Final Justice (Badge of Honor 8)

He suddenly slammed his left hand on top of his right and stared at it angrily. After a moment, he took the left hand away and looked at the right. The right hand rose, trembling, from the table. He slapped it d

own again.

“I have no idea what’s the matter with it,” he explained with a shy smile. “It just keeps doing that.”

“Jesus Christ,” Armando C. Giacomo said.

He turned to Inspector Weisbach, who looked almost as horrified and unhappy as he felt.

“Inspector, I believe that Dr. Payne is about to advise me that in her professional medical opinion, Sergeant Payne, having suffered understandable pain, fear, and anguish as the result of tonight’s events, not only is not able to intelligently respond to any questions posed by anybody, but is in urgent need of medical attention. Would you have problems with that?”

“No, sir,” Weisbach said. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No, goddamn it!” Amy called from the interview room. “He’s had enough sirens and flashing lights for tonight.”

The men looked away in embarrassment.

Doctor Payne was holding Sergeant Payne in her arms, stroking his head. He was sobbing uncontrollably.

After a moment, Peter Wohl entered the room.

“Take him,” Amy ordered.

Very gently, Wohl pulled Matt from Amy’s arms and took him into his own.

She went to Kimberly’s telephone and dialed a number from memory.

“This is Dr. Payne. I will require a private room immediately, anywhere but in psychiatric. I will be there shortly with the patient.”

She hung up, but stood there with her hand on the telephone in thought.

Captain Frank Hollaran and First Deputy Commissioner Coughlin walked into the room.

“Amy, honey!” he said when he saw her. “I’m not sure you should be here…”

“Just shut up, Uncle Denny,” she said, levelly. “Now I’m taking care of him.”

Then she raised her voice.

“Get him on his feet, Peter. We’re going to take him out of here.”

In a moment, Wohl appeared in the interview room door, his arm around Matt.

Matt smiled shyly at everybody as Wohl led him across the room and out the door, but no one spoke or moved.

Sergeant Matthew Payne was lying on his side in the hospital bed, his arm over his face, when the door opened.

He first looked annoyed, and then curious. His hand reached out and found the bed control. As the back of the bed rose, he rolled onto his back, then folded his arms over his chest and looked somewhat defensively at the two physicians who entered the room. One was his sister, the other a short, plump, somewhat jowly man in his fifties.

He was Aaron Stein, M.D., the Moses and Rebecca Wertheimer Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Stein had surprised many of his peers-and annoyed as many more-when he selected Amelia Payne, M.D., for a psychiatric residency under his mentorship. She had then just turned twenty-two years old.

She had worked under him-he always insisted on saying “with him”-ever since, and it was widely believed that Dr. Stein had been responsible for Dr. Payne’s current position as the Joseph L. Otterby Professor of Psychiatry.

“I must really be off my rocker if Amy called in the heavy-duty reinforcements,” Matt said.

“How do you feel, Matt?” Dr. Stein asked.

“I feel as if I was drugged,” Matt said. “I can’t imagine why.”