Men In Blue

TWO

Highway Two-B was a Philadelphia Highway Patrol vehicle moving southward on Roosevelt Boulevard, just entering Oxford Circle. It was occupied by Sergeant Alexander W. Dannelly, and driven by Police Officer David N. Waldron. Sergeant Dannelly and Officer Waldron had moments before seen Captain Dutch Moffitt going into the Waikiki Diner, dressed to kill in civvies.

It was four in the afternoon, and Captain Dutch Moffitt usually worked until half-past five, and often longer. And in uniform.

"The captain is obviously engaged in a very secret undercover investigation," Sergeant Dannelly said.

"Under-the-covers, you said, Sergeant?" Officer Waldron asked, grinning.

"You have an evil mind, Officer Waldron," Sergeant Dannelly said, grinning back. "Shame on you!"

"How about a cup of coffee, Sergeant?" Waldron asked. "The Waikiki serves a fine cup of coffee."

"You also have a suicidal tendency," Sergeant Dannelly said. "I ever tell you that?"

Two beeps on the radio cut off the conversation.

"Roosevelt Boulevard and Harbison," the dispatcher's voice said. "The Waikiki Diner. Assist officer. Police by phone. Roosevelt Boulevard and Harbison. The Waikiki Diner. Assist officer. Police by phone."

"Jesus Christ!" Officer Waldron said.

"That's got to be the captain," Dannelly said.

"Report of a robbery, shooting, and hospital case," the dispatcher said. "All cars going in on the assist, Harbison and the Boulevard, flash information on a robbery at that location. Be on the lookout for Caucasian male, long blond hair, brown jacket, direction taken unknown, armed with a gun."

As Sergeant Dannelly reached for the microphone, without waiting for orders, Officer Waldron had dropped the transmission shift lever into D-2, and flipped the switches activating the flashing light assembly and the siren, and then shoved his foot to the floor.

"Highway Two-B in on that," Sergeant Dannelly said into the microphone.

The Ford, its engine screaming in protest, tires squealing, accelerated the rest of the way around Oxford Circle and back down Roosevelt Boulevard toward the Waikiki Diner.

The second response came on the heels of Highway Two B's: "Two-Oh-One in on that Waikiki Diner." It was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Two-Oh-One was not thatinstant responding to the call.

The Waikiki Diner was in the territory of the Second Police District. Two-Oh-One was a Second Police District patrol wagon, a Ford van.

Philadelphia police, unlike those of every other major city, respond to all calls for any kind of assistance.

If you break a leg,call the cops! If Uncle Harry has a heart attack, call the cops! If you get your fingers in the Waring blender,call the cops!

A paddy wagon will respond, and haul you to the hospital. Not in great comfort, for the back of the van holds only a stretcher, and there is no array of high-tech lifesaving apparatus. But it will cart you to the hospital as fast as humanly possible.

Paddy wagons are police vehicles, driven by armed sworn police officers, normally young muscular officers without much time on the job. Young muscles are often needed to carry large citizens down three flights of stairs, and to restrain bellicose drunks, for the paddy wagon also still performs the function it did when it was pulled by horses, and "paddy" was a pejorative term for those of Irish heritage. Paddy wagon duty is recognized to be a good way to introduce young police officers to what it's really like on the streets.

When the "assist officer" call came over the radio, Two-Oh-One was parked outside Sid's Steak Sandwiches amp; Hamburgers on the corner of Cottman and Summerdale avenues, across from Northeast High School. Officer Francis Mason was at the wheel and Officer Patrick Foley was inside Sid's, where he had ordered a couple of cheese steaks and two large Cokes to go, and then visited the gentlemen's rest facility. He and Francis had attended a function of the Fraternal Order of Police the night before, and he had taken advantage of the free beer bar. He' d had the runs all day.

Officer Mason, when he got the call, picked up the microphone and said Two-Oh-One was responding, flicked up the siren and lights, and reached over and pushed open the passenger side door. It was ninety seconds, but seemed much longer, before Officer Foley appeared, on the run, a pained look on his face, fastening his gun belt, and jumped in the van.

