After a few minutes, the Hispanic male walked from the stage over to the box truck. He hopped inside and began sliding big cardboard boxes to the outer edge. He popped open the flaps to one, reached in, and came out with a white T-shirt. He held it up to his torso to show the others. Simpson saw that its silkscreened block lettering screamed STOP KILLADELPHIA! on the front and back, the STOP in bright red ink, the KILLADELPHIA in black.
The Hispanic male pulled out more shirts from the box and tossed them to the others as they walked up. Everyone slipped one on over their hooded sweatshirts.
Then the Hispanic male began sliding five-by-three-foot posters to the outer edge, and when he handed them down, Simpson could see the front of them. They were enlarged images of murder victims, posters similar to those used in the Center City demonstrations at JFK Park and the Roundhouse.
The first showed Lauren Childs. She was in the photograph that she had posted online that morning, the one taken at the LOVE artwork with Tony Gambacorta. Her boyfriend had been inelegantly cropped from the frame-his arm, around her neck, was all of him that remained visible-and a white circle with MURDER VICTIM #362 in red text was positioned over where his head would have been. Along the bottom of the poster was her name, followed by “19 Years Young.”
On the second poster was Jimmy Sanchez, his serious face pockmarked with acne. He was wearing not a green elf costume but, instead, a shirt and tie and blazer. He sat staring at a chess-board, his right hand hovering over a white rook. Under his image was “Jaime A. Sanchez, 15 Years Young.” The white circle in the upper corner had MURDER VICTIM #363.
The next poster showed a grinning black male with MURDER VICTIM #360 in the white circle. At the bottom was “Dante Holmes, 20 Years Young.”
These were carried to the stage and leaned against its front.
When Simpson saw the next poster getting moved to the back of the truck, he muttered, “I’ll be damned.”
The poster was an enlargement of a digital image originally taken by police department closed-circuit cameras and then picked up by the media.
The image showed one of the PPD Aviation Unit’s Bell 206 L-4 helicopters hovering over the Ben Franklin Bridge, the eighty-year-old steel suspension bridge that spanned the Delaware River. Traffic was stopped around wrecked vehicles, and everywhere were ambulances and fire trucks and police cruisers.
And standing in the middle of the mayhem-in front of a sheet that covered a human form-was Matt Payne.
He wore gray trousers, a pale blue starched shirt with a red-striped tie, navy blazer, and shiny black loafers. The slacks had been soiled and the shoes scuffed during the chase. He had his Colt.45 in hand, and was giving the helicopter a thumbs-up gesture.
Bright red lettering at the top of the poster read SGT. MATTHEW PAYNE, and PUBLIC ENEMY #1 was along the bottom.
Simpson clicked on the ECC button.
“Yeah, Harv,” Kerry Rapier’s voice came over Simpson’s headset. “Saw it on the monitor here. I’ve sent word up the chain of command.”
“Payne didn’t shoot that guy, if I remember right.”
“You’re right. That guy-something Jones. . Kenny Jones-had just fled the scene of a shooting. He stole a minivan, and Matt pursued him in an unmarked Crown Vic. Jones managed to get on the bridge going the wrong way-into seven lanes of oncoming traffic. Payne caught up in the Police Interceptor and executed a textbook PIT maneuver, bumping the minivan so that Jones spun out and hit the zipper barrier.”
“Who knows how many lives he saved doing that. But you get no points for that, huh?”
“No kidding. And then Jones ditched the minivan and made a run for it-with Payne on foot in hot pursuit. It was anyone’s guess what the hell the guy would do next-probably carjack someone headed toward Camden-but then he blindly ran into the path of a bus.”
“At least there’s not a poster of Jones.”
“I wouldn’t speak too soon, Harv.”
Simpson grunted as the screen then showed the men placing another poster at the back of the van, this one of a pudgy, balding, middle-aged white male wearing a coat and tie.
“Who is Cairns?” Simpson said, reading the poster.
“The casino jewelry store manager shot this morning. Guess he wasn’t ‘young’ enough.”
“Huh?” Simpson said, then added, “Oh.”
He saw that, while the poster had listed the name, Malcolm Cairns, and the white circle with a red MURDER VICTIM #361, there was no age mentioned. It was clear, however, he was long past his twenties and thirties.
The next three males shown on the posters were labeled as murder victims 350, 351, 352. Ricardo Ramírez was a chunky twenty-seven-year-old Puerto Rican, Héctor Ramírez a swarthy forty-year-old Cuban, and Dmitri Gurnov a tall, wiry, thirty-year-old Russian with sunken eyes and a three-day growth of beard.
“Aren’t those guys from Payne’s shoot-out last month on the casino boardwalk, Kerry?”
“Yeah, but it was the Russian who whacked the Cuban Ramírez, and maybe five minutes later Ricky Ramírez killed Gurnov. Then when Ricky Ramírez started shooting at Jim Byrth-”
“That Texas Ranger who was up here?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Ramírez shot at Byrth and then took shots at the helo that came on station and was lighting up the scene. When Matt ordered Ramírez to drop the weapon, the bad guy made the mistake of getting in a shoot-out with the good ol’ Wyatt Earp of the Main Line. That poster attests to the fact that it didn’t turn out too good for Ramírez.”
“Why the hell do they get included in this? Because Payne took out one? An active shooter who’d just killed a guy? That’s pure horseshit.”
“Well, technically they all are homicides and made the list. But I take your point.”
The next poster was of an attractive, petite nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican. Krystal Angel Gonzalez was listed as MURDER VICTIM #348.
Rapier said: “And there’s the poor girl who made the mistake of getting involved with Ricky Ramírez.”
“That’s the girl who was killed in the home invasion in Old City last month, right?”
“Yeah. Tragic story. Spent most of her life in and out of foster homes, then got conned by Ramírez. All the details haven’t come out, but what we do know is that Ramírez was running drugs and hookers out of a dive bar in Kensington. He made the Gonzalez girl think she was his girlfriend, then tried to pimp her out, and beat her when she wouldn’t do it.”
Simpson grunted again. “Same old story. You’re right-tragic.”
“Same story but with a twist. After he began beating her, she got her hands on his books-contacts, schedules, everything-”
“And passed them to the woman who ran the foster home,” Simpson finished. “I heard that. And the woman went into hiding when she found the girl killed in her fancy house, the place set afire with Molotov cocktails.”
“And the woman who went into hiding used the books as leverage to get to Ricky Ramírez and the Russian, who owned the dive bar.”
“Nice guys. And now all dead guys. Sergeant Payne should get credit for all three.”
They watched as the final posters were being put up-with Payne’s Public Enemy #1 poster being affixed to the front of the lectern.
“Those bastards,” Rapier said. “Harv, if you knew Matt, you’d know he’d rather not get credit for even one. It’s why this all stinks. Anyway, I’ll check back in a bit.”
“I’ll be here with bells on,” Simpson said, reaching for the thermos.
–
Five minutes later, Simpson watched over the lip of his stainless steel cup as a new shiny black Lincoln Navigator came flying up Twenty-ninth and then, tires screeching, pulled up onto the sidewalk behind the rental box truck. The driver of the SUV slipped a paperboard sign on the dash that had a facsimile of a crucifix and the wording CLERGY-ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS.