The Witness

RPC."

"Jesus, you know what we're saying, Jason?" Wohl said.

"I'm not saying anything yet," Washington said.

"Mrs. Monahan said she saw acop shoot her husband," Wohl said.

"Yeah, but the doctor said she could find no puncture wounds. Let's find out about that first, before we start saying anything."

He opened his door.

"What's going on here?"

"The ME called me. He's an old pal. He said I wasn't going to believe what he had to show me."

"Did you ask him if he found an entrance wound?"

"Just before he told me I wasn't going to believe what he had to show me," Washington said as he got out of the car.

Chief Inspectors Dennis V. Coughlin and Matt Lowenstein were in the office of Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick when Staff Inspector Peter Wohl came into it. The mayor was not. Wohl wondered where he was.

The odds are that in the next five or ten minutes, either Lowenstein or Coughlin will be ordered to temporarily assume command of Special Operations, pending the naming of a permanent new commanding officer.

"Good morning, sir," Wohl said.

"You're a hard man to locate, Wohl," Czernick said.

"I'm sorry about that, sir."

"Sorry won't cut it, Wohl," Czernick said. "You know that someone with your responsibilities can't simply vanish from the face of the earth for three hours."

"Yes, sir."

"You're not going to try to tell me you weren't aware I had sent out a call for you?

"I am now, sir."

The door opened and Mayor Carlucci walked in, drying his hands on a paper towel.

Everybody stood up.

The mayor finished wiping his hands, looking around for a wastebasket, and, finding none, carefully laid the towel in Czernick's OUT basket and turned to Wohl.

"My mother used to tell me if you looked hard enough, you could always find something nice about anybody," he said. "I can find a few nice things about you, Peter. For one thing, you're here. That took some balls; I wouldn't have been surprised if you had just mailed in your resignation. And you look remarkably crisp and well turned out for someone who, I am reliably informed, arrived at the scene of the Monahan shooting looking and smelling as if he had spent the night on a saloon floor."

Wohl forced himself to meet the mayor's eyes. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then the mayor looked away.

"No denial?" he asked softly.

"I drank too much last night, sir."

"The third nice thing I have to say about you is that you seemed to be able to instill a high, hell, incredibly high, level of loyalty in people who work for you. It took a lot of balls from Jack Malone, especially considering the trouble he's in already, to march into my office and tell me that if anyone was to blame for this colossal fuckup, it was him, not you."

"He did what?" Czernick asked indignantly.

"You heard what I said," the mayor said. "And if you're thinking about doing anything to him for coming to see me, forget it."

"The responsibility is mine, Mr. Mayor," Wohl said, "not Lieutenant Malone's."

"Yeah, that's what I told him," Carlucci said. "Okay, Peter, you're here. Tell me what the fuck happened."

"All I can do is tell you what I know so far, sir."

Carlucci sat down on the edge of Czernick's desk and made a "come on" gesture with both hands.

"A few minutes before six this morning, an unmarked car pulled up behind the unmarked car on protection duty outside Mr. Malone's home. In the belief their relief had arrived, the officers on duty drove away-"

"If you had used Highway Patrol as I told you to," Commissioner Czernick said, "none of this would have happened!"

"We believe that as soon as the RPC going off duty turned the corner, an individual in police uniform-"

"Answer the commissioner's question, Peter," the mayor said.

"I wasn't aware that it was a question, sir."

"Don't add insolence to everything else, Peter," the mayor said.

"I didn't use Highway because I thought using Special Operations officers was a more efficient utilization of manpower. And because I didn't want a Highway car parked there all night, every night."

"But you do now admit that was faulty judgment?" Czernick said.

"No, sir. I do not. I would do the same thing again. And I don't think it would have made a bit of difference if a Highway car had been given the job. The same thing would have happened."

"Now, that's bullsh-"

"He answered your question, Tad," the mayor interrupted. "Now let me ask one: What, if it was still your responsibility, would you do to the cops who took off before they were properly relieved?"

The question took Wohl by surprise. He tried to shift mental gears to consider it.

"They took off without checking to see that the cops who were relieving them were really cops. That got Monahan killed, and makes the entire Department look ridiculous," the mayor said.

"I don't think I'd do anything to them, sir. I hope you don't. If I had been in that car and saw another car with uniformed cops in it show up when I expected a car with uniformed cops in it to show up, I would have presumed I had been relieved."

"And you would have been wrong."

"Malone's plan was pretty thorough. I reviewed it. There was nothing in it about having the cops on the job check the IDs of the cops relieving them. That's my fault. Not Malone's and certainly not theirs."

The mayor shrugged, but said nothing. He made another "come on" gesture with his hands.

"We believe," Wohl continued, "that as soon as the RPC, the one going off the job, turned the corner, an individual wearing a police uniform rang Mr. Monahan's doorbell, and when Mr. Monahan answered the doorbell, he shot him, if that's the correct word, with a stun gun."

"What?" Chief Lowenstein asked incredulously. "What did you say, ' stun gun'?"

"What the hell is a stun gun?" the mayor asked.

"What it is, Jerry," Chief Coughlin said, "is a thing that throws little darts at you. There's wires, and when it hits you, you get shocked. It's supposed to be nonlethal."