Officer Mason made a U-turn on Summerdale Avenue; skidded to a stop at Cottman; waited until there was a break in the traffic; and then turned onto Cottman, running on the left side of the avenue, against oncoming traffic, until he was finally able to force himself into the inside right lane.

"I think I shit my pants," Officer Foley said.

The broadcast was also received by a vehicle parked in the parking lot of LaSalle College at Twentieth Street and Olney Avenue, where a crew from WCBL-TV had just finished taping yet another student protest over yet another tuition increase. After a moment's indecision, Miss Penny Bakersfield, the reporter, told the driver that there might be something in the car for "Nine's News," if he thought he could get there in a hurry.

Highway Two-B made a wide sweeping U-turn, its tires screeching, from the northbound center lane of Roosevelt Boulevard into the southbound right lane and then into the parking lot of the Waikiki Diner.

There were no police cars evident in the parking lot; that made it almost certain that the "assist officer, shots fired" call had come from Captain Dutch Moffitt, who had either been in his unmarked car, or his own car.

Sergeant Dannelly had the door open before Highway Two-B lurched to a stop in front of the diner. Pistol drawn, he ran into the building, with Waldron on his heels.

A blond woman was on her knees beside Dutch Moffitt, who seemed to be sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Dannelly pushed her out of the way, saw the blank look in Moffitt's eyes, and then felt for a pulse.

"He ran out the back," the woman said, very softly.

"Go after him!" Dannelly ordered Waldron. "I'll go around outside."

He pushed himself to his feet and ran back out of the diner. He recognized the signs of fury in himself-some miserable fucking pissant shit had shot Dutch, the best goddamn captain in the department-and told himself to take it easy.

He stopped and took two deep breaths and then started to run around the diner building. Then he changed his mind. He ran to the car, whose doors were still open, switched the radio to the J-Band, and picked up the microphone.

"Highway Two-B to radio. Will you have all Highway cars switch to JBand, please."

He waited a moment, to give radio time to relay the message, and to give everybody time to switch frequencies, and then put the mike to his lips again.

"Highway Two-B to all Highway cars. We have a police shooting at Boulevard and Harbison involving Highway One. All Highway units respond and survey the area for suspect. Radio, will you rebroadcast the description of the suspect?"

He threw the microphone on the seat and started to run to the rear of the Waikiki Diner. He knew that all over the city, every Highway Patrol car had turned on its siren and flashing lights and was heading for the Waikiki Diner.

"Highway takes care of its own," Sergeant Dannelly said firmly, although there was nobody around to hear him.

The third response to the "assist officer, shots fired" call came from a new, light tan 1973 Ford LTD Brougham, which was proceeding northward on Roosevelt Boulevard, just past Adams Avenue and the huge, red brick regional offices of Sears, Roebuck amp; Company.

There was nothing to indicate the LTD was a police vehicle. It even had whitewall tires. When the driver, Peter F. Wohl, a tall man in his very early thirties, wearing a well-cut glen-plaid suit, decided to respond, he had to lean over and open the glove compartment to take the microphone out.

"Isaac Twenty-three," he said to the microphone, "put me in on that assist."

He pushed in the button on the steering wheel that caused all the lights on the LTD to flash on and off (what Ford called "the emergency flasher system") and started methodically sounding his horn. The LTD had neither a siren nor a flashing light.

"Isaac" was the call sign for "Inspector." Peter F. Wohl was a Staff Inspector. On those very rare occasions when he wore a uniform, it carried a gold leaf insignia, identical to the U.S. military's insignia for a major.

A Staff Inspector ranked immediately above a captain, and immediately below an inspector, who wore the rank insignia of a lieutenant colonel. There were eighteen of them, and Peter F. Wohl was the youngest. Staff inspectors thought of themselves as, and were generally regarded, by those who knew what they really did, to be, some of the best cops around.

They were charged with investigating police corruption, but that was not all they did, and they didn't even do that the way most people thought they did. They were not interested in some cop taking an Easter ham from a butcher, but their ears did pick up when the word started going around that a captain somewhere had taken a blonde not his wife to Jersey to play the horses in a new Buick.

