The Vigilantes

[FOUR]

Executive Command Center The Roundhouse Eighth and Race Streets, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 1:54 P.M.

“Thank you, Commissioner Walker,” Sergeant Matt Payne said into the receiver of one of three multiline telephones on the conference table in front of him. He looked at Detective Tony Harris, seated next to him, and rolled his eyes as he added, “I’m really grateful for your having pushed the processing of those prints.”

He looked past Harris and saw that not only had Corporal Kerry Rapier caught the unflattering gesture, he was grinning at it.

He’s not one of his starchy boss’s biggest fans either.

Payne looked at the “desk sign” on the conference table between him and Harris. As sort of an inside joke, Payne had fashioned it out of a sheet of legal-pad paper he’d folded lengthwise twice to make an inverted V. Handprinted on it was TASK FORCE OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP.

The sign reminded Payne that Deputy Police Commissioner Howard Walker had been among the first to flee the ECC after Mayor Carlucci had stormed out, still fuming over Kendrik Mays’s mother bringing in his bloody body for a ten-thousand-dollar reward.

Police Commissioner Ralph Mariana had then told Payne: “What Jerry announced about you having the full support of the department wasn’t just thrown out there for the benefit of appeasing the public.” He’d paused and smiled. “I think, though, that the part about calling in the FBI and others for help was. Jerry’s never been a fan of the feds coming in and telling us how it’s supposed to be done. I know I’m not.”

Mariana had looked from First Deputy Police Commissioner Denny Coughlin to Deputy Police Commissioner Howard Walker to Captain Henry Quaire to Lieutenant Jason Washington. All were standing in a loose group near the doorway, and all nodded their agreement.

“Whatever you want, Matt, you’ve got. Just say.”

“I appreciate it,” Payne had said. “But I believe that right now what I have”-he motioned to Harris and to Corporal Kerry Rapier seated at his control panel-“is all Operation Clean Sweep needs. Running lean and mean to start will help keep us focused, and the confusion to a minimum. I can always add people as I go. But if I get too many people in here too fast, we’ll spend more time and effort keeping the navel-gazers busy than actually hunting the doer.”

“Understood. Your call. All I ask is for someone to keep me posted so I can keep Jerry in the loop.” Mariana nodded once and went out the door.

Walker had then said, “Kerry, you heard him. Anything Sergeant Payne needs.”

And he’d looked at Quaire and Washington and added, “If there’s anything I can do, let me know.” Then Walker had bolted.

Payne had seen the exchange of looks between Coughlin, Quaire, and Washington. While not one of them would have said it aloud, Payne knew what they were thinking: that Walker was headed to Forensics to chew out in his snooty manner whomever he deemed responsible for the delay in processing the Halloween Homicides fingerprints-and the resulting egg on his face before the mayor of Philadelphia.

Coughlin had simply said, “Let us know, Matty,” and they were all gone.

Payne had walked to the door and swung it almost completely closed. Then he’d turned and looked between Tony Harris and Kerry Rapier and said, “Either of you buy that lean-and-mean bullshit?”

They had grinned.

“Me neither. I haven’t a fucking idea of what to do first.” He gestured at the banks of TV monitors that showed all the images of the pop-and-drop victims, the volumes of evidence, and live feeds that included a video of Shauna Mays being handcuffed. “Except, after interviewing this woman Hizzonor wants to make an example of, to run a fine-toothed comb back through everything.”

Payne took a sip from his china mug of black coffee, then said: “Kerry, would you please punch up”-he glanced at the second bank of nine sixty-inch, flat-screen TV monitors-“number seventeen, Reggie Jones’s file, on the main bank?”

The monitor still displayed various images and data from the first eight pop-and-drops-the five from the previous month and the three from last night-now all collected on the monitors numbered ten to eighteen. And, within the last hour, Rapier had added that of Kendrik Mays, including the video of Payne’s interview of Shauna Mays.

The third bank of nine monitors, numbers nineteen through twenty-seven, now showed the rotating feeds of video from the department’s various cameras around the city, as well as feeds from two local TV news broadcasts.

“Yes, sir,” Rapier said, and his fingers flew across the keyboard.

