When Radcliffe approached, Payne turned and looked toward him.
What the hell?
Andy had a shiny bruise on his left cheek, his lower lip had been busted, and there were scratches on his hands. Black tape wrapped the wheelchair’s left armrest, securing it and covering its torn fabric.
“What the hell happened to you?” Payne said.
Andy shrugged.
“Last night one of my wheels got caught in a busted sidewalk. I took a tumble.”
“That was more than some tumble,” Payne said. “You look like you bounced down three flights of stairs. Where did it happen?”
Andy hesitated a moment, seemed to avoid eye contact, then said, “Near my house. You know how bad those streets are busted up, especially in winter.”
“Did you see a doctor?” Rapier put in. “Are you in pain?”
“Nah,” Andy said, glancing briefly at him. “My mom fixed me up pretty good. Just a little sore in places.”
“Anything we can do?” Payne said.
He looked past Payne toward the wall of flat-screen monitors. Payne thought that Andy appeared embarrassed by all the attention.
“No, thanks,” Andy said, shaking his head. “I’m fine, Sergeant Payne. Just want to get to work.”
Payne studied him.
“Sergeant Payne”? he thought. Not “Marshal”?
Something’s not right. He must really have smacked the hell out of his head.
Andy pointed to the right bank of monitors.
“That’s Tyrone Hooks at the casino. What’s up with that?”
Payne was about to ask how Andy knew of Hooks, but felt his cell phone vibrate multiple times.
He pulled it from his pants pocket and saw there were four new text messages. They were all from Mickey O’Hara.
—
Payne enjoyed a close friendship with Michael J. O’Hara that had begun years back when Payne was a rookie cop.
A wiry thirty-seven-year-old with an unruly head of curly red hair, O’Hara was an unusual journalist, and not only because he had won a Pulitzer prize for a series of front-page above-the-fold articles that uncovered deep corruption in the Department of Human Services, specifically the Children and Youth Division.
The Irishman had a genuine respect for the police—it was said he knew more Philly cops than did the police commissioner himself, always correctly spelling their names in what they considered his fair and factual reporting—and in turn had earned their respect, which had resulted in him being allowed inside the Thin Blue Line.
When Payne had been involved in his first shoot-out, and a ricocheted bullet grazed his forehead right before he returned fire, it had been O’Hara who photographed the bloodied Payne standing with his .45 over the dead shooter, a career criminal. That image, along with O’Hara’s article extolling the Triumph of Good Over Evil in the City of Brotherly Love, appeared the next day on the front page of The Philadelphia Bulletin under the headline: OFFICER M. M. PAYNE, 23, THE WYATT EARP OF THE MAIN LINE.
—
Payne scanned the texts—then slowly read them a second time.
At first he wondered why there were four, and not just one. But then thought that Mickey might be being overly cautious about having the complete message self-contained. Which only added to the mystery and urgency.
And why didn’t he call?
Maybe he had only enough signal to send a text?