As they thought of it, they investigated corruption in the city administration; fraud against the city; bribery and extortion; crimes with a political connection; the more interesting endeavors of organized crime; a number of other interesting things; and only way down at the bottom of the list, crooked cops.

Peter (no one had ever called him "Pete," not even as a kid; even then he had had a quiet dignity) Wohl did not look much the popular image of a cop. People would guess that he was a stockbroker, or maybe an engineer or lawyer. Aprofessional, in other words. But he was a cop. He'd done his time walking a beat, and he'd even been a corporal in the Highway Patrol. But when he'd made sergeant, young, not quite six years on the force, they'd assigned him to the Civil Disobedience Squad, in plain clothes, and he'd been in plain clothes ever since.

It was said that Peter Wohl would certainly make it up toward the top, maybe all the way. He had the smarts and he worked hard, and he seldom made mistakes. Equally important, he came from a long line of cops. His father had retired as a Chief Inspector, and the line went back far behind him.

The roots of the Wohl family were in Hesse. Friedrich Wohl had been a farmer from a small village near Kassel, pressed into service as a Grenadier in the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel's Regiment of Light Foot. Primarily to finance a university he had founded (and named after himself) in buildings he confiscated from the Roman Catholic Church at Marburg an der Lahn, Landgrave Philip had rented out his soldiers to His Most Britannic Majesty, George III of England, who had a rebellion on his hands in his North American colonies.

Some predecessor of William Casey (some say it was Baron von Steuben, others think it was the Marquis de Lafayette) pointed out to the founding fathers that the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel's Regiment of Light Foot (known, because of their uniforms, as "the Redcoats") were first-class soldiers, sure to cause the Continental Army a good deal of trouble. But they also pointed out that many of them were conscripted, and not very fond of the Landgrave for conscripting them. And, further, that a number of them were Roman Catholic, who considered the Landgrave's expulsion of the Church and his confiscation of Church property an unspeakable outrage against Holy Mother Church.

It was theorized that an offer of 160 acres of land, a small amount of gold, and a horse might induce a number of the Redcoats to desert. The theory was put into practice and at least one hundred Redcoats took advantage of the offer. Among them, although he was not a Roman Catholic and had entered the service of the Landgrave voluntarily, was Grenadier Friedrich Wohl.

Friedrich Wohl's farm, near what is now Media, prospered. When the War of 1812 came along, he borrowed heavily against it, and used the money to invest in a privateer, which would prey upon British shipping and make him a fortune. TheDetermination sailed down the Delaware with all flags flying and was never heard from again.

Wohl lost his farm and was reduced to hiring himself and his sons out as farm laborers.

The sons moved to Philadelphia, where they practiced, without notable success, various trades and opened several small businesses, all of which failed. In 1854, following the Act of Consolidation, which saw the area of Philadelphia grow from 360 acres to 83,000 by the consolidation of all the tiny political entities in the area into a city, Karl-Heinz Wohl, Friedrich Wohl's youngest grandson, managed to have himself appointed to the new police department.

There had been at least one Wohl on the rolls of the Philadelphia Police Department ever since. When Peter Wohl graduated from the police academy, a captain, two lieutenants, and a detective who were either his uncles or cousins sat with Chief Inspector August Wohl on folding chairs in the auditorium watching Peter take the oath.

There was a long line of cars slowing to enter Oxford Circle ahead of him, a line that was not likely to make room for him, no matter how his lights flashed, or he sounded the horn. He fumed until his path was cleared, then floored the accelerator, racing through the circle, and leaving in his wake a half dozen citizens wondering where the cops were when they were needed to protect people from idiots like the one in the tan Ford.

He reached the intersection on Roosevelt Boulevard, at the 6600 block, where Harbison and Magee come together to cross it, and then separate again on the other side. The light was orange and then red, but he thought he could beat the first car starting up, and floored it and got across to the far lane, and then had to brake hard to keep from getting broadsided by a paddy wagon that had come down Bustleton Avenue.

The cop at the wheel of the wagon gave him a look of absolute contempt and fury as it raced past him.

Wohl followed it into the Waikiki Diner parking lot, and stopped behind it.

There was a Highway Patrol car, both doors open, nose against the entrance; and Wohl caught a glimpse of a Highway Patrolman running like hell, pistol pointing to the sky next to his ear, obviously headed for the rear of the building.

