The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

“What times?”

“Jack, you’re not my mother.”

“Just answer the question, for Christ’s sake, Matt.”

“She picked me up at the hotel about half past six and dropped me back off here just before midnight. We drove out to Hershey, to the hotel. We had clam chowder, roast beef, and asparagus. Did you know, Jack, that asparagus is an aphrodisiac?”

“Don’t tell me it worked. You’re not doing anything really stupid with that woman, are you, Matt?”

“No,” Matt said, and looked into Susan’s eyes. “I’m not doing anything stupid with that woman, Jack. Did you call up for a report on my sex life, or did you have something on your mind?”

“You didn’t call.”

“I had nothing to report. I have nothing to report now, so, if you will excuse me, Jack, I will return to my breakfast. The eggs are getting cold.”

“The Ollwood woman called the Reynolds woman twice last night. Called herself ‘Mary-Ellen Porter.’ Called at six fifty-five and again at eleven thirty-two.”

“If she called herself ‘Mary-Ellen Porter,’ how do you know it was the Ollwood woman?”

“We ran a voiceprint, of course,” Matthews said, just a trifle condescendingly.

“Excuse me,” Matt said. “I should have known. A voiceprint.”

“And she called the Reynolds woman at her office yesterday morning. At 9:44.”

“You’ve got a tap on the Reynolds woman’s office phone?”

“Well, sort of.”

“What exactly does ‘sort of’ mean?”

“We have an agent in her office. Not on this, something else. But she’s an agent—”

“She’s an agent?” Matt interrupted.

“I’m not supposed to bring you in on any of this, Matt.”

“What the hell, I’m only a lousy local cop, right? Tell me as little as possible?”

“There’s a lot of fraud in the welfare system. Including some people in the Department of Social Services on the take. The programs are federally assisted, so that makes it fraud against the government. So we have somebody in there. What’s she’s done is rig a simple tap, a small recorder.”

“Has the amateur wiretapper got a name?”

“That, I’m not going to tell you. Sorry, Matt, that’s none of your business.”

“Good-bye, Jack.”

“Shit!” Matthews said. “Don’t hang up!”

“What’s her name, Jack?”

“Veronica Haynes,” Matthews said.

Susan exhaled audibly. Matt put his hand on her shoulder, and somehow Susan wound up lying beside him, with her face in his neck.

“Well, maybe this is your business after all,” Matthews said. “What happens is the Ollwood woman calls the Reynolds woman, who gives her a number. Almost certainly of a phone booth. Always a different one—you’d be surprised how many phone booths there are within a five-minute walk of the Department of Social Services Building. She uses some kind of code for the number, so we never can find it until too late. Anyway, once she gives her the number, the Reynolds woman goes to the phone booth, and the Ollwood woman calls her there.”

“So you can’t get a tap on the phone booth?”