Deadly Assets

[TWO]

A decade earlier-listed in police records as “MUGGS, Leonard Robert, Also Known As ‘Skinny Lenny’”-the Reverend Josiah Cross had completed a year and a day in the slam. His offenses included assault and forgery of a financial instrument-while hopped up on crack cocaine, he’d beaten an elderly neighbor with a baseball bat, then cashed the old man’s welfare check. Cross had, as he put it, “suffered an unfortunate incarceration for a simple misunderstanding at a difficult point in life, and I’ve paid my dues for it,” then returned to society penniless but on a mission and with a new identity.

Having arranged for a money order in the amount of thirty-five dollars to be sent to Utopian World Ministries of Cleveland, Ohio, he had received at the jail by return mail a certificate, suitable for framing, signifying that Leonard R. Muggs was licensed as an ordained minister of the Utopian World Order.

Certificate in hand, he headed straight back to the old run-down neighborhood where his mother still lived-the area known as Strawberry Mansion for its most prominent residence, though the place no longer was a shining landmark-and slept on the threadbare couch in her row house when he wasn’t out looking up his old contacts.

Within days he had convinced, if not coerced, one Smitty Jones-the not very bright but very tightly wound thirty-year-old who was his onetime street-corner business partner-to front him a kilogram of marijuana on credit.

Cross moved the product, and with that cash then rented, for next to nothing, an empty building in the neighborhood that most recently had been City Best Chinese Eggroll for three years, before the owners tired of the regular robberies and fled.

The edifice had a mock pagoda facade, with a distinctive red-tiled roofline that curled out and upward, and a faded crimson red front door, on which he had painted in gold WORD OF BROTHERLY LOVE MINISTRY, REV. J. CROSS PASTOR and, above that, a big crucifix.

When Smitty showed up at the door and said that he wanted payment for the dope, Josiah announced that it had been “the work of a higher power” for the money to go to the new church. Josiah suggested that it might be possible Smitty would be repaid somewhat later, but then again he could make no promises.

“I have been redeemed,” Cross explained, somewhat piously, “and am now a man of the cloth. It’s out of my hands, brother.”

Smitty wasn’t buying it.

“That’s bullshit, bro! I’m gonna snuff your sorry skinny ass out if I don’t get my money back now!”

But about the time he finished making that threat he was staring at the black muzzle of the Reverend Josiah Cross’s Beretta Cheetah.380 caliber semiautomatic, which Cross had instantly produced from somewhere beneath his black robe.

Smitty didn’t think the tiny pistol could do much damage-he knew guys got hit all the time with a 9, which was bigger than a.380 and what most everyone else packed, and even those bigger bullets just went right through them and the ER doctors stitched them up and sent them home the same night-but he figured Skinny Lenny just might get lucky and hit some important part on him.

Wordlessly, hands above his head, Smitty slowly walked backward to the faded crimson front door.

Five years later-with a growing congregation that had come to include, after he put them on the church payroll as deacons, both Smitty Jones and the elderly man who “miraculously” had forgiven the old Skinny Lenny for assaulting and robbing him-Cross had preached himself into a position in the community that, courtesy of City Councilman (At Large) H. Rapp Badde Jr., was considered worthy of an appointment to the CPOC.

–

Matt Payne looked at Jason Washington and said, “It’s no wonder that Badde bought his old neighborhood buddy. They’re cut from the same corrupt cloth. I won’t go into Badde’s-the list is too long-but the quote Reverend unquote Cross’s hypocritical behavior is nothing short of an outrage. As you well know, there are honest to God nuns and monks and others serving in those hard-hit neighborhoods. They’re the real deal, actually doing God’s work. They’re not making a mockery of it all for personal gain like Cross, starting with his shilling for Badde from the pulpit and essentially turning that bogus church into a campaign office.”

“You are aware that Cross got on camera after your interview. .”

“Yeah, I saw him as I was leaving.”

“. . and when the reporter asked if he felt what he was doing in a place where a young woman had just been murdered was ‘disrespectful’ or ‘disgusting,’ he dodged the query by stating instead that he felt that three hundred and sixty-two murders was ‘disgusting’ and that ‘a trigger-happy cop contributing to the bloodshed of citizens in the city was despicable.’”

Payne grunted. “I guess he’d rather have those murderers still running the streets.”

“It is anyone’s guess what his genuine motives are. .”

“Beyond personal gain, you mean,” Payne put in.

