W.E.B Griffin - The Murderers

“Oh, my God!”

A metallic female voice came on the telephone: “Dr. Payne is not available at this time. If you will leave your name and number, she will return your call as soon as possible. Please wait for the tone. Thank you.”

He waited for the tone and then said, “Amy, if you’re there, please pick up.”

“Dad?”

“Penny was found by the maid ten minutes ago with a needle in her arm. Violet thinks she’s gone.”

“Damn!”

“I think you had better go out there and deal with Grace,” Brewster Payne said.

“Goddamn!” Dr. Amelia Payne said.

“Tell her I’m coming,” Patricia said.

“Your mother said she’s coming to Chestnut Hill,” Payne said.

“All right,” Amy said, and the connection went dead.

Payne waited for another dial tone and dialed again.

“More than likely by mistake,” Matt’s voice said metallically, “you have dialed my number. If you’re trying to sell me something, you will self-destruct in ten seconds. Otherwise, you may leave a message when the machine goes bleep.”

Bleep.

“Matt, pick up.”

There was no human voice.

He’s probably at work, Payne decided, and replaced the handset in its cradle.

“Elizabeth, please call Mrs. Craig-you’d better try her at home first-and tell her that something has come up and I don’t know when I’ll be able to come to the office. And ask her to ask Colonel Mawson to let her know where he’ll be this morning.”

Mrs. Newman nodded.

“Poor Matt,” Mrs. Newman said.

“Good God!” Brewster Payne said, and then stood up. His old-fashioned, well-worn briefcase was sitting on the low fieldstone wall surrounding the patio. He picked it up and then jumped over the wall and headed toward the garage. His wife started to follow him, then stopped and called after him: “I’ve got to get my purse. And I’ll try to get Matt at work.”

She waited until she saw his head nod, then turned and went into the house.

Officer John D. Wells, in RPC Fourteen Twenty-three, slowed down when he reached the 900 block of West Chestnut Hill Avenue, a little angry that his memory had been correct.

There are no goddamned numbers. Just tall fences that look like rows of spears and fancy gates, all closed. You can’t even see the houses from the street.

Then, as he moved past one set of gates, it began to open, slowly and majestically. He slammed on the brakes and backed up, and drove through the gates, up a curving drive lined with hundred-year-old oak trees.

If this isn’t the place, I can ask.

It was the place.

There was a man on a patio outside an enormous house sitting on an iron couch holding a girl in her nightgown in his arms.

Wells got quickly out of the car.

“Thank God!” the man said, and then, quickly, angrily: “Where the hell is the ambulance? We called for an ambulance!”

“A rescue squad’s on the way, sir,” Wells said.

He looked down at the girl. Her eyes were open. Wells had seen enough open lifeless eyes to know this girl was dead. But he leaned over and touched the carotid artery at the rear of her ear, feeling for a pulse, to make sure.

“Can you tell me what happened, sir?” he asked.

“We found her this way, Violet found her this way.”

There came the faint wailing of a siren.

“There was a needle in her arm,” a large black woman said softly, earning a look of pained betrayal from the man holding the body.

Wells looked. There was no needle, but there was a purple puncture wound in the girl’s arm.

“Where did you find her?” Wells asked the black woman.

“Sitting up in her bed,” Violet said.

The sound of the ambulance siren had grown much louder. Then it shut off. A moment later the ambulance appeared in the driveway.

Two firemen got quickly out, pulled a stretcher from the back of the van, and, carrying an oxygen bottle and an equipment bag, ran up to the patio.

The taller of them, a very thin man, did exactly what Officer Wells had done, took a quick look at Miss Penelope Detweiler’s lifeless eyes and concluded she was dead, and then checked her carotid artery to make sure.

He met Wells’s eyes and, just perceptibly, shook his head.

“Sir,” he said, very kindly, to H. Richard Detweiler, “I think we’d better get her onto the stretcher.”

“There was, the lady said, a needle in her arm,” Wells said.

H. Richard Detweiler now gave Officer Wells a very dirty look.

The very thin fireman nodded. The announcement did not surprise him. The Fire Department Rescue Squads of the City of Philadelphia see a good many deaths caused by narcotics overdose.

Officer Wells went to his car and picked up the microphone.

“Fourteen Twenty-three,” he said.

“Fourteen Twenty-three,” Harriet Polk’s voice came back immediately.

“Give me a supervisor at this location. This is a Five Two Nine Two.”

Five Two Nine Two was a code that went back to the time before shortwave radio and telephones, when police communications were by telegraph key in police boxes on street corners. It meant “dead body.”

“Fourteen B,” Harriet called.

Fourteen B was the call sign of one of two sergeants assigned to patrol the Fourteenth Police District.

“Fourteen B,” Sergeant John Aloysius Monahan said into his microphone. “I have it. En route.”

Officer Wells picked up a clipboard from the floor of the passenger side of his car and then went back onto the patio. The firemen were just finishing lowering Miss Detweiler onto the stretcher.

The tall thin fireman picked up a worn and spotted gray blanket, held it up so that it unfolded of its own weight, and then very gently laid it over the body of Miss Detweiler.

“What are you doing that for?” H. Richard Detweiler demanded angrily.

“Sir,” the thin fireman said, “I’m sorry. She’s gone.”

“She’s not!”

“I’m really sorry, sir.”

“Oh, Jesus H. fucking Christ!” H. Richard Detweiler wailed.

Mrs. H. Richard Detweiler, who had been standing just inside the door, now began to scream.

Violet went to her and, tears running down her face, wrapped her arms around her.

“What happens now?” H. Richard Detweiler asked.

“I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you some questions,” Officer Wells said. “You’re Mr. Detweiler? The girl’s father?”

“I mean what happens to…my daughter? I suppose I’ll have to call the funeral home-”

“Mr. Detweiler,” Wells said, “what happens now is that someone from the Medical Examiner’s Office will come here and officially pronounce her dead and remove her body to the morgue. Under the circumstances, the detectives will have to conduct an investigation. There will have to be an examination of the remains.”

“An autopsy, you mean? Like hell there will be.”

“Mr. Detweiler, that’s the way it is,” Wells said. “It’s the law.”

“We’ll see about that!” Detweiler said. “That’s my daughter!”

“Yes, sir. And, sir, a sergeant is on the way here. And there will be a detective. There are some questions we have to ask. And we’ll have to see where you found her.”

“The hell you will!” Detweiler fumed. “Have you got a search warrant?”

“No, sir,” Wells said. There was no requirement for a search warrant. But he did not want to argue with this grief-stricken man. The Sergeant was on the way. Let the Sergeant deal with it.

He searched his memory. John Aloysius Monahan was on the job. Nice guy. Good cop. The sort of a man who could reason with somebody like this girl’s father.

Sergeant John Aloysius Monahan got out of his car and started to walk up the wide flight of stairs to the patio. Officer Wells walked down to him. Monahan saw a tall man in a dressing robe sitting on a wrought-iron couch, staring at a blanket-covered body on a stretcher.