The Last Witness

by W. E. B. Griffin

  Five minutes later, as a few of the girls were coming out of the cabin and sipping champagne from clear plastic cups, he spotted the last pack of boats in the Poker Run. He made turns to put his bow a little ahead of the pack, then bumped up the throttles to wide open.

  Carlos pretended not to notice that the wind with the higher speeds was causing the brunette’s champagne to slosh all over her.

  II

  [ONE]

  Office of the First Deputy Commissioner

  Philadelphia Police Headquarters

  Eighth and Race Streets

  Sunday, November 16, 3:05 P.M.

  “Yes—to answer the question that I’m sure has been on everyone’s mind—I’m damn well aware that this is a highly volatile situation,” the Honorable Jerome H. “Jerry” Carlucci, mayor of Philadelphia, all but growled. “To a large degree, the department has been lucky to keep quiet and compartmentalized the disappearance of the first two caseworkers. But with the McCain girl now gone missing, it would appear that that luck just ran the hell out.” He waved his right hand in the direction of the muted flat-screen television that was tuned to a local newscast. “Especially when the goddamn media gets wind of it.”

  Five men, all standing, watched Carlucci pacing along the curved wall of bookshelves in the large third-floor office. Built in a circle design, the decades-old four-story “Roundhouse” was said not to have a straight wall anywhere, including in its elevators.

  The men were First Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, whose office it was; Captain Francis Xavier Hollaran, Coughlin’s assistant; Chief Inspector Matthew Lowenstein; Captain Henry Quaire, the head of the Homicide Unit and who reported to Lowenstein; and Quaire’s number two, Lieutenant Jason Washington. All were in plainclothes.

  Carlucci was a massive—large-boned and heavyset—sixty-two-year-old with intense brown eyes and dark brown hair graying at the temples. He wore the suit he had put on for church that morning, a pin-striped gray woolen two-piece with a light blue dress shirt with white French cuffs and collar, and a red silk necktie with a matching silk pocket square.

  Before becoming mayor, Carlucci had spent twenty-six years in the Philadelphia Police Department, holding, he was quick to announce, every rank but that of policewoman. He spoke bluntly and did not suffer fools—period. When he reached across the proverbial political aisle, it usually was with an iron fist. That certainly had made him more than a few enemies, but he didn’t give a damn. He enjoyed the respect of far many others—ones who appreciated his ability to not only confront seemingly impossible problems but, more times than not, to effectively fix them.

  Carlucci stopped at the window near the big wooden desk. He turned to Coughlin, who stood behind the desk, next to the high-back black leather chair that showed years of use. Coughlin, tall and heavyset, with a full head of curly silver hair and eyes that missed nothing, projected a formidable presence.

  “Denny, where the hell did you say Ralph was?”

  “He’s the keynote speaker at the National Chiefs of Police convention.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Vegas.”

  Carlucci’s eyebrows went up. “Of course he gets to go to tony Las Vegas. I think the nicest place—and I use that loosely—that I went as commissioner was Newark.”

  There were a few chuckles.

  Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariana was the department’s top cop—the last position Carlucci had held before his retirement and being elected mayor. Both the commissioner and the first deputy commissioner served at the mayor’s pleasure, although they were appointed to their jobs by the city’s managing director. The seven thousand policemen they commanded—the country’s fourth-largest force—were all civil servants.

  Carlucci was neither surprised at Mariana’s absence nor was he angry. It was no secret that Mariana—a natty, stocky, balding Italian with four stars on his white uniform shirt—served as the face of the police department, while it was his three-star, Denny Coughlin, who effectively saw to the day-to-day running of the department.

  And it was His Honor the mayor who ultimately called the shots.

  The brass in the room had a long history—certainly professional but also to varying degrees personal—with one another. When young Philadelphia police officers showed promise, a “rabbi” quietly mentored them as they rose in the ranks, preparing them to take on greater responsibilities. Jerry Carlucci, for one example, then a captain and head of the Homicide Unit, had been Denny Coughlin’s rabbi.