The image from TV monitor number seventeen was then duplicated-nine times larger-on the main bank of monitors. The image was from a digital video recording that had been shot at the crime scene the previous night, and showed the Old City sidewalk with the battered body of Reggie Jones lying inside the yellow police-line tape. The scene was brightly lit by a pair halogen floodbeams that were mounted high on the side of the Medical Examiner’s Office panel van, which also held the video camera.

In the bottom right-hand corner of the image was an ID stamp:

Richard Saunders Holdings/Lex Talionis

Third amp; Arch

0105 hours, 01 Nov

Corporal Rapier then typed a few more keystrokes, and up popped another text box. It contained:

Name: Reginald “Reggie” JONES

Description: Black male, age 20, 5 ft. 11 in., 260 lbs.

L.K.A.: 725 Daly St, Phila.

Call Received: 01 Nov, 0012 hours

Prior arrests: 4 total: Possession of cocaine (3) and distribution of cocaine (1). On probation for possession of crack cocaine.

Cause of Death: BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA and/or STRANGULATION.

Case No.: 2010-81-039613-POP-N-DROP

Notes: Badly beaten by Suspect(s) Name Unknown. SNU 2010-56- 9326 SNU 2010-56-9327. Ligature strangulation caused by plastic zip ties (two (2) 24-inch-long zip ties put together to make a single 48-inch-long tie). Mildly mentally retarded. Body transported to Lex Talionis, Old City. Brother is Kenneth J. JONES, black male, age 22, a fugitive wanted on warrants for crack cocaine possession with intent to distribute.

Payne and Harris were looking at the image and reading the text.

“Still using ‘Pop-n-Drop’ as the code for the master files, Kerry?” Payne asked.

The youthful corporal grinned, then said, “Yes, sir. It just made sense to stick with the obvious.”

“What about the fact that Jones wasn’t shot?”

“Hey, getting beat up can be called getting ‘popped,’” Rapier said reasonably. “Besides, I didn’t want to have to recode all the others to fit. This way, it’s consistent from the start.” He looked at Payne, who was still studying the main screen, then felt he needed to explain better: “With the master files all linked by ‘pop-n-drop,’ the system can build on any of the previous composite reports, tables, graphs, maps, et cetera, that you created with the information from the earlier case files.”

Payne turned to him and nodded. He said, “Okay, Kerry. I really have no problem with that. It was just an idle question.”

“Yes, sir,” Rapier said.

Rapier knew that Payne was well versed in how the system worked. That it went into the digital files and took key words-names, locations, weaponry, et cetera-and attempted to cross-match them first to the files coded “pop-n-drop,” and then to all the other master case files in the system. If the system found a possible connection, it would generate a digital report citing those cases and the connections.

And, of course, it was able to then feed all that information to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center and attempt to cross-match with NCIC’s vast criminal database that was constantly updated by law enforcement across the country.

“So there’s Commissioner Walker’s handiwork in the Notes section,” Tony Harris said casually, pointing with his ink pen in the direction of the text box on Reggie Jones’s image.

“And it’s not good news,” Payne said, looking at it. “Forensics, it appears, has found more than one doer’s prints on Jones.”

“Well, then,” Harris said with a smile, “on the positive side, that means we have twice the chance of getting lucky with IAFIS putting a name to those SNUs.”

IAFIS was the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. SNU was the abbreviation for Suspect Name Unknown.

“Kerry,” Payne said, “would you click on Reggie’s SNUs?”

“Thought you’d never ask, Marshal,” Rapier said.

Payne ignored the curious sudden reference to his nickname, Wyatt Earp of the Main Line, but saw out of the corner of his eye that Rapier was grinning.

Then, on the monitor, over the text box, a cursor appeared-and he immediately understood.

“It is different, Kerry,” Payne said.

Harris snorted.

The digital pointer on-screen was not the usual black arrow. It was an actual image of a Colt. 45 ACP Officer’s Model pistol. Rapier knew it was Payne’s favorite sidearm.

“I thought you’d like it, Marshal. Changing the cursor image was easy enough. This next part took a little work.”

All the underlined words in the case file were hyperlinks that allowed a system user to access additional information on the case.

