He went to the front door and jerked it open.
The driver was slumped over the wheel.
There was a sickening bloody white mess on the windshield. A 168grain lead projectile had penetrated the rear window of the van, and then the rear of the driver's skull, with sufficient remaining energy to cause most of his brain to be expelled through an exit wound in his forehead.
Matt reached inside and shut off the ignition. Then he ran around the front, went to the side door, and pulled it open. There was something on the floor of the van, under a tarpaulin. He jerked the tarpaulin away.
Mrs. Naomi Schneider, naked, her hands bound behind her, looked at him out of wide eyes.
"I'm a police officer," Matt said. "You'll be all right, lady. It's all over."
Naomi started screaming again.
Beep Beep Beep.
Tiny Lewis opened his microphone and said, "Officer needs assistance. Shots fired. 8800 block of Norwood Street. Ambulance Required. Police by telephone."
The first response to the call was from a Fourteenth District RPC. The second was, "M-Mary One in on the shots fired."
The Honorable Jerry Carlucci, Mayor of the City of Philadelphia, was returning to his Chestnut Hill home from a late dinner with friends. M-Mary One was the first car on the scene.
Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, followed by Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., entered the Rittenhouse Square residence of Officer Matthew Payne. Chief Inspector Dennis V. Coughlin was already there.
"Here's the newspapers. TheLedger and theBulletin," Wohl said. "I bought five of each."
"TheLedger! Why did you buy that goddamned rag?" Coughlin asked, surprised and angry.
"I think I'm going to have theLedger story framed," Wohl said.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Coughlin asked as Wohl handed him a copy of theLedger.
There was a photograph of Miss Elizabeth Woodham on the front page, in her college graduation cap and gown, three columns wide, with the caption, "Rapist-Murderer's Latest Victim."
SCHOOLTEACHER
STILL AT LARGE;
By Charles E. Whaley
Ledger Staff Reporter
Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernick confessed tonight that while " everything that can be done is being done" the police have not arrested, or for that matter, even identified, the Northwest Philadelphia rapist-murderer whose latest victim's mutilated body was discovered early today by State Police in Upper Bucks County.
"Our Police Department is a disgrace, and we intend to force the mayor to do something about it," said Dr. C. Charles Fortner, a University of Pennsylvania sociology professor, at a press conference at which he announced the formation of "The Citizens' Committee for Efficient Law Enforcement."
"A recall election would be a last step," Dr. Fortner said, "but not out of the question if the mayor proves unable or unwilling to shake up the Police Department from top to bottom. The people of Philadelphia are entitled to better police protection than they are getting. We will do everything necessary to see that they get it. The kidnapping and brutal murder of Miss Woodham, and the Police Department's nearly incredible ineptness in dealing with the situation, demands immediate action. We are not going to let them forget Miss Woodham as they have forgotten this psychopath's other victims."
Dr. Fortner said that Arthur J. Nelson, publisher of theLedger, has agreed to serve as Vice-Chairman of the committee, and that Nelson and "a number of other prominent citizens" would be with him when the new organization stages its first public protest today. Fortner said that the committee would form before the Police Administration Building at Seventh and Arch Streets at noon, and then march to City Hall, where they intend to present their demands to Mayor Jerry Carlucci.
(A related editorial can be found on Page 7-A.)
"If they march," Chief Coughlin said, "I'll get a bass drum, and march right along with them."
Matt was leaning on his desk, sipping at a glass dark with whiskey, looking down at theBulletin's front page. There was a four-column photograph on it, of Officer Matthew Payne and the Honorable Jerry Carlucci, who had an arm around Matt's shoulder, and who was standing with his jacket open wide enough to reveal that His Honor the Mayor still carried his police revolver. The caption below the picture read, "Mayor Carlucci Embraces 'Handsome Hero' Cop."
When he heard Coughlin speak, he looked over at him.
"What?"
"You read theBulletin first, Matty," Coughlin said. "Then you'll really enjoy the story in theLedger."
Matt shrugged, and returned to reading theBulletin.
"Mickey O'Hara will do all right by you," Denny Coughlin said. "He told me he thought you'd done a hell of a job. I'll bet that's a very nice story."
"So far it's bullshit," Matt replied.
NORTHWEST SERIAL
By Michael J. O'Hara
Bulletin Staff Writer
Officer Matthew Payne, 22, in what Mayor Jerry Carlucci described as an act of "great personal heroism," rescued Mrs. Naomi Schneider, 34, of the 8800 block of Norwood Street in Chestnut Hill, minutes after she had been abducted at knifepoint from her home by a man the mayor said he is positive is the man dubbed the "Northwest Serial Rapist."
The man, tentatively identified as Warren K. Fletcher, 31, of Germantown, had, according to Mrs. Schneider, broken into her luxury apartment as she was preparing for bed. Mrs. Schneider said he was masked and armed with a large butcher knife. She said he forced her to disrobe, then draped her in a blanket and forced her into the rear of his 1969 Ford van and covered her with a tarpaulin.
"The next thing I knew," Mrs. Schneider said, "there was shots, and then breaking glass, and then the van crashed. Then this handsome young cop was looking down at me and smiling and telling me everything was all right; he was a police officer."
Moments before Officer Payne shot the kidnapper and believed rapistmurderer, according to Mayor Carlucci, the man had attempted to run Payne down with the van, slightly injuring Payne and doing several thousand dollars' worth of damage to Payne's personal automobile.
"Payne then, reluctantly," Mayor Carlucci said, "concluded there was no choice but for him to use deadly force, and proceeded to do so. Mrs. Schneider's life was in grave danger and he knew it. I'm proud of him."
Mayor Carlucci, whose limousine is equipped with police shortwave radios, was en route to his Chestnut Hill home from a Sons of Italy dinner in South Philadelphia when the rescue occurred.
"We were the first car to respond to the 'shots fired' call," the mayor said. "Officer Payne was still helping Mrs. Schneider out of the wrecked van when we got there."
Payne, who is special assistant to Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, commanding officer of the newly formed Special Operations Division, had spent most of the day in Bucks County, where the mutilated body of Miss Elizabeth Woodham, 33, of 300 East Mermaid Lane, Roxborough, had been discovered by State Police in a summer country cottage.
Miss Woodham was abducted from her apartment three days ago by a masked, knife-wielding man. A Bucks County mail carrier had described a man meeting Mr. Warren K. Fletcher's description, and driving a maroon 1969 Ford van identical to the one in which Mrs. Schneider was abducted, as being at a cottage where her body was discovered. Police all over the Delaware Valley were looking for a similar van.