“. . but he then announced that he would be leading a protest rally at his church this afternoon at five. The interview was then drowned out with the chants of ‘No more murder, no more Payne.’”

“Five o’clock?” Payne said, then touched the glass face of his cell phone.

From its speakerphone, a sultry, surprisingly real-sounding female voice practically purred, “What can I do for you, Marshal?”

Payne saw Washington’s eyebrows go up, and that he shook his head and grinned.

Payne spoke into the phone: “New calendar entry with alarm: Protest today seventeen hundred hours.”

“Protest December fifteenth at five P.M.,” the sexy, artificially generated voice confirmed. “Calendar alarm set thirty minutes prior.”

“Thank you,” Payne said, looking up at Washington.

“My pleasure, Marshal.”

“If I did not know better, Matthew. .”

“What?” Payne said mock-innocently. “Technology is our friend.” He looked at the phone a second, then added, “But I should probably change that voice before Amanda hears it. The mechanical robot tone that reads the NOAA weather radio alerts might be safer.” He then mimicked the disjointed droning computer-generated voice: “To-day’s. Wea-ther. Fore-cast. .”

Washington chuckled. “On that side note, how is your bride-to-be?”

Payne raised an eyebrow.

“She called, said she wasn’t exactly thrilled to see me on TV being called Public Enemy Number One. She would be down there marching and chanting with a sign, too, if she thought it would hasten my finding other work.”

Dr. Amanda Law-whose father, Charlie Law, was friends with Washington, dating back to their time together in Northeast Detectives-had made it clear she was not thrilled with the prospect of spending every day, as she had while growing up, wondering if someone she loved would leave in the morning-and not come home alive. That her father took retirement only after taking a bullet to the knee served to strengthen her resolve.

“It’s certainly a reasonable fear,” Washington said, “one my bride, who in decades hasn’t gotten over it, is at least less vocal about after all these years.”

He paused, then added, “But. . I still see it in her eyes. Special indeed are the strong ladies who tolerate the toll this occupation takes on their relationships.”

Payne nodded thoughtfully.

“What I meant a moment ago,” Washington went on, “was, and apropos of that side note: If I didn’t know better, I would take it that you intend on attending Cross’s rally. That does not seem to be a wise idea for ‘Public Enemy Number One.’”

Payne shrugged. “I’ll have to think about it. Tell me no, and I won’t go. We’ll certainly have enough eyes in the crowd-”

Just then his phone vibrated, and he glanced at its screen. Then he looked back at Washington.

“Okay, that’s a heads-up that the casino security camera imagery is finally all in the war room. Will be ready to review in ten. Want to take a look?”

Washington glanced at his wristwatch. “If I can squeeze it in. Speaking of Finley, you are aware that he visibly cringed during his tour of the Roundhouse when he heard you call the Executive Command Center the ‘war room.’”

The ECC, the department’s enormous and enormously expensive nerve center, was outfitted with highly secure communications equipment able to link up local, state, federal, and international law enforcement agencies, as well as integrate satellite, Internet, radio, television, and citywide fixed and mobile surveillance cameras. It was next to the police commissioner’s office, down the hall from where they now stood.

Payne, his face showing he was unrepentant, shrugged, then added, “Tony’s still working the scene at the casino.”

“Tony” was Detective Anthony Harris, a slight, wiry, starting-to-bald thirty-six-year-old. He had fifteen years on the job, and longer in Homicide than Payne’s entire four years on the force. On the surface, it would reasonably follow that Harris would harbor a bitter resentment that someone younger and far less experienced-it was no secret that plenty among the rank and file complained that Payne was “a rich kid with connections playing cop”-could be his immediate superior, as well as over other veteran Homicide detectives.

But that simply wasn’t the case. Harris had worked with Payne before the promotion. He appreciated that, while Payne may have earned the position by making the top score on the sergeant’s exam, he really had earned Harris’s respect with his intellect and his genuine willingness to learn from those with more time on the job.

“Tony was on the Wheel?” Washington said. “It was my understanding that he finally had a weekend off.”

Payne nodded. “I think he has set a new department record for overtime. For once, he did plan to take the weekend off. But you know him. When he heard Charley Ogden had it, and what the case entailed, he volunteered to take it off Ogden’s hands.”

