The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor 10)

Both Matt and Tony wore the same clothing that they’d had on when they’d left Liberties Bar with Mickey O’Hara some six hours earlier. And with baggy eyes and five-o’clock beard shadows, both looked as if they’d just awakened from a very short sleep.

“Jesus, you two look like the walking dead,” Coughlin said by way of greeting. “You especially look like hell, Matty.”

“Just call me an overachiever, Uncle Denny,” Payne replied dryly. “I was catching a nap in the car when the long arm of Lieutenant Washington reached out for us. After Tony and I left the scene in Old City, we went to check out a hunch. The dead guy, Reggie Jones, had a sort of to-do list in his coat pocket, and we wound up staking out his house in South Philly. Thought it was a long shot, and boy was it.”

“And I thought,” Coughlin said, his tone suddenly cold as his Irish temper flared, “that we all agreed you would stay the hell off the streets while all that Wyatt Earp of the Main Line business died, if you’ll pardon my choice of words.”

There had been a flurry of new stories—from print to TV to the Internet—after the Bulletin had run the photograph of the tuxedo-clad Payne holding his Colt .45 above the robber he’d shot in the parking lot of La Famiglia Ristorante. And then those were rehashed when the story broke about Payne’s foot chase and shoot-out with the assassin who fled Temple University Hospital. The mayor, who wasn’t displeased with Payne per se but was tired of constantly defending a good cop doing a good job, simply called Denny Coughlin and suggested Matt stay the hell out of sight—and stay out of the news.

And Coughlin had sent the order down the chain of command, after telling Matt himself.

Coughlin looked from Payne to Washington to Quaire. “Well?”

Quaire began, “I take—”

“It’s my fault, sir,” Detective Tony Harris interrupted. “I should have known better.”

“The hell it is,” Matt Payne said, looking at Tony. He turned to Coughlin and added, “I invited myself along. Me and Mickey O’Hara.”

Coughlin’s eyebrows went up. “What the hell was Mickey doing?”

“We were at Liberties,” Payne said, “when th

e news came in about the third dead guy. You know you can’t tell Mickey ‘no.’”

“Nor, apparently, you,” Coughlin said to Matt, his ruddy face turning redder by the second. “When I give an order, I damn well expect it to be kept.”

“Yes, sir,” Matt said, his voice tired, its resigned tone sounding like that of a schoolboy who’d just been dressed down by the headmaster. Which, a dozen years ago, he had been on more than one occasion.

“And you, Detective Harris,” Coughlin said.

“Yes, sir?”

“Same applies.”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

Coughlin nodded and, with a more gentle voice, added, “I do commend you, Tony, being the low man on the totem pole here, for trying to take the bullet for everyone else, guilty or not.”

Harris shrugged, making his rumpled navy blazer look even worse.

“I do feel responsible, sir. I’ve seen Matt day in and day out at his desk up to his eyeballs with mostly paperwork from the other pop-and-drops. I wanted him to see a fresh crime scene. That thought had occurred to me earlier last night, when the scene for the first two guys who were pop-and-dropped was being worked. But for whatever reason I didn’t call him. Then, when the news came about the third one, and we were having drinks at Liberties, it just made sense for him to come along and see the scene. It’s a helluva lot better than reading statements, sir.”

Coughlin considered that a long moment. He looked between them, then back to Harris, and nodded. “From a homicide investigation standpoint, I do see your point.”

Everyone in the room knew well that, among the many other assignments he’d held, then-Captain Coughlin had been the chief of the Homicide Unit, and Detective F. X. Hollaran had been his right-hand man even back then.

He looked at his wristwatch.

“Okay, Matty, you have ten minutes. Tell me what I need to know before going upstairs to face the wrath of the bosses.”

Payne nodded.

“All of the dead,” he began, looking at Coughlin, then the others, “have been adult males, both the earlier pop-and-drops and the three found last night. That’s where that thread ends.

“Of the first five, all were shot at point-blank range in the head. The ballistics tests on the only two bullets recovered—every other round passed through their bodies—showed them to be 9 millimeter and .45 caliber. Three were black males, one a white male, and one a Hispanic male. And all were wanted on outstanding warrants, either for parole violation or for jumping bail, for sex crimes committed on kids or women. They got popped somewhere other than where they were dropped.”

“How do you know that for sure?” Frank Hollaran asked. “Is that an assumption due to lack of evidence?”