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She laughed.
“Certainly not Johnny. After all I’ve seen what marriage does? Would you? And I don’t think I’m cut out to be an everyday mother. I have plenty of interaction with children at my ranches. Children I can really help. I’ve found that’s my real calling. And I want the money to do more of it now.”
“And to zing Mason.”
She laughed again.
“There is that,” she said, digging back in her purse and producing another miniature bottle of vodka. “Anyway, that’s far too much about me. What about you? How long are you going to continue with this cop thing?”
She reached over and pulled back on his fleece jacket, revealing the bloodstain on his shirt.
“My God, Matthew, I saw the news reports, and then someone told me that you almost died. Is catching another miserable heroin pusher worth losing your life?”
She opened the bottle and drank half of it.
He said, “Another miserable killer, slash, heroin pusher, to be precise. But you’re not the first person to make that point.”
“Well then?”
“I don’t have an answer right now. Except maybe to quote the great Marine Corps general Chesty Puller: ‘If not me, who? If not now, when?’ And I find it interesting you press the point while I’m trying to track down who killed your friend today.”
“You’ve made a lot of headlines, Matthew. You don’t need any more.”
“I might say the same about you.”
Once more Camilla Rose laughed, this time loudly. She smiled broadly.
“Touché,” she said, holding up the miniature bottle of vodka in a mock toast. She swallowed the rest, then added, “Except my headlines have been fun ones. Mine never said I almost died in some godforsaken ghetto.”
—
As Payne turned the Porsche up the brick-paved drive of The Rittenhouse, he felt his cell phone vibrate once in his pocket, indicating a new text message. He ignored it as he scanned the line of cars parked across the drive and saw that the shot-up Bentley was gone.
Before turning in to the drive, he had looked to the southern end of the park and noticed that those crime scenes were gone, too. Where the streets had been all blocked off traffic now flowed freely. Only the soot on the stone façade of the building remained, and even it looked as if it had been mostly hosed off.
If this were anywhere but Center City, he thought, the crime scene tape would be flapping in the wind for weeks, all faded and ragged.
Here, thanks to those business-funded cleaning services, everything already is tidy. It’s like nothing happened. Which is exactly the way they want it.
He stopped at the valet kiosk. There was a new crew of valets; two of whom trotted toward the car doors.
“Matthew,” Camilla Rose said, “would you be offended if I asked for a rain check on the Library? I am suddenly exhausted and there is still work to do for the gala. I really don’t think I have anything more to add to what I probably should not have shared already.” She sighed. “But this is part of the fight I’ve chosen.”
He waved off the valet approaching his door, then wrote on a business card and handed it to her.
“That’s my personal cell phone number,” he said. “The others are my work numbers. We’ll talk more later. Please call at any time if you think or hear of anything else. And let me know the soonest I can question Johnny. The first forty-eight hours are the most critical in finding a murderer.”
She nodded. “I will. Thank you.”
“Oh, and would you happen to have your brother’s number?”
“You bet your ass I do.”
She tapped on the face of her phone, then looked at the card Payne gave her, then tapped again.
Payne’s phone vibrated.
“There,” she said. “I sent you all his numbers, addresses—everything. Good luck with getting to the bastard. Let me know how else I can help.”
