It took some time for Sergeant Payne and Detective Lassiter to find the home of Lieutenant Colonel Lacey Richards Jr. on Captain O’Neal Drive in Daphne. Captain O’Neal Drive was a winding road in a heavily wooded area, and the house numbers were hard-or impossible-to find.
But they finally found it, a large home sitting under massive oaks between Captain O’Neal Drive and Mobile Bay. Colonel Richards, a short, totally bald, barrel-chested man wearing a yellow polo shirt and khaki pants, opened the door himself.
“You’re the homicide guy from Philadelphia?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Payne, right?”
“Yes, sir. Sergeant Matt Payne.”
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing the little lady. A pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
“This is Detective Lassiter, Colonel,” Matt said.
“I’ll be damned,” Colonel Richards said. “Well, come on and tell me what you want to know. Can I offer you a little taste? I was about to have one myself.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir,” Matt said.
“I didn’t catch your name,” Richards said to Olivia.
“Lassiter, sir.”
“I meant your first name.”
“Olivia, sir.”
“Can I offer you a little something, Olivia?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He led them through the house to a patio in the rear. There was a row of upholstered desk chairs and a well-stocked wet bar.
“You’re just in time for sunset,” he announced, pointing at the sun setting across the bay. “I like to come out here and watch and have a little taste.”
“It’s very nice,” Olivia said.
A tanned, gray-haired woman at least a foot taller than Richards came onto the patio.
“I’m not sure you should be here, baby,” Richards said.
“I live here, Lacey,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Hi, I’m Bev Richards.”
“This is sort of official, honey.”
“Did he offer you something to drink?” she said, ignoring him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Sir, I have no objection to Mrs. Richards hearing what I have to ask,” Matt said.
“I surrender,” Richards said. “This is Olivia Lassiter- Detective Olivia Lassiter-and this is Sergeant Payne.”
They shook hands.
“My husband said you were here about that pervert he caught last night,” Bev Richards said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All the way from Philadelphia?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I really want to hear about this,” she said. “But will it wait until I make you something to drink?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Matt said.
“What’ll it be?” Richards asked.
“Whatever you’re having will be fine, sir.”
“You may want to reconsider,” Bev said. “What he drinks is something he calls a scotch martini.”
Matt and Olivia looked at each other and smiled.
He saw that Richards had seen the smile and didn’t like it. “You make a martini, except no vermouth, and with scotch?” Matt asked.
“Right.”
“That would be fine with us, sir. I just taught Oliv… Detective Lassiter to drink those. Except with Irish.”
“See, wiseass?” Colonel Richards said to his wife.
“They’re the drink of choice at a bar where we go,” Matt said.
“You mean you and her, or the other homicide cops?” Richards asked.
“She, and me, and the other homicide cops,” Matt said.
“Oh, God, I’ll never hear the end of that,” Bev Richards said.
“You want me to make enough for you, or are you going to continue to be difficult?”
“Make the damn scotch martinis,” Bev Richards said. “I can’t wait to hear what he’s going to ask you.”
“I can make the drinks and talk at the same time, just like I can chew gum and walk at the same time. What do you want to know, Sergeant?”
“Actually, sir, I’d like to ask you what happened. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to get our conversation on my tape recorder.”
Richards frowned, and for a moment Matt thought he might say no.
“What the hell, why not?” Richards said, and began to pour scotch into a glass martini shaker full of ice.
He looked over his shoulder at Matt.
“Where should I begin?” he asked.
“When was the first time you saw this fellow?” Matt asked.
“Well, just before the whole thing went down was the first time I saw him,” Richards said. “I was checking the guard, so to speak.”
“I’m not sure I follow you, sir.”
“Well, we run three roving patrols. Some of our guys are getting a little long in the tooth, and in the wee hours, they sort of pull off and catch a few winks. You can get yourself shot in the service for that, but this isn’t the service, and all I can do is roam around and try to catch them. And then all I can do is wag my finger in their faces and tell them they’re letting the side down.”
“I understand,” Matt said.
Colonel Richards interrupted himself to vigorously shake the martini mixer for a full sixty seconds, and then, with the precision of a chemist dealing with a known poisonous substance, to pour the mixture into oversized martini glasses.
“Welcome to our home,” Bev said, raising her glass.
“Thank you,” Matt and Olivia said, in duet.
The colonel took an appreciative sip and then went on.
