The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor 10)

For the first ten minutes after he’d forced them to swallow the powerful sedative, he’d watched them slowly get sleepier and sleepier. Gartner faded faster, and Curtis thought that might be because of the cocaine he’d also consumed.

By the time fifteen minutes had passed, they’d basically become incoherent, slurring their words.

After the twenty-minute mark, with them curled up babylike on the carpet, Curtis had felt confident that they posed no problem whatsoever and had gone out to move the car behind the building.

Now, a half hour later, he struggled to get them—very groggy but agreeable, despite their wrists still being bound—one at a time down the corridor and out the back door of the office building.

He’d parked the Malibu in the dark alley and left its truck open.

He dumped JC and Gartner inside the trunk, then took the clear adhesive tape and wrapped their heads so that the tape sealed the nose and mouth of both men.

As he watched their bodies begin to convulse at the blockage of their airways, Curtis wondered, Why don’t I feel bad about this?

Then—boom!—a vision came of Wendy.

It was the one of her, spread-eagled, bound to the bed with her nylon stockings.

Shit! That’s the hell why!

He looked at JC.

Because of what you did to my baby and to whoever else, you miserable bastard.

Then his eyes went to the other bucking body.

And you, Danny Boy, kept him out of jail so that he could.

Kept him and who the hell knows how many other miserable shits on the streets.

Curtis, suddenly furious, shook his head angrily as he took one last look at the pair.

Then he quickly pulled from his pocket two plastic garbage bags he’d grabbed in Gartner’s office and covered their heads with them. He took the Glock from his jacket and put its muzzle at the base of JC’s skull, angled toward the top of his head, and squeezed the trigger.

The .45-caliber round fired with a loud bang, JC made a primal groan, his legs kicked out straight, and the garbage bag on his head billowed briefly, the top of it moving violently as bullet fragments flew out, accompanied by bits of brain and blood, and lodged in the trunk floorboard.

The pistol automatically ejected the empty brass casing, which flew up, hitting the trunk lid, then landed beside JC’s body, near where a dark stream of blood flowed from the bag, staining the white shirt and pooling on the football jersey.

Now you won’t be going after those high school girls—or any others.

Then he moved the pistol muzzle to the same place at the base of Gartner’s skull and squeezed off another round.

This time the ejected spent casing landed on the concrete of the alleyway. The brass made a tinkling sound in the darkness as it tumbled to a stop against a curb.

Rot in hell, you scum! Will Curtis thought, then slammed down the lid.

[TWO]

Loft Number 2180 Hops Haus Tower 1100 N. Lee Street, Philadelphia Saturday, October 31, 11:10 P.M.

As Matt Payne looked out of Amanda Law’s penthouse window, thinking about how much damn truth Amanda had written in his would-be obituary, he took a sip from the beer bottle and swallowed hard.

So then why do I feel the pull to be out there running down those animals?

Because of what else Amanda said, long before writing the obit? That it takes cops like me and her dad to keep the city as safe as possible from the bad guys loose on the streets.

Which she’d told me, more than a little ironically, right before those shits snatched her off the street.

At the memory of finding her bound in the gutted kitchen of that abandoned row house, Payne suddenly felt his throat constrict.