Badge Of Honor: The Victim Part 9

"What's this for?" she asked.

"Well, I sort of hoped you'd park it for me until I can catch up with you," Matt said. "I really can't leave it parked out in front."

"When are you going to 'catch up with me'?"

"As soon as I can. Sometime tonight you're going to have to make a statement at Homicide."

"I already told that detective everything I know."

"You know that," Matt said. "He doesn't."

She took the keys from him.

"I was about to say," she said, a touch of wonder in her voice, " 'You're not going to just leave me here like this, are you?' But of course you have to, don't you? You're really a policeman."

"I'm sorry," Matt said.

"Don't be absurd," Amanda said. "Why should you be sorry? It's just that-you don't look like a cop, I guess."

"What does a cop look like?"

"I didn't mean that the way it came out," she said.

She took his arm and they went the rest of the way up the stairway.

"Wait here, please," Matt said when they came to the double doors leading to the dining room. He stepped inside.

"May I have your invitation, sir?"

"I won't be staying," Matt said as he spotted the head table, and Mr. and Mrs. H. Richard Detweiler, and started for it.

"Hey!" the man who'd asked for the invitation said sharply, and started after him.

Mr. H. Richard Detweiler, who obviously had had a couple of drinks, was engaged in animated conversation with a youthful, trim, freckle-faced woman sitting at his right side. She was considerably older than she looked, Matt knew, for she was Mrs. Brewster Cortland Payne II, and she was his mother.

She smiled at him with her eyes when she saw him approaching the table, then returned her attention to Mr. Detweiler.

"Mr. Detweiler?" Matt said. "Excuse me?"

"Matt, you're interrupting," Patricia Payne said.

The man who had followed Matt across the room came up. "Excuse me, sir, I'll have to see your invitation," he said.

H. Richard Detweiler first focused his eyes on Matt, and then at the man demanding an invitation.

"It's all right," he said. "He's invited. He'd forget his head if it wasn't nailed on."

"Mr. Detweiler, may I see you a moment, please, sir?"

"Matt, for G.o.d's sake, can't you see that I'm talking to your mother?''

"Sir, this is important. I'm sorry to interrupt."

"Well, all right, what is it?"

"May I speak to you alone, please?"

"G.o.ddammit, Matt!"

"Matt, what is it?" Patricia Payne asked.

"Mother, please!"

H. Richard Detweiler got to his feet. In the process he knocked over his whiskey gla.s.s, swore under his breath, and glowered at Matt.

Matt led him out of the room.

"Now what the devil is going on, Matt?" Detweiler asked impatiently, and then saw Amanda. "How are you, darling?"

"Mr. Detweiler," Matt said, "there's been an incident-"

"Incident? Incident? What kind of an incident?"

Brewster C. Payne II came out of the room.

"Penny's been hurt, Mr. Detweiler," Matt said. "She's been taken to Hahneman Hospital."

In a split second H. Richard Detweiler was absolutely sober.

"What, precisely, has happened, Matt?" he asked icily.

"I think it would be a good idea if you went to the hospital, Mr. Detweiler," Matt said.

Detweiler grabbed Matt by the shoulders.

"I asked you a question, Matt," he said. "Answer me, dammit!"

"Penny appears to have been shot, Mr. Detweiler," Matt said.

"Shot?" Detweiler asked incredulously. "Shot?"

"Yes, sir. With a shotgun."

"I don't believe this," Detweiler said. "Is she seriously injured?''

"Yes, sir, I think she is."

"How did it happen? Where?"

"On the roof of the parking garage behind the Bellevue," Matt said. "That's about all we know."

"'All we know'? What about the police?"

"I'm a policeman, Mr. Detweiler," Matt said. "We just don't know yet what happened."

"That's right," Detweiler said, dazed. "Your dad told me you were a policeman-and then there was all the business in the newspapers. My G.o.d, Matt, what happened?"

"I don't know, sir."

"d.i.c.k, you'd better go to the hospital," Brewster C. Payne said. "I'll get Grace and bring her over there."

"My G.o.d, this is unbelievable!" Detweiler said.

"It would probably be quicker if you caught a cab out front," Matt said.

H. Richard Detweiler looked at Matt intently for a moment, then ran down the stairs.

"How did you get involved in this, Matt?" Brewster C. Payne II asked.

"Amanda and I found her- Excuse me. Dad, this is Amanda Spencer. Amanda, this is my father."

"h.e.l.lo," Amanda said.