“Well, I saw this guy-or thought I did-I saw what looked like somebody running between trees. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So I figured if I stopped, he’d see that, so I drove a couple of blocks away, and parked, and then came back on foot. My night vision’s not what it used to be, but I can still move pretty good through the dark. I was in Special Forces for a long time.”
“Were you really?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, ma’am, I was,” Richards said. “So I see him doing this again. Moving from one tree to another, stopping a minute, and then running to the next. By the time he’d done that three, four times, I had a pretty good idea where he was running to, and while he was hiding behind a tree, I ran, and a little faster, and pretty soon I was ahead of him.”
“Interesting,” Matt said.
“And I was right about where he was going,” Richards said. “Building 202. I got down on the ground when I saw him coming, and I saw him pull a mask-a black ski mask- over his head. Did I say he was wearing black coveralls?”
“No, sir. You did not. What about the mask?”
“You’ve seen them. One of our guys-I mean one of the Delta Force guys, not the guys in Jabberwocky-came up with the idea of using them-all they are is regular ski masks, except black, and without all that cutesy-poo reindeer stuff you see on some ski masks-for their psychological effect when you’re hitting an objective. They scare hell out of people. They think they’re being attacked by Darth Vader.”
“I understand,” Matt said.
“So, the first thing I thought was that I didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that somebody running around dressed up like that wasn’t selling Bibles door-to-door. And what I should do was shove my. 45 up his left nostril. But you always think twice, or should, and I did. Then I thought maybe this was just some clown trying to scare his wife or girlfriend or, for that matter, boyfriend-you’d be surprised at the weirdos that collect in those condominiums. The things we’ve seen in Jabberwocky…”
“Disgusting,” Bev Richards chimed in. “Absolutely disgusting! ”
“Anyway, so I decided I better be sure this guy wasn’t some kind of pervert-or if he was a pervert, he was playing with his own squeeze-before I did anything. So I kept him under surveillance. Then he goes to the kitchen window of 202B- there’s two apartments to a floor in the condo buildings, four apartments to each one: 202B is the ground floor one to the left, if you’re facing it from the front-and whips out this knife. Sword is more like it, it looks like something the bad guys carry in a Stan Colt movie, a great big sonofabitch-”
“Watch your mouth, Colonel!” Bev Richards said.
“This gentleman then begins to attempt to pry the kitchen window open with this knife, the blade of which I would estimate to be at least fourteen inches in length, as much as four inches in breadth at the widest point, and highly polished, perhaps even chromium plated,” the colonel said, paused, and inquired, “Better?”
“Much better,” Bev said.
“In other words, Sergeant, a great big sonofabitch,” the colonel went on, visibly pleased with himself.
“You saw him, Colonel,” Olivia asked, “attempt to pry open the window? You’re sure that’s what he was doing?”
“Well, he could have been attacking a column of ants with that sword, but it looked to me like what he was doing with it was trying to pry the window open.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“Well, I got out the ol’ cellular, alerted the team, told them what was going down, and to block the exits. Unless you want to swim, there’s only two ways out of there. Then I got up, put a round in the chamber, turned the flashlight on him, and said, ‘Excuse me, sir. May I ask what you’re doing?’ ”
“Those were your exact words?” Matt asked.
“Those were my exact words,” Colonel Richards said.
“And then what happened?”
“For a moment, I thought he was going to attack me with the sword, and I hoped he wouldn’t, because I never was any good at taking sharp objects away from people, and I didn’t want to have to put him down with the. 45 because that would really have opened a large can of worms, and then he just turned and ran off.”
“Still wearing the mask?” Matt asked.
“I dunno. I suppose so. Anyway, I called ‘Halt, or I’ll fire’ and let off a couple of rounds in the general direction of the moon, thinking that might scare him into stopping. It didn’t. So I called the team and told them to block the exits, and to be careful because this guy had a knife. Then I called the cops. Then I started for my car. I saw headlights go on, and heard an engine start and tires squealing. So I got in my car. When I got to the Highway 98 exit, I saw that he’d run into Chambers Galloway’s brand-damned-new Mercedes truck thing, and that the old guy had him spread-eagled on the ground with a twelve-bore shotgun pointed at him.”
“Did he have the mask on then?” Matt asked.
“No. But I looked into his car just before the cops came, and it was in the car, that and the knife.”
“Did the police find out who he is?” Olivia asked.
“Not right away,” the colonel said, and looked at his wife. “At first, he wouldn’t say anything, and he wasn’t carrying any identification. Not even a driver’s license. So Charley tossed him in the slam-”
“Charley?” Olivia asked.