Wohl got out of his car and started toward the diner.

"Hey, you!" a voice called.

It was the driver of the wagon. He had his pistol out, too, with the muzzle pointed to the sky.

"Police officer," Wohl said, and then, when he saw a faint glimmer of disbelief on the young cop's face, added, "Inspector Wohl."

The cop nodded.

Wohl started again toward the diner entrance and almost stepped on the body of a young person lying in a growing pool of blood. Wohl quickly felt for a pulse, and as he decided there was none, became aware that the body was that of a young woman.

He stood up and took his pistol, a Smith amp; Wesson "Chiefs Special" snub-nosed.38 Special, from its shoulder holster. There was no question now that shots had been fired.

"In here, Officer!" a voice called, and when Wohl saw that it was Teddy Galanapoulos, who owned the Waikiki, he pushed his jacket out of the way, and reholstered his pistol. Whatever had happened here was over..

Teddy hadn't been calling to him, and when he ran up looked at him curiously, even suspiciously, until he recognized him.

"Lieutenant Wohl," he said. It was not the right place or time to correct him. "Hello, Mr. Galanapoulos," Wohl said. "What's going on?"

"Fucking kid killed Captain Moffitt," Teddy said, and pointed.

Dutch Moffitt, in civilian clothes, was slumped against the wall. A woman was kneeling beside him. She was sobbing, and as Wohl watched, she put a hand out very gingerly and very tenderly and pulled Dutch's eyelids closed.

Wohl turned to the door. The cop from the paddy wagon was coming in, and the parking lot was filling with police cars, which screeched to a halt and from which uniformed police erupted.

"Put your gun away," Wohl ordered, "and go get your stretcher. The woman in the parking lot is dead."

A look of disappointment on his face, the young cop did as he was ordered.

A Highway Patrol sergeant, one Wohl didn't recognize, walked quickly through the restaurant, holstering his pistol. He looked curiously at Wohl.

"I'm Inspector Wohl," Wohl said.

"Yes, sir," Sergeant Alex Dannelly said. "There was two of them, sir. Dutch got the one that shot him. The other one, a white male twenty to twenty-five years old, blond hair, ran through the restaurant and out the kitchen."

"You get it on the air?"

"No, sir," Dannelly said.

"Do it, then," Wohl ordered. "And then seal this place up, make sure nobody leaves, keep the people in their seats, make sure nothing gets disturbed…"

"Got it," the Highway Patrol sergeant said, and went to the door and waved three policemen inside.

Wohl dropped to his knees beside the woman, and laid a gentle hand on her back.

"My name is Wohl," he said. "I'm a police officer."

She turned to look at him. There was horror in her eyes, and tears running down her cheeks had left a path through her face powder. She looked familiar. And she was not Mrs. Richard C. Moffitt.

"Let me help you to your feet," Wohl said, gently.

"Get a blanket or something," Louise Dutton said, in nearly a whisper. "Cover him up, Goddamn it!"

"Teddy," Wohl ordered. "Get a tablecloth or something."

He helped the woman to her feet.

Officer Francis Mason and Officer Patrick Foley ran in, with the stretcher from the back of Two-Oh-One. They quickly snapped the stretcher open and unceremoniously heaved Dutch Moffitt onto it. Wohl started for the door to open it for them, but a uniform beat him to it.

The sound of sirens outside was now deafening. He looked through the plate-glass door of the diner and saw there were police cars all over it. As he watched, a white van with WCBL-TC CHANNEL 9 painted on its side pulled to the curb, a sliding door opened, and a man with a camera resting on his shoulders jumped out.

Wohl turned to the blonde. "You were a friend of Captain Moffitt's?"

She nodded.

Where the hell do I know her from? What was she up to with Dutch?

"Why are they doing that?" she asked. "He's dead, isn't he?"

I don't know why they're doing that, Wohl thought. The dead are left where they have fallen, for the convenience of the Homicide Detectives. But, I guess maybe no one wants to admit that a fellow cop is really dead.

"Yes, I'm afraid he is," Wohl said. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"He was trying to stop a holdup," Louise said. "And somebody shot him. A girl, he said."

