But not if she was a looney. Mickey had his principles, among them that looney people aren’t funny. Unless, of course, they thought they were the King of Pennsylvania or something. Mickey never wrote about loonies who were pitiful.
The second thought he had was more of a hunch than anything else. It could have something to do with a real looney, a dangerous one, a white male scumbag who had been running around lately raping women. Not just any women, but nice, young, middle-class white women, and not just raping them, either, but making them do all kinds of dirty things, weird things. Or doing the same to them. Jack Fisher, one of the Northwest detectives, had told Mickey that the looney had tied one girl down on her bed, taken off his own clothes, and then pissed all over her.
Then Mickey had a third thought: Whatever was going on was not, at the moment, of professional interest to Michael J. O’Hara. There would probably be a story in the Philadelphia Bulletin, either a two-graph piece buried with the girdle ads in section C, or maybe even a bylined piece on the front page, but it would not be written by Michael J. O’Hara.
Michael J. O’Hara was withholding his professional services from the Bulletin, pending resolution of contractual differences between the parties. Bull Bolinski had told him, “No, you’re not on strike. Bus drivers strike, steelworkers strike. You’re a fucking professional. Get that through your thick head.”
Mickey O’Hara had been withholding his professional services for three weeks now. He had never been out of work that long in his life, and he was getting more than a little worried. If the Bulletin didn’t give in, he thought it entirely possible that he was through. Not only with the Bulletin, but with the other newspapers in Philadelphia, too. The bastards in management all knew each other, they all had lunch at the Union League together, and there was no question in Mickey’s mind that if the Bulletin management decided to tell him or the Bull to go fuck himself, they wouldn’t stop there, they would spread the word around that Mickey O’Hara, always a troublemaker, had really gone off the deep end this time.
And it was already past the point where he could tuck his tail between his legs and just show up in the City Room and go back to work. The only thing he could do was put his faith in the Bull. And sweat blood.
Mickey reached over and turned off the police-bands shortwave radio, then headed downtown, via the Roosevelt Boulevard Extension to North Broad Street, then down Broad toward City Hall.
Bill Dohner, a wiry, graying, forty-two-year-old cop who had been on the job for exactly half his life, turned off his lights and siren when he was four blocks away from Forbidden Drive, although he didn’t slow down. Sometimes, flashing lights and a howling siren were the wrong way to handle a job.
He reached over on the front seat and found his flashlight, and had it in his hand as he braked sharply at the entrance to Forbidden Drive. The unpaved road looked deserted to him, so he continued down Bell’s Mill Road and crossed the bridge over Wissahickon Creek. He didn’t see anything there, either, so he turned around, quickly, but without squealing his tires, and returned to Forbidden Drive and turned right into it.
His headlights illuminated the road for a hundred yards or so, and there was nothing on it. Dohner drove very slowly down it, looking from side to side, down into Wissahickon Creek on his right, and into the woods on his left.
And then Dohner saw Mary Elizabeth Flannery. She was on her feet, just at the end of the area illuminated by his headlights, on the edge of the road. She had her head down and her hands behind her, as if they were tied, and she was naked.
Dohner accelerated quickly, reaching for his microphone.
“Fourteen Twenty-Three. I got a naked woman on Forbidden Drive. Can you send me backup?”
He braked sharply when he reached Mary Elizabeth Flannery, then reached onto the passenger side floorboard, coming up with a folded blanket. Then he jumped out of the car.
Dohner saw the blank look in Mary Elizabeth Flannery’s eyes when she saw him, and saw that his guess had been right; her hands were tied behind her.
“It’s going to be all right, miss,” Bill Dohner said, gently, as he draped the blanket around her shoulders. “Can you tell me what happened?”
At that moment, every radio in every police car in the city of Philadelphia went beep beep beep, and then they heard Joe Bullock’s voice. “Assist Officer, Forbidden Drive at Bell’s Mill Road. Police by radio. Assist Officer. Forbidden Drive at Bell’s Mill Road. Police by radio.”
Flashing lights and sirens on all the cars that had previously been headed toward Bell’s Mill Road went on, and feet pressed more heavily on accelerator pedals: flashing lights and sirens went on in cars driven by Bill Dohner’s Sergeant (14A); Bill Dohner’s Lieutenant (14DC); two of Dohner’s peers, patrolling elsewhere in the Fourteenth District (1421 and 1415); on Highway Twenty-Six, D-Dan 209, and others.
Bill Dohner took a well-worn but very sharp penknife from his pocket and cut the white lamp cord binding Mary Elizabeth Flannery’s hands behind her. He did not attempt to untie the lamp cord. Sometimes a knot could be used as evidence; the critters who did things like this sometimes used unusual knots. He dropped the cord in his trousers pocket, and gently led Mary Elizabeth Flannery to his car.
“Can you tell me what he looked like?” Bill Dohner asked. “The man who did this to you?”
“He came in the apartment, and I didn’t hear him, and he had a knife.”
“Was he a white man?” Dohner opened the rear door of the c
ar.
“I don’t know…. Yes, he was white. He had a mask.”
“What kind of a mask?”
“A kid’s mask, like the Lone Ranger.”
“And was he a big man, a little man, or what?” Dohner felt Mary Elizabeth Flannery’s back stiffen under his hand. “What’s the matter?” he asked, very gently.
“I don’t want to get in the back,” she said.
“Well, then, I’ll put you in the front,” he said. “Miss, what did this man do to you?”
“Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Mary Elizabeth Flannery said, sucking in her breath, and then sobbing.