The Traffickers

ONE

140 South Broad Street, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 8:45 P.M.

Captain Francis X. Hollaran pointed to his wristwatch and said to First Deputy Police Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, “You’re on in fifteen, boss.” Both were wearing suits and ties.

Coughlin nodded.

From the corner of the room, he looked around at the audience. People were beginning to fill the fifty seats set up around the ten round tables in the western wing of the Grant Room of the Union League of Philadelphia. The room, thirty-seven feet square with ten-foot-high ceilings, was elegantly decorated with stunning chandeliers, dark wood-paneled walls, rich burgundy drapery, and thick deep-red-patterned woolen carpeting. A waitstaff in understated black outfits served light hors d’oeuvres and drinks, the latter being mostly coffee and water and soft drinks but also a fair number of cocktails.

The crowd was composed mostly of men. All were well-dressed and well-groomed.

And well-connected.

The Union League of Philadelphia was founded as a patriotic society in 1862, during the Civil War, by men of the upper middle class. They supported the Union side in the war and, of course, President Lincoln’s policies. In keeping with its motto of “Love of Country Leads,” the League fiercely supported the military of the United States of America. Its building, listed on the National Historic Register, occupied a whole block of Center City.

Coughlin regularly came and spoke to the Union League’s members and guests as an outreach of the police department. The gathering had evolved-which was to say, had grown far beyond his expectations-from smaller informal chats over drinks in the League’s bar down the corridor. Still, he tried to keep the tone of the larger gathering the same as that of those earlier ones-that of a more or less casual get-together.

The outreach was a self-appointed task, one he felt neither the mayor nor the police commissioner could do effectively because of their high profiles. And they both agreed with Coughlin; as first deputy police commissioner, he was the top cop who really had his hand in the everyday business of all the varied departments.

Coughlin considered it highly important that the city’s heavy hitters had a better understanding of what the department was doing-and what the men on the street were up against. If they did, he figured, then they would be more prone to defend and support the police department. And, failing that, at least not be of a limited mind-set to rush to judgment and damn the department for the slightest infraction.

Denny Coughlin quickly patted his suit coat at chest level, first one side then the other. He felt relief when he found that the half-dozen index cards bearing his notes for the evening discussion were still in the inside left pocket.

Coughlin then looked at Hollaran and said, “Frank, Jason Washington told me that that Texas Ranger is with Matty.”

“That’s right, Denny.”

“Put out the arm for them, would you, please? For one, I’d like to meet the man. Liz Justice spoke highly of him. For another, he might be able to contribute to tonight’s topic. Meantime, I’m going to visit the gentlemen’s facility before this thing gets started.”

Hollaran nodded, then stepped into the corridor. He pulled out his cell phone from his suit jacket’s inside pocket. But then he remembered that by the door was a chrome-plated four-foot-tall pole on a round chrome base that displayed a sign:

CELLULAR TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS PROHIBITED! PER STRICT LEAGUE POLICY 0654-1. KINDLY TURN OFF ALL SUCH DEVICES. THANK YOU.

Hollaran walked down the corridor and went to a bank of telephones. He picked up the receiver of one that had a small sign beside it that read LOCAL CALLS. He looked at his cell phone. He scrolled down its phone book list until he found PAYNE MATT HOME, then PAYNE MATT CELL. He punched a key to show the number, then he punched the number into the landline phone’s keypad.

“Matt,” Hollaran said when Payne answered. “Frank Hollaran. Commissioner Coughlin would like you and your guest to join us at the Union League. How soon can you get here?”

“We just left the ME’s office,” Payne said.

“Anything new?”

“Yeah. And it doesn’t look good. I think we can be there directly. ‘We’ being Jim Byrth and Tony Harris.”

Harris? Hollaran thought. He’s a damned good cop.

But he’d be out of his league here in, well, the League. Would that make him uncomfortable? “I have no problem with Tony, Matt. But would he be comfortable?”

“A helluva lot more comfortable than where we just were and witnessed.”

Hollaran heard a strange tone in Payne’s voice. Anger maybe? “Okay,” he said. “I leave the decision in your capable hands, Sergeant. See you shortly.”

Forty-five minutes earlier, Philadelphia Homicide Detective Tony Harris and Philadelphia Homicide Sergeant Matt Payne and Texas Rangers Sergeant Jim Byrth had walked out of Liberties feeling no pain. The questions had arisen as to where they were going to have dinner and where Byrth was going to rent a room for the duration of his stay in the City of Brotherly Love.