“Charley Yancey, the chief of police. And a pretty good one,” the colonel explained, and then went on: “I think Charley charged him with leaving the scene of an accident, which is heavier than being a Peeping Tom, which is like spitting on the sidewalk. Anyway, once he had him locked up, Charley began to try to identify him through the car.”
“And did he?”
“Not until about ten o’clock this morning,” the colonel said. “The car had Illinois plates, but when Charley called out there, they said the plates were not for the car this guy was driving, and they didn’t have the VIN… the Vehicle Identification Number?…”
“Yes, sir. I’m familiar with the term,” Matt said.
“… in their data bank. So Charley checked with Montgomery-that’s the state capital, where our data bank is-and neither did they. Nor did Florida or Mississippi.”
“Interesting,” Matt said.
“So Charley finally decided to make sure he was using the right VIN, and when he went out to the impound yard, he finally saw the Gambino Motor Cars chrome thing on the trunk. You know what I mean?”
“I’m not sure, sir.”
“Next to where it says Chevrolet Impala or whatever, the dealers put their own name.”
“Yes, sir. Now I understand. Colonel, can I ask you how you know all this?”
The question made Colonel Richards uncomfortable.
“The minute I started to tell you, I was afraid you’d ask that question,” he said. “Would you be satisfied if I told you I have a source inside the police department? I do, and I don’t want him getting in trouble with Charley because he’s keeping me up to speed on this.”
“You’re talking about a police officer?”
“No, I’m talking about the guy who goes there once a week to wax the floors.”
“Colonel, I can’t see any reason why I should tell the chief of police that I even know who you are. I was just curious…”
“That’s probably a good idea. Don’t tell him you talked to me.”
“All right, sir, I won’t. You were saying something about the car dealer?”
“Fats Gambino. Great big fat Italian guy. He takes a lot of heat with a name like that, as you can imagine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anyway-he’s a friend of mine, by the way-Fats has the Mercedes franchise and the Porsche franchise and others. Volvo, for one. And he deals in classy cars, exotic cars, is that what they call them? Rolls Royces, old Packards, stuff like that.”
“Exotic cars. Yes, sir, I understand.”
“And he also does things like buy fleets of cars from people like Hertz and Dollar and Alamo. I think they get rid of them after forty thousand miles, or a year. Something like that. Anyway, Gambino buys them up north, brings them here, cleans them up, and puts them on his used-car lot. That’s where the peeper got his car.”
“He bought it from Gambino?”
“No. He borrowed it from Gambino. It turns out this guy is in the exotic-car business. He was in town to try to sell Fats a Rolls Royce and something else, I forget what, and to try to make a deal with Gambino for a couple of Porsches.”
“I’m a little confused here, Colonel,” Olivia asked. “You’re saying this fellow drove here from someplace in a Rolls Royce, and then borrowed a Chevrolet from Mr. Gambino? ”
“No. He drove here in a great big tractor-trailer rig with three, four, really fancy cars in it. Then he borrowed the Chevy from Gambino. Told him he was going to Biloxi to play blackjack. Fats is one pissed-off guy, let me tell you…”
“There goes your mouth again,” Mrs. Richards said.
“Mr. Gambino is apparently distressed at the prospect that his name will be associated in the public’s mind with that of a chap charged by the police as a Peeping Tom. Better?”
“Sometimes, Lacey…”
“Let me see if I can get this in sequence, Colonel,” Matt said. “When the chief of police couldn’t identify the car by its VIN, he did so by tracing it to the Gambino dealership?”
“A little after ten this morning. Gambino goes to work late. When he finally came in, he said, yeah, he owned a car like that, he owned a dozen cars like that, and he had loaned one to a friend of his to go to Biloxi. Bingo. Mr. Peeper is identified. ”
“Okay. I think I’ve got it straight,” Matt said. “Thank you.”
“And now are you going to tell me why you’re interested in this guy? Interested enough to come all the way down here from Philadelphia, P.A.?”
“Colonel, you’ve been very helpful, and I’m really grateful. But I would be in deep trouble if it ever got out I told you anything that could possibly jeopardize our investigation.”
“Okay. I had twenty-seven years in uniform, and for most of that time I had a top-secret clearance. But okay.”
“Would you be satisfied if I told you, Colonel, that from what you’ve told me, the way this Peeping Tom operates is unusually like the way a man we’re looking for in connection with a homicide in Philadelphia operates?”
