Broken Trust Read online

  “Police!” Payne shouted at her from beside the door of the Porsche, which was still open. He held the .45 in his right hand, muzzle up and trigger finger along its slide, and pointed with his left toward the building entrance. “Stay back!”

  As the woman passed Melody, the valet intercepted her and tried persuading her to return to the building.

  Payne squeezed in behind the wheel, wincing again at the sharp pain. After putting his phone and pistol on the passenger seat, he threw the stick shift into first gear, hitting the gas pedal while dumping the clutch.

  The 911 leapt into motion and went screaming around the top of the drive. He caught a glimpse of the attractive blonde forcing her way past the valet and heading toward the street.

  Payne shook his head.

  She must be crazy . . . or have a death wish.

  He laid steadily on the horn as he approached the brick drive’s exit and then turned onto the street.

  Ahead, the battered van now was racing almost side by side with the SUV. The two vehicles were quickly nearing the T intersection that was at the southwest corner of Rittenhouse Square. A line of nineteenth-century buildings loomed directly ahead. Around the corner was the brownstone with bronzed signage reading DELAWARE VALLEY CANCER SOCIETY.

  There’s no room for both to make that turn, Payne thought.

  Damn—they could hit my place.

  Payne then saw the black tube again slide out of the chromed door on the right side of the van. He waited for another shotgun blast—but then the Escalade swerved hard into the van.

  The impact caused the van to go up on the sidewalk and almost into the park. The Escalade then sharply veered right. The driver overcorrected—and the SUV slid sideways, its right tires clipping the opposite curb, causing the SUV to tip and then roll onto its roof.

  Sonofabitch! Payne thought.

  Sparks sprayed out from the Escalade as it slid down the street and then onto the sidewalk. It struck a tree and a lamppost, causing it to spin. Its rear end then slammed into the heavy stone wall of one of the two-hundred-year-old buildings. The impact compressed and then ripped open the fuel cell. Gasoline flowed out, then erupted in flames.

  The white van braked and skidded sideways as it returned to the street. It then managed to make the left turn, passing within feet of the upside-down SUV. Billows of dense black smoke now rose above the thick orange-and-red flames coming from the rear of the vehicle.

  Payne had just decided on the closest spot ahead that he could park in order to extricate whoever was in the SUV. But then he saw two blue shirts—Philadelphia police officer, detective, and corporal ranks wore uniforms with blue shirts; higher ranks, including the commissioner, wore ones of white—run out of the park and approach the scene. They passed more people who were fleeing into the park. One of the officers was yelling into the Police Radio microphone clipped to the epaulet of his shirt.

  Nearing the intersection, Payne waited until the last second before braking hard and downshifting, then shot through the turn, the all-wheel-drive sports car hugging the street as if it was riding on rails.

  He accelerated quickly after the van.

  Ahead, more people bolted from the crosswalks and sidewalks as the van approached Eighteenth Street. The van then made a right onto Eighteenth, tires squealing again as its rear end fishtailed.

  Oh shit.

  Wrong way—that’s a one-way.

  Payne scanned the intersection, looking for cross traffic. He could see across the southeast corner of the park clearly. But the building across the street on the right created a blind corner. It was impossible to see what was happening on the far side of it.

  A second later, it did not matter—the shrieking roar of tortured metal reverberated off the tall buildings as a Quaker Valley Foods six-wheeled box truck, apparently having dodged a head-on collision with the white van, came sliding up the two-lane street on its side. It then struck a pair of cars that had stopped at the light and wedged between them, completely blocking off Eighteenth to the right.

  Payne carefully approached the intersection, looking beyond the truck and two cars, but could see only a half dozen other wrecked cars and boxes of frozen meat scattered along the street.

  He smacked the top of the steering wheel with his open palm.

  “Damn it!”

  He quickly reached for his phone, connected it to the port, and thumbed the EMERGENCY prompt on the keypad.

  “Philadelphia nine-one-one,” a woman’s deep, calm voice came over the car’s audio system. “What is your emergency?”

