The Last Witness
Page 1
ALSO BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN
HONOR BOUND
HONOR BOUND
BLOOD AND HONOR
SECRET HONOR
DEATH AND HONOR
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
THE HONOR OF SPIES
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
VICTORY AND HONOR
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
EMPIRE AND HONOR
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
BROTHERHOOD OF WAR
BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS
BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS
BOOK III: THE MAJORS
BOOK IV: THE COLONELS
BOOK V: THE BERETS
BOOK VI: THE GENERALS
BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED
BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS
BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS
THE CORPS
BOOK I: SEMPER FI
BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS
BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK
BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND
BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE
BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT
BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES
BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH
BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE
BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!
BADGE OF HONOR
BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE
BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS
BOOK III: THE VICTIM
BOOK IV: THE WITNESS
BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN
BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS
BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS
BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE
BOOK IX: THE TRAFFICKERS
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
BOOK X: THE VIGILANTES
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
MEN AT WAR
BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES
BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS
BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES
BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS
BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
BOOK VI: THE DOUBLE AGENTS
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
BOOK VII: THE SPYMASTERS
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
PRESIDENTIAL AGENT
BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT
BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE
BOOK III: THE HUNTERS
BOOK IV: THE SHOOTERS
BOOK V: BLACK OPS
BOOK VI: THE OUTLAWS
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
BOOK VII: COVERT WARRIORS
(and William E. Butterworth IV)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com
Copyright © 2013 by William E. Butterworth IV
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Griffin, W. E. B.
The last witness / W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV.
p. cm.—(Badge of Honor series; Volume 11)
ISBN 978-1-101-60100-6
1. Payne, Matt (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—Pennsylvania— Philadelphia—Fiction. 3. Philadelphia (Pa.)—Fiction. I. Butterworth, William E. (William Edmund), author. II. Title.
PS3557.R489137L37 2013 2013016782
813'54—dc23
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
IN FOND MEMORY OF
SERGEANT ZEBULON V. CASEY
Internal Affairs Division
Police Department, the City of Philadelphia, Retired
“There came a time when there were assignments that had to be done right, and they would seek Zeb out. These assignments included police shootings, civil-rights violations, and he tracked down fugitives all over the country. He was not your average cop. He was very, very professional.”
HOWARD LEBOFSKY
Deputy Solicitor of Philadelphia
Contents
Also by W.E.B. Griffin
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
[FIVE]
II
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
III
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
[FIVE]
IV
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
V
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
VI
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
VII
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
VIII
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
[FIVE]
IX
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
[FIVE]
X
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
XI
[ONE]
[TWO]
[THREE]
[FOUR]
[FIVE]
I
[ONE]
Society Hill, Philadelphia
Saturday, November 15, 10:29 P.M.
“Stop yelling, Krystal, and listen very carefully to me,” Maggie McCain ordered evenly, hoping her tone did not betray her deep fear. “He can track you with your cell phone. Turn it off. Then take out the battery if you can.”
Maggie, at the wheel of her eight-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser, was twenty-five years old and, standing five-six and weighing one-thirty, slender and fit. She had pale skin, intense green eyes set in a pleasant face, and shoulder-length chestnut brown hair that she mostly wore up, as now, brushed smooth against her scalp and tied in a tight, neat ponytail. She had on elegant dark woolen slacks and a heavily woven black sweater.
Her work cell phone in hand, Maggie heard her personal phone begin ringing in her purse. When she quickly dug it out and saw that the caller ID read MOTHER, she pushed a key to silence the ring, then let the call roll into voice mail.
Oh, damn it, Krystal! she thought, as she heard Krystal starting to cry.
And damn this traffic!
A sea of glowing red brake lights reflected on the rain-slick Center City street. It was a cold, dreary night, the rain occasionally mixing with wisps of snow.
She stared out past the swishing windshield wipers, anxiously awaiting the signal light to turn green.
“Did you hear what I said?” Maggie went on. “Use my house phone to call me back. But first make sure all the doors are locked and stay away from the windows. Try to be calm. I’m just minutes away.”
