Assignment of detectives to conduct investigations, called jobs, was on a rotational basis. As jobs came in, they were assigned to the names next on the list. Once assigned a job, a detective would not be assigned another one until all the other detectives on the wheel had been assigned a job, and his name came up again.
The next name on the wheel was that of a detective Mort Shapiro privately thought of as Harry the Farter. Harry, aside from his astonishing flatulence, was a nice enough guy, but he was not too bright.
What Amay had just called in was not the sort of job that should be assigned to detectives like Harry the Farter, if there was to be any real hope to catch the doer. The name below Harry the Farter’s on the wheel was that of Richard B. “Dick” Hemmings, who was, in Mort Shapiro’s judgment, a damned good cop.
Shapiro opened the shallow drawer in the center of his desk, and took from it a report of a recovered stolen motor vehicle, which had come in several hours before, and which Detective Shapiro had “forgotten” to assign to a detective.
When a stolen motor vehicle is recovered, or in this case, found deserted, a detective is assigned to go to the scene of the recovery to look for evidence that will assist in the prosecution of the thief, presuming he or she is ultimately apprehended. Since very few auto thefts are ever solved, investigation of a recovered stolen motor vehicle is one of those time-consuming futile exercises that drain limited manpower resources. It was, in other words, just the sort of job for Harry the Farter.
“Harry!” Mort Shapiro called, and Harry the Farter, a rather stout young man in his early thirties, his shirt showing dark patches of sweat, walked across the squad room to his desk.
“Jesus,” Harry the Farter said when he saw his job. “Another one?”
Shapiro smiled sympathetically.
“Shit!” Harry the Farter said, broke wind, and walked back across the squad room to his desk. When, in Shapiro’s judgment, Harry the Farter was sufficiently distracted, Shapiro got up and walked to the desk occupied by Detective Hemmings, who was typing out a report on an ancient manual typewriter. He laid a hand on his shoulder and motioned with his head for Hemmings to join him at the coffee machine.
“Amay just called in,” Shapiro said after Hemmings had followed him to the small alcove holding the coffee machine. “We’ve got another rape, it looks like, on Forbidden Drive by the Bell’s Mill bridge over the Wissahickon.”
Hemmings, a trim man of thirty-five, just starting to bald, pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows.
“Amay said that he could use some help protecting the crime scene,” Shapiro said. “I just gave Harry a recovered stolen vehicle.”
Hemmings nodded his understanding, then walked across the room to a row of file cabinets near Shapiro’s desk. He pulled one drawer open, reached inside, and came out with his revolver and ankle holster. He knelt and strapped the holster to his right ankle. Then he went to Shapiro’s desk, opened the center drawer, and took out a key to one of the Northwest Detectives unmarked cars, then left the squad room.
Shapiro, first noting with annoyance but not surprise that Harry the Farter was still fucking around with things on his desk and had not yet left, entered the Lieutenant’s office, now occupied by the tour commander, Lieutenant Teddy Spanner.
“Amay called in an attempted criminal rape, kidnapping, et cetera,” Shapiro said. “It looks as if our scumbag is at it again. I gave it to Hemmings.”
“Where?” Spanner asked.
“Forbidden Drive, by the bridge over the Wissahickon.”
“Who’s next up on the Wheel?” Spanner said.
“Edgar and Amay,” Shapiro said.
“What’s Harry Peel doing?” Lieutenant Spanner asked.
“I just sent him on a recovered stolen vehicle,” Shapiro said.
Spanner met Shapiro’s eyes for a moment.
“Well, send Edgar if he’s next up on the Wheel, over to help, and tell him to tell Amay to stay with it. Or, I will. I better go over there myself.”
“Yes, sir,” Mort Shapiro said, and walked back across the squad room to his desk, where he sat down and waited for the next job to come in.
Officer Bill Dohner used neither his siren nor his flashing lights on the trip to the Chestnut Hill Hospital Emergency Room. For one thing, it wasn’t far, and there wasn’t much traffic. More importantly, he thought that the girl was upset enough as it was without adding the scream of a siren and flashing lights to her trauma.
“You just stay where you are, miss,” Dohner said. “I’ll get somebody to help us.”
He got out of the car and walked quickly through the doors to the Emergency Room.
There was a middle-aged, comfortable-looking nurse standing by the nurse’s station.
“I’ve got an assaulted woman outside,” he said. “All she has on is a blanket.”
The nurse didn’t even respond to him, but she immediately put down the clipboard she had been holding in her hands and walked quickly to a curtained cubicle, pushing the curtains aside and then pulling out a gurney. She started pushing it toward the doors. By the time she got there, she had a licensed practical nurse, an enormous red-haired woman, and a slight, almost delicate black man in a white physician’s jacket at her heels.