“Your guy is a pervert too?” Colonel Richards asked.
“Yes, Colonel,” Olivia said. “He is.”
“If our guy turns out to be your guy, will I have to read about it in the newspaper? Or will you tell me first?”
“You’ll hear about it long before it gets into the papers,” Matt said. “I promise.”
It was ten to seven when Matt pulled the rented Mustang into the Joseph Hall Criminal Justice Center in Daphne.
There was a large parking lot, and it was full. Matt wondered why, at this time of day.
“I’m getting hungry again,” he said to Olivia.
“After all you had for lunch? I can’t believe it.”
“I don’t know. I must have done something to work up an appetite.”
“I can’t imagine what,” Olivia said. “When are you going to call Lieutenant Washington?”
“I don’t have anything to tell him yet,” Matt argued. “And if he had something to say to us, he would have called.”
Inside a double glass door was a barren room with shiny tile walls. There were several metal doors and a small window in the walls. Next to the window was a buzzer button and a sign reading, RING BELL FOR SERVICE.
Matt pushed the button. There was a buzzing sound, and a moment later the small door opened inward, and the face of a plump middle-aged woman appeared in the opening. She had what looked like a police uniform on, but Matt saw neither badge nor weapon.
“Can I help you?”
“Good evening,” Matt said, and showed her his identification. “I’m Sergeant Payne, this is Detective Lassiter, and we’d like to see Chief Yancey, please.”
“Can’t right now, he’s in court.”
She pointed to her left, to a single door in the shiny tile wall.
“Well, then, may I please speak to the supervisor on duty?”
“That’d be Sergeant Paul.”
“Do you think I can see Sergeant Paul?”
“You want to see him, or just speak to him?”
“I’d really like to speak to him in person,” Matt said.
“He’s on patrol. I’ll give him a call.”
“Thank you very much.”
Ninety seconds later, her face appeared again.
“He’s still working a DUI. Says it will take him fifteen minutes to get here.”
“Thank you. Should we wait here?”
“If you went in the courtroom, you could sit down,” she said. “I’ll tell him where you are.”
“Thank you very much.”
Matt opened the single steel door in the tiled wall for Olivia, then followed her in.
They found themselves at the head end of a fairly large courtroom, right by the judge, who, sitting on his bench a few feet above them, looked down at them in what was certainly curiosity and possibly annoyance.
“Go along the wall,” Matt quickly ordered Olivia, and he followed her past a railing dividing the bench area-which had tables for the accused and their counsel-from the spectator area, which was furnished with benches not unlike church pews.
Behind the last row of benches was an open area, fairly crowded with people-Matt thought they looked like the accused and their counsel-and behind that a set of double doors.
They found seats in the next-to-the-last row and tried to look inconspicuous.
There were a number of police officers in the courtroom, most of them on the bench side of the barrier. Two of them stood out. One was a short, trim man in a neat, white shirt uniform. On each of his collar points was a colonel’s eagle. In the Philadelphia police department, that was the uniform insignia of a chief inspector. Inspector Peter Wohl, on those rare occasions when he wore a uniform, wore a silver leaf, the same insignia as that of a lieutenant colonel.
When the man wearing the colonel’s eagles looked at them with unabashed curiosity, Matt decided he had to be Chief Yancey, and had the unkind thought that the Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia police department probably outnumbered the Daphne police department, and that Captain Quaire only got to wear the insignia of a captain.
The second police officer who stood out looked, Matt thought, as if he could be Jason Washington’s younger brother. He was an enormous, very black sergeant. He was quietly talking on a cellular phone, which almost disappeared in his massive hand.
It didn’t take either Matt or Olivia long to figure out what was going on. This was Municipal Court, primarily occupied with misdemeanor level violations of the law, primarily traffic offenses.
And it was a smooth-running operation. The clerk called a case number. The accused, sometimes accompanied by his counsel, or his mother and/or father, approached the bench. One of the uniforms then detached himself from the knot of fellow police officers and stood facing the bench. The clerk read the charges, and the judge asked how the defendant pled. If the defendant pled “guilty,” sentence was immediately dispensed. If the defendant pled “not guilty,” the arresting officer testified, the defendant (or his counsel, but not, Matt noted with a smile, his mother and/or father) was permitted to cross-examine the uniform, and when that was done, the judge immediately decided guilt or innocence and handed out the sentence.
Then the next case was called.