  An image of the police 911 dispatch center flashed in his mind.

  The grimy room, in the bowels of the Police Administration Building at Eighth and Race streets, was cramped with rows of workstations holding antiquated computers, and stood in sharp contrast to the department’s high-tech Executive Command Center.

  That the dispatchers toiled in such conditions, each working an average of three hundred 911 calls over the course of an eight-hour shift, amazed him as much as he was disgusted by the petty interagency infighting at City Hall over the modernizing of the separate police, fire, and non-emergency 311 facilities.

  He knew that dispatchers had to very quickly discern which calls were genuine emergencies, and then how to properly respond to them, and which ones were, for example, pranks and worse. While bored middle school–aged kids still called in hoaxes to liven up a slow day in the neighborhood with sirens, dispatchers now also dealt with older, tech-savvy “swatters” calling in bogus hostage or active-shooter threats and giving a rival’s address so that responding police SWAT (special weapons and tactical) teams would kick down the rival’s doors, scaring the living shit out of him—or worse.

  And now Payne had no doubt the dispatch center was already lit up with a flood of legitimate calls for help from Rittenhouse Square.

  “This is Sergeant Payne,” he said, and gave the unique identifier code that would confirm him as Badge No. 471. He turned left on Eighteenth, and announced, “I’m in a black Porsche in pursuit of the vehicle involved in a shooting at Rittenhouse Square that caused two major wrecks there. Shooter’s vehicle is a white Chevy van with white magnetic signs on its doors that say KEYCOM INSTALLER . . .”

  After taking the immediate first right off Eighteenth, which was Locust, he then took the next right and headed down South Seventeenth.

  Payne kept the Porsche in second gear, repeatedly pushing the tachometer needle near redline. Its engine roared.

  “. . . Did you copy that?” Payne said.

  “Sergeant, I can barely hear you.”

  Payne raised his voice as he spoke slowly: “I repeat, Rittenhouse Square shooter is in a white Chevy van headed south—the wrong way—on South Eighteenth. I am driving a black Porsche in pursuit—”

  “Okay. Got it. Description of the doers? White? Black? Skinny? Medium build? Anything?”

  “Negative. Only the vehicle, a white Chevy with significant damage on right side and door signs reading KEYCOM INSTALLER. Also, need Fire Rescue for vehicle fire and multiple collisions at South Rittenhouse Square—”

  “Priority 1 call for service already made on the fire and collisions. Stand by.”

  Payne flew down Seventeenth, hoping he could maybe get ahead of the van and cut it off. The Porsche shot, block by block, from ten m.p.h. to nearly sixty, then back to ten as Payne slowed and looked down every cross street toward Eighteenth.

  Finally, at Spruce Street, he again stepped heavily on the brakes, looked toward Eighteenth—and saw the white van. There was no missing it, especially because it now was dragging its rear bumper. A shower of sparks flew as the bumper bounced wildly off the street.

  The van quickly turned onto Spruce, fishtailing as its rear tires lost traction. More sparks sprayed.

  Payne raised his voice: “Shooter’s vehicle now on Spruce heade
d toward South Nineteenth.”

  Payne turned and sped after the white van, relieved that at least it now was going with traffic on the one-way street.

  “Westbound Spruce at Nineteenth,” the dispatcher confirmed.

  He heard her relay that over Police Radio, then she said, “Multiple units on their way, Sergeant.”

  At Nineteenth, the traffic signal cycled red, and Payne had to cut between three cars blocking the intersection. Then, at Twentieth, he blew through the light that had just turned red, narrowly avoiding a SEPTA bus.

  He shot through the next two intersections, barely slowing to clear them, each time the car becoming light on its suspension as it crested the crown of the cross streets.

  The traffic signal at Twenty-second was about to cycle to green—he saw the DON’T WALK on the far corner, its flashing, upraised hand having turned solid red—but not in time. He had to brake hard to miss ramming a taxicab that was last through the intersection.