The Wheel wasn’t actually a wheel, but a roster of Homicide Unit detectives on duty. Whichever detective was at the top of the roster had the job to “man the desk,” which included answering incoming calls. When a job came in, the detective at the top of the Wheel took the case. Then he tapped the detective who was “next up on the Wheel”-the next name on the roster-and he or she then came to man the desk.

With as many homicides as the city suffered, the system did not spare anyone from juggling multiple cases, both new ones and older unsolved cases, including decade-old cold cases. But it came close to taking what otherwise would be an overwhelming workload and distributing it in a more or less equitable manner.

Payne went on: “It’s not like we don’t have enough cases to go around. Ogden already was working two recent ones on top of his others. And I’ve got McCrory out with Kennedy on yesterday’s drive-by shooting in Kensington that killed the twenty-year-old Dante Holmes. Hank Nasuti has the LOVE Park murder of Lauren Childs. Lucke is running the Jimmy Sanchez job.” He paused when Washington shook his head slightly, then said, “The murdered fifteen-year-old elf?”-Washington nodded, and then he went on-“And of course Tony owns the casino case, with the jewelry store manager, Malcolm Cairns, dead at the scene, and the victim who’s looking like she may not survive, Marie Cottrell.”

“The Northern Liberties young lady, not the grandmother?”

“Right. She’s twenty-six, and recently moved to NoLibs. The grandmother, apparently after seeing her go down, fainted. While paramedics transported the granddaughter to the ER at Hahnemann, an EMT treated the grandmother at the scene for a cut from flying glass. Her fainting was attributed to medication she’s taking”-he paused, then, with genuine disgust in his voice, added-“coupled no doubt with watching her granddaughter damn near dying at her feet. Happy holidays, huh. .?”

Washington looked at him a long moment, nodded slightly, then said: “About Lauren Childs. One of the things I wanted to tell you was I just got off the telephone with Dr. Mitchell. We were discussing another case, and he brought up her name.”

Howard Mitchell, M.D., a balding, rumpled fifty-year-old, usually found in a well-worn two-piece suit, had served nearly a decade as the Philadelphia medical examiner.

“Yeah? We’ve already got autopsy results? I hadn’t heard.”

“Unofficial and incomplete results. He has not finished the autopsy on her. But she and the Sanchez boy came in at almost the same time. Dr. Mitchell, no surprise, stated that the cause of the boy’s death was obvious. But he said he was curious about hers, and made time for a preliminary look. He went in and examined the damage and said it was clear why she bled out so quickly.”

“Hit an artery?”

“That and worse. The knife was thrust in just beneath the rib cage”-he poked his finger upward at the bottom edge of the pocket on his shirt-“the sharp blade nicking the left lung before piercing the apex of the heart and then cutting the aorta. Dr. Mitchell said the doer twisted the blade so violently that it went through the walls of the heart, practically slicing it in two.”

Payne grunted. “Thus explaining why she just instantly collapsed. And the great deal of blood. Jesus.”

“It happened quickly. Similar to when you get a deep cut and don’t immediately feel pain, which explains why she did not scream. He said that it had to have been a thin, long-bladed, almost surgically sharp instrument, one at least six inches in length.”

“Like one used for cleaning fish?”

Washington nodded. “A fillet knife was the example he gave.”

Payne took a sip of coffee.

After a moment he said, “And a fillet knife”-he drew his left pointer finger across his throat-“would do a damn effective job.”

“Or similar tool.”

Payne looked at him and thought, Translation of which is: a gentle reminder not to lock on one possibility.

He said, “Understood.”

“But it is an angle to work until a better one presents itself. Keep turning over the stone under the stone.”

Payne nodded, then looked out the windows.

“Certainly not at a loss for fish markets where he could work. Off the top of my head there’s Golden and John Yi’s in Reading Terminal Market, Darigo’s in the Italian Market, there’s an Asian one”-he pointed across the expressway-“right there on Spring Garden, which is in line with the direction the kidnapper was taking the little girl. And of course there’s Fishtown, but that’s more or less a misnomer these days. I’m not sure you could find a single shad for sale there, let alone a fully stocked fish market.”

“There is also the distinct possibility that the doer simply could be an avid angler.”

“Yeah, and/or just one sick sonofabitch,” Payne said, then looked at Washington and added, “I wonder how he carried a long blade like that without anyone seeing it?”

“Perhaps in a sheath of some design up his sleeve?” Washington said, then demonstrated by putting his right fist to the cuff of his left sleeve and pulling out an imaginary blade. “Or in the upper of a boot.”

