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"What's this…" Amy asked as she took a quick glance, and then she broke off in midsentence. Almost absently, she backed away from Matt and Jerry and sat down on the side arm of her couch.
"My God!" she said, finally. "This is a sick man."
"We'd sort of figured that out," Matt said. "What we need from you is a profile."
"Who's 'we,' you and the sergeant?"
"Peter Wohl, for one. The head of the Vice President's Secret Service detail, for another."
"The Secret Service have their own psychiatrists," Amy said. "I met one of them at Menninger one time. Why me?"
"Wohl said to tell you we need a profile yesterday," Matt said. " We won't get one from the Secret Service until tomorrow. If then."
"Secret Service?" Penny said, coming back into the room with cups and saucers. "That sounds interesting!"
"That's right," Amy said, ignoring Penny, "he is coming to town, isn't he? Next week?"
"Right," O'Dowd said.
"I think I have just been more or less politely told that what's going on here is none of my business," Penny said.
Matt looked at her, saw the hurt in her eyes, and surprised himself by handing her one of the Xeroxes.
"Not to be spread around the Merion Cricket Club, okay, Penny?"
"Thank you," Penny said, and Matt understood that it was not simply ritual courtesy for having been handed a piece of paper. He glanced at O'Dowd and saw in his eyes that he did not approve of what he had done.
And you 're right, Sergeant. I should not have passed that official document to a junkie three days out of the funny farm. And I thank you for not saying so, and humiliating me in front of my sister.
"You have no idea who this man is?" Amy asked.
"None. That's why we need the profile."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"Circulate it in the Department, 'Do you know someone who fits this description?'"
"Not in public? Not in the newspapers?"
"That didn't come up," Matt said.
"Probably not," O'Dowd said. "That would tend to set off the copycats."
"Yes," Amy said thoughtfully. She looked directly at O'Dowd. "This letter doesn't give me much to go on, you understand?"
"I understand, Doctor," O'Dowd said. "But whatever you could tell us would be helpful."
He sounds like Jason Washington, Matt thought. Stroking the interviewee.
Jason Washington, late of Homicide, now a sergeant heading up Special Operations Division's Special Investigation Section, considered himself to be the best detective in the Philadelphia Police Department. So did Peter Wohl and Matt Payne.
And then as Matt watched Jerry O'Dowd skillfully draw from his sister a profile of the looney tune who wanted to blow up the Vice President, he had another series of thoughts, which ranged from humbling to humiliating:
Wohl didn't send Pekach 's driver with me so that I could ask him questions. He sent me with Jerry O'Dowd because I could get O'Dowd in to see Amy. My sole role in this was to get him into her presence. She might have, probably would have, told anyone else to call her office and arrange an appointment.
Pekach didn't pick this guy to be his driver for auld lang syne, but rather because Jerry O'Dowd is a very bright guy, an experienced detective, and now a sergeant. Both Pekach, when he volunteered O'Dowd to "drive me," and Wohl, when he accepted the offer, knew damned well O'Dowd would take over this little interview sooner or later, probably sooner, and in any event the instant Rookie Detective Payne started to fuck it up.
Penny handed him a cup of coffee.
