“I’m all right to drive,” Matt insisted, somewhat indignantly, as Lorraine led him across the FOP bar and up the stairs to the street.
Peter Wohl walked to his car, and stood outside the door until he saw Dr. Amelia Payne’s Buick station wagon come out of the alley beside the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building and drive past him.
He raised his hand in a wave, but Dr. Payne either did not see it, or ignored it. He shrugged and got in the car, started it up, and reached for the microphone in the glove compartment, realizing only then that was the wrong radio. He put the microphone back, and fumbled around on the seat for the microphone that would give him access to the Highway Band.
He became aware that a car had pulled parallel to him and stopped. He turned to look, and found a pair of Highway Patrolmen looking at him from the front seat of an unmarked Highway car.
He waved and smiled. There was no response from either cop, but the car moved off.
They either didn’t recognize me, or they did and aren’t in a particularly friendly mood toward the sonofabitch who took Highway away from Good Ol’ Mike and gave it to Dave Pekach.
He picked up the microphone, and as he did, smiled.
“Highway One, this is S-Sam One.”
“Highway One,” Pekach came back immediately. Wohl was not surprised that Pekach was up and riding around. Not only was he new to the job, and conscientious, but Pekach was used to working nights; it would take him a week, maybe longer, to get used to the idea that the Commander of Highway worked the day shift.
“I’m on Rittenhouse Square, David. Where are you? Where could we meet?”
Wohl chuckled. The brake lights on the unmarked Highway car flashed on, and the car slowed momentarily. In what he was sure was an involuntary reflex action, the driver had hit the brakes when he heard the New Boss calling Highway One. He was sure he could read the driver’s mind: I thought that was him. Now what’s the bastard up to?
“I’m on the expressway about a mile from the Manayunk Bridge,” Pekach said. “You name it.”
“You know where I live?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Wohl said, and laid the microphone down.
Pekach, in full uniform, complete to motorcyclist’s boots and Sam Browne belt festooned with shiny cartridges, was leaning on a Highway blue-and-white on the cobblestones before Wohl’s garage apartment when Wohl got there.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was working the expressway with radar for speeders, Wohl thought, and was immediately sorry. That was both unkind and not true. What David Pekach was doing was what he would have done himself in the circumstances, making the point that Highway could expect to find the boss riding around at midnight, and the second, equally important point, that he was not sneaking around in an unmarked car, but in uniform and in a blue-and-white.
Wohl pulled the nose of the LTD up to the garage and got out.
“Let me put this away, David,” he called. “And then I’ll buy you a beer. Long night?”
“I thought it was a good idea to ride around,” Pekach said.
“So do I,” Wohl said, as he unlocked the doors and swung them open. “But it’s after midnight.”
He put the car in the garage, and then touched Pekach’s arm as he led him up the stairs to the apartment.
“You seen the papers?” Pekach said.
“No, should I have?”
“Yeah, I think so. I brought you the Bulletin and the Ledger.”
“Thank you,” Wohl said. “It wouldn’t take a minute to make coffee.”
“I’m coffeed out; beer would be fine.”
“Sit,” Wohl said, pointing to the couch beneath the oil painting of the voluptuous nude, and went to the refrigerator and came back with two bottles of Schlitz. “Glass?”
“This is fine,” Pekach said, “thank you.”
“Nothing on Elizabeth Woodham?” Wohl asked. “I expect I would have heard….”
David Pekach shook his head.
“Not a damn thing,” he said. “I was so frustrated I actually wrote a speeding ticket.”
“Really?” Wohl chuckled.
“Sonofabitch came by me at about eighty, as if I wasn’t there. I thought maybe he was drunk, so I pulled him over. He was sober. Just in a hurry.”
“It’s been a long time since I wrote a ticket,” Wohl said.
“When he saw he was going to get a ticket,” Pekach said, “he got nasty. He said he was surprised a captain would be out getting people for something like speeding when we had a serial rapist and a kidnapped woman on our hands.”
“Ouch,” Wohl said.
“I felt like belting the sonofabitch,” Pekach said. “That was just before you called.”
“I had a disturbing session just before I called you,” Wohl said. “With a psychiatrist. You’ve seen that kid hanging around Bustleton and Bowler? Payne?”
“He’s Dutch’s nephew or something?”
“Yeah. Well, his sister. I let her read the files and asked her for a profile.”
“And?”
“Not much that’ll help us find him, I’m afraid. But she said—the way she put it was ‘slippery slope’—that once somebody like this doer goes over the edge, commits the first act, starts to act out his fantasies, it’s a slippery slope.”
“Huh,” Pekach said.
“Meaning that he’s unable to stop, and starts to think of himself as invincible, starts to think, in other words, that he can get away with anything. Worse, that to get the same charge, the same satisfaction, he has to get deeper and deeper into his fantasies.”
“Meaning, she doesn’t think we’re going to get the Woodham woman back alive?”
“No, she doesn’t,” Peter said. “And worse, that because he’s starting to think he’s invincible, that he’s not going to get caught, that he’ll go after somebody else, a new conquest, more quickly than he has before.”
“I’m not sure I understand that,” Pekach said.
“What she said is that the first time, after he’d done it, he was maybe ashamed and afraid he would get caught. And then when he didn’t get caught, he stopped being afraid. And he remembered how much fun it was. So he did it again, got into his fantasies a little deeper, and was a little less frightened, and a lot less ashamed.”
“Jesus!”
“What she, Dr. Payne, said was that it “evolves into frenzy.”
“She meant he loses control?”
“Yeah.”
“You think she knows what she’s talking about?”
“I’m afraid she does,” Wohl said.
“What can be done that isn’t being done?” Pekach asked.
“Tony Harris is working minor sexual offenders,” Wohl said. “He thinks this guy may have a misdemeanor arrest or two for exposing himself, soliciting a hooker, you know. Mike has been out recruiting people, and as soon as they start coming in, in the morning, I’m going to put them to work ringing doorbells for Harris.”
“If there was a van, any kind of van, in Northwest Philly tonight that got away with not coming to a complete stop, or whose taillights weren’t working, you know what I mean, I would be very surprised,” Pekach said. “But we just can’t stop every goddamned van in town, looking for a hairy white male, no further description available.”
“I know,” Wohl said.
“I went to the roll call tonight,” Pekach said, “and reminded Highway that if we catch this scumbag, it might get the goddamned newspapers, especially the goddamned Ledger, off our backs. Not that they wouldn’t be trying to catch this scumbag anyway.”
“I know,” Wohl said.
“Czernick on your back, Peter? Coughlin? The mayor?”
“Not yet,” Peter said. “But that’s going to happen.”
“What do they expect?”
“Results,” Wohl said. “I’m wide open to suggestion, David.”
“I don’t have any, sorry,” Pekach said.
“What
did you decide after tonight?” Wohl asked.
“Excuse me?”
“What shape is Highway in? Isn’t that why you were riding around?”
Pekach met Wohl’s eyes for a moment before replying.
“I went in on six calls,” he said. “One on 95, one on the expressway, both traffic violations, and the other four all over town, a robbery in progress, two burglaries, man with a gun, that sort of thing. I didn’t find a damned thing wrong with anything Highway did.”
“Did AID come up with any witnesses in the accident?”
Any accident involving a city-owned vehicle is investigated by the Accident Investigation Division of the Police Department.
“Not a damned one.”
“Well, I’ll check and make sure they keep trying,” Wohl said.
“I intended to do that, Inspector,” Pekach said, coldly.
“I didn’t mean that, David,” Wohl said, evenly, “the way you apparently thought it sounded.”
“I also let the word get out that maybe AID could use a little help,” Pekach said.
“Meaning exactly what, David?” Wohl asked, his voice now chilly.
Pekach didn’t reply; it was obvious he didn’t want to.
“Come on, David,” Wohl insisted.
Pekach shrugged.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Pekach said, “if a bunch of people in sports jackets and ties went around the neighborhood ringing doorbells. And if one of them turned up a witness, and then, anonymously, as a public-spirited citizen, called AID and gave them the witness’s name, what’s wrong with that?”
“Off-duty people in sports coats and ties, you mean, of course? Who could easily be mistaken for newspaper reporters or insurance investigators because they never even hinted they might be connected with the Police Department?”
“Of course,” Pekach said.
“Then in that case, David,” Wohl said, smiling at Pekach, “I would say that the new commander of Highway was already learning that some of the things a commander has to do can’t be found in the book.”
“I’m sorry I snapped at you before,” Pekach said. “I don’t know what the hell is the matter with me. Sorry.”
“Maybe we’re both a little nervous in our new jobs.”
“You bet your ass,” Pekach agreed, chuckling.
“You want another beer, David?”
“No. This’ll do it. Now that I had it, I’m getting sleepy.” He got up. “Something will turn up, Peter, it always does,” he said.
“I’m afraid of what will,” Wohl said. “How long do you think it will take your wife to learn that the Highway Captain doesn’t have to work eighteen hours a day?”
“Forever; I don’t have a wife,” Pekach said. “Or was that to politely tell me not to ride around?”
“It was to politely tell you to knock off the eighteen-hour days,” Wohl said.
Pekach looked at him long enough to decide he was getting a straight answer, and gave one in return.
“I think Highway is sort of an honor, Peter. I want to do it right.”
“You can do it right on say twelve hours a day,” Wohl said, smiling.
“Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”
“The difference is that you have a kindly, understanding supervisor,” Wohl said. “I have Coughlin, Czernick, and Carlucci.”
“You may have a point.” Pekach chuckled. “Good night, Peter. Thanks for the beer.”
“Thanks for the talk,” Wohl said. “I wanted to bounce what Dr. Payne said off someone bright.”
“I’m very much afraid she’s going to be right,” Pekach said, and then he added, “Don’t read those newspapers tonight. Let them ruin your breakfast, not your sleep.”
“That bad?”
“The Ledger is really on our ass, yours in particular,” Pekach said.
“Now, I’ll have to read it,” Wohl said, as he walked with Pekach to the door.
Wohl carried the beer bottles to the sink, emptied the inch remaining in his down the drain, and put them both in the garbage can under the sink.
He went to his bedroom, undressed, and then, giving into curiosity, walked naked into the living room and reclaimed the newspapers.
He spread them out on his bed, and sat down to read them.
There was a photograph of Elizabeth J. Woodham on the front page of the Ledger, under the headline: KIDNAPPED SCHOOLTEACHER. Below the picture was a lengthy caption.
* * *
Elizabeth J. Woodham, 33, of the 300 block of E. Mermaid Lane in Chestnut Hill, is still missing two days after she was forced at knifepoint into a van and driven away. Her abductor is generally believed to be the serial rapist active in Chestnut Hill.
Inspector Peter Wohl, recently put in charge of a new Special Operations Division, which has assumed responsibility for the kidnapping, was “not available for the press” for comment, and Captain Michael J. Sabara, recently relieved as commander of the Highway Patrol to serve as Wohl’s Deputy, refused to answer questions concerning Miss Woodham put to him by a Ledger reporter.
Sources believed by the Ledger to be reliable, however, have said the police have no clues that might lead them to the abductor, and no description of him beyond that of a “hairy, well-spoken white male.” [Further details and photographs on page B-3. The Police Department’s handling of this case is also the subject of today’s Ledger editorial, page A-7.]
