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“Matthew,” Jason Washington said, “we just got a call from the Twenty-sixth District. More bodies were found a little over an hour ago. Three dead.”
“Jesus! More pop-and-drops? Wait—the Twenty-sixth? That’s north of here, not Old City.”
That news caused Harris and Rapier to look at Payne curiously.
“No, they’re not pop-and-drops in Old City,” Washington said. “In fact, quite interestingly, there’s no obvious cause of death at all with two of them. They say the third looks like he succumbed to blunt trauma. May or may not be a connection with your doer, but because Carlucci says your Op Clean Sweep gets priority, you are hereby officially in the loop.”
“Where’s the scene, Jason?”
Payne pulled out his notepad, flipped to a clean page, and wrote “Jefferson & Mascher” on it.
“On our way,” he said. “Thanks.”
[THREE]
2408 N. Mutter Street, Philadelphia Sunday, November 1, 4:35 P.M.
Michael Floyd, sitting up in the front passenger seat of the Ford Freestar, was grinning from ear to ear under the brim of Will Curtis’s grease-smeared FedEx cap.
Curtis steered the minivan off the curb. Because Mutter was a one-way street northbound, he headed for the next street up, Cumberland.
“No! No!” Michael began shouting.
Will slammed on the brakes, forcing them both against the shoulder straps of their seat belts. The FedEx cap flew off Michael’s head and landed on the dashboard.
Michael pointed over his shoulder and said, “That way.”
Curtis pointed out the windshield. “This street is one-way.”
Michael looked at him with an expression that suggested the statement was meaningless to him.
“He live that way!” Michael then said, pointing south again.
Well, Curtis thought, he probably only knows how to get there by walking.
If I drive around until I find a street that has southbound traffic, he may not have the first idea where he is.
Oh, hell. “This is a one-way street, Officer? But I was only going one way.”
Will Curtis drove up on the sidewalk, checked his mirror for traffic, then cut the steering wheel hard left to make a U-turn. He had to back up once to make the turn on the narrow street.
Curtis was somewhat surprised that they’d had no trouble driving the wrong way down Mutter, then the wrong way down Colona Street. And at Mascher Street, he was relieved to find that it was a one-way going the right direction, south. But then, a block later, at Susquehanna Avenue, they reached a dead end.
They were looking at a park.
Curtis turned to his navigator, who was pointing straight.
“There,” Michael said.
“Through the park?” Curtis said, incredulous. “Oh, for chrissake!”
“That way!” Michael said.
Well, hell, that’s the way he walks.
Then that’s the way we’ll drive.
Curtis checked for traffic, then drove across Susquehanna Avenue and hopped the curb. There was a concrete walkway crisscrossing the park, and he followed it.