Corporal Rapier moved the Colt pistol over the underlined SNU 2010- 56-9326. When he clicked on it, three things happened in rapid succession. First, the sound of a pistol firing emanated from the speakers. Second, a puff of smoke appeared and disappeared from the muzzle of the pistol cursor. And, third, a box popped up that was headlined “Suspect Name Unknown #2010-56-9326.” It held digitized images of fingerprints that had been lifted from Reggie Jones.

Now Harris laughed out loud. “That’s great!”

Payne looked at Rapier and said, “Have a little extra time on your hands lately, Corporal?”

Rapier looked back, appearing a little embarrassed, and shrugged. “Didn’t take that long. You don’t like it?”

“No, I think it’s great, too, Kerry.”

Payne returned his attention to the big monitor, and Rapier moved the cursor to the underlined SNU 2010-56-9327. After another click of the cursor, complete with “firing pistol” effects, a second box popped up with digitized images of fingerprints, this one headlined “Suspect Name Unknown #2010-56-9327.” As in the previous box, there was a hyperlink-REGINALD “REGGIE” JONES CASE NO.: 2010-81-039613-POP-N-DROP-referencing back to Reggie Jones’s master case file. That meant, at least for the moment, that the two sets of fingerprints were associated with only a single crime-his murder.

“Well, the good news is that both doers left really clear prints, even if they’re far from a full set,” Payne said. “IAFIS should have no trouble with them.”

“Assuming there’s a match on file,” Harris said.

Payne grunted. He knew that had been the problem with the first five pop-and-drops. When they ran the prints though IAFIS, nothing came back. It was possible-though hard to fathom, Payne thought, considering the shooter had killed five people-that the doer had never been fingerprinted.

“Well, we should know in a couple hours,” Payne said.

He turned to Rapier and said, “Let’s see what we’ve got on Gartner.” He looked at the second bank of monitors. “Looks like lucky number thirteen.”

Kerry Rapier worked his control panel, and the image from TV monitor number thirteen replaced the main screen’s image of Reggie Jones. It was somewhat similar to Jones’s-a brightly lit shot of the sidewalk outside Francis Fuller’s office building in Old City.

But this image from the medical examiner’s video recording showed two bloodied bodies, with the smaller of the two slightly grayed-out and blurred so it was instantly clear which of the dead was Gartner.

The bottom right-hand corner ID stamp was also slightly different:

Richard Saunders Holdings/Lex Talionis Third amp; Arch 2301 hours, 31 Oct

Payne, Harris, and Rapier read the text box that next appeared:

Name: Daniel O. “Danny” GARTNER

Description: White male, age 55, 5'9", 160 lbs.

L.K.A.: 1834 Callowhill St, Phila. and 1014 Hall St, Phila.

Prior Arrests: None.

Call Received: 31 Oct, 2202 hours.

Cause of Death: GUNSHOT and/or SUFFOCATION.

Case No.: 2010-81-039612-POP-N-DROP

Notes: SNU 2010-56-9280 Gartner was a criminal defense lawyer. Found dead with a client, one John “JC” NGUYEN Case No.: 2010- 81-039611-Pop-n-Drop. Large-bore gunshot to head. clear packing tape wrapped around head, covering mouth and nose. Garbage bag over head sealed with packing tape. Packing tape also bound wrists and ankles. One (1) spent shell casing Glock. 45 caliber found in alleyway behind Gartner’s law office. Also recovered from inside law office were zipper-top bags, one containing cocaine and one with 53 tablets of Rohypnol. And a large volume (possibly in excess of a gallon) of urine, source unknown, poured around office. Body transported to Lex Talionis, Old City.

“Well, no surprise there,” Matt Payne said.

“Why’s that, Matt?” Harris asked.

“Kerry, go ahead and click on his SNU. I think I know where this is going.”

The Colt pistol pointer fired and smoked over the hyperlink. A box headlined “Suspect Name Unknown #2010-56-9280” popped up. It had seven different sets of fingerprints, some with two or three fingers, one with only a finger and thumb. And it had seven case file hyperlinks:

Daniel O. “Danny” GARTNER Case No.: 2010-81-039612-Pop-n-Drop John “JC” NGUYEN Case No.: 2010-81-039611-Pop-n-Drop Jerome WHITEN Case No.: 2010-81-039605-Pop-n-Drop Dion THOMPSON Case No.: 2010-81-039598-Pop-n-Drop Jason “Whitey” WALSH Case No.: 2010-81-039593-Pop-n-Drop Jamaal ROSS Case No.: 2010-81-039589-Pop-n-Drop Juan RIVERA Case No.: 2010-81-039582-Pop-n-Drop

“Holy shit!” Tony Harris said. “The prints are from the same doer.”

