Broken Trust (Badge of Honor 13)

They both turned and saw thirty-six-year-old Harold W. Kennedy, Sr., approaching.

“Human skin doesn’t stand a chance,” the enormous black detective finished.

“They look like giant, badly peeled grapes,” Harris said.

Multiple flashes of white light began pulsing as two crime scene photographers, one crouched and moving around the pool, the other halfway up a twelve-foot-tall folding ladder, worked to capture the scene from every angle. The photographer on the ladder let his still camera hang from its strap and began shooting with a video camera.

“Grotesque grapes,” Payne added, taking a quick photograph with his phone.

“Told you that you had to see it,” Kennedy said.

The body on the left was that of a short, small-framed skinny male, maybe in his thirties. The other, looking a bit older and bordering on obese, was an olive-skinned male who had thin dark hair that now partially covered his pockmarked face.

“They could have whacked them anywhere,” Payne said. “There’s a reason someone went to a lot of trouble doing this here. Even hauling in the equipment.”

“We ran the trailer,” Kennedy said, “and it didn’t come up—no registration, no nothing. But when I called the manufacturer with the VIN and the serial number of the pressure washer, they gave me the dealer in Doylestown they’d sold it to. And the dealer, Bucks County Home Improvement, said they reported that it’d been stolen sometime last November.”

Payne looked at Harris.

“And what did you say that male caller told the nine-one-one dispatcher?”

“Almost word for word,” Harris said, “‘You can find the jagoffs that shot up Rittenhouse Square in the tower behind the old Richmond Power Plant.’ When the call came in, from a blocked number, we saw it come up in the ECC. I gave Hal the heads-up, he checked it out, then I put the arm out for you.”

Payne, looking up again at the bodies, said, “My God, that had to hurt.”

“No shit,” Kennedy said.

“You ever use a pressure washer, Matt?” Harris said.

“Yeah, all the time when I was a kid. Cleaning the brick patio at home, the boat at the Shore. Once, I got careless with the wand. I’ll tell you, you let

that jet of water nick you even a little bit and, after you’re finished swearing at the top of your lungs, you make sure you never let it happen again. Took a long time to heal, for the scar to fade.”

“So, then, you’d think someone would’ve heard their screams,” Kennedy said. “Especially since sound travels so well across water.”

Payne glanced around the interior of the enormous space.

“I’d bet that between the noise from that washer’s gas engine,” he said, “and these thick walls muffling it all, the screams were probably hard to hear—or, at least, hard to distinguish as screams. Add to that being closer to the sounds of the city and the traffic noise from the expressway . . .”

“Or, maybe, they just were dead,” Harris said.

“But why make it look like torture?” Kennedy said.

Payne’s mouth went on automatic: “‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?’”

Harris and Kennedy looked askance at him. Payne looked back at them.

“Tankersley, the retired Homicide guy,” he said, looking between them, “just an hour or so ago quoted that a bit of Jeremiah to me. Maybe the doers wanted to make some desperately wicked point.”

“Or just are psychopaths,” Harris said.

“I’m betting both,” Kennedy said. “And speaking of psychopaths making a point, come take a look at this. Just found it.”

Harris and Payne, being careful not to step in the various pools of fluid, followed Kennedy over to a nearby wall. Kennedy pulled a small, black tactical flashlight from his pocket. Its bright, narrow beam cut the dark. They saw that the power washer had been used on the wall, the high-pressure jet of water having cut through the layers of coal residue. The lettering was faint and not well formed but legible.

“Talk about reading the writing on the wall,” Harris said, holding up his phone to photograph it.

Payne read it aloud. “‘Austin got lucky this time.’”