The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

“What if Ollwood is already at the restaurant, gives your girlfriend the package, and takes off?”

“That’s possible. When we get there, cruise the parking lot. We’re looking for an old Ford station wagon and/or a battered Volkswagen.”

“If Ollwood has taken off, then what, Matt?”

“This is as far as I’m going, Jack. We go to the locals and ask for their help.”

Susan was talking on one of the pay phones when Matthews drove around to the back of the Crossroads Diner.

So was a young, grossly obese young woman in overalls with a small child perched on her hip.

Susan gave no indication that she had seen Matthews’s car as they drove by her.

Matthews turned the corner of the building and stopped.

“I didn’t see a Bug or a station wagon,” Matthews said. “Did you?”

“No. What’s likely to happen is that Ollwood will come here and just give her the package. We don’t want her to get out of the parking lot.”

“Okay. You get out, see what Susan has to say, and I’ll start looking for Ollwood’s car. I’ll try to block it. If necessary, I’ll ram it.”

Matt jumped out of the Chevrolet, and Matthews began to turn his car around.

Matt entered the front of the restaurant, then looked out a window to see that Susan, now off the phone, was still at the bank of pay phones.

Then he went out the back door of the restaurant and made his way through the parked cars until he was across the lane from Susan.

He had to call “honey” twice before she saw him crouched low between the fenders of a Dodge and a Ford.

“She’s coming, right away, to pick me up,” Susan said.

The grossly obese young woman, in the act of counting change, looked at Susan curiously, and then even more curiously when she saw Matt.

Matt backed up and retraced his path through th

e restaurant.

Jack’s car was nowhere in sight, but a row of garbage cans had been placed across the road to block it.

Matt could see curious faces on people wearing cook’s whites looking out from the restaurant’s kitchen; Jack Matthews had obviously shown them his badge and explained what he was doing with the garbage cans.

And, as obviously, he planned to block the lane from the other end.

Matt walked quickly down the front of the restaurant, looking for Matthews’ Chevrolet. He found it and started to walk toward it, when he saw the battered Volkswagen turning into the parking lot.

He walked, as quickly as he could—without appearing to be running, just some guy going to his car—forcing himself not to look again at the Volkswagen, until he was parallel to where Susan stood at the bank of pay phones.

He got there just as the Volkswagen stopped.

Susan went to it and pulled the door open.

Matt ran to the Volkswagen and tried to pull the driver’s door open. He had decided the best way to restrain Jenny Ollwood was to jerk her out of the car and throw her on the ground.

He had solved the problem of having no handcuffs by “forgetting” to return the pair he had borrowed from Lieutenant Deitrich when they had arrested Calhoun. He would put the borrowed set on Jennifer Ollwood.

The Volkswagen driver’s-side door was locked.

“You are under arrest!” he shouted.