“Yeah,” Payne said, his tone frustrated. “I thought I recognized that SNU number when I saw it.”

“And not a single hit with IAFIS?”

“Nope, not one,” Payne said. “The problem is all we get with this guy’s fingerprints is more of his fingerprints. He makes no effort to cover his tracks. It’s incredible.”

“And piss,” Corporal Kerry Rapier said. “Don’t forget the piss.”

“Right,” Payne said. “And the useless piss.”

Payne looked at the list.

“I can damn near recite from memory everything about those first five, mostly because what little we have on them is pretty much the same. Starting with, of course, whoever the hell shot them. All male fugitives-three black, one white, and one Hispanic, an illegal alien-with a history of sex crimes against women or children. All shot either in the head or chest at point-blank range. The only autopsy results we have so far are from them. Rivera”-he gestured at the second bank of monitors-“there on number sixteen, had two full-metal-jacket 9-millimeter rounds in his chest. Whitey Walsh, on number fifteen, the lone white guy, must have had one helluva hard head, because somehow a jacketed hollow-point. 45-caliber round went in at the base of his skull and stayed there after scrambling his brains.”

“Jesus!” Harris said. “That’s the kind of thing that generally happens only with a. 22-caliber round.”

“Yeah,” Payne said. “Which suggests that maybe-just maybe-our doer is loading his own ammo and making light loads for his targeted killings. Or just a bad round. Either way, shot from a Glock. Ballistics, of course, caught the unique scoring made by the rifling in Glock barrels.”

Harris nodded. “There was that Glock. 45-cal shell casing behind Gartner’s office. It’d be a long shot, but wouldn’t surprise me to hear the doer’s prints also came off that brass.”

“Yeah,” Payne said, nodding thoughtfully. Then he went on: “And get this: The autopsies also found that all five had STDs.”

“How nice,” Harris said dryly. “The gift that keeps on giving. Especially when you rape someone. Damned animals.”

Payne said: “Which I’ve come to learn is not that unusual, particularly in certain circles.”

Rapier offered, “The stats are that one out of five people over age twelve in America has herpes.”

Harris shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“One in five over twelve?” Payne repeated. “That’ll put the fear of God in you. How’d you become such an expert on the subject, Kerry?”

“You know what they say: ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’” Rapier replied mock-formally. Then he smiled and lightly added: “If I were you, Marshal, I wouldn’t worry much about those odds.”

Payne and Harris exchanged glances, then Payne looked at Rapier. He raised an eyebrow and said, “Okay, I’ll bite. Why shouldn’t I worry?”

“Well, normally I would counsel caution, faithful use of condoms and all.” He paused. “But I’m almost certain you can’t get STDs from your palm.”

Harris burst out laughing.

“This one?” Sergeant Matt Payne asked innocently, showing Corporal Kerry Rapier his right palm. Then Payne immediately turned it and folded all but the middle finger.

“That’s what I think of your counsel, Corporal.”

Both exchanged grins.

“And the other thing they all had in common,” Payne continued, “is the Wanted sheet. They were all printed on the same paper stock. Same bond. Same whiteness factor-or lack thereof. Really cheap paper, almost gray. Wanted sheets for everyone but Gartner and Nguyen.” He motioned at the main bank of monitors. “Kerry, can you punch up Nguyen’s?”

The Colt pistol pointer floated over John “JC” NGUYEN Case No.: 2010- 81-039611 -Pop-n-Drop. The pistol fired and smoked, and the image from monitor number fourteen appeared in place of Gartner’s. The time-stamp ID was identical, and the paused image was almost so, the only difference being that in this image it was Gartner’s body that was grayed out.

They read the text:

Name: John “JC” NGUYEN

Description: Asian male, age 25, 5'2", 110 lbs.

L.K.A.: 1405 S. Colorado Street, South Philly.

