The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

Deitrich nodded.

“You’re talking about the lady who works in the bank, right?” Martinez asked.

Deitrich nodded again.

“Holmes’s wife died two years ago, of cancer,” Deitrich went on. “About the time Mrs. Worner finally gave up and put her husband away.”

“Excuse me?” Matt asked.

“He got hurt bad in Korea,” Deitrich said. “Lost one leg above the knee and the foot on the other leg. She married him anyway. He got a one-hundred percent disability pension. They weren’t hurting for money. But he couldn’t work, and he got into the sauce pretty bad. I guess he was in pain a lot, and he just sort of went downhill until she couldn’t handle him anymore. The last time he got arrested for drunken driving, the judge gave him the choice of going into the VA hospital or two years in jail. He went to the VA hospital.”

“And enter the friendly neighbor, right?” McFadden said.

Deitrich nodded again.

“She’s Catholic, so she won’t divorce her husband. Maybe she wouldn’t marry Holmes anyway. He’s not a real catch. He works for Pennsylvania Power and Light as a lineman, and he doesn’t look much like Paul Newman. But anyway, she sneaks over to his house at night, or he over to hers, fooling nobody in the neighborhood, of course, but everybody feels sorry for them—mostly for her—and nobody says anything.”

“Shit!” McFadden said.

“So there’s your connection, Payne,” Deitrich said. “What do you want to do about it?”

“The question is, what did she do?” Matt asked.

“You know fucking well what she did, Payne,” Martinez said. “She conspired with Calhoun to hide whatever those Five Squad scumbags wanted to hide in a safe-deposit box. That makes her an accessory after the fact.”

“First of all, we don’t know if anything connected to Five Squad is in that safe-deposit box—”

“We will, the minute we go into the box.”

“Which box, Jesus?” Matt said, patiently. “When we go to the judge for a search warrant, he’s going to want to know what box we have cause to believe there is something in. He’s not going to give us a warrant to go in every box in the bank.”

“Maybe Calhoun will have the key on him when we arrest him, Matt,” McFadden said.

“And maybe he won’t,” Matt said. “Maybe the uncle keeps the key for him.”

“And maybe,” Deitrich chimed in, “the key never leaves the bank.”

“Excuse me?” Matt said again.

“You’re working on the idea that there is a box in there rented under a phony name,” Deitrich said. “What I’m thinking is maybe Mrs. Worner, who is in charge of the whole operation, is just letting your man use a box that’s not rented. Who would know? He goes in, she gives him the key, and that’s the end of it. No record, of course.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Matt said.

“Have we got enough to arrest the uncle on?” McFadden asked.

“After we get in the box, presuming we find something in the box, then maybe. Right now, no.”

“It’s eight o’clock,” Martinez said. “Wohl is waiting to hear from you whether or not we can tie Calhoun to anything in the box.”

“I have an idea,” Matt said. “Let’s scare everybody.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Martinez asked.

“We go along, right now, when the Harrisburg cops go to Uncle Vincent’s house to arrest Calhoun. We don’t do it quietly. We make sure Mrs. Worner sees the police cars at Uncle Vincent’s house. Following good police procedure, the Harrisburg cops send a couple of uniforms to make sure Calhoun doesn’t get out the back door. Looking out her kitchen window, she’ll see that. Charley and I will also be at the back door. She’ll see us. Calhoun is taken off.”

“So?” Martinez asked.

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