Payne had said, “I’d offer you the guest room in my apartment-”

“Thanks, but no way could I accept your offer,” Byrth had interrupted.

“And you’re exactly correct,” Payne had replied. “Because I’m not.”

Byrth turned to him with a look that said, Then why the hell did you offer it?

Tony Harris explained, “It’s because he doesn’t have one. His apartment is tiny.”

Payne’s stomach growled.

“Excuse me. Obviously, I am in need of sustenance,” he said. Then he added, “Jim, that was what’s known as a hypothetical statement. Because if I did have one, it’d be all yours. That’s where I was going with that train of thought.”

Byrth smiled, then shook his head. The Hat on top accentuated the motion.

Harris added, “You’re welcome to stay at my house. I do have a guest room.”

“Thank you, Tony. But, really, I couldn’t impose. Besides, I’m not spending my money.”

Then Harris’s phone had started ringing. That reminded Payne he’d turned his off, and he pushed the 0/1 button till his screen lit up. He cleared out the MISSED CALLS list-all from Chad Nesbitt, who within a twenty-minute period had called a dozen times, then had gotten the message and given up.

I told you, ol’ buddy, I’ll deal with that later.

Harris answered his phone.

After a moment, he said, “Okay, thanks.” And ended the call.

“Dr. Mitchell’s finishing up with the girl they fished out of the river,” Harris said. “I asked him to call me when he did. I wanted to swing by. You guys don’t need to go.”

“Am I allowed to ask, ‘Who’s Dr. Mitchell’?”

Payne said, “Sure. Feel free to ask anything. He’s the medical examiner.”

“As strange as it might sound, I’d like to go,” Byrth said. “You always learn something. Even if it’s only a little thing that triggers a thought later.”

“The Black Buddha calls that ‘Looking under the rock under the rock,’ ” Payne said. “I’m in, too, Tony. I figure I’ve got enough liquid encouragement in me to get through it.”

“Won’t take but a moment,” Harris said.

Harris had been wrong. It had taken longer than he had thought. They’d had more to discuss than just the young Hispanic woman.

The Medical Examiner’s Office, just across the Schuylkill River, was next door to the University of Pennsylvania and, somewhat appropriately, just up University Avenue from Woodlands Cemetery.

The medical examiner’s job was to investigate all “non-natural and unattended natural deaths.”

The Medical Examiner’s Office was open round-the-clock. In a city like Philly, that was an absolute necessity. Its investigators handled some six thousand cases each year-which averaged out to be a staggering sixteen a day. They worked long hours to determine what caused a person’s violent or suspicious death, particularly all homicides and suicides and any deaths that were drug-related.

And they were good at it. They more or less quickly determined the manner of death in about half of the cases; the remainder required an autopsy. The ME’s office then wrote up a report of the autopsy for use in the criminal justice system, and the ME himself often appeared in court and provided expert testimony.

Philadelphia Medical Examiner Howard H. Mitchell was board-certified in forensic pathology, and the balding, rumpled man could usually be found in a well-worn suit and tie. When Payne, Harris, and Byrth found him, however, he wore tan hospital scrubs and surgical gloves. The scrubs and gloves had more than a little blood on them.

Dr. Mitchell was in the room marked PORTMORTEM EXAMINATION. The autopsy room was brightly lit, almost harshly, and its temperature a chilly sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The walls and floor were covered with shiny ceramic tiling, gray ones on the floor and white ones on the walls. There were three stainless-steel operating tables, each with a four-inch-diameter stainless-steel drain in the tiled floor directly beneath them. Two of the stainless-steel operating tables were empty and gleaming.

Dr. Mitchell stood at the third table. He was neatly suturing up the flesh over the chest cavity of a brown-skinned female body without a head.

He looked over his shoulder as the three came into the room.

“ ’Evening, gentlemen,” Dr. Mitchell said.

“Thanks for calling, Doc,” Tony Harris said. “Doc, this is Sergeant Jim Byrth of the Texas Rangers. Jim, Dr. Howard Mitchell, our distinguished ME.”

“Good to meet you, Doctor,” Byrth said.

“Same,” Dr. Mitchell replied. “I’d offer my hand, but…”

“I appreciate that,” Byrth said.

“Jim’s here in Philly hunting a guy who likes to lop off heads.”