Prior Arrests: 14 total: possession of marijuana (10); possession with intent to distribute Methamphetamine (2); possession with intent to distribute gamma hydroxybutyric (GHB) (1); Involuntary deviant sexual intercourse amp; rape of an unconscious or unaware person (1). On Probation for GHB distribution. Sex crime charges dismissed due to technicality: broken evidence chain of custody. Outstanding bench warrant for failure to appear in Municipal Court on two counts of intent to deliver a controlled substance.

Call Received: 31 Oct, 2202 hours.

Cause of Death: GUNSHOT and/or SUFFOCATION.

Case No.: 2010-81-039611-POP-N-DROP

Notes: SNU 2010-56-9280 Found dead with his criminal defense lawyer, Daniel O. “Danny” GARTNER Case No.: 2010-81-039612-POP-N-DROP. Large-bore gunshot to head. Clear packing tape wrapped around head, covering mouth and nose. Garbage bag over head, sealed with packing tape. Packing tape also bound wrists and ankles. One (1) spent shell casing Glock. 45 caliber found in alleyway behind law office of Gartner. Also recovered from inside law office were zipper-top bags, one containing cocaine and one with 53 tablets of Rohypnol. And a large volume (possibly in excess of a gallon) of urine, source unknown, poured around office. Body transported to Lex Talionis, Old City.

“So,” Payne said after studying the information for a moment, “with the exception of Gartner, all the dead have a sex-crime component. And the exception to that being that Gartner got his client off on a technicality. Ergo, our doer”-he looked at the text box and read aloud from it-“‘SNU 2010-56-9280,’ whose prints are linked to seven of the eight pop-anddrops-”

“Make that nine,” Kerry Rapier interrupted, pointing to the third bank of monitors. “Here comes Xpress on number twenty-six.”

He manipulated the console panel, and the video feed from the department’s CCTV camera at Eighth and Arch in Old City appeared on the main bank. It showed a small red pickup packed with teenagers pulling up in front of Francis Fuller’s office building-and being immediately surrounded, first by plainclothed policemen, then by uniforms.

Using the control panel’s joystick, Rapier first panned the scene, then zoomed in to look inside the open back of the pickup. After a couple teenagers hopped out, the camera had a clear view of a motionless, bloodied black male lying there.

“This would appear to be one Xavier ‘Xpress’ Smith,” Rapier said. “I pulled his sheet earlier.”

“Who doesn’t really count in our manhunt of the pop-and-drop doer,” Payne said. “Miracle of miracles, we’re right now looking at the guys-these street-justice vigilantes-who popped Smith. Wish our other doer was so damn easily collared.”

Rapier said, “His rap sheet shows twenty-two cases of petty robbery, possession of stolen goods, and possession of and intent to deliver crystal meth.”

“To which,” Payne said, “we can add a charge of murder. At least according to Javier Iglesia. Assuming, of course, Xpress himself is not dead. He’s not moving at all in the back of that truck.”

They watched the CCTV feed as the uniforms began handcuffing the very unhappy teenagers.

After a moment, Payne said, “Getting back to what I was saying about our SNU whose prints are linked to seven of our eight”-he exchanged glances with Rapier-“our nine pop-and-drops, the doer is targeting criminals with a history of sex crimes against women and children.” He looked at Harris. “Ergo, Plan A, the obvious thing to do would be to list every critter fitting that profile, then have their Last Known Address immediately put under surveillance.”

Kerry Rapier offered, “I can generate a report listing them.”

Harris looked at him, then at Payne, and said, “Then just wait for the doer, or doers, to show up? That’s not going to work. I mean, at least logistically.”

Payne nodded. “I know, I know. If even one percent of the city’s fifty thousand fugitives were sex offenders, that’d mean we’d need five hundred guys on the street to stand watch. And that’s for just one shift. It’d take fifteen hundred to go round the clock. And then there’s the Megan’s Law offenders.”

Harris shook his head. “No way we could get that kind of manpower. We may as well put in a request for a magic wand to wave.”

Payne sighed audibly. He said, “So, Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“What they say to do when nothing goes right.”

Harris shook his head.

“‘Go left.’”

Harris looked at him a long moment, then said, “Back to square one.”

Payne nodded. “And looking under the rock under the rock.”