The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

Patricia Payne came out of the kitchen with two glasses. She handed one to Denny Coughlin and the other to Matt.

“Thank you,” Matt said, and took a sip, and then turned and set the glass on the chair at the end of the couch.

The red light on his telephone answering machine was blinking. He shifted on the couch and stretched to push the button that would play his messages.

“Matt—” Brewster Payne said, stopping him.

“Dad?”

“There’s some pretty unpleasant stuff on there,” Brewster C. Payne said. “The only reason I didn’t erase them was because I thought they would be of interest to Denny. Maybe you’d better wait until your mother and Amy have gone.”

“Don’t be silly, Brewster,” Patricia Payne called from the kitchen. “I’m not a child, and I’ve already heard them.”

“What are you talking about, Dad?” Amy asked.

Holloran appeared at the head of the stairs.

“Sorry, Chief, I had trouble finding a place to park.”

“Push the button, Matt,” Patricia Payne ordered. “Get it over with.”

There were, it was later calculated when the tape was transcribed, forty-one messages on the tape, all that the thirty-minute tape would hold. Four of the messages were from people known to Matt Payne. One was a recorded offer to install vinyl siding at a special price good this week only. One was a cryptic message, a female voice saying, “You know who this is, call me after nine in the morning.” Matt recognized the voice to be Helene Stillwell’s, but had the presence of mind in the circumstances to shrug and shake his head and smile, indicating he had no idea who it might be.

The other thirty-five messages recorded on his machine were from persons unknown to him.

The voices were different (later voice analysis by police experts indicated that four individuals, three males and one female, had telephoned several times each) but the gist of the messages was that Matt Payne, variously described as a motherfucker, a honky, a pig, and a cocksucker (each noun coming with various adjectival prefixes, most commonly “fucking,” “goddamn,” and “motherfucking”), was going to be killed for having murdered Abu Ben Mohammed.

Patricia Payne, except to pass drinks around, stayed in the kitchen while the tape played. Amy, after the first thirty seconds or so, came and sat beside Matt on the couch, took a notebook from her purse, and made notes.

The policemen in the apartment looked either at the floor or the ceiling, and seemed quite uncomfortable. Sergeant Holloran’s and Officer McFadden’s faces quickly turned red with embarrassment and stayed that way, even after the tape suddenly cut off in midsentence and began to rewind.

“Nice friends you have, Matthew,” Amy Payne broke the silence. “You ever hear what happens to people who roll around with the pigs in the mud?”

“I wonder how they got the number?” Matt asked. “I’m not in the book.”

“There are ways to get unlisted numbers,” Denny Coughlin said absently. “I’ll want to take that tape with me, Matt, and see what the lab boys can make of it.”

“Well, the thing to do is have Matt’s number changed,” Brewster C. Payne said.

“Some of that was spontaneous,” Amy said thoughtfully. “But some, maybe most, seemed to me to be rehearsed, perhaps even read.”

“What did you say, Amy?” Coughlin asked.

“If you know what to listen for, Uncle Denny,” Amy said, “you sometimes can hear things in people’s voices. I said, I think that some of those people called and said whatever came into their minds, but others, I think, seemed to be reading what they said, or at least had a good idea of what they were going to say before they said it. Oddly enough, those are the ones who sounded awkward or hesitant.”

“Interesting,” Coughlin said, not very convincingly. “I’d rather not have that number changed, Brewster. Maybe we can get Mall another line—that will lake a day or two, probably—”

“No, it won’t,” Payne said.

“What won’t?”

“Getting Matt another line. I think I know who to call.”

“What I was saying, Brewster, is that I would like to leave that line as it is, and record what calls come in.”

“Oh, I see what you mean.”

“Have you got a spare tape for the machine, Matty?”