A portly, red-faced policeman in a white shirt with captain's bars pinned to the epaulets of his white shirt came into the Waikiki.

His name was Jack McGovern, and he was the commanding officer of the Second District. He had been a lieutenant in Highway Patrol when Peter Wohl had been a corporal. He had made captain on the promotion list before Peter Wohl had made captain, and they had sat across the room from each other when they'd sat for the Staff Inspector's examination. Peter Wohl had been first on the list; Jack McGovern hadn't made it.

McGovern's eyebrows rose when he saw Wohl.

"What the hell happened?" he asked. "Was that Dutch Moffitt they just carried out of here?" he asked.

"That was Dutch," Wohl confirmed. "He walked in on a holdup."

McGovern's eyebrows rose in question.

"He's gone, Jack," Wohl said.

"Jesus," McGovern said, and crossed himself.

"I think it would be better if you took care of the parking lot," Wohl said. "You're in uniform. You see the woman's body?"

McGovern shook his head. "A woman? A woman shot Dutch?"

"There were two of them," Wohl said. "One ran. Dutch got the other one. I don't know who shot Dutch."

"He said it was a woman," Louise Dutton said, softly.

Captain McGovern looked at her, his eyebrows raising, and then at Wohl.

"This lady was with Captain Moffitt at the time," Wohl said, evenly. He turned to Louise. "I've got to make a telephone call," he said. "It won't take a moment."

She nodded.

Wohl looked around for a telephone, saw the cashier's phone lying on the floor off the hook, and went to a pay phone on the wall. He dropped a dime in it and dialed a number from memory.

"Commissioner's office, Sergeant Jankowitz."

"Peter Wohl, Jank. Let me talk to him. It's important."

"Peter?" Commissioner Taddeus Czernick said when he came on the line a moment later. "What's up?"

"Commissioner, Dutch Moffitt walked into a holdup at the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard. He was shot to death. He put down one of them; the other got away."

"Jesus H. Christ!" Commissioner Czernick replied. "The one he got is dead?"

"Yes, sir. It's a woman, and a witness says she's the one that shot him. She said Dutch said a woman got him. I just got here."

"Who else is there?"

"Captain McGovern."

"Jesus Christ, Dutch's brother got himself killed too," the commissioner said. "You remember that?"

"I heard that, sir." And then, delicately, he added: "Commissioner, the witness, a woman, was with Dutch."

There was a perceptible pause.

"So?" Commissioner Czernick asked.

"I don't know, sir," Wohl said.

"That was the other phone, Peter. We just got notification from radio," Commissioner Czernick said. "Who's the woman?"

"I don't know. She looks familiar. Young, blond, good-looking."

"Goddamn!"

"I thought I had better call, sir."

"You stay there, Peter," the commissioner ordered. "I'll call the mayor, and get out there as soon as I can. Do what you think has to be done about the woman."

"Yes, sir," Wohl said.

The commissioner hung up without saying anything else.

Wohl put the phone back in its cradle, and without thinking about it, ran his fingers in the coin return slot. He was surprised when his fingers touched coins. He took them out and looked at them, and then went to Louise Dutton.

"Are you all right?"

Louise shrugged.

"A real tragedy," Wohl said. "He has three young children. "

"I know he was married," Louise said, coldly.

"Would you mind telling me how you happened to be here with him?" Wohl asked.

"I'm with WCBL-TV," she said.

"I knew your face was familiar," Wohl said.

"He was going to tell me what he thinks about people calling the Highway Patrol 'Carlucci's Commandos,'" Louise said, carefully.

That's bullshit, Wohl decided. There was something between them.

As if that was a cue, the Channel 9 cameraman appeared at the door. A policeman blocked his way.

"Christ, if she's in there, why can't I go in?" the cameraman protested.

Wohl stepped to the door, spotted McGovern, and raised his voice. " Jack, would you get up some barricades, please? And keep people out of our way?"

He saw from the look on McGovern's face that the television cameraman had slipped around the policemen McGovern had already put in place.

"Get that guy out of there," McGovern said, sharply, to a sergeant. " The TV guy."