Dr. Mitchell nodded as he kept stitching. “What a coincidence, eh?”

“Good to see you, Doc,” Payne said.

Dr. Mitchell didn’t take his eyes off his stitching. “Likewise, Matt.”

Payne had seen the crude sewing of other doctors on post-autopsy bodies. He knew that Dr. Mitchell’s neat suturing was done as a gesture of respect for the deceased, as well as for their families, who may or may not have to view the body for a positive identification.

Payne glanced at the female victim’s hands and feet.

He said, “Looks like the usual washerwoman effect.”

Now Dr. Mitchell did turn his head toward him. He had a look of mock surprise.

He said, “So you do pay attention to what I say! My day is now complete!”

Payne smiled and shook his head.

Dr. Mitchell and his eight full-time investigators held weekly meetings with police detectives. They updated the policemen on cases, reviewing new information and reminding them which bodies remained unidentified and held at the morgue. One such recent case had been the bullet-riddled body of a black male. The victim had been pulled from the Delaware River at the foot of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge that connected Philly to Camden, New Jersey.

Dr. Mitchell had explained to Payne the “washerwoman effect”-the term in modern society of course being the complete opposite of politically correct. But “washerperson” just didn’t seem to carry the same descriptive impact.

The ME had said that the wrinkles on the body were caused by its having been immersed in water for an extended period of time. They were particularly pronounced on the flesh of the feet and, of course, of the hands. The condition was consistent with that of a woman who spent a lot of time washing with her hands. Thus, its name.

Harris then said, “Anything unusual jump out at you, Doc?”

Mitchell shook his head. “You mean, except for not being able to do a cranial exam? Not that I’m complaining; that saved me a good half hour off the usual two-hour process.”

“Yeah.”

“Define ‘unusual’ in this business, Detective,” he said dryly. He then added, “Nothing beyond the grass particles embedded in the bone of the spinal column.”

“Tell us about that,” Payne said.

“Well, it’s clear that whatever was used to cut through the flesh and bone had previously been used in someone’s yard.”

Kerry Rapier told us in the command center that Javier Iglesia had mentioned he’d seen the grass embedded on the body.

“Like a pair of those long-handled shears?” Payne said.

Mitchell shook his head. “No, these weren’t leaf particles. These were fibers of grass. I could show you in the microscope, but that’s not necessary. It’s pretty clear to the naked eye. Here, look.”

He waved them over to the end of the table where the neck wound remained open. He pointed.

“Jesus!” Payne said when he saw the hacked bone and flesh. “She was whacked at-look at all those chunks taken out. Shears would have made a cleaner cut. I mean, cuts. From two sides.”

“Are those also metal fragments?” Byrth said.

“Good eyes,” Mitchell said. “Blade fragments, I’d say. I believe the severing was caused by either a very sharp blade from, say, a lawn mower or, more likely, a more brittle blade, such as a machete.”

“Well, now, that’s good news!” Payne said, the sarcasm evident in his tone. “There can only be-what? — ten, twenty thousand machetes out there? Or one particular one rusting on the bottom of the Schuylkill.”

Byrth raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, but it’s consistent with what happened to the two in Texas.”

Payne and Harris turned and looked at Byrth.

“They used machetes?” Payne said.

Byrth nodded. “It’s a common tool used by the Latino lawn-mowing crews in Texas. You’ll see them pruning bushes and tree limbs with them. Apparently they use them on tall grass, too. If you think about it, it’s a pretty efficient bush tool. By ‘bush’ I mean jungle. They used it wherever they came from in Central America; why not here?”

The three stood in a shocked silence as they watched the ME go back to suturing the body of the young Hispanic female.

Payne had a mental image of some Latino towering over young girls and flailing with the long-bladed machete, just hacking away at their necks.

What sort of animal does that? he thought.

Certainly a godless one…

Harris finally broke their silence.

“What happens next, Doc?” he said. “We got nothing back from the FBI on her fingerprints. No records, nothing.”

“The examiners will make the usual calls, trying to see if she’s a runaway or similar. But unless someone comes forward, I guess she’ll just go on the list with the other two.”

He nodded at a clipboard hanging on a hook by the door.

Dr. Mitchell explained: “We went ahead and wrote up the two Hispanic males from the motel explosion.”

The ME’s office had a Forensic Investigative Unit. Among other tasks, the FIU worked to identify human remains. Then, if successful, it contacted the next of kin.