The image of a desperate Krystal Angel Gonzalez—a curvy five-foot-one, nineteen-year-old Puerto Rican—frantically pacing the stylish living room of Maggie’s Society Hill town house flashed in her mind.
That was exactly what Krystal had done two days earlier, when she banged on Maggie’s door at four in the morning. Then she dropped onto the leather couch and lay on her side. Under crossed arms, she tugged her knees tightly against her chest and, off and on, sobbed uncontrollably for hours.
Krystal had finally escaped from Ricardo, the twenty-seven-year-old Fishtown strip club manager she briefly had been calling her boyfriend. But at a brutal cost. Her short dark hair was matted with dried blood, her face bruised and swollen. Raw welts had formed on the back of her thighs where he had whipped her with a pair of wire coat hangers folded together.
She promised me she’d never go back to him, Maggie thought, watching the traffic light finally cycle to green. I warned her over and over that he really didn’t love her.
“Please hurry!” Krystal said hysterically. “Ricky said the beating was nothing like what he’d do if I told! He’d make me disappear, like Lizzi and Brandi. Then . . . he tore my clothes off and . . . and . . .”
Krystal Gonzalez’s quivering voice trailed off.
And you did tell, Maggie thought, shaking her head.
Oh my God . . .
“I’m almost home,” Maggie said, and then, raising her voice to be heard over Krystal’s sobs, added, “Now turn off your phone!”
Maggie broke off the call. She stuffed the phone in her pocket as her silver SUV rolled up to the intersection. She hung a fast right, pressing harder on the accelerator as she followed Pine Street toward Society Hill.
As a rule, and Maggie devoutly believed in rules—“A place for everything and everything in its place,” she often said—she did not like talking on the phone while driving. She also did not like speeding. And she really did not like breaking her own rule of anyone connected with Mary’s House being prohibited from coming to her residence.
But seeing Krystal throwing away what might be her last chance to get her life straight . . . I just can’t stand that.
We were accomplishing so much.
And now this . . .
—
Mary’s House, in nearby South Philadelphia, served as a temporary residence for young children and teenagers waiting to be placed in foster homes by the city’s Department of Human Services. The facility actually was composed of two four-bedroom row houses sharing a common wall. With no signage announcing its existence, Mary’s House looked no different from the neighboring well-kept duplexes that lined the street across from Girard Park.
The charity was one of the many ministries of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the century-old Roman Catholic parish on Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line, where Maggie McCain’s family had worshipped since before her birth.
At Mary’s House, Maggie, with a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania, wore many hats. Her biggest was that of chief administrator. She dealt with the detailed—and often obscure—requirements of the Department of Human Services while overseeing the two other social workers who day to day kept up with the twenty-plus female residents ranging in age from five to seventeen.
If allowed—especially as compassion for the kids’ lot in life chipped away at any wall of professional detachment—it quickly could become an all-consuming job.
Maggie knew the City of Philadelphia had its challenges—perhaps more than its fair share in terms of struggling families. It was the fifth-largest city in the United States, with one in four of its 1.5 million residents living in poverty, a third of them under age eighteen.
And the tragic result of that meant an annual caseload of some twenty thousand—from infants to teenagers—moving through the overburdened bureaucracy that was the city’s Department of Human Services.
DHS’s role, with hundreds of millions in annual funds, was to protect the abused and neglected. This meant investigating and overseeing broken families—and, when necessary, immediately removing children from a potentially dangerous environment. Thus, at any given time thousands found themselves in temporary care while DHS evaluated if it was safe for them to be returned to their family—or placed with a foster family.
And Mary’s House was but one small charity among dozens in Philly providing help—temporary shelter that included food, clothing, health care, and more—until permanent foster care, or adoption, could be secured.
—
The thick, well-worn file labeled “Gonzalez, Krystal Angel” had been among the first cases that Maggie McCain had reviewed after arriving at Mary’s House.
That had been two years earlier, when Krystal had just turned seventeen. It had taken Maggie nearly half a year to earn the confidence of Krystal, who since age ten had suffered the revolving doors of various homes. The last time at Mary’s House had been her third to live there.