Wohl turned back to Louise.

"It would be very unpleasant for Mrs. Moffitt, or the children," he said, "if they heard about this over the television, or the radio."

Louise looked at him without real comprehension for a minute.

"I don't know about Philadelphia," she said. "But most places, there' s an unwritten rule that nothing, no names anyway, about something like this gets on the air until the next of kin are notified."

"That's true here, too," Wohl said. "But I always like to be double sure."

"Okay," she said. "I suppose I could call."

"That would be very much appreciated," Wohl said. He extended his hand to her, palm upward, offering her change for the telephone.

Louise dialed the "Nine's News" newsroom, and Leonard Cohen, the news director, answered.

"Leonard, this is Louise Dutton. A policeman has been killed-"

"At the Waikiki Diner on Roosevelt Boulevard?" Cohen interrupted. " You there?"

"Yes," Louise said. "Leonard, the police don't want his wife to hear about it over the air."

"You know who it was?"

"I was with him," Louise said.

"You saw it?"

"I don't want his wife to find out over the air," Louise said.

"Hey, no problem. Of course not. Have the public affairs guy call us when we can use it, like usual."

"All right," Louise said.

"Tell the crew to get what they can, at an absolute minimum, some location shots, and then you come in, and we can put it together here," Cohen said. "We'll probably use it for the lead-in and the major piece. Nothing else much has happened. And you saw it?"

"I saw it," Louise said. "I'll be in."

She hung up the phone.

"I just spoke with the news director," she said. "He said he won't use it until your public affairs officer clears it. He wants him to call."

"I'll take care of it," Wohl said. "Thank you very much, Miss Dutton."

She shrugged, bitterly. "For what?" she asked, and then: "How will she find out? Who tells her?"

Wohl hesitated a moment, and then told her: "There's a routine, a procedure, we follow in a situation like this. The captain in charge of the district where Captain Moffitt lived was notified right away. He will go to Captain Moffitt's house and drive Mrs. Moffitt to the hospital. By the time they get there, the mayor, and probably the commissioner and the chief of Special Patrol, will be there. And probably Captain Moffitt's parish priest, or the department Catholic chaplain. They will tell her. They're friends. Captain Moffitt is from an old police family."

She nodded.

"While that's been going on," Wohl said, wondering why, since he hadn't been asked, he was telling her all this, "radio will have notified Homicide, and the Crime Lab, and the Northeast Detectives. They'll be here in a few minutes. Probably, since Captain Moffitt was a senior police officer, the chief inspector in charge of homicide will roll on this, too."

"And she gets to ride to the hospital, while the police radio is talking about what happened here, right? God that's brutal!"

"The police radio in the car will be turned off," Wohl said.

She looked at him.

"We learn from our mistakes," Wohl said. "Policemen get killed. Captain Moffitt's brother was killed in the line of duty, too."

She met his eyes, and her eyebrows rose questioningly, but she didn't say anything.

"The homicide detectives will want to interview you," Wohl said. "I suppose you understand that you're a sort of special witness, a trained observer. The way that's ordinarily done is to transport you downtown, to the Homicide Division in the Roundhouse…"

"Oh, God!" Louise Dutton said. "Do I have to go through that?"

"I said 'ordinarily," Wohl said. "There's always an exception."

"Because I was with him? Or because I'm with WCBL-TV?"

' 'How about a little bit of both?" Wohl replied evenly. "In this case, what I'm going to do is have an officer drive you home."

I have the authority to let her get away from here, to send her away, Wohl thought. The commissioner said, "Do what you have to do about the woman," but I didn't have to. I wonder why I did?

"I'm not going home," she said. "I'm going to the studio."

"Yes, of course," he said. "Then to the studio, and then home. Then, in an hour or so, when things have settled down a little, I'll arrange to have some officers come to the station, or your house, and take you to the Roundhouse for your statement."

"I don't need anybody to drive me anywhere," Louise said, almost defiantly.

"I think maybe you do," Wohl said. "You've gone through an awful experience, and I really don't think you should be driving. And we owe you one, anyway."

She looked at him, as if she's seeing me for the first time, Wohl thought.

"I didn't get your name," she said.