"We drove onto the roof of the garage and found her," Matt said. "Amanda called it in. They took her to Hahneman in a wagon."

"How badly is she injured?"

"It was a shotgun, Dad," Matt said.

"Oh, my G.o.d! A robbery?"

"We don't know yet," Matt said. "I have to get back over there." He looked at Amanda. "I'll see you . . . later."

"Okay," Amanda said.

Matt ran down the stairs, taking his badge from his pocket and pinning it to his lapel again. The Traffic cop would probably be waiting for him. He reached the door, stopped, and then trotted into the gentlemen's lounge. Concentrating on the business at hand, he didn't notice the young gentleman at the adjoining urinal until he spoke.

"What the h.e.l.l have you pinned to your lapel, Payne?"

Matt turned and saw Kellogg Shaw, who had been a year ahead of him at Episcopal Academy and then had gone on to Princeton.

"What's that sore on the head of your d.i.c.k, Kellogg?" Matt replied, and then ran out of the men's room, zipping his fly on the run. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Kellogg Shaw exposing himself to the mirror over the sinks.

SIX.

Victor, checking his rearview mirror to make sure that Charles was still behind him, flicked on his right-turn signal and turned into the short-term parking lot at Philadelphia International Airport.

He took a ticket from the dispensing machine, then drove around the lot until he found two empty parking s.p.a.ces. A moment after he stopped, Charles pulled the Cadillac in beside him.

Charles got out of the Cadillac, glanced around the parking lot to make sure that no one had an idle interest in what they were doing, and then opened the door of the Pontiac. Quickly he s.h.i.+fted the Remington Model 1100 from the floor of the Cadillac to the floor of the Pontiac. Victor helped him put it out of sight under the seat.

Charles then took his carry-on from the Cadillac and walked toward the terminal building. Victor waited until Charles was almost out of sight, then got out of the Pontiac. He put the keys on top of the left rear tire, then took his carry-on from the backseat, slammed the doors, checked to make sure they were locked, and then walked to the terminal.

Victor checked in with TWA, then went to the c.o.c.ktail lounge. Charles was at the bar. Victor touched his shoulder and Charles turned.

"Well, look who's here," Charles said.

"Nice to see you. Everything going all right?"

"No problems at all."

"Can I buy you a drink?"

"A quick one. I'm on United 404 in fifteen minutes."

"Lucky you. I've got to hang around here for an hour and a half."

Fifteen minutes later Charles boarded United Airlines Flight 404 for Chicago. An hour and fifteen minutes after that, Victor boarded TWA Flight 332 for Los Angeles, with an intermediate stop in St. Louis.

At the entrance to the Penn Services Parking Garage there was a crowd of citizens, almost all of them well dressed and almost all of them indignant, even furious.

They had been told, or were being told, by uniformed police officers and detectives that the entire Penn Services Parking Garage had been designated a crime scene and they could not reclaim their cars, or even go to them, until the investigation of the scene had been completed. And they had been told, truthfully, that no one could even estimate how long the investigation of the crime scene would take.

Matt felt sorry for the cops charged with keeping the civilians out. The necessity to go over the garage with a fine-tooth comb was something understood by everyone who had ever watched a cops-and-robbers television show. But that was different.

"I'm a law-abiding citizen, and not a holdup man or a murderer or whatever the h.e.l.l went on in there. I didn't do anything, and all I want to do is get in my own G.o.dd.a.m.n car and go home. It's a G.o.dd.a.m.n outrage to treat law-abiding citizens like this! How the h.e.l.l am I supposed to get home?"

When he got to the entrance ramp, Matt saw that it was crowded with police cars. They had moved off the street, he realized, to do what they could about getting traffic flowing smoothly again. He decided that the mobile crime lab, and the other technical vehicles, had gone up to the roof.

"Detective D'Amata?" Matt asked the district cop standing in front of the stairwell door.

"On the roof."

Matt went up the stairs two at a time and was a little winded when he finally emerged on the roof. There was a district cop just outside the door, and he took a good look at Matt and his badge but didn't say anything to him.

The mobile crime lab was there, doors open, and three other special vehicles, CRIME SCENE-DO NOT CROSS tape had been strung around the area, the entire half of the roof, and a photographer armed with a 35-mm camera as well as a revolver was shooting pictures of the b.l.o.o.d.y pool left when the van cops had loaded Penelope Detweiler into their van and hauled her off to Hahneman.

Matt looked around for Detective D'Amata. Before he found him, Lieutenant Foster H. Lewis came up unnoticed behind Matt and touched his arm.