"You know what this thing is?" Carlucci asked him incredulously.

"They had a booth at the IACP (International Association of Chiefs of Police) Convention," Chief Coughlin said. "They demonstrated them. They're supposed to be used places where you don't want to fire a gun."

"And Monahan was shot with one of these things?" the mayor asked.

"That's what the medical examiner believes, sir," Wohl said. "Mr. Monahan died of a heart attack. The ME thinks it was caused by getting hit with a stun gun. There are two small bruises on his chest."

"How come the ME knows about these things?" the mayor asked.

"They've been trying to sell them to us," Coughlin said.

"We buy any of these things, Tad?" the mayor asked.

"I would have to check, Mr. Mayor."

"There are three at the range at the Academy," Wohl said. "On loan from the dealer, or the manufacturer, I'm not sure which."

"Let me get this straight: You're telling me Monahan was shot by a cop with a Mickey Mouse Buck Rogers stun gun we borrowed from somebody?"

"No, sir. I checked with the Academy. The ones out there are inoperative; they're waiting for the manufacturer, or the dealer, to come fix them.

"So where did the one who shot Monahan come from?" the mayor asked, and then, before Wohl could frame a reply, thought of something else: "I thought Coughlin just said they're nonlethal?"

"They're supposed to be, Jerry," Coughlin replied. "That's what they said at the convention. They're supposed to knock you on your ass for a couple of minutes, but they're not supposed to kill you."

"Monahan's dead," the mayor said.

"They're not classified as firearms, Mr. Mayor," Wohl said. "So they' re available on the open market. I called Colosimo's. They said they didn't have any, never had, but they had heard that a place in Camden had them, and some store in Bucks County. I've got people checking that out."

"How do we know Monahan was shot by a cop?" the mayor asked.

"We don't. Mrs. Monahan said that she saw a police officer take a gun from his coat-"

"These things look like guns?"

"I don't know, sir. I've never seen one."

"In dim light, or if you don't know all that much about guns," Coughlin said, "it would look, maybe, to Mrs. Monahan, like a gun."

"Do they make any noise? Where do they get the electricity to shock you?"

"They go 'splat,' " Coughlin said. "Or like that. Not like a.38."

"Like a.22, Chief?" Wohl asked.

"Something. Sure. It could be mistaken for a.22."

"Mrs. Monahan said it sounded like a.22," Wohl said.

"Why would they use something like this?"

"So there wouldn't be the sound of a gun going off," Lowenstein said.

"If it makes as much noise as a.22, then why not use a.22?" the mayor asked. He did not wait for a reply, but asked another question: "What is it, Peter? The guy who shot Monahan with this thing, the people in the car, were they cops or not?"

"They had an RPC, Mr. Mayor. An unmarked RPC."

"How do we know that? And if so, where did they get it?"

"Wedon't know. But Washington said, and I think he's right, that if it wasn't an RPC, I mean if it was just a similar Ford, the cop who walked past it would have picked up on that, either consciously or subconsciously: The tires would have been wrong, it wouldn't have had an antenna, or the right antenna-"

"So if it was a bona fide car, that makes it look as if a cop, cops, were the doers, doesn't it?" Carlucci interrupted.

"That sounds entirely credible," Wohl said. "As to where it came from, it probably came out of the parking lot at Bustleton and Bowler."

The mayor turned to Lowenstein and pointed a finger at him.

"I want those bastards, Matt!"

"Yes, sir," Lowenstein said softly, coldly, "so do I."

Carlucci turned back to Wohl. "What I'm thinking now is that it would be best, until he can give some real thought to your replacement, that we have Mike Sabara fill in for you. Is there something wrong with that?"

"No, sir. Sabara is a good man."

"Is there some way you can put off going to Harrisburg for a day or two? I'd like you to be available to Lowenstein."

"I'm not going to Harrisburg," Wohl said.

Carlucci looked at him in surprise, and then the look seemed to turn to anger.

"That's strange, Peter," he said. "Not half an hour ago, your pal Farnsworth Stillwell was on the phone. He wanted to be sure there would be no hard feelings about you going with him. He said you really didn't want to go, and that to get you he had to offer you a hell of a lot of money.

"I saw him last night. He offered me a job as his chief investigator. I told him I'd have to think it over, and I'd get back to him before he had his press conference this morning."

"He told me you had accepted. Period."

"I never thought of accepting. The reason I didn't call him this morning to tell him was that I was busy.

"Look at me, Peter," Carlucci said. Wohl met his eyes. "Now tell me again, when did you decide?"

"When he made the offer," Wohl said evenly. "I was afraid I would say something I would regret if I said anything last night."

Carlucci looked at him intently for a full thirty seconds before he spoke again.

"Okay. That obviously changes things," he said, finally, and then looked around the table. "Since Inspector Wohl is not resigning from the Department, there is no need to name a replacement for him at Special Operations at this time-"

"Mr. Mayor!" Czernick said.

"-temporary or otherwise," Carlucci went on coldly. Then he looked at Wohl. "There will be, Peter, unless you get this mess straightened out.Capisce?"

"Yes, sir."

"Keep me informed," the mayor said, and got up and walked out of the room.