A hand tapped Matt’s shoulder. He looked around and saw a middle-aged man he instantly decided was a lawyer. The lawyer was pointing to the cracked-open double doors of the courtroom. Matt saw the enormous sergeant beckoning to him.
He and Olivia made their way through the standees in the rear of the courtroom and out the door.
“You’re the cop from Philadelphia?” the enormous sergeant asked in a thick southern accent.
Matt saw that he had a highly polished name badge reading “Sgt. D. Kenny” pinned to his crisply pressed shirt.
This is the guy I talked to when I called from outside Olivia’s apartment.
“Cops from Philadelphia,” Matt said. “This is Detective Lassiter, and my name is Payne. I’m a sergeant.”
The sergeant stopped Matt from producing his identification with a wave of his huge hand.
“The chief says that Sergeant Paul doesn’t know anything about the peeper; that court will probably last until about ten-thirty, maybe later; and that you can wait for him if you want but that he’d much rather talk to you in the morning. About eight.”
“Can I ask you two questions, Sergeant?”
“You can ask.”
“Is your peeper going to make bail and walk out of here tonight?”
“No.”
Matt took his laptop out of his case. The enormous sergeant watched silently and without expression as Matt turned it on.
“I’d really be grateful, Sergeant, if you could tell me if this knife looks familiar to you.”
Matt turned the laptop’s screen so the sergeant could see it. It was one of the digital images Matt had taken from the camera the doer had left in Cheryl Williamson’s apartment. It showed a visibly terrified young woman lying on a bed, tied to the headboard with plastic binders. Her breasts were exposed. Lying between them was a large knife, its tip almost touching the soft skin under her chin. There were several thumbnail-sized drops of a thick, milky white fluid on the highly polished blade.
The enormous sergeant looked at the image, then at Matt, and then back at the computer screen. Then he handed the laptop back to Matt.
“Wait,” he said.
In two minutes, he was back with the chief.
Matt wordlessly raised the almost closed laptop screen and extended it to the chief.
“Where’d you get this?” the chief asked.
“Our doer forgot his camera when he left the scene,” Matt said. “Possibly because by then he knew he’d killed Miss Williamson and was a little frightened.”
“Sonofabitch!” the chief said, instantly adding, “Excuse me, ma’am.”
Olivia made a gesture indicating she understood.
The chief, taking care that Olivia could not see the screen, returned the laptop to Matt.
“You’re the sergeant who talked to me and Sergeant Kenny this morning, right?”
“Yes, sir. I’m Sergeant Payne, and this is Detective Lassiter.”
“Let me tell you how it is, Sergeant. Sometime tonight, in there, a man is going to appear before the judge to have both the suspension of his DUI sentence and the suspension of the revocation of his driver’s license challenged by me. I personally got him again for DUI two nights ago, and one of my not-too-smart officers let him go on his own recognizance after he’d had time to sober up. He’s a lawyer, and he’s got a damned good lawyer, and nothing would make either of them happier than for them to show up only to hear that I’m not there. I think they’re sitting in a car someplace waiting for some other lawyer to call, telling them I’ve gone. You follow me?”
“Yes, sir. Another continuance. And you don’t want that to happen.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I understand, sir. I was a little concerned that your peeper would get out on bail.”
“That’s not going to happen, not tonight,” the chief said. “Kenny, you bring these officers up to date on what happened last night. We can do that much. And later tonight, if you’d like, or in the morning-which would be better for me-we can talk about what we’re going to do about this Peeping Tom Jabberwocky caught.”
“Yes, sir, Chief,” Sergeant Kenny said.
“And tell the people in the lockup that the only person who can let Mr. Homer C. Daniels out of his cell is me.”
“Yes, sir, Chief.”
Sergeant Kenny led them through a corridor, then a locked door into what was obviously the administrative department of the Daphne police department. It was a fairly large room with several rows of desks. Offices opened off it, and Matt saw signs identifying those of the chief, the deputy chief, and then-just as they reached it- one reading “Sgt. Kenny.”
He waved them inside, closed the door, and gestured for them to sit down.
“Okay. I don’t know how much you know-”
“Not much,” Matt said.
“I don’t know how many details you have, so if I start telling you something you already know, stop me.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t think the chief dislikes Colonel Richards,” Sergeant Kenny said, “but the chief doesn’t know what a fine officer the colonel was when he was in Special Forces. I do.”
“And does the chief know that you know-”
“I don’t think that’s ever come up in conversation, come to think of it.”
