Special Operations

by W. E. B Griffin

  “They said all they have so far is what I just gave you,” Quaire said.

  “If they call back,” Wohl said, “get it to me right away, will you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Quaire said, his tone showing annoyance.

  That was stupid of me, Wohl thought. I shouldn’t have told Quaire how to do his job.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it came out, Henry,” Wohl said. “Sorry.”

  There was a pause, during which, Wohl knew, Henry Quaire was deciding whether to accept the apology.

  “The last time we dealt with Quakertown, they were a real pain in the ass, Inspector,” Quaire said, finally. “Resented our intrusion into their business. But I know a Trooper Captain in Harrisburg….”

  Wohl considered that a moment.

  “Let’s save him until we need him, Henry,” he said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky this time.”

  “Call me if you think I can help,” Quaire said.

  “Thanks very much, Henry,” Wohl said. “I’ll keep you advised.”

  “Good luck,” Quaire said, and hung up.

  Wohl looked up at Washington.

  “I’ll get up there just as fast as I can,” Washington said. “I’m wondering if I need Tony up there, too.”

  “Whatever you think,” Wohl said.

  “Would it be all right if I took the kid with me?” Washington said.

  It took Wohl a moment to take his meaning.

  “Payne, you mean? Sure. Whatever you need.”

  “It’s in the sticks,” Washington explained. “He might be useful to use the phone….”

  “You can have whatever you want,” Wohl said. “You want a Highway car to go with you?”

  “No, the kid ought to be enough,” Washington said. “Highway and the Troopers have never been in love. Would you get in touch with Tony and tell him, and let him decide whether he wants to go up there, too?”

  “Done.”

  “Maybe I can get a description of this sonofabitch anyway,” Washington said. “Or the van.”

  “I was afraid we’d get something like this,” Wohl said.

  “It’s not like Christmas finally coming is it?” Washington said, and walked out of Wohl’s office.

  Matt Payne was sitting at an ancient, lopsided table against the wall beside Sergeant Ed Frizell’s desk, typing forms on a battered Underwood typewriter.

  “Come on with me, Payne,” Washington said.

  Matt looked at him in surprise, and so did Sergeant Ed Frizell.

  “Where’s he going with you?” Frizell said.

  “He’s going with me, all right?” Washington said, and took Matt’s arm and propelled him toward the door.

  “I need him here,” Frizell protested.

  “Tell Wohl your problem,” Washington said, and followed Matt outside.

  “You know Route 611? To Doylestown, and then up along the river to Easton?” Washington asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  “You drive,” Washington said.

  Matt got behind the wheel.

  “Take a right,” Washington ordered, “and then a left onto Red Lion.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said, and started off.

  There was a line of cars stopped for a red light at Red Lion Road. Matt started to slow.

  “Go around them to the left,” Washington ordered. “Be careful!”

  And then he reached down and threw a switch. A siren started to howl.

  “Try not to kill us,” Washington ordered. “But the sooner we get out there, the better. Maybe we can find this sonofabitch before he does it again.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The State Troopers found Miss Woodham,” Washington said. “Mutilated. Dead, of course. In the sticks.”

  Matt edged into the intersection, saw that it was clear, and went through the stop sign.

  My God, I’m actually driving a police car with the siren going, on my way to a murder!

  “Are you sure you’d rather not drive, Mr. Washington?” Matt asked.

  “You have to start somewhere, Payne. The first time I was driving and my supervisor turned on the light and siren, I was sort of thrilled. I felt like a regular Dick Tracy.”

  “Yeah,” Matt Payne said, almost to himself, as he pulled the LTD to the left and, swerving into and out of the opposing lane, went around a UPS truck and two civilian cars.

  Sergeant Ed Frizell stood in Inspector Wohl’s doorway and waited until he got off the telephone.

  “Sir, am I going to get Payne back? Detective Washington just took him off somewhere, and I have all those—”

  “You’ll get him back when Washington’s through with him. You better find Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and tell them Payne might not be back by the time he’s supposed to be at the Peebles residence.”

  “Yes, sir,” Frizell said, disappointed, and started to leave.

  “Wait a minute,” Wohl said. “There’s something else.” He had just that moment thought of it.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get somebody on the Highway Band and ask them to get me a location on Mickey O’Hara. I mean me, say ‘W-William One wants a location on Mickey O’Hara.’”

  “He might be hard to find, sir. Wouldn’t it be better to put it out on the J-Band? And have everybody looking for him?”

  “I think Mickey monitors Highway,” Wohl said.

  “Can I ask what that’s all about, Inspector?”

  “Put it down to simple curiosity,” Wohl said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  And then, as Frizell closed the door, Wohl thought of something else, and dug out the telephone book.

  “Dr. Payne,” Amelia Alice Payne’s voice came over the line.

  “Peter Wohl,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, and he sensed that her voice was far less professional, more—what? girlish—than it had been a moment before.

  “I called to break our date,” he said.

  “I wasn’t aware that we had one,” she said, coyly.

  “We had one for dinner,” he said. “I remember.”

  “So do I,” she confessed. “I was waiting for you to call.”

