Broken Trust (Badge of Honor 13)

Payne thought that the two looked like they could still be in high school. They had youthful faces, ones now caked in dried sweat and soot. Their eyes reflected the fatigue and shock that came after an enormous rush of adrenaline.

“That’s a lot of blood,” Payne said.

“Mostly the victim’s,” Officer Foster

said, then shook his head. “Lots of it. That was my first time responding to a really bad scene. I only got out of the academy a few months ago.”

Simpson said, “You oughta ride with us sometime. We average twenty runs a shift. Never a dull moment.”

Harkness stared at Payne, then his eyes grew large.

He said, “I thought you looked familiar. You’re Sergeant Payne, right? Homicide?”

Harkness glanced at the bloodstain.

He said, “And that’s where you took the bullet from that fucking heroin dealer you chased down, right?”

Payne raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“Guilty,” he said. “And a word to the wise: Try not to stand near me. I tend to attract bullets.”

Simpson chuckled.

“Jesus, and you’re already back on the job?” Harkness asked. “How you doing?”

“No need to worry about me,” Payne said, and gestured toward Harkness’s arm. “That going to be okay?”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Just scraped it up real good after cutting the driver’s seat belt free. I mean, there really was blood all over. Had no idea that it could be so slippery.”

“So, then,” Officer Foster said, nodding toward the car, “that was you in that black Porsche, wasn’t it? Chasing the van.”

“Yeah, looked like you guys had this scene covered—and, clearly, you did. Decided that going after the shooter was the thing to do.”

“You get the bastard?” Foster asked.

Payne raised his eyebrows again and shook his head.

“Unfortunately, no. But they just found the van, abandoned, and are searching the area for the doers.”

Then he nodded toward the Escalade.

“Can you tell me about that scene?” Payne said. “Who was in the vehicle? Their condition?”

“Two white males, both from Florida, who are staying at The Rittenhouse,” Foster said, and glanced at Harkness. “Me and him hauled them out right before the fire spread to the inside. Didn’t get much info before the EMTs went to work on them.”

Harkness pulled a small spiral notepad from his shirt pocket. He flipped pages, read his notes, then looked at Payne.

“Driver’s a guy from West Palm Beach named Kenneth Benson, thirty-two years old,” he said. “He was unconscious. Shot up real good. That’s where all the blood came from. The EMTs working on him said he took multiple hits to the upper body, with one to the neck. Said it looked like with buckshot.”

Payne nodded.

“That’s what it looked like back at the scene of the shooting—buckshot,” he said. “How about the passenger?”

“The passenger,” Harkness went on, “is a thirty-five-year-old named John Austin. He somehow missed getting hit. Suffered some cuts from glass, was pretty badly banged up, but that was it. Call it a miracle, or something. He got transported to Hahnemann first.” The wail of the siren from the ambulance that just left the scene could be heard as it headed up Eighteenth Street, and he added, “The driver got put in that meat wagon. The paramedic said they’ll probably pronounce him at Hahnemann’s.”

“That makes this job yours, right?” Foster said. “I mean, Homicide’s.”

“That’s what’s known in the unit as job security,” Payne said, triggering another chuckle from the EMT. Then he added, “If it was single-aught buckshot, each round has nine pellets, and each of those lead balls is the size of a .32 caliber bullet. And I saw the shooter get off two rounds. How the hell did the passenger manage to not get shot?”