Final Justice

by W. E. B Griffin

  He had made the quick judgment that despite his implied offer to help, Lieutenant Mueller was going to be part of the problem, not a solution.

  “I’m going to call your Lieutenant and introduce myself,” Lieutenant Mueller said, “and suggest the next time he thinks we can help Philadelphia, he call and set up an appointment.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir, I wasn’t aware that was necessary, and I don’t think Lieutenant Washington is, either.”

  “Probably not,” Mueller said, smiling. “But you’ve heard, I’m sure, Detective . . . Harris, was it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That a new broom sweeps clean.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve heard that.”

  “I’m the new broom around here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But you’re here. So how may we be of assistance?”

  “Sir, as I said, I’m working a homicide. We have a visor hat . . . like a baseball cap, without a crown, that the doer left at the scene. Our lab, specifically Mr. Richard Candelle, has been able to lift only a partial that’s probably an index finger.”

  "Candelle, you say?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I believe I have met your Mr. Candelle. African-American, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir. He is.”

  “Go on, Detective Harris.”

  “I was hoping that you could have a look at it, and see if you couldn’t find more than we have.”

  “We have, as you might not be aware, an Automated Fingerprint Identification System.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve heard that.”

  “It’s state-of-the-art technology. In the hands of an expert— I’ve been certified in its use myself—it sometimes can do remarkable things.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, we’ll have a look at it for you, Detective. And get word back to you within, possibly, seventy-two hours.”

  “Sir, I’d sort of hoped to stick around until you . . .”

  “Take a hotel room, you mean? Well, if that’s all right with your supervisor, it’s fine with me. As I say, we’re talking about three days, if things go well.”

  “I meant today, sir.”

  “That’s out of the question, I’m afraid. You just leave the evidence item with me, and we’ll get to it as soon as possible.”

  “The thing is, Lieutenant, my supervisor, Lieutenant Washington—you’re sure you don’t know him?”

  “Quite sure. I’d remember a name like that.”

  “Well, sir, Lieutenant Washington wants to ship the hat— the evidence item—to the FBI lab first thing in the morning.”

  “Well, that solves our problem then, doesn’t it? The FBI really knows how to handle this sort of thing.”

  “Thank you for seeing me, sir. And I’m sorry I didn’t have an appointment.”

  “Just don’t do it again in the future, Detective.”

  “No, sir, I won’t.”

  [FOUR]

  The airplane, a Cessna Citation, came in from over Bucks County, touched down smoothly, and began to taxi to the terminal.

  Nesfoods International had a Citation either identical to this one or very nearly identical to it. Matt’s father had told him he had to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince the Internal Revenue Service that when the Nesbitts (father and/or son) and their families rode it to Kentucky or Florida the purpose was business, not to watch the Kentucky Derby or lie on the sands of Palm Beach.

  The Citation stopped two hundred feet from them, and ground handlers went quickly to it to chock the wheels.

  The mayor, the commissioner and the monsignor started to walk toward it. The commissioner turned and signaled for Matt to come with them.

  The door rotated open, revealing stairs, as they—and a gaggle of photographers and reporters holding microphones— approached the airplane.

  Matt saw what looked like a fat woman sporting a dirty blonde pageboy haircut and wearing pajamas come quickly out of the door and down the stairs—then noticed the goatee. The man held one 35mm camera with an enormous lens in his hands, and another, with a slightly smaller lens, hung from his neck.

  He knelt to the right and aimed his camera at the door.

  Stan Colt appeared in the doorway, smiling and ducking his head.

  “Go down a couple of steps!” the fat photographer ordered.

  Colt obeyed. He carefully went down two steps, then waved and flashed a wide smile. He was wearing blue jeans, a knit polo shirt, and a Philadelphia 76ers jacket. His fans applauded. Some whistled.

  Colt came down the rest of the stairs and walked to Monsignor Schneider, who enthusiastically shook his hand and introduced him to the mayor and the commissioner, who both enthusiastically shook his hand.

