W. Griffin: The Vigilantes

He looked over at Radcliffe. “Andy, who’ve been your role models in life?”

“Well, my momma, of course,” he said immediately, clearly without thought. “She taught me hard work, discipline, never to give up. And there’s Will Parkman, that really good cop who was a Marine and helps me go to school so I can eventually get a job here.” He paused and thought, then added, “And you, Marshal.”

Payne looked at Radcliffe, thinking that he now was being mocked. But when Matt saw Andy’s face, he knew Andy was sincere.

Payne said, “I’d be damned careful about that last guy. He’ll only lead you to trouble.” He sighed. “And damn sure not to catch any bad guys.”

“What’s up with the bad-guy pop-and-drops having histories of sex crimes,” Radcliffe said, “and STDs?”

“Where’d you get that?” Payne said, impressed.

He pointed at his laptop screen. “From the master file case notes.”

“You’ve gone all the way back to the beginning?”

“Sure. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when trying to turn over a rock under a rock?”

Payne nodded. “Yes, indeed it is. And, to answer your question, there’s not any single answer-with the exception of what Kerry recently suggested. None apparently knows what the hell a condom is.”

Radcliffe said, “I’ve been feeding key data into my skunk-works search engine.”

Radcliffe had managed to get his hands on an early version of a super-powerful software program developed at MIT, and Payne had seen him use it before.

“And?” Payne said.

“All the pop-and-drops who’d been shot had either been charged with or served time for a sex crime, all but the lawyer and his client.”

“Right.”

“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.”

“Tossed on a technicality,” Radcliffe said. “The chain of evidence of the rape kit was broken. It was deemed inadmissible in the trial. But the results still are on file. They state that the blood test from the girl he raped showed that she had really early stages of the bacterial disease gonorrhea.”

“And?” Payne said.

Radcliffe shrugged. “Nguyen’s master case file from those charges says that he was undergoing treatment for gonorrhea.”

“So Nguyen gave the girl the clap,” Payne said.

“Would appear that way.”

“Nothing new. Kerry has a story about one where the rape victim got whatever disease in her throat,” Payne said. He then appeared to be in deep thought. He said: “Which puts Nguyen in line with the other pop-and-drops, leaving only Gartner with no sex-crime link. He may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when Jay-Cee got popped.” He paused, then added, “Lucky us.”

“You didn’t like Gartner?”

“Nobody liked that slimy sonofabitch.”

Andy Radcliffe raised his eyebrows, nodded once, then looked back to the laptop screen. “Maybe I can find a link with Gartner and some sex crime…”

“Kerry, let’s take another look at the interview I had with Shauna Mays.”

Rapier worked his control panel, and the image of Matt with the malnourished and badly bruised woman in Homicide’s Interview Room II came on the monitor. In the right-hand bottom corner was a small date stamp: 01 NOV, 13:20:01.

“Run it up to about 13:30,” Payne said.

Rapier fast-forwarded to that point on the clock, hit play, and shortly thereafter the sound of Payne exhaling came through the speakers in the ceiling. Then his voice, slightly frustrated, said:

“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Who had the gun?”

“A delivery guy. He come in with Kendrik’s paper. That paper I had that the cop took?”

“The Wanted sheet?”

“Yeah, that’s it. He come in and-No, wait. First he say he got a check for Kendrik. And when I let him in, he give me the paper. The sheet. Said there was no check.”

“This began at what time?”

She cocked her head. “Time? This morning, all I know. Ain’t no clocks in a crack house!”

In the ECC, there was a chorus of chuckles from Harris, Radcliffe, and Rapier.

As they watched Payne in the video nodding while writing in his notepad, Kerry said, “Gee, Marshal, I thought everyone knew crack houses didn’t have clocks.”

Payne gave him the finger as his voice came through the speakers:

“What did this guy look like? And was he alone, anyone else in the house?”

“Just him. Old white guy, maybe my age. Tall. Kinda skinny.”

“Okay, you can stop it, Kerry,” Payne said. He looked at Harris. “So, a delivery guy. A FedEx delivery guy? And Mudd said the blue shirt had seen a FedEx minivan rolling through right before Cheatham took a bullet.”

“But that kid, his nephew, told Mudd that he didn’t see one. Which of course, as Mudd pointed out, could’ve been a straight-out lie.”

They were quiet a long moment, each in deep thought.

Then Harris said: “You have any idea how many FedEx trucks there are in Philadelphia?”

“But it was on a Sunday, not a normal day for deliveries.”

“I’ll say it again, Matt. You have any idea how many FedEx trucks there are in Philadelphia? And just because they may not be delivering, they’re still moving around the city for logistical and other reasons, like maintenance. And, then again, for all we know, this one was stolen.”

Matt nodded. “Agreed. But it’s a rock to look under. Maybe we’ll find another under it.”

Looking at the image of Marc James, Payne said, “Whoever he is, our mystery shooter’s bright. He’s doing the reverse of a sweepstakes sting.”

“A sweepstakes sting?” Radcliffe repeated.

Payne explained: “You mail out, say, a thousand letters to the LKA of people wanted on outstanding warrants. The letter says the recipient is guaranteed a prize worth up to a couple hundred bucks, and the first fifty people who show up have a chance to win a car. The official-looking but bogus letterhead has the address of some empty store in a strip center you get a civic-minded owner to let you borrow. The day of the ‘event,’ you furnish it with a couple desks and some chairs, then put signs in the window that say ‘Keystone State Sweepstakes Headquarters.’ And you borrow a nice new luxury sports car or SUV to park in front with a sign saying ‘Win This!’ Then, when the wanted ones show up, an undercover posing as a secretary matches the letter to the warrant list to make sure it’s still outstanding, then sends the idiot back to another room for his photograph and prize-a nice shiny pair of handcuffs.”

Radcliffe grinned. “Sounds like it works.”

“Not as good as it used to, but yeah, there’s still plenty of stupid critters out there. One really bright one even brought his court papers as his proof of ID.”

“So,” Radcliffe said, “instead of the guy sending out letters to the LKAs, he went to them individually, saying he was delivering FedEx envelopes containing checks?”

“That appears to be it,” Payne said.

Everyone was silent a moment.

Then Radcliffe went back to his keyboard and stared at the screen, then quickly typed something and smacked the enter key.

“There,” he said, pointing at the screen. “I don’t know if it means anything, but in Nguyen’s file?”

“Yeah?” Payne said.

“The district attorney’s case notes say that William Curtis is employed by FedEx here. Says he lives on Mount Pleasant.”

Payne casually sipped from his Homicide coffee mug, then said, “Who the hell is William Curtis?”

Twenty minutes later, Harris returned the receiver to the cradle of the multiline phone on the conference desk. He looked at Payne.