Special Operations (Badge of Honor 2)

McFadden’s logic was beyond argument, which served to anger Martinez even more.

“That sonofabitch is trouble, Charley,” he said, furiously. “And he ain’t never going to make a cop.”

“I think he’s all right,” McFadden said. “He just don’t know what he’s doing, is all. He just came on the job, is all.”

“You think what you want,” Martinez said, zipping up his fly. “Be an asshole. Okay. This is what we’ll do: We’ll park Richboy outside the house from sunset to midnight. We’ll go look for this Walton Williams. Then we’ll split the midnight to sunrise. You go first, or me, I don’t care.”

“That would make him work what—what time is sunset, six? Say six hours, and we would only be working three hours apiece.”

“Tough shit,” Martinez said. “Look, asshole, Wohl meant it: until we catch this Williams guy, we’re going to have to stake out the house from sunset to sunrise. So the thing to do is catch Williams, right? Who can do that better, you and me, or your rookie buddy? Shit, he don’t even know where to look, much less what he should do if he should get lucky and fall over him.”

Sergeant Ed Frizell raised the same question about the fair division of duty hours when making the stakeout of the Peebles residence official, but bowed to the logic that Officer Payne simply was not qualified to go looking for a suspect on his own. And he authorized three cars, one each for what he had now come to think of as Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the Kid. He also independently reached the conclusion that unless Walton Williams was really stupid, or maybe stoned, he would spot the car sitting on Glengarry Lane as a police car, and would not attempt to burglarize the Peebles residence with it there. And that solved the problem of how just-about-wholly inexperienced Matt Payne would deal with the suspect if he encountered him; there would be no suspect to encounter.

At two-fifteen, when Staff Inspector Wohl walked into

the office after having had luncheon with Detective Jason Washington at D’Allesandro’s Steak Shop, on Henry Avenue, Sergeant Frizell informed him that Captain Henry C. Quaire, the commanding officer of the Homicide Bureau, had called, said it was important, and would Wohl please return his call at his earliest opportunity.

“Get him on the phone, please,” Wohl said. Waving at Washington to come along, he went into his office.

One of the buttons on Wohl’s phone began to flash the moment he sat down.

“Peter Wohl, Henry,” he said. “What’s up?”

“I just had a call from the State Trooper barracks in Quakertown, Inspector,” Quaire said. “I think they found Miss Woodham.”

“Hold it, Henry,” Wohl said, and snapped his fingers. When Jason Washington looked at him, Wohl gestured for him to pick up the extension. “Jason’s getting on the line.”

“I’m on, Captain,” Washington said, as, in a conditioned reflex, he took a notebook from his pocket, then a ballpoint pen.

“They—the Trooper barracks in Quakertown, Jason,” Quaire went on, “have a mutilated corpse of a white female who meets Miss Woodham’s description. Been dead twenty-four to thirty-six hours. They fed it to NCIC and got a hit.”

“Shit,” Jason Washington said, bitterly.

“Where did they find it?” Wohl asked, taking a pencil from his desk drawer.

“In a summer cottage near a little town called Durham,” Quaire said. “The location is…”

He paused, and Wohl had a mental image of him looking for a sheet of paper on which he had written down the information.

“…1.2 miles down a dirt road to the left, 4.4 miles west of US 611 on US 212.”

Jason Washington parroted the specifics back to Quaire.

“That’s right,” Quaire said.

“They don’t have anything on the doer, I suppose?” Washington said.

“They said all they have so far is what I just gave you,” Quaire said.

“If they call back,” Wohl said, “get it to me right away, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” Quaire said, his tone showing annoyance.

That was stupid of me, Wohl thought. I shouldn’t have told Quaire how to do his job.

“I didn’t mean that the way it came out, Henry,” Wohl said. “Sorry.”

There was a pause, during which, Wohl knew, Henry Quaire was deciding whether to accept the apology.