The Last Witness (Badge of Honor 11)

There’s more, but it’s really just more of the same, and I can’t send it right now because there are technical problems with the ECC.

Had to get here early – trying to make sure the bugs I’m working out stay out. I’ve learned the hard way that electronics do not like budget cuts.

Anyway, be sure to link in via the department’s encrypted VPN Tier-1AA gateway. Maybe there’s enough money for the department to make the rent on that.

Also, I got from Tony Harris that DOT non-driver ID you wanted run. The Cusick girl only had two hits, both fines for personal possession of less than 30 grams of marijuana. She paid $200 for the first bust last year, and $300 for the second a couple months ago.

The Hazzard address in Kensington blew up with all kinds of hits, though. Mostly drug-related. So I drove past it on the way home last night, and then the hits made sense. It’s a flophouse called New Hope. It was locked down for the night – the roll-up steel doors over the windows and front door closed so tight that a couple crackheads who’d shown up too late were sleeping on the stoop.

I hate to think why a good-looking girl like that would have to be at a place like that.

Anyway, I was going to go back by there today and look around, then let you know.

KR

Payne sipped at his coffee as he thought, Because, sad to say, she was probably a hooker.

He then went to the attachments. He scrolled through them quickly at first, then went back and read them more carefully, hoping to find what he thought he had missed by scanning them.

He didn’t.

Mostly dead damn ends.

And Kerry saying there’s just more of the same isn’t exactly encouraging.

The crime-scene report was there. It detailed what he’d already learned, adding little. When he read Dr. Mitchell’s report on the autopsy of the Gonzalez girl, he was surprised to learn something new: that the medical examiner had determined the cause of death to be from two .22 rounds fired into her brain from behind her ear.

That certainly means something—something beyond that she got whacked—but what exactly?

There’s a rock under that rock to look under . . . just hope under it isn’t another dead end. Have to see what, if anything, ballistics comes up with.

And the files on the two missing female case workers at West Philadelphia Sanctuary were as thorough as possible—though the investigations offered no clear clue as to what could have possibly caused their disappearance.

Short of the obvious: “I’m sick of dealing with a frustrating, thankless job—I’m never coming back.”

They were just hardworking people putting in their time, hoping at the end of the day they made a difference in some kid’s life.

And there really was no information on Maggie McCain, except for the blind text she sent saying she was fine. She really had left no trail to follow.

These could easily turn into cold cases. . . .

Shaking his head in frustration, he created a folder on his desktop, named it McCAIN.CASE, then dragged all the files into it. Then he transferred from his phone to his laptop the images that Jim Byrth had sent him, created another folder that he named BYRTH.LIQUID.MURDERS, and dragged them into it.

He looked back at Kerry’s e-mail, copied the paragraph about what he had found out on the ID, then went to his personal e-mail and created a new e-mail:

From: MP

Date: 17NOV 0434

To: Tex

Subject: Update on CUSICK, Elizabeth

Jim . . .

Below is what I got from Kerry Rapier on your mystery girl. Will send more when I get it.

Matt then pasted in the e-mail the short text, put it in italics, then clicked on the button that was an icon of a carrier pigeon.