  Carlucci looked from Coughlin to the others.

  “The department has run out of luck because Margaret McCain’s father . . . you are aware of who the McCains are?” he said rhetorically, continuing before anyone could answer: “For everyone’s edification, allow me to share. They’re among the Proper Philadelphians—the founders—right up there with the Whartons and the Pennypackers and the Rittenhouses. There’s the story that Michael McCain, one helluva clever lawyer who later became governor, banged heads with Ben Franklin over the way various parts of the Declaration of Independence were worded. And Will McCain, Margaret’s father, is a chip off that old block—the old man also was six-foot-something and had a hot Scottish temper. Would not surprise me if, like the old man, Will carries a gun everywhere. Hell, the McCains once owned the land that’s now the Radnor Hunt Club. So, understanding that background explains why Will does not take no for an answer. He’s like General George Patton—also a Scot—in that he gets what he wants. And what he wants right now are answers about his daughter.”

  “I sympathize with her father and his frustration,” Chief Inspector Lowenstein offered. “The McCain girl has gone to great lengths trying to become untraceable—and done so remarkably quickly. His fear is grounded, and that is without the benefit of knowing anything about the other missing caseworkers.”

  The ruddy-faced Lowenstein, who was Jewish, had a full head of curly silver hair. He was barrel-chested, large, and stocky.

  “The damn fact of the matter,” Carlucci said pointedly, “is that we essentially don’t know a thing about what happened to those two women.”

  The room was silent for a long moment. Then Coughlin came to Lowenstein’s defense.

  “It’s certainly not for lack of effort,” Coughlin said evenly, the frustration in his tone evident. “Since those first two went missing last week, Matt has had an entire unit in Special Operations quietly running down every lead.”

  Carlucci nodded.

  “I of course understand that, Denny. As well as the frustration. Yet now we’re looking for three.” He turned to Lowenstein. “It sounds as if you’ve decided that Margaret McCain is a willing participant in her disappearance.”

  “I don’t know if the word ‘willing’ is entirely accurate,” Lowenstein said, waving a sheaf of papers. “But it is looking like she could be the one making the decisions. What she’s doing seems almost planned.”

  “What’re those papers?” Carlucci said.

  “The initial responses to our electronic queries. I’m thinking that because of her job keeping track of the kids at Mary’s House, she became quite knowledgeable about electronic tethers—credit and debit cards, cell phones, E-ZPass, et cetera. She’s being careful. There’s been no signal from her personal cell phone, which could mean she has intentionally turned it off or that it has a dead battery. Her Land Cruiser’s GPS unit either is not working or has been disabled. When we queried the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, her E-ZPass account came up with no active travel through any tollbooth in the last forty-eight hours.” He paused, then went on: “And there were only two charges on any of her half dozen credit cards. Both to the same PNC MasterCard. One was for forty bucks and change at a Gas & Go near the airport. The other was made a half hour later, at two o’clock this morning, at a Center City pharmacy for more than three hundred dollars.”

  “Anything on their survei
llance cameras?”

  “We got a look at images at the Gas & Go, but they were too dark and grainy to tell if she was alone or not when she pumped gas. The pharmacy’s system was inoperable.”

  “Okay, so it sounds like she topped off her gas tank, suggesting she’s hit the road—and is avoiding tolled ones. And the other’s probably for prescriptions? They aren’t cheap.”

  Lowenstein shrugged. “Could be. If I were leaving town for a while, I’d want my meds. We should know shortly—we are waiting for a response from the store as to what its computer system says the itemized receipt shows she bought. But that’s the end of the trail. After that, there is nothing. It’s like she pulled the plug on everything.”

  “What about that stuff they’re all doing on the Internet?” Carlucci said.

  “Social media activity?”

  “Yeah. That produced a number of leads with the other two caseworkers. Is she in touch with anyone through that?”

