The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor 10)

Maybe try again later. At least there’s a house at this address.

Just as he turned to go down the steps to the minivan, he saw movement in the left downstairs window, where he noticed a knothole in the warped wood.

So you use that as a peephole, eh?

Nervously, he readjusted the .45-caliber Glock that he had stuck under the waistband of his pants, right behind the buckle of his heavy leather belt.

This morning’s work wasn’t wasted after all. . . .

Curtis turned back to the door.

At five o’clock that morning, Will Curtis had awakened and gone downstairs to the kitchen to make his coffee, just as he’d done every day for as long as he could remember, easily twenty years.

All the while careful not to wake up his wife.

Not even a week after Wendy had been attacked, Linda had moved into her old bedroom. It was on the back side of the row house’s first floor. It had not exactly been left as a shrine after Wendy had moved out and gotten her first apartment—if only because Wendy had needed a lot of the furniture and other items to kick-start her new independence—but it still had a lot of her personal items from growing up, things like the many trophies she had won playing soccer in junior and senior high school. And the walls were practically covered solid with framed and pushpinned photographs of Wendy a

nd her countless gal pals, from birthday parties to summer trips at the Jersey shore, all from various points of her teen years.

A lot of memories for Linda to recall as she lay there. And, ever more the recluse, she spent more and more time in Wendy’s old bed. (They’d told Wendy that a new life required a new bed, and among the apartment-warming gifts they’d given her had been a queen-size bed—the one she’d been attacked on.)

I don’t know who’s going to take care of Linda when I’m gone, but I do know she won’t want for anything.

Especially with the house being paid off and the fat payout from my life insurance policy coming.

Which is damn convenient, because she’s barely holding on to her teller job.

And I’m feeling worse every day.

As the coffee brewed, Will Curtis went down into the basement.

Shortly after moving into the house, he’d begun converting the basement into a recreation room. It had a pair of soft, deep sofas that faced a monster flat-screen plasma TV. In the corner was a freestanding bar he’d built himself. And just about every nook and cranny was filled with Philadelphia Eagles memorabilia—he’d started the collection in his youth and later had help from Wendy, who’d grown into a genuine fan, too.

And, in the corner of the rec room, his desk held a desktop computer.

Every morning, by the time he’d finished checking his e-mail, the pot of coffee would have finished brewing. He’d then go up and pour a big cup to bring back down and drink while catching up on e-mails and then reading phillybulletin.com, the online edition of the Philadelphia Bulletin. Up until a couple years ago, he would go out to the front stoop and pick up the paper version that he’d subscribed to forever. But, as it had never arrived until at least six in the morning—and, on rainy days, arrived wet—he’d let the subscription lapse after getting in the habit of reading the news online.

And not just news.

Lately, he’d started following a new website, the name of which he really liked: CrimeFreePhilly.com. It had news articles, but also a lot of information about crime and criminals. And so, in the last month, it had become an indispensable tool for Curtis.

Now, a cup of freshly brewed coffee in his left hand, he used his right hand to click onto CrimeFreePhilly.

The morning’s lead headline was: THREE DEAD IN OLD CITY

POLICE HUNT GUNMAN IN “POP-AND-DROP” MURDERS

Three dead? had been Curtis’s first thought as he sipped from his coffee cup.

Then: Pop-and-drop? That’s an interesting way to put it.

He noticed that Michael J. O’Hara had written the news article. Curtis had seen the byline in the Bulletin for a long time, and he liked the articles the O’Hara guy wrote. But he hadn’t seen O’Hara’s name in some time, and he’d wondered if something had happened to the reporter. But now, here was his name appearing on this new website.

Curtis read O’Hara’s news story. It was short, only six brief paragraphs stating the basic information that three men had been left dead in Old City at Lex Talionis. It didn’t list the victims’ names or how they’d been killed.

And it mentioned absolutely nothing about the pop-and-drops at the police stations.

Curtis saw that the article referenced both the reward offered by Lex Talionis and the speech made by Francis Fuller. Both references were underlined, meaning they were links to other pages with more information. When Curtis clicked on Francis Fuller, the page with the pop-and-drop article was replaced with a much longer piece on Fuller’s speech on the “evildoers,” written by someone named Dick Collier. He skimmed it, then went back and read it in its entirety.