The Last Witness (Badge of Honor 11)

“I’m damn sure going to try.” He paused, then, his voice rising, added, “Here comes another jet. I’ll call you back later.”

Byrth broke off the call as the roar overhead drowned out whatever Sheriff Pabody had begun to say. It wasn’t as loud as the 737 had been a few minutes earlier. He looked up to the approach lights and saw that this aircraft was a corporate-sized jet, white with elaborate red artwork.

Nice. Are those gambling dice painted on it?

His eyes then went back to the Hispanic bouncer at the front door of the strip club.

That boy looks friendly as fire ants.

Wonder what my odds are of getting any answers in there—a million to one? Worse?

Byrth’s cell phone then made a ping! sound. He looked at it and saw that Sheriff Pabody had sent him the photograph he’d taken of the girl’s Pennsylvania Department of Transportation identification. He tapped the image and the ID filled the screen of his phone. He dragged his fingers on the screen, enlarging her head shot.

“Wow,” he heard himself softly say aloud. “What a beautiful girl.”

Framed in rich chestnut brown hair, the energetic, youthful face with a bright sensual smile seemed to stare out right at him.

Then his mind flashed with the horrific image of the blue-black blotched flesh of the face that stared back at him from the drum of sulfuric acid.

Could it be the same girl?

That one was blonde. Or maybe bleached-blonde.

And Glenn said the toll is at least ten.

God help them . . .

Byrth, as was his ritual, reached down and double-checked his .45s—the full-frame Model 1911-A1 in his hip holster and the smaller-framed Officer’s Model on the inside of the top of his left boot. Then he grabbed his Stetson and stepped out of the Tahoe.

[TWO]

Society Hill, Philadelphia

Sunday, November 16, 8:57 P.M.

“I’m sure the police will solve this soon, Mrs. McDougal,” Michael J. O’Hara said after shaking hands with the sad-faced silver-haired elderly woman and stepping to the sidewalk in front of her townhome. “Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Nice to see you again.”

The woman nodded wordlessly, glanced up and down the narrow tree-lined cobblestone street, then quickly shut her front door. He heard a solid clunk-clunk-clunk as she locked the three new dead bolts she’d had a handyman install only hours earlier.

O’Hara looked six doors down the street to where yellow CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape roped off the sidewalk in front of Margaret McCain’s fire-damaged home. Arranged against the wall under a soot-covered window was a small makeshift memorial. It consisted of more than a dozen long-stemmed flowers and a bouquet of balloons floating above a pair of plush two-foot-tall teddy bears embracing each other.

The night air had a heavy acrid burned smell to it, and that clung to his nostrils and the back of his throat.

O’Hara felt his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out.

“Where’s my cameraman?” he said into it, answering without introduction. “I’m going to do my live shot here at the scene.”

The phone began vibrating again.

“Hold on a sec, damn it,” he said.

He looked at the caller ID. It read MARSHAL EARP.

Finally! he thought.

O’Hara put the phone back to his head, snapped, “Just get him here now,” then touched a key that broke off that call and answered the incoming one.

“Matty!” O’Hara said into the phone. “You really must be embracing island time if ASAP means four hours. Just how the hell is life as a beach bum?”