What Maggie found in her file was, while without question horrific, sadly common.
“DHS, after notification by an anonymous source, confirmed through the various utility service providers that the address of the Brewerytown row house where the mother and her five (5) children lived did not have gas, water, or electricity. On-site inspection by caseworkers found that there was trash littering every room, as well as evidence of rodents and human feces. Said conditions—‘clear and convincing evidence of parental inadequacy’—thus meet the Pennsylvania standard for terminating parental rights.”
The file further stated that the anonymous source alleged that the mother and her new boyfriend were selling crack cocaine—when they were not using it.
With a court order, and backed by two Philadelphia Police officers, DHS caseworkers came and took the children away.
Krystal—at ten the youngest sibling—and her four sisters were placed in Mary’s House and from there into their first foster home. All against the objections of their maternal aunt, who wanted them in her Kensington home with her three children.
Relatives wanting five more mouths to feed? Maggie had thought incredulously, reading the file. Or just five more checks from DHS?
These situations are so desperate . . . no matter how much money gets thrown at the problem.
After two years, a DHS caseworker discovered evidence of abuse of the oldest Gonzalez sibling by the foster parents—and suspected there was more—and the girls returned to the safety of Mary’s House.
It would be a brief stay.
The aunt lobbied DHS to the point that she finally won court-approved custody of them. The file notes stated that all was more or less okay for the following three years—until the driver of a stolen car hit the aunt in a Kensington crosswalk, killing her. DHS, due to limited space, then split up the six cousins—the eldest two, almost eighteen, had run away and not been heard from since—between three temporary homes.
Krystal, who’d just turned fifteen, wound up back at Mary’s House with no real hope of ever living again with her sisters and cousins.
Caseworkers, as much as they wished to oversee each and every child without fail, knew that the system, frustratingly flawed, was anything but perfect—and that there were those who invariably fell through holes in the safety net that was DHS. The younger kids, particularly infants, understandably commanded the majority of attention. At high risk were the teenagers, who constantly tested the patience of caseworkers. They would talk back, lie, and sneak out at night, violating Philadelphia’s curfew. Alcohol and drug use, particularly among those who’d been abused,
wasn’t at all uncommon.
Maggie McCain herself had added ample notes in Krystal’s file, most often in connection with the twins Lizzi and Brandi.
Krystal had met the attractive, blonde sixteen-year-olds at a West Philadelphia facility serving DHS, where they’d lived for almost a year. Not church-affiliated, it was two miles from Mary’s House, and twice its size. The girls had found the rules there were fewer, or not strictly enforced, or both, and being opportunistic—if not cunning—teenagers they took advantage of that.
A year after befriending Krystal, Lizzi and Brandi had introduced her to an older girl, all of twenty-one, who impressed them with the money she said she earned serving cocktails at a couple of Philly nightclubs.
Krystal had been so awed that she’d dropped her guard and gushed to Maggie McCain: “She has the latest everything—her hair, her nails, her clothes! And her own place! ‘Ya gotta use what ya got to get what ya want,’ is what she said. She’s going to help find Lizzi and Brandi jobs, and let them share her place until we can get our own.”
“We?” Maggie had blurted.
“I mean them. Lizzi and Brandi.”
But Maggie had understood exactly what she meant.
The girls had led tough lives, ones that most people could not—and, truth told, really did not want to—begin to try to comprehend. The closer the girls got to eighteen, the odds of them being adopted into any family, let alone a stable, loving one, were about as good as the chance they’d be taken bodily into heaven. And the promise of a new, exciting life on their own simply was too tempting.
Maggie at first couldn’t compose a reply.
“Use what you got to get what you want”?
That could not be any clearer. . . .
Then, even as she began saying the words, Maggie knew they were falling on deaf ears: “You girls must be very, very careful, Krystal. You have to understand that there’s a price, sometimes a very steep one. . . .”
—
Maggie McCain sped through the tree-lined cobblestone streets of Society Hill, a posh section of Center City overlooking the Delaware River that dated back to the 1700s.
The knot that had formed in the pit of her stomach at the mention of Lizzi and Brandi felt like it was getting worse.