He paused as they considered that.
Then Harris said, “Jones was a small-time dealer. What he had was more of a consumption habit. But he did have a couple busts for selling coke. He was on probation for possession. Word is that… this is not exactly PC-”
“Oh, no,” Payne gasped dramatically, “we’ve never heard something that was politically incorrect uttered in the Roundhouse!”
There were grins, including Tony’s.
“Say it, Tony,” Coughlin said, his face serious. “We need to know e verything.”
“Reggie Jones was backward.”
“Backward?”
“More or less retarded,” Tony said.
“And now he’s deceased,” Payne said, “making him number eight.”
“No warrants?” Coughlin went on.
His investigator’s mind is still on high speed.
“No, sir. Not on the deceased. His brother, however, is in the wind.”
“How’s that?”
“Kenneth J. ‘Kenny’ Jones, black male, age twenty-two, skipped out on a charge of possession with intent to distribute. Jumped his two-thousand-dollar bail after getting picked up in Germantown. Like his brother Reggie, Kenny’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Tried to sell crack cocaine to a couple of our guys working an undercover task force.”
Coughlin snorted, thought a moment, then said, “Maybe the doer popped the wrong brother by mistake?”
“Possible.”
“And the others who’d been pop-and-dropped all had some sexual crime component?”
“Yes, sir. All but the lawyer. And all the others had been shot.”
“But not the Jones boy? He was strangled.”
Harris nodded. “Correct.”
Coughlin looked at Hollaran. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking?”
Frank Hollaran had worked with Denny Coughlin so many years he could finish his sentences.
“That it’s possible?” Hollaran asked. “Sure, boss. If somehow they’d heard about the pop-and-drops. But I doubt it’s happened in this case. Not enough time has elapsed. It can happen, probably will happen, especially with the cash rewards being offered.”
“What’re we talking about?” Payne asked.
“Copycats. Folks who mimic crimes they see in the news. That fifteen minutes of fame Andy Warhol talked about.”
Quaire, gesturing again at the newspaper on Washington’s desk, put in: “And now we have-cue the dramatic music-the Halloween Homicides.”
Payne offered: “Playing devil’s advocate, maybe it’s not so much a copycat as it is someone taking up Frank Fuller on the hefty bounty he offers for-what’s his phrase?-the evildoers.”
“Think that through, Matthew,” Washington said. “Who is going to claim those rewards? At least for the dead critters? They’d be admitting to murder.”
Payne shrugged.
“Regardless,” Coughlin said, “Jerry Carlucci is going to want to know what we’re doing about the problem. He’s planning on having a press conference at noon in the Executive Command Center. What he talks about depends on what he hears from us. And I’m sure he will denounce Fuller’s bounty.”
“Isn’t denouncing the bounty a bit hypocritical?” Payne asked.
“In what way?” Coughlin said.
“The Philadelphia Police Department is in bed with, for example, the FBI and the DEA, which do offer big rewards for fingering bad guys. And that nationwide Crimestoppers program pays five or ten grand for information leading to a conviction-just call their toll-free number. It pays up even if you remain anonymous. It’d make my job a helluva lot easier if someone called with something on these pop-and-drops.”
“We do ask for tips on catching criminals, Matty,” Coughlin said reasonably, “but we don’t encourage killing. There’s a difference, one somebody needs to point out to Frank Fuller.” He sighed deeply. “But good point. Carlucci will have to spin it in a positive way.”
He glanced at his watch. “Okay, everyone follow me upstairs. This was just the dress rehearsal.”
Payne didn’t move, causing Coughlin to raise an eyebrow in question.
“ ‘Everyone’ as in everyone?” Matt asked. “Am I allowed to leave the office?”
Coughlin, his voice taking an official tone, then said, “As of this moment, Sergeant Payne, assuming you can at some point soon get a decent shower and shave, I hereby order your release from desk duty.”
Coughlin looked around the office.
“Everyone think they can follow that order?”
There was a chorus of “Yes, sir.”
[FOUR]
5550 Ridgewood Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 9:35 A.M.
There were three official emergency vehicles parked at the curb in front of the Bazelon’s row house, all with various doors open and the red-and-blue light bars on their roofs flashing. Two were white Chevy Impala squad cars assigned to the Twelfth District, and the third was a somewhat battered white Ford panel van that had a blue-and-gold stripe running the length of the vehicle and blue block lettering that spelled out MEDICAL EXAMINER.
On the wooden front porch of the row house, two Philadelphia Police Department blue shirts were on either side of a rocking chair, one a male standing and writing notes and the other a female down on one knee. The young woman cop was speaking softly to eighteen-year-old Sasha Bazelon, who sat in the rocker, her face in her hands, her body visibly shaking as she sobbed.
Standing nearby on the sidewalk was a small crowd of fifteen people, mostly adult men and women holding Bibles, all watching with looks of deep sadness or abject helplessness. A couple of the women were dabbing at their cheeks with white cotton handkerchiefs. They wore what Mrs. Joelle Bazelon would have said was their Sunday Go-to-Meeting Clothing.
Any other week, Joelle Bazelon also would have been in her church clothes, usually a dark-colored billowing cotton dress, joining the group as it made the regular walk to worship at the Church of Christ three blocks over, at Warrington and South Fifty-sixth Street.
This morning, however, the sixty-two-year-old widow’s cold dead body, clad in a rumpled housecoat, was about to be removed from her living room couch and placed inside a heavy-duty vinyl bag by two technicians from the Medical Examiner’s Office.
The techs were dressed alike in black jeans, white knit polos, and stained, well-worn white lab coats that were thigh-length with two big patch pockets on the front. They had transparent blue plastic booties covering their black athletic shoes. Their hands wore tan-colored synthetic polymer gloves.
The body bag was on a heavy-duty, metal-framed gurney that had been positioned alongside the couch, its oversize rubber wheels locked to prevent it from rolling.
The tech who was lifting the body by holding the lower legs-just above the swollen and bruised ankles-was Kim Soo. A small-bodied man with short spiked black hair and puffy round facial features, he’d been born in Philly twenty-eight years earlier to parents from South Korea who became naturalized Americans.
Soo had spent the last two hours carefully photographing the row house with a big, bulky, professional-level Nikon digital camera, its body badly scratched and dinged. He’d moved through the residence fluidly with the camera, documenting the scene. The strobe had been so intense that its pulsing flashes were easily seen by the small crowd on the sidewalk.
Soo’s face was stonelike as he looked at the lead technician, Javier Iglesia. Soo had known Iglesia going back to South Philly High, where Kim had been two grades behind him.
Iglesia, a beefy but fit thirty-year-old of Puerto Rican ancestry, was normally a very talkative sort, always ready with an opinion on anything. Now, however, holding the body at the shoulders, Iglesia was being unusually quiet.
Finally, Iglesia said, “I knew being a tech for the ME wasn’t going to be all glory, Kim. But days like this, when it gets personal, I honest to God genuinely hate this damned job.”
Iglesia looked at Soo, who said, “I know.”
After getting a stronger grip on the housecoat, Iglesia said, “Ready? On three. One, two, three…”