  Jesus, he’s a hell of a lot smaller and shorter than he looks in the movies!

  Photographs were taken, and the momentous occasion was both recorded on videotape and flashed via satellite to at least two of Philadelphia’s TV stations, which interrupted their regular programming to bring—live—to their viewers images of Mr. Colt’s arrival.

  Matt saw that a young man his age and a prematurely gray-haired woman Matt guessed was probably in her late thirties had begun to take luggage from both the cabin and the baggage compartment. Both were stylishly dressed. Matt had no idea who they were, but presumed they had been on the airplane.

  When they had all the luggage off the plane, they began to carry it to a black GMC Yukon XL, on the doors of which was a neat sign reading “Classic Livery.”

  The side windows of the truck were covered with dark translucent plastic. Matt knew that the truck—there were several just like it—was usually used to move cadavers from hospitals to funeral homes that rented their funeral limousines from Classic Livery. He wondered if the truck was going to be able to haul all the luggage.

  The commissioner indicated the white limousine. Colt nodded, then sort of trotted over to the fans behind their barriers, shook hands, kissed two of the younger females, and then, waving, sort of trotted to the white limousine and ducked inside.

  The fat photographer got in the front seat. The mayor and the commissioner got in the back.

  “Hi!” Terry Davis said.

  He hadn’t seen her get off the Citation.

  Jesus, she looks good!

  “Hi!”

  “You’re going wherever they go from here?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said.

  “Got room for me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  He saw that she had two large pieces of what he thought of as “limp” luggage and a squarish item he thought was probably a makeup kit. Plus an enormous purse.

  “My car’s over there,” he said, gesturing in the general direction.

  “Will all this stuff fit in a Porsche?”

  “The city’s car,” he said. “It’s a Ford.”

  When he picked up her limp luggage, his left hand hurt.

  “What did you do to your face?” Terry asked, as she picked up her own bag.

  “I fell down,” Matt said, as he started to walk to the Crown Victoria.

  He saw that Detective Jesus Martinez had finally shown up; he was standing with McFadden, and they did, he thought, indeed look like Mutt and Jeff.

  “You better follow me,” Matt said, and his voice was drowned out by the roar of the Highway bikes starting up.

  “You better follow me,” Matt repeated.

  His hand hurt again when he loaded Terry’s luggage into the backseat.

  By the time Terry’d gotten in and he’d gotten the engine started, McFadden and Martinez had pulled their identical unmarked Crown Victorias in behind him.

  And the convoy had left. He could see the GMC and four assorted vehicles bearing the press bringing up the end of it, disappearing around the corner of the administration building.

  Discretion forbade racing to catch up with the convoy. He knew where it was going; he could probably catch up with it on I-95.

  But whe
n he reached the airport exit, it was barred by a line of cars stopped by two Eighth District uniforms and a sergeant apparently charged with seeing that Mr. Colt’s fans did not join the convoy.

  Matt drove to the side of the line of cars, and when he reached the head of it, reached under the dash and pushed the button that caused the blue lights under the grille to flash and the siren to start to growl.

  The uniform sergeant waved the first fan’s car through the gate, then waved Matt through the space he had occupied, with McFadden and Martinez following.

  “So tell me about the face,” Terry said when he had caught up with the convoy and was driving a stately fifty-five miles per hour down I-95 at the end of it.

  “I was trying to stop a homicidal maniac from detonating an atom bomb and ending life as we know it on our planet.”

  Terry giggled. It was an accurate synopsis of Stan Colt’s last opus.

  “And in so doing, I fell down.”

  “And landed on your face?”

  “Correct.”

  “But you caught the bad guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Stole a car, ran a red light, and slammed into a family in their van.”

  “That’s awful. But what did it have to do with you?”

  “I saw the crash. That made it my business.”

  “Stan will love that story,” Terry said.

  “Please don’t tell him,” Matt said.