* * *
Peter turned to the story, which contained nothing he hadn’t seen before, and then to the editorial:
* * *
HOUSECLEANING NEEDED, NOT WHITEWASH
It Is frankly outrageous, considering the millions of dollars Philadelphia’s taxpayers pour unquestioningly into their police department, that a woman can be taken from her home at knifepoint at all. It is even more outrageous that twenty-four hours after the kidnapping, the police, rather than devoting all of their time and effort to apprehending the individual responsible for the kidnapping, and rescuing a kidnapped schoolteacher, have instead elected to assign many members of the so-called elite Highway Patrol to finding witnesses willing to say that the father of the four-year-old boy killed when a stoplight-running Highway Patrol smashed into his car was at fault, not them.
It was unconscionable that Inspector Peter Wohl, a crony of Police Commissioner Czernick, who is the responsible senior police official involved, should make himself “not available” to the press. The people have a right to know how well—or how poorly—their police are protecting them.
Mayor Carlucci should replace Czernick and Wohl with police officers dedicated to protecting the public, and not to whitewashing the Highway Patrol’s unjustified, frequent, and well-documented excesses and failures. Anything less is malfeasance in office.
* * *
“Oh, shit,” Peter Wohl said, tiredly, closing the newspaper. Then he picked up the Bulletin. There were two stories about the Woodham abduction. One, a tearjerker, was written by a woman, Cheryl Davies, and chronicled the anguish of Elizabeth J. Woodham’s family and friends. She had done her homework, Peter admitted grudgingly. There was a photograph of, and the reactions of, two sixth-graders who had been in her classes.
Mickey O’Hara’s story was more or less upbeat. He wrote that Czernick had agreed to transfer to
* * *
…Staff Inspector Peter Wohl’s Just-forming new command two of the most highly respected homicide detectives, Jason Washington and Anthony Harris. Wohl, who himself enjoys a wide reputation as an investigator, has turned over the Woodham abduction to Washington and Harris, and is reported to be himself working around the clock on the investigation.
* * *
He finished reading Mickey’s story, then folded the Bulletin closed, too. He exhaled audibly, stood up, and carried the newspapers into the kitchen, intending to put them in the garbage. Then he changed his mind and simply laid them on the counter by the sink.
When he went back into his bedroom, he smashed his right fi
st into his open palm, grimaced, considered for a moment getting drunk, and wound up with his head pressing against the closed Venetian blinds on the window beside his bed.
Without knowing why he did it, he pulled on the cord, and the blinds twisted open, and he could see the Big House thirty yards away.
There were lights in only several of the windows, and he had just decided they were the windows of Two B, Chez Schneider, when there was proof. Naomi Schneider, wearing only her underpants, pranced into view, smiling happily at someone else in the room, and handing him a drink.
Without thinking about it, Peter turned off the lights in his bedroom.
“Peel him a grape, Naomi,” Peter said, aloud.
And then he wondered if Mr. Schneider had come home unexpectedly, or whether Naomi had pulled on someone else’s dong to lure him into what obviously was her bedroom.
Nice boobs!
And then a wave of chagrin hit him.
“Oh, shit,” he said. He closed the blinds quickly, turned the light on, and sat on the bed.
“You’re a fucking voyeur, you goddamned pervert! You were really getting turned on watching her boobs flop around like that.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself!
And then he had a second thought, not quite as self-critical: Or get your ashes hauled, so that you won’t get horny, peeking through people’s bedroom windows.
And then he had a third thought, considered it a moment, and then dug the telephone book from where he kept it under his bed.
Amelia Alice Payne, M.D., lived on the tenth floor of the large, luxurious apartment building on the 2600 block of the Parkway, said to be the first of its kind in Philadelphia, and somewhat unimaginatively named the 2601 Parkway.
She got off the elevator, walked twenty yards down the corridor, and let herself into her apartment.
She pushed the door closed with her rear end, turned and fastened the chain, and started to unbutton her blouse. She was tired, both from a long day, and from her long session with Staff Inspector Peter Wohl.
Special Operations Page 25