“I understand.”
“Good,” Sergeant Kenny said.
He met Matt’s eyes for a long minute.
“Okay. I wasn’t there at the Yacht Club, but the dispatcher called me at the house and told me what had gone down. So I came here. And while they were booking him, a concerned citizen who didn’t identify himself called me and said he smelled that this peeper was more than a peeper.”
“Interesting.”
“Well, after they booked him…”
“On what?”
“Peeping. It’s a misdemeanor.”
Matt nodded.
“Our detective sergeant and the chief interviewed him. I got to listen.”
“ ‘Your’ detective sergeant?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, ma’am, we have two. A detective and a detective sergeant. ”
“I see.”
“This was three o’clock in the morning. And this guy said he wasn’t going to say anything, even give us his name, without a lawyer.”
“He’d been Mirandized?”
“Sure. Well, hell, I thought that was a little strange. This wasn’t even serious. Not even like DUI. This was peeping. We catch peepers every couple of weeks. The judge fines them two hundred dollars and court costs, and threatens them with having to register as a sex offender if they get caught again. I can’t recall any peeper ever going to jail.”
“I understand.”
“Then the chief tried to identify this guy through the car, and got nowhere. That made him a little more suspicious, so he charged him with leaving the scene of an accident, which is either, depending on the circumstances, either a first-class misdemeanor-thirty days in our jail, max- or a felony.
“Anyway, they just left him in a cell to think things over. I guess he did, because in the morning-just before you called-when the chief got him a lawyer, he’d changed his tune. Now he was all remorse. He was ashamed, and was going to be embarrassed when all this came out, and all he wanted to do was take his punishment.”
“Had you identified him by then?”
“He gave us his name, and said he was from Las Vegas, and that he’d borrowed the car from Fats Gambino in Mobile, said he was doing business with Gambino, told us Gambino would confirm that, and practically begged us not to tell Gambino why he’d been arrested.”
“And then you had to wait for Gambino to come to work?”
“Yeah. And while we were waiting for that, you called. And asked about the knife.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, Fats confirmed what he had told us, and said he’d loaned him the car to go to Biloxi to play blackjack. And offered to get his bail.”
“And?”
“We told him bail hadn’t been set, that he hadn’t been arraigned. And then, an hour after that, Fats called back, said he’d just got the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune. It had the picture of old Mr. Galloway standing over him in it. And Fats wanted to know if the guy on the ground was the one who was driving his car, and the chief said yes, it was, and Fats threw a fit. He wasn’t going to make bail for a pervert, et cetera, et cetera, and asked was there any way he could get his car back without his name being connected with it. The chief told him he’d see what he could do, but couldn’t make no promises.”
Sergeant Kenny let this sink in for a moment, then went on.
“By this time, the chief-who’s a nice man-is starting to feel sorry for this guy. And the mayor says that enough people have been laughing at Daphne and Jabberwocky, and that if he had his druthers the municipal judge would set bail high enough to hurt him when he jumped it, but not too high that he couldn’t afford to make it or jump it-something on the order of a thousand dollars, maybe less-and that would be the end of it.
“The chief was willing to go along. There was your phone call, but you told the chief you were going to send a telex saying who you were, and you didn’t, so he thought it was likely you were some wiseass reporter…”
“I completely forgot about that,” Matt said. “When I showed my lieutenant the newspaper, the next thing I knew Olivia and I were on the way to the airport. I’m sorry.”
“And then you showed up here,” Sergeant Kenny said. “And that changed things.”
“We’re really anxious to bag our doer, Sergeant,” Olivia said. “Dr. P… the psychiatrist who did a profile said that the doer was going to be really frightened when he realized he had killed someone, and do one of two things-go underground for a long time, or keep doing this sort of thing, knowing that he could only be executed once. If this is our doer, he obviously wasn’t frightened into going underground. ”
Sergeant Kenny considered that for a moment.
“Can I ask how you got involved in this, ma’am? Just curious. ”
“I was next up on the wheel at Northwest Detectives when the brother found the victim,” Olivia said. “So I got involved that way.”
“You know what she means, Sergeant?”
“No, but I’m guessing she was the first detective on the scene, and then you got involved because it was a homicide.”
“Right.”
“So why do you two think this guy is your man? Because of the knife?”
“That would be incriminating if it’s the same one in the pictures we have,” Olivia said. “But we have more.”