  She looked at him strangely.

  “Okay. If you don’t want me to.”

  [FIVE]

  Lieutenant Luther Stecker of the Pennsylvania State Police had obviously just finished shaving when his doorbell rang, for he answered the door in a sleeveless undershirt, with a towel hanging from his neck, and with vestiges of shaving cream under his chin and near his left ear.

  He was a small and wiry man who wore what was left of his gray hair in a crew cut.

  He waited wordlessly for his caller to announce his purpose.

  “Lieutenant Stecker?” Tony Harris asked.

  Stecker nodded.

  “Sir, I’m Detective Harris from Philadelphia Homicide.” Stecker nodded and waited for Harris to go on.

  “I’m working a job, and I really need your help.”

  “This is my last day on the job. Why’d you come here?”

  “I went by the lab, sir. And saw Lieutenant Mueller.”

  And again Stecker waited expressionlessly for him to go on.

  “Lieutenant, Dick Candelle said if anybody can come up with enough points from what I’ve got, it’s you.”

  “You know Candelle?”

  “Yes, sir. We go back a while.”

  “And he couldn’t develop enough points from what you’ve got?”

  “No, sir. But all he had to work with was a partial, sir. Probably an index finger.”

  A plump, pleasant-looking woman appeared behind Stecker.

  “What?” she asked.

  “This is Detective Harris from Homicide in Philadelphia.”

  “Did you tell him this is your last day on the job, and that . . .” She looked at her watch. “. . . in an hour and ten minutes, you’re having your retirement party at the Penn-Harris? ”

  “Tell me about the job,” Stecker said.

  “Two black guys held up a Roy Rogers,” Harris said. “They killed a Puerto Rican lady.”

  “That’s terrible,” the gray haired lady said, sucking in her breath.

  “And then when a uniform—a friend of mine, nice guy, Kenny Charlton, eighteen years on the job, two kids— responded to the robbery in progress, one of the doers—who was wearing the visor hat, cap, I’ve got—stuck a .38 under his vest and blew him away.”

  Stecker didn’t say anything.

  “The only tie we have to these critters is this,” Tony said. He held up the plastic evidence bag containing the crownless visor cap.

  “That’s all? No witnesses?”

  “Nothing’s worked.”

  “Grace, why don’t you get Detective Harris a cup of coffee and a piece of cake while I put my shirt on.”

  “Luther, your party starts in an hour and ten minutes.”

  “You told me,” Lieutenant Stecker said.

  [SIX]

  The chancellery of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was prepared for the “photo op” presented by Mr. Stan Colt paying a courtesy call upon the cardinal.

  The cardinal “just happened” to be on the ground floor of the chancellery as the Highway bikes, Lieutenant McGuire’s unmarked car, the white Lincoln limousine, and the mayoral Cadillac limo rolled up it. That permitted the recording for posterity of images of the cardinal warmly greeting Mr. Colt as he got out of the limo.

  The Hon. Alvin W. Martin had to move quickly to get in that shot, but he made it.

  The cardinal, the mayor, and Mr. Colt, preceded by the fat photographer in the pageboy haircut, then entered the building. Lieutenant McGuire trotted after them, turned at the door, spotted Matt getting out of his car, and signaled for him to come along.

  “Are you going in there?” Matt asked Terry Davis.

  “That’s what I get paid for,” she said.

  When they reached the cardinal’s office, there was a delegation of faculty from West Catholic High School lined up to shake Mr. Colt’s hand and to welcome him back to his alma mater. The mayor didn’t manage to get in that shot, but he did manage to get in another shot in front of the cardinal’s desk, of the cardinal, the principal of West Catholic, Monsignor Schneider, and Mr. Colt.

  Then, after shaking hands a final time, Mr. Colt, again preceded by the fat photographer moving backward and frantically snapping pictures, left the cardinal’s office.

  Mr. Colt stopped when he saw Terry Davis.

