The Assassin (Badge of Honor 5)

The black Philadelphia Homicide detective had said he was pretty sure (a) that there was a body and (b) they were going to find it right around where they had found the Jaguar.

And they had. Not a hundred yards from the Jaguar they had found a shallow grave with a black guy in it.

Springs had spoken to the big Homicide detective:

"How come you were so sure we'd find a body, and find it here?"

"I'm Detective Jason Washington," the black guy had said, introducing himself, offering a hand that could conceal a baseball. " How do you do, Deputy Springs? We're grateful for your cooperation."

"Why did you know the body would be here?" Springs had pursued as he shook hands. "Call me Dan."

"I didn't know it would be here," Washington had explained. "But I thought it would be."

"Why?"

"Well, I started with the idea that the doers were not very smart. They would never have stolen the Jaguar, an easy-to-spot vehicle, for example, if they were smart. And I'm reasonably sure they were drunk. And people who get drunk doing something wrong invariably sober up, and then get worried about what they've done. That would apply whether they shot this fellow back in Philadelphia, en route here, or here. They would therefore be anxious to get rid of the car, and the body, as quickly as possible. I would not have been surprised if we had found the body in, or beside, the car. And they are both lazy, and by now hung over. I thought it unlikely that they would drag a twohundred-odd-pound corpse very far."

Just like Sherlock Holmes, Springs had thought. He haddeduced what probably had happened. Smart guy, as smart as Springs had ever met.

They'd caught the guys, two colored guys, who had shot the one in the Barrens, a couple of days later, in Atlantic City. They had been using the dead white guy's credit cards, which proved Detective Washington's theory that they were not very smart.

They'd copped a plea, and been sentenced to twenty years to life, which meant they would be out in seven, eight years, but Springs now recalled hearing somewhere that they had been indicted for kidnapping, and were to be tried in federal court for that. The white boy's father had political clout, he owned a newspaper, newspapers, and he wanted to make sure that the guys who chopped up his son didn't get out in seven or eight years.

Deputy Springs was thinking of the enormous black Homicide detective who dressed like a banker and talked like a college professor, wondering if he was still around Philadelphia, when suddenly the steering wheel was torn out of his hands, and the Ford skidded out of control off the dirt road and into a scraggly pine tree before he could do anything about it.

He hit the four-inch-thick pine tree squarely. He was thrown forward onto the steering wheel, and felt the air being knocked out of him. The Ford bent the pine tree, and then rode up the trunk for a couple feet, and then the tree trunk snapped, and the car settled on the stump.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Deputy Springs exclaimed. For a moment, he could see the branches of the pine tree, and then, accompanied by the smell of the water/antifreeze mixture turning to steam, the windshield clouded over.

There was a screeching from the engine compartment as the blades of the fan dug into the radiator.

Springs switched off the ignition, unfastened his seat belt, and pushed his door open. He got out and walked several feet away from the car and stood there for a moment, taking tentative deep breaths to see if he'd broken a rib or something, and bending his knees to see if they were all right.

Then he walked around the front of the car and examined the bumper.

They're not bumpers, they're goddamned decoration is all they are. Look at the way that "bumper" is bent!

He walked to the right side of the car and saw what had happened.

He'd blown a tire. The wheel was off the ground, and still spinning, and he could see the steel and nylon, or polyethylene or whatever they were, cords just hanging out of the tire.

That sonofabitch really blew. It must have been defective from the factory. Christ, it could have blown when I was chasing some speeder on the highway, and I would have been up shit creek.

He walked back to the driver's side and got

behind the wheel and turned the ignition key on. The radio lights went on.

He called in, reporting that he'd had an accident, and approximately where, and that he'd need a wrecker.

They said they'd send someone as quick as they could, and asked if he was hurt. He told them no, he was all right, he had been lucky. He also told them he was going off the air, that he didn't want to have the ignition and the radios on, he might have got a gas line.

They told him to take it easy, they were going to send a State Trooper who was only ten, fifteen miles away, and that the wrecker should be there in thirty, thirty-five minutes.

He turned the ignition off and got out of the car again. He took another look at the shredded tire, and then walked twenty yards away and sat down against another pine tree.

He then offered a little prayer of thanks for not getting hurt or killed, and settled down to wait for the Trooper and the wrecker.

SEVENTEEN