel captain’s chair and went to it and opened it.

A portly detective Matt recognized stood there.

“Mr. Atchison and his attorney, Mr. Sidney Margolis, are here,” he said formally, and then he recognized Matt. “Whaddayasay, Payne?”

Summers shrugged, a gesture Milham interpreted to mean Fuck you, too, and went out of the interview room.

“You know Summers?”

“The sonofabitch and another one named Kramer had me in here when I shot Stevens. The way they acted, I thought they were his big brothers.”

“When you did what? ‘Shot Stevens’?”

“Charles D. Stevens, a.k.a. Abu Ben Mohammed. He was one of the, quote, Arabs, unquote, on the Goldblatt Furniture job.”

“I remember that,” Wally said. “He tried to shoot his way out of an alley in North Philly when they went to pick him up?”

“Right.”

“And shot a cop, who then put three rounds in him? That was you?”

Matt nodded. “I took a ricochet off a wall.”

“I didn’t make the connection with you,” Wally said. And then, surprising himself, he added, “You hear about the plainclothes Narcotics guy getting shot?”

“Washington said something about it.”

“Summers had me in here earlier today. ‘What did you know about the death of Officer Jerome H. Kellog?’”

“I heard.”

“Kellog’s wife-they were separated-and I are pretty close. They had me in here. Sitting in that chair is a real bitch.”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed.

“And you took out the North Philly Serial Rapist, too, didn’t you?” Wally said, remembering.

Matt nodded.

Jesus, Wally thought, as long as I’ve been on the job, I’ve never once had to use my gun. And this kid has twice saved the City the price of a trial.

“If I give you Boy Scout’s Honor to keep my runaway mouth shut, could I hang around here?” Matt asked.

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Washington said you’re a damned good investigator. I’d like to see you work.”

Washington said that about me? I’ll be damned!

“Sure. Be my guest.”

“Where has, quote, the victim, unquote, been up to now?”

“Probably in the Hahnemann Hospital parking lot being told what not to say by his lawyer. Or deciding if it would be smarter to take the Fifth.”

“Wouldn’t he be? I had the feeling Jason Washington didn’t believe what he had to say.”

“Oh, this guy did it,” Milham responded matter-of-factly. “Or had it done. There’s not much question about that. Proving it is not going to be easy. He’s smart, and tough, and he’s got a good lawyer. But I think I’ll nail the sonofabitch.”

“Is that intuition on your part? Or Jason’s? Or did I miss something?”