  “It produced leads,” Coughlin put in, “but none went anywhere. The caseworkers themselves never posted anything on the Internet after they went missing.”

  “And it’s worse with the McCain girl,” Lowenstein added. “We asked everyone—friends, family, neighbors, coworkers—and every single person said Margaret never really embraced social media. She tried one or two, then gave up on them. Her mother said she didn’t think that they were worth the time, that they took away from her privacy.”

  Carlucci looked deep in thought.

  “Okay. Back up,” he then said. “When was the last time she was seen?”

  “As far as we know at this point,” Jason Washington picked up, as he pulled a notepad from his jacket, “the absolute last contact that any family or friends had with her was last night when she left dinner.” He paused and looked at his notes. “That was at Zama Sushi near Rittenhouse Square about ten-fifteen. She was with her cousin, twenty-year-old Emma Scholefield, who is a junior studying dance at University of the Arts.”

  “And did this cousin have anything to offer?” Carlucci said.

  Washington shook his head. “Not much more than Mrs. McCain had already told us she’d told her. The cousin stated that Margaret appeared absolutely normal, upbeat, her usual self. They talked mostly about her sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands and their plans for the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. When they left the restaurant, the cousin said that, as she started walking up the block toward her apartment, she saw Margaret get in her Toyota SUV and drive off toward Walnut Street. Margaret had told her she was looking forward to a good night’s sleep so she could hit the gym first thing in the morning.”

  “Which never happened.”

  “Right. Gym records show she hasn’t been there in three days.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “Mrs. McCain said that, at exactly ten thirty-one, she called Margaret’s personal cell phone, got no answer, and left her daughter a voice-mail message. At that time, according to telephone records, Margaret’s work cell phone had been connected for four minutes to the cell phone number that we believe to be the Gonzalez girl’s. It is a pay-as-you-go phone, and we do not know who purchased it.”

  “Gonzalez is the dead girl?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Carlucci considered all that, then said, “And the McCain woman’s fire alarm automatically called in at what time?”

  “Precisely at ten forty-two. That was eight minutes after the call between the work cell phone and the go-phone ended. At ten fifty-one, nine minutes after the firehouse got the call, there was one last call from what we believe was the Gonzalez go-phone to Margaret’s work cell. There have been no other calls on Margaret’s personal cell phone—as noted, it’s off for whatever reason—and none dialed on the work cell phone. The Crime Scene Unit guys found the latter, broken, in a puddle in the alley. It looked as if it had been hit hard, maybe dropped.”

  “And that go-phone?”

  “Phone company records list at least two dozen different numbers the Gonzalez go-phone dialed or texted since last night, including Margaret’s work cell phone three times in a row today just after twelve noon. We traced its signal to West Philly, to the Westpark high-rise at Forty-fifth and Market. That’s of course a Housing Authority property, one in fair shape and full. So, no way for us to pinpoint in which apartment the phone could be. Then Anthony Harris had a great idea. He drove over there and began calling the phone over and over. Some miscreant with attitude finally answered, and when Harris told said miscreant that he had the money he owed him and was waiting with it outside the gate, the miscreant hung up. Then the phone went dead, the signal turned off.”

  Carlucci grunted. “Damn. But that was worth the attempt. Has to be pretty good odds that someone owes that punk money. And, even if not, he would have taken the cash off Harris’s hands—even sending some surrogate to get it, in case he smelled it was a setup. Not grabbing the easy money must mean he’s really running scared, and that doesn’t suggest anything good.”

  “We’ve got an unmarked sitting on the Westpark high-rise, in case the phone goes live again and he hits the street,” Lowenstein said. “We also have one keeping an eye on her business, Mary’s House, and one at the residence.”

  “On the chance that the doer will return to the scene?” Carlucci asked, but it was more of a statement.

  “It’s a long shot but we’ve all seen it happen before.”

  Mayor Carlucci looked at Jason Washington.