  Still, he saw that he was closing the distance with the van.

  As he raced even faster over Twenty-third, the street crown caused the Porsche to leave the ground. He pulled his foot completely out of the accelerator and, as a precaution, hovered it over the brake pedal as the vehicle tires returned to the street.

  He watched the van make a sliding left onto Twenty-fourth, its rear end clipping the front fender of a rusty school bus that had CHRISTIAN STREET YMCA painted on its side. The impact caused the van’s bouncing bumper to break loose. It sent out a spray of sparks as it spun beneath the engine compartment of the bus.

  “Shooter’s van now heading down Twenty-fourth just south of Spruce,” Payne announced loudly as the car decelerated from fifty.

  “Southbound Twenty-fourth between Spruce and Pine,” the dispatcher said, then repeated the information over Police Radio to the responding units.

  “Move!” Payne then muttered to himself. “Move! Move! Move!”

  As the Porsche flew up on the bus, a series of enormous clouds of black smoke belched out from under it. It then started to slide sideways, coming to a stop when the front tires struck the curb.

  “Damn it!” he said, smacking the steering wheel again.

  Payne saw a shiny black slick spreading on the asphalt.

  Bumper must have speared the oil pan, he thought. Not good . . .

  He shoved the brake pedal toward the floor and instantly felt heavy vibration kicking back through the pedal, indicating that the antilock braking system was functioning.

  The car stopped just short of the bus and the edge of the oil slick.

  Payne looked up at the bus. Above its windshield a sign read OUT OF SERVICE. The emergency flashers came on and the STOP sign swung out from its side. The tall twin glass main doors opened outward and a big man wearing what looked like mechanic’s clothing stepped out. He went to the front, where he began surveying the damage.

  “Say again, Sergeant Payne?” the dispatcher’s even voice came from the speakers.

  In the distance, he heard the overlapping Whoop-Whoop! of multiple sirens.

  “Sergeant? You okay?”

  As the distinct heavy smell of hot tire rubber and brake pads started filling the car, Payne scanned the intersection. There was no way around the bus. And no time to turn back and take another route. He knew he could never catch up to the van now.

  He shook his head in frustration.

  “Pursuit ended,” Payne announced. “Shooter’s van still at large. Last seen southbound on Twenty-fourth. I’m headed back to scene of the shooting at Rittenhouse Square.”

  “Hold one,” the dispatcher said.

  He heard the dispatcher talking over Police Radio and then heard a reply, the labored voice of a male officer speaking rapidly.

  After a moment, the dispatcher said to Payne: “Vehicle matching your description has been located on Twenty-fourth at Fitler Square. Abandoned. The units responding, ten of them, are conducting a search of the area.”

  “Thank you. Nothing further,” Payne said, then reached over to the cellular phone and ended the call.

  As he put the gearshift in reverse, the in-dash screen flashed with his phone’s caller ID. It read RITTENHOUSE REALTY. He left it unanswered.

  Damn it, he thought, looking back over his shoulder while shaking his head. And so much for Amanda’s surprise.

  [ TWO ]

  Ten minutes later, Payne turned off Twentieth Street onto the narrow, tree-lined, one-lane Rittenhouse Street. He scanned the busy scene ahead.

  Police, firefighters, and Emergency Medical Services technicians seemed to be everywhere.

  Blue shirts strung yellow POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape at the nearest corner, where the Cadillac Escalade was still on its roof. The fire was extinguished. Soot now darkened the front of the two-hundred-year-old building that the overturned SUV had struck. An acrid, burning smell hung heavy in the air.

  Next to the police tape, firemen worked with practiced precision around Engine 43 and Ladder 9 from the Market Street firehouse.

  Across the street, one fire department Emergency Medical Services Unit was departing the scene—the red-and-white ambulance’s emergency lights flashing and siren sounding—while an EMT from a second unit was administering first aid to the two blue shirts who Payne had seen running to the burning SUV.

