"I don't give a damn who sees us together. Anyway, we're working together."
"I do. I want to stay in Homicide."
"Oh."
"I need time to think, and if I see you, I won't be able to think clearly." She paused. "Matt, will you do me a big favor?"
"Name it."
"Forget what happened last night."
"How the hell am I supposed to do that? It happened, and at the risk of repeating myself, I found it to be an entirely delightful experience."
"I'm not saying it wasn't," she said. "My God, couldn't you tell? What I'm saying is that I don't want anybody even to guess about it until I can think about it, really think about it. Will you do that for me?"
"Whatever you say, Mother."
"Thank you."
"I suppose your having a look at my hand is entirely out of the question?"
"What's wrong with your hand?" she asked.
That's genuine concern in her voice.
"I believe you described it as a 'puncture wound.' "
"And I also told you to stop at an emergency room on your way home. You mean you didn't?"
"I seem to have forgotten that instruction. I must have had something else on my mind. Bleeding to death didn't seem important at the time."
"You're bleeding now?"
More genuine concern.
He looked at his hand.
"No, but it looks unhealthy."
"Matt, go to an emergency room, please. Right now. I'll see you at work."
"How about doing me a favor?"
"If you want me to come there, I will," she said after a moment.
"What I want you to do is tell me now if you're trying to… let me down gently."
"Oh, God! If I was trying to dump you, kindly or otherwise, I would not have offered to come there."
"You mean that?"
"You think last night was a one-night stand for me?"
"Oh, God, I hope not," he said, and laughed.
"What's funny?"
"I seem to have acquired your penchant for 'Oh, God!' "
"Are you all right to drive with your hand?"
"Sure."
"Then go to an emergency room and I'll see you at work. Okay?"
"Okay."
"And we won't look in each other's eyes. Agreed?"
"With great reluctance."
"Oh, God!" she said, and then there was the hiss that told him she had pressed the End key on her cellular.
[TWO] Matt pulled the Porsche into the Emergency Trauma Center of Hahnemann Hospital on North Broad Street and parked beside a Sixth District wagon in the area with the sign POLICE AND EMERGENCY VEHICLES ONLY.
A man of about his age, wearing hospital greens and what looked like twenty-four hours of beard growth, stopped him as he was walking toward the hospital entrance.
He pointed wordlessly at the sign.
"I'm on the job," Matt said, and pushed his jacket away from the badge on his belt with his sore hand.
"What did you do to the hand?"
"Fell over a fence," Matt said.
The man waved his hand in a signal for Matt to follow him inside.
"You're a doctor?" Matt asked.
"No, I wear this stuff because I like pastel colors."
The paperwork didn't take long.
The doctor was waiting for him in a treatment room.
"That's nasty," the doctor said. "Puncture wounds can be bad news. How'd you do it?"
"Going over a fence," Matt said. "The top of the fence- the twisted ends of the wire?"
The doctor nodded. "Your tetanus up to date?"
"I suppose so."
"Suppose doesn't count," the doctor said, as he opened a glass door in a white cabinet.
"This is going to hurt," the doctor said.
It did.
And so did the injection of an antibiotic "as a precaution" in the other buttock.
"I hope you can shoot right-handed, Sherlock," the doctor said. "For the next three, four days, that paw is going to be tender."
"I'm right-handed. You going to put a bandage on it?"
"Youwant a bandage?"
"What I don't want is people asking, 'What did you do to your hand, it looksghastly?' "
"I could paint the area with some lovely lavender antiseptic."
"Just a simple large Band-Aid, please."
"Okay. Why not?"
"Thank you."
"You mind if I ask a couple of questions, Sherlock?"
"Shoot."
"Why were you jumping over a fence?"
"I was chasing a guy who drove a stolen car through a red light and clobbered a family in a minivan."
"You get him?"
Matt nodded.
"Good for you."
"You said two questions."
"Why did the cops stand around with their thumbs up their ass while that girl was being raped and murdered?"
[THREE] Matt's gluteus maximus began to ache as he got on the Roundhouse elevator. The doctor had said that both the tetanus booster and the antibiotic would probably cause "mild discomfort."
The mild discomfort left his mind when he walked into Homicide and found that Detective Lassiter had already reported for duty. She was sitting at a desk with a telephone to her ear.
She was wearing a skirt and a double sweater. It didn't matter. Her naked form was engraved forever in Matt's mind.
She looked at him, then away.
"Already at it, Mother?" he said.
She looked at him, nodded, and then quickly looked away again.
"Captain wants to see you, Sergeant," Detective Alonzo Kramer, a stocky, ruddy-faced, forty-three-year-old, said, pointing to Captain Quaire's office.
Matt could see through the glass enclosure that Lieutenant Gerry McGuire, the commanding officer of Dignitary Protection, was with Quaire.
I wonder what that's about?
Oh, shit! Stan Colt! I forgot all about that!
Quaire saw Matt coming and waved him into his office. "Good morning," Matt said, politely.
"What happened to your face?" Quaire asked.
"I took a slide on a concrete driveway last night chasing a guy."
Quaire gesturedgive me more with both hands.
"I almost had Lassiter home…"
"From where?" Quaire asked, smiling.
"From Liberties. Lieutenant Washington had us meet him there. And afterward, I took her home. She had to give her unmarked back to Northwest."
"And what happened? Detective Lassiter didn't do that to your face, did she, Sergeant?" Captain Quaire asked, mock seriously. He looked to see if Lieutenant McGuire shared his sense of humor. From his smile, it was obvious that he did.
"No, sir," Matt said. "As we came down Knight's Road, off Woodhaven, a fellow in a stolen Grand Am ran the Red Lion stoplight, rammed into a Dodge Caravan, and took off running."
"I saw that in the overnights," McGuire said. "I thought Highway bagged that guy. You got involved in that?"
"I saw it. I had to."
Quaire made anothergive me more gesture with his hands.
"It happened right in front of us. Lassiter called it in, then checked the people in the van, and I started chasing the guy."
"And he gave you trouble?" Quaire asked, now seriously. "The face?"
"No, sir. While I was chasing him, I took a dive over a wire and scraped my face on a driveway. Then I tried going over a fence, and bruised my hand."
"But you got the guy?"
"Yes, sir. Eighth District locked him up. But I'm going to have to go to Northeast Detectives to give a Detective Coleman a full statement. He only got the initial details for the affidavit3last night.
"Why didn't you give your statement last night?" Quaire asked.
"I wanted to get some antiseptic on my face."
"So why didn't you do the paperwork last night, after you went to the emergency room and got some antiseptic on your face?"
"I didn't go to the emergency room last night. I went to Hahnemann this morning."
Quaire nodded.