The Last Witness (Badge of Honor 11)

We’re a world away from Philly—and the damn insanity of me dealing with murders.

His grin faded.

Do we have to go back to that?

Matt saw the screen of his cell phone, which he had placed in a cup holder in front of the wheel, light up. A text message box appeared:

305-555-1254 2:05 PM

IT’S CHAD. WE STILL ON FOR TONIGHT?

Guess he got a new number down here.

Or had to borrow someone’s phone.

Bet he dropped his in the drink again!

Matt picked up the phone and texted back:

TRIED TO TEACH ANOTHER PHONE TO SWIM, HUH?

YUP. WE’RE EN ROUTE TO LITTLE MUNSON NOW. ETA 2 HOURS.

SEE YOU AT 7. BRING $$. YOU ARE BUYING.

Growing up on the upper-crust Main Line, known for Philadelphia’s old money, Chadwick Thomas Nesbitt IV and Matthew Mark Payne had been buddies since they wore diapers. The friendship of the Nesbitts and Paynes—Chad’s father and Matt’s stepfather were best friends—went further back than that.

Matt put his phone back in the cup holder and pulled a water bottle from the built-in cooler. He looked back over his right shoulder, then over his left, making his regular scan of the area for boat traffic and other possible obstacles. He thought he heard the music getting a little louder again and glanced back down in time to see Amanda pulling her hand and its twinkling diamonds away from the control panel.

Well, she clearly likes my music mix.

Maybe cranking up the songs is her way of hinting she could get used to this, too. . . .

—

Matt and Amanda had arrived in the Keys two days earlier, exactly a week after he mentioned over dinner in Philadelphia that he finally had found in Florida a year-old Porsche 911 he wanted to buy. It would replace his 911, which had been riddled by shotgun blasts as he’d chased a pair of robbers in a restaurant parking lot, one that happened to be a dozen blocks from the police department’s headquarters.

“Now that I’ve finally finished up the last case’s paperwork, I can take a little time off and go get it,” Matt said, then took a swig of red wine.

Amanda knew he was referring to what the news media had been calling the “Halloween Homicides,” a series of murders involving a vigilante shooter taking out convicted sex offenders and drug dealers who were fugitives.

In the end, Matt had become involved in a shoot-out and then a chaotic foot chase across the massive Interstate 676 suspension bridge—the Benjamin Franklin—that had been broadcast live. Images from that—all invariably showing Matt running and dodging cars with his Colt .45 semiautomatic drawn—soon appeared in every local media outlet from television to print to the Internet with headlines that, in one sensational phrasing or another, screamed: “Bullets Fly as the Wyatt Earp of the Main Line Solves Serial Murder Mystery.” Various national media ran with the story, too.

“You’re being disingenuous, sweetie,” Amanda had replied, pointedly but with a smile. “What you mean to say is that your Uncle Denny ordered you to take the time off so you would be out of sight and mind of the media, not to mention the ACLU. Playing up the story of the wealthy hometown hero with a growing history of shoot-outs sells newspapers—and creates friction for City Hall.”

Matt’s “Uncl

e Denny” was First Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin. The fifty-six-year-old wasn’t a blood relative, and thus not actually Matt’s uncle. But he was his godfather—having been best friends with Matt’s biological father, who was killed in the line of duty while Matt was still in the womb—as well as second in command of the Philadelphia Police Department.

And it was the mayor himself who had ordered—through Coughlin—that Matt take another “cooling-off period.” With all his shootings having been thoroughly investigated by Internal Affairs and judged to be righteous, the time off wasn’t meant exactly for Matt’s benefit. The periods were instead designed to give the media and the American Civil Liberties Union time to find something else on which to focus their seemingly boundless energy.

Careful, Matty, he thought. Don’t need to pick the scab off that conversation now.

No question Amanda would like for this cooling-off period to become permanent—for me, as she says, “to quit playing cop and get a job where no one shoots at you.”

Her being newly pregnant can’t help but bring that up again.

“I stand corrected,” Matt said, smiling and raising his wineglass. “Either way, I’m off-duty and going toy shopping.”