"Wohl, Peter Wohl," he said.

"And you're a policeman?"

"I'm a Staff Inspector," he said.

"I don't know what that is," she said. "But I saw you ordering that captain around."

"I didn't mean to do that," he said. "But right now, I'm the senior officer on the scene."

She exhaled audibly.

"All right," she said. "Thank you. All of a sudden I feel a little woozy. Maybe I shouldn't be driving."

"It always pays to be careful," Wohl said, and took her arm and went to the door and caught Captain McGovern's attention and motioned him over.

"Jack, this is Miss Louise Dutton, of Channel 9. She's been very cooperative. Can you get me a couple of officers and a car, to drive her to the studio, drive her car, too, and then take her home?"

"I recognize Miss Dutton, now," McGovern said. "Sure, Inspector. No problem. You got it. Glad to be able to be of help, Miss Dutton."

"Have you caught the other one, the boy?" Louise asked.

"Not yet," Captain McGovern said. "But we'll get him."

"And the other one, the one who shot Captain Moffitt, was it a girl?"

"Yes, ma'am, it was a girl," Captain McGovern said, and nodded with his head.

Louise followed the nod. A man in civilian clothing, but with a pistol on his hip, and therefore certainly a cop, was stepping around the body, taking pictures of it from all angles. And then he finished. When he did, another policeman (adetective, Louise corrected herself) bent over and with a thick chunk of yellow chalk, outlined the body on the parking lot's macadam.

"Where's your car, Miss Dutton?" Wohl asked.

Louise could not remember where she had left it. She looked around until she found it, and then pointed to it.

"Over there," she said, "the yellow one."

"Would you like to ride in your car, or in the police car?" Wohl asked.

Louise thought that over for a moment before replying, "I think my car."

"These officers will take you to the studio and then home, Miss Dutton," Wohl said. "Please don't go anywhere else until we've taken care of your interview with Homicide. Thank you very much for your cooperation."

He offered his hand, and she took it.

The first thing Wohl thought was professional. Her hand was a little clammy, often a symptom of stress. Getting a cop to drive her had been a good idea, beyond hoping that it would make her think well of the police department. Then he thought that it was a very nice hand, indeed. Soft and smooth skinned.

There was little question what Dutch saw in her, he thought. But what did she see in him? This was a tough, well-educated young woman, not some secretary likely to be awed by a big, strong policeman.

A black Oldsmobile with red lights flashing from behind the grille pulled into the parking lot as Louise Dutton's yellow convertible, following a blue-and-white, turned onto Roosevelt Boulevard.

Chief Inspector of Detectives Matt Lowenstein, a large, florid-faced, silver-haired man in his fifties, got out the passenger side and walked purposefully over to McGovern and Wohl.

"Goddamned shame," he said. "Goddamned shame. They pick up the one that got away?"

"Not yet, sir," McGovern said. "But we will."

"Every male east of Broad Street with a zipper jacket and blond hair has been stopped for questioning," Wohl said, dryly. Lowenstein looked at him, waiting for an explanation. "A Highway Patrol sergeant went on the J-Band and ordered every Highway vehicle to respond."

Lowenstein shook his head. He agreed with Wohl that had been unnecessary, even unwise. But the Highway Patrol was the Highway Patrol, and when one of their own was involved in a police shooting, they could be expected to act that way. And, anyway, it was too late now, water under the dam, to change anything.

"I understand we got an eyewitness," he said.

"I just sent her home," Wohl said.

"They interviewed her here? Already?"

"No. I told her that someone would pick her up for the interview at her home in about an hour," Wohl said.

Captain McGovern's eyes grew wide. Wohl had overstepped his authority, and it was clear to him that he was about to get his ass eaten out by Chief Inspector Lowenstein.

But Chief Inspector Lowenstein didn't even comment.

"Jank Jankowitz tried to reach you on the radio, Peter," he said. " When he couldn't, he got on the horn to me. The commissioner thinks it would be a good idea for you to go by the hospital… Where did they take him?"

"I don't know, Chief. I can find out," Wohl replied.

Lowenstein nodded. "If you miss him there, he's going by the Moffitt house. Meet him there."

"Yes, sir," Peter said.