Most unidentified bodies brought to the ME were identified within a matter of hours. This was accomplished by matching fingerprints to FBI database records. Folks who died violent deaths of a suspicious nature tended to have an arrest record, which of course included a full set of fingerprints. For those who didn’t have a rap sheet the size of a phone book, the identification sometimes was made using dental records or DNA matching, both of which tended to be more difficult than matches by prints. But, like the prints, these matches were indisputable.

There were those victims, however, who just could not be so matched. Decomposition and charring of the body topped the list of reasons why no records could be found on a John or Jane Doe. And so the ME’s office published a list of these non-name victims available for public review.

Payne walked over and collected the clipboard. He read the top sheet:

City of Philadelphia

Medical Examiner’s Office

Forensic Investigative Unit

Howard H. Mitchell, MD

Medical Examiner To date, using current methods, the Forensic Investigative Unit of the Medical Examiner?s Office has been unable to identify the following persons. It is hoped that this listing of unknown individuals and their description being made public will aid in our identifying them.

Anyone having any information that may help the FIU identify these person or persons is asked to contract the Forensic Services Manager at 215-685-7445.

CASE NUMBER: 09-4087

RACE: Hispanic

GENDER: Male

ESTIMATE AGE: 25–30 years ESTIMATE HEIGHT AND WEIGHT: 5?4”, 140 pounds DATE BODY FOUND: 09 September LOCATION OF BODY: Philly Inn, 7004 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia DISTINGUISHING MARKS: tattoo of a tear drop at corner of right eye; tear drop incomplete, only bottom inked in PERSONAL EFFECTS: gold earring stud right lobe.

CLOTHING: LUCKY brand jeans size 34x32, [unknown] brand T-shirt size medium, NIKE athletic shoes size 10 BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Charred remains. The decedent was killed in the explosion of a meth lab. Clothing mostly burned. The decedent can be identified by dental record or DNA.

CASE NUMBER: 09-4087

RACE: Hispanic

GENDER: Male

ESTIMATE AGE: 20–25 years ESTIMATE HEIGHT AND WEIGHT: 5?0”, 100 pounds DATE BODY FOUND: 09 September LOCATION OF BODY: Philly Inn, 7004 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia DISTINGUISHING MARKS: None PERSONAL EFFECTS: Timex wristwatch CLOTHING: Notorious BIG brand jeans size 34x32, [unknown] brand T-shirt size medium, NIKE athletic shoes size 10 BRIEF DESCRIPTION: Charred remains. The decedent was in an explosion of a meth lab but may have died from a cut to the throat. Clothing almost completely burned. Timex wristwatch melted to wrist. The decedent can be identified by dental record or DNA.

Matt Payne snorted as he read.

He handed the clipboard to Tony Harris.

Payne said, “Get a load of the brand names of their jeans. ‘Notorious BIG’ and, irony of ironies, ‘Lucky.’”

Harris took the sheet and looked. He grunted as he handed the board to Byrth.

“Jim, any idea what’s with the older, bigger guy’s tattoo?” Payne then said.

“Hard to say,” Byrth replied as he scanned the sheet, “because the gangbangers have bastardized it so much. A teardrop originally was basically a symbol of someone crying over a lost one, either incarcerated or murdered-a display of closure. Then it came to be a badge of honor, or warning, especially in prison, indicating that the bearer had murdered someone in or out of prison.”

“What about the one on this guy? A tear with an empty top and a full bottom.”

“Could mean he avenged the murder of a loved one.”

Payne looked at Tony Harris.

“The other guy had the slit throat,” Payne said.

Harris nodded. “Could be something. Maybe suggests he wasn’t shy about taking someone out?”

“Certainly fitting,” Byrth said. He then added, “You don’t want to walk around with one in Australia.”

“Why?” Payne said.

“There, convicts who’re accused as being child molesters basically get branded with a teardrop.”

Payne shook his head. “Hell, I don’t want to walk around with one anywhere.” He sighed as he glanced again at the abused corpse. “No offense, Doc, but I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“None taken, Matt. This particular job even depresses a callous veteran such as myself. Good luck catching the sonofabitch.”

Harris and Byrth said their thanks and goodbyes, and followed.

And as they stepped outside, Payne’s cell phone began ringing.

He looked at the screen. It read: UNION LEAGUE OF PHILA-1 CALL @ 2045.

“Wonder who this is?” he said, and a moment later heard Hollaran’s voice.