  “The State Police called,” he said.

  “They found the Woodham woman,” Amy said. “Oh, God!”

  “They found the mutilated body of a woman who may be Miss Woodham,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “In the sticks. Bucks County. Near the Delaware River. Way up.”

  “Mutilated? How?”

  Now she sounds like a doctor again.

  “I don’t know that yet,” Wohl said. “I just sent a detective up there.”

  I did not mention Matt Payne, he decided, because her next question would probably be a challenging “why?”

  “This is another of those times I hate having to say, ‘I told you so,’” Amy said.

  “It’ll take him an hour, an hour and a half to get there and have a quick look. I’ve been reminded that the State Troopers aren’t always as cooperative as they could be. I may have to go up there myself and wave a little rank around. So that blows our dinner, I’m afraid.”

  “I’d like to see the body,” Amy said.

  I know she’s a doctor, a shrink, so why did that shock the shit out of me?

  “How was she killed?” Amy went on, without waiting for a reply.

  “I don’t know that, either,” Wohl said. “Or even where. All I know is what I told you.”

  “Where did they find the body?”

  “In a summer cottage,” he said.

  “Maybe if I could look around,” Amy said. “Oh, I don’t know. I might just be butting in and getting in the way. But you have to find that man, Peter.”

  “If this body is Miss Woodham,” he said.

  “Well, what do you think?” she asked, sharply.

  “I think it’s going to prove to be her,” Wohl said. “I have nothing to back up that feeling, of course. It very well could be someone else.”

  “A
nd thanks but no thanks, huh? Peter, you came to me! I didn’t ask to become involved in this.”

  “Could you get off to go up there with me? Presuming I have to go? In say an hour and a half?”

  “I don’t want to butt in.”

  “I’m asking for your help,” Wohl said. “Again.”

  “Yes, I could,” she said. “I’ll just cancel my appointments, that’s all.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” he said, “as soon as I hear from Washington.”

  “From Washington?”

  “That’s the detective’s name,” Wohl said.

  “Oh.” She chuckled.

  “There’s a flock of nice restaurants up there,” he said. “We can have dinner in the country, if you’d like.”

  “Are they run by gangster men of honor, or would you actually have to pay for it?”

  “Jesus, you’re something,” he said. “There goes my other phone. I’ll call you.”

  His caller was an indignant Inspector from the Traffic Division who had wrecked his car, sent someone to get him another from the motor pool, and been informed that Peter Wohl’s Special Operations Division had, in the last three days, taken all the available new cars. Peter’s explanation that they had drawn what cars the motor pool had elected to give them did not mollify the Inspector from Traffic.

  The next call, which came in while the Traffic Inspector was still complaining, was from Mickey O’Hara.

  “I understand that you’re looking for me,” Mickey said. “What’s up, Peter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit, I heard the call.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wohl said. “I thought you had called to demand to know what, if anything, has developed in the Woodham kidnapping.”

  There was a pause.

  “Okay,” Mickey said. “What if anything has developed in the Woodham case?”

  “Well, since you put that to me as a specific question, which is not the same thing as me volunteering information to one favored representative of the press, I suppose I am obliged to answer it. The State Police have found a body near Durham, Bucks County, 4.4 miles west of US 611 on US 212, which they feel may be that of Miss Woodham.”

  “When?”

  “They reported the incident to the Philadelphia Police less than an hour ago,” Wohl said.

  “Anybody else have this?”

  “Since no one has come to me, as you did, Mr. O’Hara, with a specific question that I am obliged to answer, I have not mentioned this to anyone outside the Police Department.”

  “Thanks, Peter,” Mickey O’Hara said, “I owe you one.”

  The line went dead.

  Wohl broke the connection with his finger and dialed first Chief Coughlin’s number and told him what had happened and what (minus Mickey O’Hara) he had done about it. And then he called Commissioner Czernick and told him the same thing.

  Then he called Sergeant Frizell in and told him to have a Highway Patrolman take one of the new cars over to Inspector Paul McGhee in Traffic with the message that he could have the use of it until a car was available to him from the motor pool.

  Then he settled down to deal with the mountain of paperwork on his desk until such time as Washington checked in.

  A mile the far side of Willow Grove, Jason Washington switched off the siren.

  “If this is Miss Woodham,” he said. “And we won’t know until we get a look at the body—maybe not even then, maybe not until we get her dental records, they didn’t say how badly she was mutilated, only that she had been—this may be the first break we’ve had in this job.”

  “I don’t understand,” Matt said. He had been thinking that it was suddenly very quiet in the car, even though the speedometer was nudging eighty.

  “Well, maybe somebody saw a van drive in. The site is supposed to be a summer cottage on a dirt road; in other words, not a busy street. People might have noticed. Maybe we can get an identification on the van, at least the color and make. If it’s a dirt road, or there’s a lawn, or some soft dirt, near the cottage, maybe we can get a cast and match it against the casts on Forbidden Drive—do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said. “When I Xeroxed the reports, I read them.”

