The Witness (Badge of Honor 4)

“Did you ask him if he found an entrance wound?”

“Just before he told me I wasn’t going to believe what he had to show me,” Washington said as he got out of the car.

Chief Inspectors Dennis V. Coughlin and Matt Lowenstein were in the office of Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich when Staff Inspector Peter Wohl came into it. The mayor was not. Wohl wondered where he was.

The odds are that in the next five or ten minutes, either Lowenstein or Coughlin will be ordered to temporarily assume command of Special Operations, pending the naming of a permanent new commanding officer.

“Good morning, sir,” Wohl said.

“You’re a hard man to locate, Wohl,” Czernich said.

“I’m sorry about that, sir.”

“Sorry won’t cut it, Wohl,” Czernich said. “You know that someone with your responsibilities can’t simply vanish from the face of the earth for three hours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re not going to try to tell me you weren’t aware I had sent out a call for you?”

“I am now, sir.”

The door opened and Mayor Carlucci walked in, drying his hands on a paper towel.

Everybody stood up.

The mayor finished wiping his hands, looking around for a wastebasket, and, finding none, carefully laid the towel in Czernich’s OUT basket and turned to Wohl.

“My mother used to tell me if you looked hard enough, you could always find something nice about anybody,” he said. “I can find a few nice things about you, Peter. For one thing, you’re here. That took some balls; I wouldn’t have been surprised if you had just mailed in your resignation. And you look remarkably crisp and well turned out for someone who, I am reliably informed, arrived at the scene of the Monahan shooting looking and smelling as if he had spent the night on a saloon floor.”

Wohl forced himself to meet the mayor’s eyes. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then the mayor looked away.

“No denial?” he asked softly.

“I drank too much last night, sir.”

“The third nice thing I have to say about you is that you seemed to be able to instill a high, hell, incredibly high, level of loyalty in people who work for you. It took a lot of balls from Jack Malone, especially considering the trouble he’s in already, to march into my office and tell me that if anyone was to blame for this colossal fuckup, it was him, not you.”

“He did what?” Czernich asked indignantly.

“You heard what I said,” the mayor said. “And if you’re thinking about doing anything to him for coming to see me, forget it.”

“The responsibility is mine, Mr. Mayor,” Wohl said, “not Lieutenant Malone’s.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him,” Carlucci said. “Okay, Peter, you’re here. Tell me what the fuck happened.”

“All I can do is tell you what I know so far, sir.”

Carlucci sat down on the edge of Czernich’s desk and made a “come on” gesture with both hands.

“A few minutes before six this morning, an unmarked car pulled up behind the unmarked car on protection duty outside Mr. Malone’s home. In the belief their relief had arrived, the officers on duty drove away—”

“If you had used Highway Patrol as I told you to,” Commissioner Czernich said, “none of this would have happened!”

“We believe that as soon as the RPC going off duty turned the corner, an individual in police uniform—”

“Answer the commissioner’s question, Peter,” the mayor said.

“I wasn’t aware that it was a question, sir.”