“Well, let’s see if it is,” Kenny said. He got up, walked to a steel door, and unlocked two locks. He came out with a Jim Bowie replica knife wrapped in plastic film.
“We got the Mobile police lab to take prints off it this afternoon,” he said, “they’re better equipped to do that than we are. They’re also having their expert see if there’s a match between Mr. Daniels’s prints and the ones they took off this.”
He unwrapped the Jim Bowie replica as Matt opened his laptop and turned it on.
“Well, what you have here is a big knife that looks just like the big knife in the picture,” Sergeant Kenny said. “I don’t suppose they made more than five or ten thousand knives just like this.”
“In the photo, Sergeant,” Olivia said, “those… spots, I suppose is the word… on the blade are sperm. We can make a DNA comparison.”
He looked at her for a long moment but said nothing.
“Was there a camera, Sergeant?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, there was. Looked like brand-new. One of those digitals.”
“Our doer left a digital camera at the scene. We took those photographs from it,” Matt said.
“And a mask?”
“A black ski mask.”
“What we believe, and what the psychiatric profiler believes, Sergeant,” Olivia said, “is that our doer has previously done what he did in this case. That is, stalk a young woman until he feels comfortable in breaking into her home. He then ties her to her bed with plastic ties…”
Kenny turned and went to the closet, returning with a Ziploc bag full of plastic ties.
“Like these?”
“Like those,” Matt said.
“… and when she is terrified sufficiently, and her clothing has been cut off,” Olivia went on, “he humiliates her sexually and takes photographs of various stages of the assault.”
“And then kills them?”
“No. We don’t think so,” Matt said. “We think he didn’t mean to kill our victim. It just happened.”
“Would you agree, Sergeant,” Olivia asked, “that there is a similarity in the modus operandi of our doer and what this man was apparently about to do last night?”
“I think you could reasonably conclude something like that,” Kenny said. “So what do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” Matt confessed. “I have no idea what the legal procedure is. But I know there’s enough here to tell my lieutenant about it.”
Sergeant Kenny pointed to the telephone on his desk. Matt started to reach for it, then stopped.
“Would it be possible for us to have a look at this man?” he asked. “I don’t mean interview him. I just have a feeling I ought to have a look at him.”
Olivia looked at him in surprise and disapproval.
Kenny considered Matt’s request a moment, then nodded, stood up, and nodded again, this time toward the door.
“If you’ve got weapons,” he said, as he unholstered his pistol and laid it on his desk, “it’d be better to leave them in here.”
Matt and Olivia laid their pistols on his desk, which gave Matt a chance to take a closer look at Kenny’s shiny revolver. It was, Matt saw, more than a little surprised, a Smith amp; Wesson Model 29 in. 44 Magnum caliber. Identical, except for the five-inch barrel on this one, to the weapon Clint East-wood had made famous in the movies.
Well, hell, why not? As big as Kenny is, he probably doesn’t even feel the recoil.
Sergeant Payne’s experience with jails was limited to those in Philadelphia, and a cell in the Spring Lake, New Jersey, jail in which, at sixteen, he and Mr. Chadwick T. Nesbitt IV, also sixteen, had been confined overnight, charged with disturbing the peace of that seashore community by taking a midnight swim in the Atlantic without bathing attire.
The Daphne jail was like none in his experience. It reminded Matt more of a hospital than a jail. It was spotless. The walls were of white tile. The bars on the six cells were white. The in-cell toilets were of stainless steel, and there was no graffiti on the walls.
The first cell was empty. Sergeant Kenny pointed to the second. It held a large, crew-cutted man wearing white coveralls on the chest of which was embroidered DAPHNE JAIL in red.
Matt stepped in front of the cell and looked in. Olivia stepped up beside him.
Homer C. Daniels, as if he was trying to be friendly, at first smiled-if a little uneasily-at the young couple standing with Sergeant Kenny looking into his cell.
Then the smile vanished.
“Who are you?” he asked, and when there no response, angrily demanded, “Sergeant, who the fuck are these people?”
“Watch your mouth, Mr. Daniels,” Sergeant Kenny said. “You see the lady!”
“I’m Sergeant Payne, Mr. Daniels,” Matt said. “And this is Detective Lassiter. We’re from the Homicide Unit of the Philadelphia police department.”
“What do you want with me?” Daniels asked.
“I’m sorry, sir. But that’s about all I can say to you without your attorney being present.”
He turned and walked toward the door through which he had entered the cell block. He stopped just inside, out of sight of the cell, and gestured almost frantically for Kenny to follow him, but Kenny waited until Olivia had turned away from the cell and started for the door.