  “If we get a match on tire casts, that would mean the same vehicle. If we can get a description of the van, that would help. If he brought her out here in a van, and if the body they have is Miss Woodham. And obviously, he has some connection with the summer cottage. I mean, I don’t think he just drove around looking for someplace to take her; he knew where he was taking her. So we start there. Who’s the owner? Our guy? If not, who did he rent it to? Does he know a large, hairy, well-spoken white male? Do the neighbors remember seeing anybody, or anything? Hell, we may even get lucky and come up with a name.”

  Matt wondered if Washington was merely thinking out loud, or whether he was graciously showing him how things were done. The former was more likely; the latter quite flattering.

  “I see you got rid of the horse pistol in the shoulder holster,” Washington said.

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said. “I bought a Chief’s Special.”

  “After I told you that, I had some second thoughts,” Washington said.

  “Sir?”

  “What kind of a shot are you?” Washington said.

  “Actually, I’m not bad.”

  “I was afraid of that, too,” Washington said. “Listen, I may be just making noise, because the chances that you would have to take that pistol out of its holster—ankle holster?”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt replied.

  “The chances that you will have to take that snub-nose out of its holster range from slim indeed to nonexistent, but there’s always an exception, so I want to get this across to you. The effective range, if you’re lucky, of that pistol is about as long as this car. If you, excited as you would be if you had to draw it, managed to hit a man-sized target any farther away than seven yards, it would be a miracle.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said.

  “I don’t expect you to believe that,” Washington said.

  “I believe you,” Matt said.

  “You believe that ‘what ol’ Washington says is probably true for other people, but doesn’t apply to me. I’m a real pistolero. I shot Expert in the service with a .45.’”

  “Well, I didn’t make it into the Marines,” Matt said. “But I did shoot Expert with a .45 when I was in the training program.”

  “Do me a favor, kid?”

  “Sure.”

  “The next time you’ve got a couple of hours free, go to a pistol range. Not the Academy Range, one of the civilian ones. Colosimo’s got a good one. Take that Chief’s Special with you and buy a couple of boxes of shells for it. And then shoot at a silhouette with it. Rapid fire. Aim it, if you want to, or just point it—you know what I’m talking about, you know the difference?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And then count the holes in the target. If you hit it—anywhere, not just in the head or in the chest—half the time, I would be very surprised.”

  “You mean I should practice until I’m competent with it?” Matt asked.

  “No. That’s not what I mean. The point I’m trying to make is that Wyatt Earp and John Wayne couldn’t shoot a snub-nose more than seven yards, nobody can, and expect to hit what they’re shooting at. I want you to convince yourself of that, and remember it, if—and I reiterate—in the very unlikely chance you ever have to use that gun.”

  “Oh, I think I see what you mean,” Matt said.

  “I hope so,” Washington said. “My own rule of thumb is that if he’s too far away to belt in the head with a snub-nose, he’s too far away to shoot.”

  Matt chuckled.

  “Where the hell are we?” Washington said. “We should be in Canada by now. Pull in the next gas station and ask for directions.”

  Route 212, a two-lane, winding road, was fifteen miles from the gas station. They
had no trouble finding the dirt road 4.4 miles from the intersection of 611 and 212. There were a dozen cars and vans parked on the shoulder of the road by it, some wearing State Trooper and Bucks County Sheriff’s Department regalia, and others the logotypes of radio and television stations.

  A sheriff’s deputy waved them through on 212, and advanced angrily on the car when Matt turned on the left-turn signal.

  “Crime scene,” the deputy called when Matt rolled the window down.

  “Philadelphia Police,” Washington said, showing his badge. “We’re expected.”

  “Wait a minute,” the deputy said and walked to a State Trooper car. A very large Corporal in a straw Smokey the Bear hat swaggered over.

  “Help you?”

  “I hope so,” Washington said, smiling. “We’re from Homicide in Philadelphia. We think we can help you identify the victim.”

  “The Lieutenant didn’t say anything to me,” the Corporal said, doubtfully.

  “Well, then, maybe you better ask Major Fisher,” Washington said. “He’s the one that asked us to come up here.”

  The Corporal looked even more doubtful.

  “Look, can’t you get him on the radio?” Washington said. “He said if he wasn’t here before we got here, he’d be here soon. He ought to be in radio range.”

  The Corporal waved them on.

  When Matt had the window rolled back up, Washington said, “I guess they have a Major named Fisher. Or Smokey thought that he better not ask.”

  Matt looked at Washington and laughed.

  “You’re devious, Mr. Washington,” he said, approvingly.

  “The first thing a good detective has to be is a bluffer,” Washington said. “A good bluffer.”

  The road wound through a stand of evergreens and around a hill, and then they came to the cabin. It was unpretentious, a small frame structure with a screened-in porch sitting on a plot of land not much larger than the house itself cut into the side of a hill.

  There was a yellow CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tape strung around an area fifty yards or so from the house. There was an assortment of vehicles on the shoulders of the road, State Trooper and Sheriff’s Department cars; a large van painted in State Trooper colors and bearing the legend STATE POLICE MOBILE CRIME LAB; several unmarked law-enforcement cars, and a shining black funeral home hearse.