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“It was good of you to come, Mayor.”
"… and you have my most sincere condolences, and my…”
“This is Kenny Jr., and this is Deborah.”
“Kenny, Deborah, your father was a brave man who died a hero. You can be very proud of him.”
There was no response.
“If there is ever anything I can do for you, I want you to call me. You understand?”
Kenny Jr. and Deborah nodded their heads but didn’t look at him.
The mayor nodded at Mrs. Charlton, then turned and walked to the aisle and then down it.
His press relations officer was waiting for him in the corridor outside the viewing room.
He led the mayor to another viewing room where the press was waiting for him. The press relations officer had arranged Mariani and the other police department brass in a line against the wall, and he handed the mayor two three-by-five cards on which the essence of the announcement had been printed in large letters.
The mayor glanced at them quickly, then turned to face the press.
“This is a very sad day,” he began. “Both a citizen-a single mother of three-and a police officer have lost their lives as a result of a brutal attack that affects not only their grieving survivors but every citizen of Philadelphia.
“This sort of outrage cannot be tolerated, and it will not be. I have ordered the formation of a task force to be commanded by Inspector Peter Wohl of the Special Operations Division…”
When Matt Payne, driving the unmarked Crown Victoria, came down Pennsylvania Route 252 and approached the driveway to his parents’ home in Wallingford, he looked carefully in the rearview mirror before applying the brake. Two-fifty-two was lined with large, old pine trees on that stretch, and the drives leading off it were not readily visible. He had more times than he liked to remember come uncomfortably close to being rear-ended.
Wallingford is a small Philadelphia suburb, between Media (through which U.S. 1, known locally as the “Baltimore Pike,” runs) and Chester, which is on the Delaware River. It is not large enough to be placed on most road maps, although it has its own post office and railroad station. It is a residential community, housing families whom sociologists would categorize as upper-middle-income, upper-income, and wealthy, in separate dwellings, some very old and some designed to look that way.
Brewster Cortland Payne II had raised his family, now grown and gone, in a large house on four acres on Providence Road in Wallingford. It had been in the Payne family for more than two centuries.
What was now the kitchen and the sewing room had been the whole house when it had been built of fieldstone before the Revolution. Additions and modifications over two centuries had turned it into a large rambling structure that fit no specific architectural category, although a real estate sales-woman had once remarked in the hearing of Mrs. Patricia (Mrs. Brewster C.) Payne that “the Payne place just looked like old, old money.”
The house was comfortable, even luxurious, but not ostentatious. There was neither swimming pool nor tennis court, but there was, in what a century before had been a stable, a four-car garage. The Payne family swam, as well as rode, at the Rose Tree Hunt Club. They had a summer house in Cape May, New Jersey, which did have a tennis court, as well as a berth for their boat, a fifty-eight-foot Hatteras called F
inal Tort V.
Matt made it safely into the drive, and as he approached the house, saw a two-year-old, somewhat battered, GMC Suburban parked with one of its front wheels on the grass beside the parking area by the garage. It had been Brewster Payne’s gift to his daughter, Amelia Payne, M.D., not because she needed such a large vehicle, but in the hope that the truck-sized-and truck-strong-vehicle would keep her alive. Amy Payne’s inability to conduct a motor vehicle over the roads of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania without, on the average of once a week, at least grazing other motor vehicles, street signs, and on memorable occasion, a fire hydrant, was almost legendary.
Amy Payne was in the kitchen with her mother and Mrs. Elizabeth Newman, the Payne housekeeper, when Matt walked in. They were peeling shrimp. Amy was a not-quite-pretty young woman who wore her hair short, not for purposes of beauty but because it was easier to care for that way.
Mrs. Newman was a comfortable-looking gray-haired woman in her fifties. Patricia Payne was older than she looked at first glance. She was trim, for one thing, with a luxuriant head of dark brown, almost reddish hair, and she had the fair skin of the Irish.
“Well, if it isn’t the famous soon-to-be Sergeant Matthew Payne,” Amy greeted her brother. “How good of you to find time in your busy schedule for us.”
“Amy!” Patricia Payne protested.
“Got another fire hydrant, did you, Sigmund?” Matt said, as he walked to the table and kissed his mother.
“You were on television,” Patricia Payne said. “I guess you know.”
“That wasn’t my idea,” Matt said. “The mayor’s press guy grabbed my arm and said ‘You stand there.’ ”
“You did look uncomfortable,” his mother said. “Well, I guess congratulations are in order, aren’t they?”
“That’s what I came out to tell you,” Matt said. “How did you find out?”
“Not from you, obviously,” Amy said.