  “What else did they find at the scene?” Carlucci said.

  “To begin with, the front door was wide open when the firefighters arrived,” Washington said. “The door showed evidence of forced entry—it’d been kicked in. But whoever did it, if they left any other fingerprints, footprints, whatever, we’ll never know. The fire department did their job quite thoroughly—drowning the blaze and trampling the crime scene. They got the fire out, and who the hell knows how much evidence. Neighbors we questioned immediately began calling it a home invasion, and repeating that to the media. We did not go out of our way to disabuse anyone of that.”

  “But?” Carlucci interrupted.

  “But here’s the problem: Who tries to cover a home invasion with Molotov cocktails? There was one broken on the kitchen’s marble counter, the other intact in the middle of the floor. Most robberies are in-and-out jobs. They don’t bother destroying the scene.” Washington pulled a folded sheet of paper from his coat and went on: “The medical examiner wrote that the Gonzalez girl did not die in the fire. The autopsy this morning found that her lungs had no fire smoke damage—and that there were two mushroomed .22s inside her cranium.” He mimed a pistol with his thumb and index finger and pointed behind his right earlobe. “Entrance wounds here. Putting a .22 behind the ear is not exactly the hallmark of a home invasion, either.”

  Glances were exchanged as they nodded agreement. They knew that a .22 caliber round, due to its low mass and velocity, was not powerful enough to penetrate the bone of a skull. But it could enter through soft tissue at the ear—then bounce around, effectively scrambling the brain and causing death more or less instantly.

  “It’s more the mark of a professional hit,” Denny Coughlin said.

  Carlucci grunted and nodded.

  “Questions then become,” Washington went on, “Why the girl? Or were they targeting Margaret and the girl got in the way? And of course if they were targeting Margaret, why did she just disappear?”

  “Who is this girl?” Carlucci said. “Gonzalez, did you say?”

  “That’s right,” Washington said. “Krystal Angel Gonzalez, age nineteen. She had an EBT card in the pocket of her blue jeans.”

  He paused, and Carlucci then nodded, affirming that he knew it was an Electronic Benefits Transfer card, which looked and worked like a plastic debit card.

  “Food stamps,” Carlucci said.

 
“Now called SNAP,” Washington went on, “for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. We ran the card, got off it her name and Social Security number, and that pulled up a hit with CPS. She’d been in and out of foster homes since age six. Before turning eighteen, her Last Known Address was in South Philly, at Mary’s House. She also had twenty-two bucks cash in her jeans—all singles, one rolled up and containing cocaine residue—and two orange fifty-dollar poker chips from Lucky Stars.”

  Washington motioned with the sheet from the medical examiner.

  “The autopsy also found evidence that she was healing from rough sexual activity,” he said. “Most likely that she’d been sexually assaulted, especially considering the welts on the back of her legs that the medical examiner believes were from a wire coat hanger.”

  Carlucci made a sour face as he shook his head.

  “Such a damn shame,” he said. “But the sad fact is that if I had a dime for every time some trick in Philly got whipped with a pimp stick, I could be living the high life like our boy Matty.” He paused. “Which reminds me, Denny, where the hell is he?”

  “To use your phrase,” Coughlin said, “he’s living the high life. They’re in the Florida Keys. Jason was just in touch with him.”

  “They?”

  Washington nodded, and explained, “Mrs. McCain gave us a list of Margaret’s friends. Amanda Law was on it. She said Amanda and Margaret had spoken since she returned from her vacation. Amanda is with Matthew, so I called him and requested that he discreetly inquire if Amanda had heard from her.”

  “Charley’s daughter, the doctor? Any truth to the rumor I heard that they’re getting married?”

  Washington nodded. “Indeed there is. They are.”

  For the first time, Carlucci’s face brightened. “Good. Her old man, like Matty’s, was as solid a cop as they come. Maybe since she understands cops she can keep ole Wyatt Earp out of the headlines.”