  “Where’s the homicide detective?” he demanded.

  Terry pointed at Matt.

  Mr. Colt’s eyebrows rose in surprise, or disbelief, and then he moved on.

  As the procession went back through the lobby, Matt heard the engines of the Highway bikes roar to life.

  The mayor of Philadelphia shook Mr. Colt’s hand a final time, said he looked forward to seeing him a little later, and then walked back to the mayoral limousine.

  Mr. Colt paused as he was about to enter the limousine, spotted Terry Davis, and called: “He’s going to be at the hotel, right?”

  “Right, Stan,” Terry called back.

  Mr. Colt nodded, then got in the white limousine.

  The fans who had somehow learned that Mr. Colt would be staying at the Ritz-Carlton and had waited there in hopes of seeing him, and perhaps even getting his autograph, touching him, or perhaps coming away with a piece of his clothing, were disappointed.

  All they got was a smile and a wave, as—preceded yet again by the fat photographer running backward—Colt went quickly into the hotel and through the lobby to a waiting elevator.

  Stan Colt was sprawled on a couch in the sitting room of his suite, taking a pull from a bottle of beer from the Dock Street Brewery, when Lieutenant McGuire, Sergeant Payne, and Miss Terry Davis were ushered into his presence by the gray-haired, stylishly dressed woman Matt had seen carrying luggage from the Citation.

  The stylishly dressed young man from the airport was talking on a telephone on a sideboard.

  “With that out of the way, Terry, what’s next?” Stan Colt greeted them.

  “There’s a cocktail party at the Bellvue-Stratford—it’s right around the corner . . .”

  “I know where it is, sweetheart. I’m from here.”

  “. . . at six-thirty. Black tie. The limo will be here at six-fifteen. ”

  “Where the hell did that virginal white one come from?”

  “You want another color?” Terry asked.

  Colt pointed to the young man on the telephone.

  “That’s what Lex is doing,” he said. “Getting a black one.”

  “The cocktail party will be over at seven-thirty, which leaves the question of din
ner open. I think you can count on at least one invitation.”

  “Let me think about that,” he said.

  He recognized Lieutenant McGuire for the first time.

  “You’re the security guy, right?”

  “I’m Lieutenant McGuire of Dignitary Protection, Mr. Colt.”

  Mr. Colt’s somewhat contemptuous shrug indicated he considered that a distinction without a difference.

  “And you’re the Homicide detective, right?”

  “I’m Sergeant Payne.”

  “But Homicide, right? You’re the guy that was in the gun battle in Doylestown Monsignor Schneider told me about?”

  Matt nodded.

  “No offense, but you don’t look the part.”

  “Perhaps that’s because I’m not an actor,” Matt said.

  “You look—and for that matter sound like—you’re a WASP from the Main Line.”

  “Do I really? Maybe that’s because I am indeed a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant who was raised in Wallingford; that’s not the Main Line, but I take your point.”

  Matt saw that Lieutenant McGuire was being made very uncomfortable by the exchange.

  “Why am I getting the feeling, Sergeant,” Colt asked, “that you would rather be somewhere else?”

  “You’re perceptive?”

  Colt chuckled.

  “You want to tell me what you’d rather be doing?”

  “I was working a Homicide before the commissioner assigned me to sit on you.”

  “ ‘Sit on’ me? That sounds a little erotic. Kinky. You know?”

  “It means that my orders are to see that you don’t do anything while you’re here that will embarrass in any way anybody connected with this charitable gesture of yours.”

  “For example?”

  “Payne!” Lieutenant McGuire said, warningly.

  “Let me put it this way, Mr. Colt,” Matt said. “As long as you’re in Philadelphia, the virtue of chastity will have to be its own reward for you.”

  Terry Davis giggled.

  “You telling me, I think, that I don’t get to fool around?” Colt asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “Not even a little.”

  “You understand who I am?”

  “That’s why you don’t get to fool around, even a little.”