  Another fire engine and ambulance were beyond that scene, at the farthest corner of the park at South Eighteenth, where a Tow Squad wrecker was pulling one of the cars away from the overturned wholesale-foods distributor’s truck.

  And a line of television news trucks was parked along the southern end of the park. Reporters stood facing tripod-mounted cameras, giving live reports on the damage behind them.

  Payne rolled halfway up the block, then eased the Porsche over the low curb and onto the sidewalk. He depressed the dash button that activated the flashing hazard lights and got out.

  Payne walked over to where the EMT stood with the two officers at the open rear doors of the ambulance. He saw that both officers had bloodstains all over their uniforms. The blue shirt whose black nameplate read FOSTER had his right hand neatly bandaged. The other, with a nameplate reading HARKNESS, was getting his left forearm wrapped in gauze.

  The three glanced at him. Payne flashed his badge. The EMT, a somewhat pudgy male in his twenties whose uniform showed his name was SIMPSON, nodded, then started to return his attention to wrapping the forearm before quickly looking back at Payne.

  “Is that your blood?” Simpson said.

  Payne realized he was motioning toward his belly.

  When Payne looked down, he saw that beneath his unzipped navy fleece jacket there was a fresh stain about four inches in diameter. Blood had seeped beyond the bandage and onto his white polo shirt.

  “Shit,” Payne said.

  He pulled back the jacket a little, and thought, Must have got hurt pulling the valet to the ground and didn’t notice it with everything else that’s going on.

  “You going to be okay?” the EMT said.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Payne said, letting go of the jacket. He forced a smile. “Only hurts when I breathe.”

  “You better let me have a look at it,” Simpson said as he began taping the wrapped gauze. “Soon as I’m done here.”

  “Really, it’s fine. But thanks.”

  Payne looked between the blue shirts.

  “What about you guys?” he said. “You okay?”

  They nodded.

  “Yessir,” they said over one another.

  Payne thought that the two looked like they could still be in high school. They had youthful faces, ones now caked in dried sweat and soot. Their eyes reflected the fatigue and shock that came after an enormous rush of adrenaline.

  “That’s a lot of blood,” Payne said.

  “Mostly the victim’s,” Officer Foster
said, then shook his head. “Lots of it. That was my first time responding to a really bad scene. I only got out of the academy a few months ago.”

  Simpson said, “You oughta ride with us sometime. We average twenty runs a shift. Never a dull moment.”

  Harkness stared at Payne, then his eyes grew large.

  He said, “I thought you looked familiar. You’re Sergeant Payne, right? Homicide?”

  Harkness glanced at the bloodstain.

  He said, “And that’s where you took the bullet from that fucking heroin dealer you chased down, right?”

  Payne raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  “Guilty,” he said. “And a word to the wise: Try not to stand near me. I tend to attract bullets.”

  Simpson chuckled.

  “Jesus, and you’re already back on the job?” Harkness asked. “How you doing?”

  “No need to worry about me,” Payne said, and gestured toward Harkness’s arm. “That going to be okay?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. Just scraped it up real good after cutting the driver’s seat belt free. I mean, there really was blood all over. Had no idea that it could be so slippery.”

  “So, then,” Officer Foster said, nodding toward the car, “that was you in that black Porsche, wasn’t it? Chasing the van.”

  “Yeah, looked like you guys had this scene covered—and, clearly, you did. Decided that going after the shooter was the thing to do.”

  “You get the bastard?” Foster asked.

  Payne raised his eyebrows again and shook his head.

  “Unfortunately, no. But they just found the van, abandoned, and are searching the area for the doers.”

  Then he nodded toward the Escalade.

  “Can you tell me about that scene?” Payne said. “Who was in the vehicle? Their condition?”

  “Two white males, both from Florida, who are staying at The Rittenhouse,” Foster said, and glanced at Harkness. “Me and him hauled them out right before the fire spread to the inside. Didn’t get much info before the EMTs went to work on them.”