They both looked at Matt in bewilderment.
Matt frantically silently mouthed something to Sergeant Kenny. He had to do it three times before Kenny understood, thought it over, shrugged, and then dutifully repeated what Matt had mouthed.
“You think that’s your man, Sergeant?” he said, speaking a little more loudly than he normally did.
“No question about it,” Matt boomed, confidently. “That’s him. It all fits. The knife, the mask, the digital camera. Same modus operandi. All we’ll have to do is match the DNA, and there’s no challenging DNA. I’ll start the extradition paperwork tonight.”
Olivia shook her head in disbelief.
Matt gestured for Olivia and Kenny to go through the door. When they had, he closed it.
“Now we call the Black Buddha,” he said to Olivia.
Olivia rolled her eyes.
Oh, shit! There goes my automatic mouth again.
“ ‘The Black Buddha’ is what we call my lieutenant,” Matt said, “who is an African-American gentleman slightly larger than you, Sergeant, and generally regarded as the best homicide investigator between Bangor, Maine, and Key West, Florida.”
“Bigger than me?” Kenny asked.
“Bigger than you, Sergeant,” Olivia said.
Kenny smiled. “How do you start the extradition paperwork? ”
“I haven’t a clue,” Matt confessed. “I’ll ask Lieutenant Washington.”
“What was that business in there?” Kenny asked.
“When I saw that sonofabitch, the idea of him getting a good night’s sleep, thinking he was going to bail himself out of here tomorrow, annoyed me. And then I remembered what Washington told me-”
“The Black Buddha?” Kenny interrupted.
Matt nodded.
“-about the likelihood of a suspect who has (a) time to reflect on his sins and (b) not had much sleep telling you a lot more than he would if he had had neither.”
“You’re not actually thinking of interviewing him?” Olivia asked.
“I’ll do exactly what Washington tells me to do,” Matt said.
“Hello?” a female voice said. Matt recognized it to be that of Martha Washington.
“Matt, Martha,” Matt said.
“Martha Washington?” Sergeant Kenny asked, smiling. Matt smiled.
“He’s in the shower, Matt. And you, I understand, are in the Deep South?”
“About as deep as you can get,” Matt said. “Standing here with a sergeant who looks like your husband’s twin brother. I really have to talk to him. When should I call back?”
“I’ll just hand him the cellular,” she said. “Hold on.”
“I’m already annoyed with you for not having checked in earlier,” Washington’s voice came over the line. “And I dislike being interrupted when I am in the midst of my ablutions. That said, you may proceed.”
“This is our doer, Jason.”
“You will forgive me for asking, Matthew, but do you believe this because of something more than your intuition? ”
“Sergeant Kenny showed me the knife he had. It’s a twin of the one in the pictures. He had a digital camera-a new one-and a package of plastic ties. He was trying to pry open a window in a young woman’s apartment when the Citizens’ Watch guy caught him.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Homer C. Daniels. White male, six feet one inch, two hundred pounds, mid-thirties. He’s a dealer in exotic cars, from Las Vegas, and he drives all over the country doing business.”
“On what charges are they-presumably the Daphne police-holding him?”
“Peeping, a misdemeanor, and leaving the scene of an accident, which is a little heavier.”
“Is there a chance, however slight, that he might be allowed to post bail?”
“Not tonight.”
There was a thirty-second pause.
“I will be calling you back shortly, Matthew. May I presume your cell phone battery is fully charged?”
“You may so presume.”
“Splendid,” Washington said, and the line went dead.
Matt hung up the telephone on Sergeant Kenny’s desk. “He’s going to call me back,” Matt said.
“You want to wait here?”
“I think maybe I’d better.”
“We keep a pot of coffee going,” Sergeant Kenny said.
Matt’s cellular buzzed fifteen minutes later.
“I have just spoken with Mrs. Solomon,” Washington said. “Placing what I truly hope is justified confidence in your analysis of the situation, she is dispatching an assistant district attorney-probably, if she decides Peter Wohl will just have to do without his services for a day or two, Steven Cohen, Esq. As we speak, a teletype message is being prepared asking the Daphne authorities to hold Mr. Daniels. Travel arrangements similarly are under way. You will be advised of the details.”
“Yes, sir,” Matt said.
“I devoutly hope this is not premature: Good job, Matt!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Please share that with Detective Lassiter.”
“Yes, sir.”