Payne slowly nodded in thought.

“Possible, I suppose,” he said, “if more than a little impractical. Could’ve just held it with the blade hidden by his arm close to his body.”

“Would be more easily used that way,” Washington said, paused, then added: “Anything more-anything at all-on identifying the doer in the Childs case?”

Payne shook his head.

“Only what little we had before. That the boyfriend, Tony Gambacorta-who Nasuti just interviewed at length-never saw him, only felt the strong hit as they passed in the crowd, and decided he had to be a big guy, and that the guy called him an asshole when they hit. It all happened so fast, though, no one really knew that she’d been stabbed-as you said, she didn’t scream-only that she’d collapsed and began bleeding heavily. Everyone was looking at her. By the time they figured out that she’d probably been stabbed, the doer was gone, and any solid witnesses-if there in fact were any at all who’d seen him and/or had a clue what just happened-had dispersed.”

“And still no video from park surveillance cameras?”

“None capturing images near that exact spot. And the ones farther out aren’t giving us anything useful.”

Washington, nodding, looked at him in deep thought.

“There is imagery from Franklin Park,” Payne went on, “and Melanie Baker, the mother of the little girl who was grabbed, gave a solid description of the doer, including the tattoo on his neck.” He paused, tapped on the screen of his phone, then held it up to show Washington. “Here’s the clearest shot we have of him. This and another were just minutes ago sent out in a Wanted flyer. Because both victims were killed with sharp blades and so close together in time and location, it has to be the same doer. Doc Mitchell should be able to find evidence that links the wounds to the same weapon.”

“A weapon that, for all we know, could well be in the muck at the bottom of the Delaware River by now,” Washington said, turning to the phone.

He studied the image. It showed the large man walking alone among the holiday crowd. He was heavyset, with a puffy round light brown face framed by a ragged mop of dreadlocks that drooped down to his shoulders.

“His eyes are empty, just dark holes staring out,” Washington said. “Vacuous and cold, devoid of life. Even as he’s about to commit a heinous act.”

“These thugs have no respect for life. No way it’s his first murder.”

Payne then flipped to the other image, a barely in focus close-up of the suspect’s face and neck framed by the sweatshirt hood.

“Check out those tats,” Payne said. “The picture’s not sharp but you can see that he inked an inverted heart on his cheek under his left eye, and an inverted peace symbol under his right eye, and ‘Family’ written in gothic lettering across the front of his neck, which Melanie Baker didn’t miss seeing.”

“An upside-down heart?”

Payne nodded. “A bright red one, about the size of a cherry, outlined in black.”

Washington thought about that, then said, “The peace symbol is meant to be a dove’s claw within a circle, so when inverted it stands for death. And the inverted heart stands for hate or for no love.”

“And that ‘Family’ inked across his throat. A gangbanger embracing his fellow thugs as family. Touching, huh?” He tapped his chest. “Warms the ol’ heart. . or cuts it like a knife.”

“Someone will recognize this miscreant, especially those body markings.”

Payne raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, but as we know, the trick will be getting that someone to admit recognizing him.”

He then turned to the window and pointed to Franklin Park.

“We were able to follow his tracks back to where he entered the park there at Race, and using images from our surveillance cameras outside the Roundhouse, we know he came this way down Race. Now we’ve got guys going store to store looking for more camera footage and possible witnesses that could help us backtrack his path. Maybe-hell, forget maybe, my gut says doubtless-all the way back to LOVE Park.”

Washington nodded, then held up his index finger in a Hold one gesture. He reached inside his suit jacket and produced a vibrating cell phone with its screen glowing. He checked the caller ID and then answered the phone: “Jason Washington. .” then, glancing at Payne, said, “Yes, sir, he’s aware of the death threats,” and after a moment added, “Will do. Okay, on my way.”

Washington looked at Payne as he broke off the call.

“That was our boss, as I anticipated, so I’ll have to pass on seeing the casino images for now. And I’m to tell you: ‘Captain Quaire says not to let down your guard-take the death threats seriously.’ That comes from me, too.”

Payne met his eyes. “Got it.”

Washington’s big hand squeezed Payne’s shoulder.

“Be careful. And let me know if anything interesting comes up, Matthew.”

Payne glanced down at the protesters. “Like if I get whacked?”

Washington saw that he was smirking.

“I said interesting. Not expected.”