Jamal’s tired voice trailed off, and he began to rub his face again.
“What’s the guy’s name who told you that?”
Jamal shrugged.
“Harvey? Javier, maybe? Heard he OD’d. He didn’t say this guy’s name, just called him la gente loca. .”
“‘Crazy people’?” Payne said, making the translation from Spanish. “I’ll be damned!”
He reached to pull out his cellular telephone, then felt it vibrate. When he checked its screen, there was a text from Kerry Rapier: “The mystery of Where’s Waldo solved! At least the where part. .”
“Jesus!” Payne blurted, then looked at Kennedy and said, “If you’ll excuse me. I should be right back but might not. Nasuti and Lucke own the LOVE and Franklin parks murders. Let them and me know what else that bastard says about that doer, and also when you’ve got Pookie coming in for that heart-to-heart talk.”
“Will do, Sarge,” Kennedy said, crossing his arms over his massive chest. “We’ve already texted Pookie. Just waiting to hear back.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Oh, you can count on it that he’ll be in touch. The bastard thinks he’s due a payday for ratting out this knucklehead to us.”
[TWO]
As Payne stepped outside the viewing room, using his shoulder to push the door closed, he finished what he had started to do when Kerry Rapier’s text interrupted him: alert Nasuti and Lucke about what Jamal had said. Then he tapped the key on the screen to call back Rapier.
“Thought that’d get your attention, Marshal,” Rapier said, by way of answering the call. “We found the car, and just waiting on a positive ID on the victim, too.”
“Where?”
“Off Torresdale, some blocks up from Harding Middle School. The VeeDub initially was reported to nine-one-one as having been carjacked.”
“You’ve lost me. Waldo’s buddy said it was taken from them at gunpoint, before Waldo got whacked.”
“Right. But then a couple hours later an anonymous adult male called in to nine-one-one and said that a Puerto Rican with a gun had just carjacked a silver VeeDub Jetta with Jersey plates on Torresdale. A couple of marked units responded, and as they searched the area, there suddenly was a black plume rising over by the commuter train tracks.
“When they got to the fire, right before the fire trucks, they saw that it was a VeeDub and that it was completely engulfed in flames. Windows were either blown out or melted.”
“Nice.”
“There’s no question that the fuel tank blew up, but they also found remains of two metal cans, one that looked like it exploded, and it’s believed these were the accelerants. And the gas in the tank. It was a superhot fire.”
“And the body?”
“There’s not much left of it. Not a completely charred skeleton but close. Apparently when the gas tank cooked off, it blew the body up into the trunk lid, which may or may not have been simultaneously blown open.”
“Well, it’s logical that it’s Waldo. The shooter likely just stuffed him in the trunk and then torched the evidence.” He paused, then said, “Didn’t Waldo’s buddy say the shooter was a skinny black guy?”
“Yeah, and his drug dealer partner was a big black guy with a bald head and meth mouth. And the young kid delivering the product was also black.”
“But the nine-one-one caller said the carjacker was Puerto Rican?”
“And near Harding Middle School, which is approximately four miles from where Dan said he saw Billy killed. They ran the Jersey plate, and it belongs to a Chevy. The Penn plate that was under the Jersey one is registered to the Jetta, and in Billy’s father’s name.”
“You have someone running down surveillance camera footage in the area?”
“Already on it before I texted you.”
“Good man.”
“One more thing, Marshal.”
“What?”
“Chuck Whaley’s headed to the location of the car fire since they found pretty much nothing but blood at the site of the killing. The Crime Scene guys have already wrapped up.”
Payne grunted derisively. “Great. Make sure he gets all you’ve got. He’ll need all the help he can get.”
“Done. Anything else?”
“No. . wait. Yeah, there is. You have access to the recording in Homicide’s interview rooms, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Rapier said, and Payne heard the sound of rapid typing in the background. “Punched it up now. Michael Hayward, aka Jamal. That’s one filthy person.”
“Yeah. Jamal the Junkie. McCrory and Kennedy brought him in on the Dante Holmes drive-by, and he just now said he’s seen the doer in the park murders at McPherson Square in Kensington. But then again he’s been consistently lying for at least the last hour.”
“That’s a great break, if true. You believe it?”
“Hell if I know. I want to believe it, so we can grab the bastard. I was giving Nasuti and Lucke the heads-up when you texted. They can broadcast the info with a Flash, and then see if any of our blue shirts who patrol the park-who probably haven’t seen the Wanted flyer yet, otherwise they’d have already made him and tried running him to ground-can ID the doer. All of which hinges on if Jamal the Junkie isn’t lying-again. And, if he actually is telling the truth, if the doer’s been seen anywhere near the park.”
“So, what is it you need me to do?”
“Right now, just make sure everyone’s getting all updates and that there’re backups of backups of that interview recording.”
“Oh ye of little faith, Marshal. Redundancy is my middle name.”
[THREE]
SEPTA Somerset Station
Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia
Saturday, December 15, 3:12 P.M.
Transit Police Officer Thelonious “Theo” Clarke, a beefy five-foot-ten twenty-one-year-old African-American, stood near the concourse exit as he scanned the crowd stepping off the just-arrived southbound train.
Clarke had served six months on the force of three hundred that policed the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority mass transit system, the trains and buses of which servicing, as its name suggested, the City of Philadelphia proper as well as the surrounding four suburban counties.
If there appeared to be some similarities with the Transit Police and the Philadelphia Police Department, that was not by coincidence. SEPTA’s officers went through the same Philadelphia Police Academy training as did Philly’s officers. Thus, it was not unusual for SEPTA’s officers to later join the PPD, which, with manpower of more than six thousand, was approximately twenty times larger in size.
And, while not nearly as common, the reverse of PPD cops joining the SEPTA force also was true-right up to the top cop.
The police chief of SEPTA had served, prior to his transfer, as head of the PPD’s elite Highway Patrol Unit. Like many cops in both departments, it was said he had multigenerational blue blood running in his veins. The chief could in fact count on the fingers of both hands how many family members served in, or had retired from, the ranks of the Philadelphia Police Department, uncles and cousins and nephews and nieces-and his father, who had retired after rising to the level of deputy police commissioner.
While Clarke liked that-he devoutly considered his brothers in blue to be family-he was the first of his biological family to become a law enforcement officer.
Theo had grown up in Spring Garden, a tough section of the city wedged in just north of the wealth of Center City. In his senior year of high school he learned that one could apply to the Philly police at age nineteen, but that PPD required sixty hours of college credits, or a mix of education and experience that could be military service or two years in the Police Explorers Cadet Program and hundreds of hours of training.