"I know," Pekach said. "It's beautiful!"

She turned and walked away from him. He saw her bending down to lift the edge of the carpet by the door. She returned with a key and used it to unlock the case. Almost reverently, she took the rifle from its padded pegs and handed it to Pekach.

"I don't think I should touch it," he said. "There's liable to be acid on my fingertips from perspiration."

"I'll wipe it before I put it back, silly," Martha Peebles said. When he still looked doubtful, she said, "I know Daddy would want you to."

He reached to take the gun, and as he did so, his fingers touched hers and she recoiled as if she was being burned, and he almost dropped the rifle.

But he didn't, and when, after an appropriately detailed and appreciative examination of the piece, he handed it back to her, their fingers touched again, and this time she didn't seem to recoil from his touch; quite the contrary.

"So what does Mr. Walton Williams have to say about the burglaries of the Peebles residence?" Staff Inspector Peter Wohl inquired, at almost the same moment Martha Peebles handed Captain David Pekach the 1893 wild cherry-stocked Ludwig Hamner Remington rolling-blockSchuetzen rifle.

"We had a little trouble finding him, Inspector," Officer Charley McFadden replied.

"But you did find him?"

"No, sir," McFadden said. "Not really."

"You didn't find him?" Wohl pursued.

"No, sir. Inspector, we was in every other fag bar in Philadelphia, last night."

"Plus the bar in the FOP?" Wohl asked.

"We met Payne there is all, Inspector," McFadden said.

"Oh, I thought maybe you thought you would find Mr. Williams hanging around the FOP."

"No, sir. It was just a place to meet Payne."

"So you had nothing to drink in the FOP?"

"Hay-zus didn't," Charley said.

"Does that mean that you and Payne had a drink? A couple of drinks?"

"We had a couple of beers, yes, sir."

"Payne can't hold his liquor very well, can he?"

"He put it away all right last night, it seemed to me," McFadden said.

"In the FOP, or someplace else?"

"We had to order something besides a soda when we was looking for Williams, sir."

"Hay-zus, too?"

"Hay-zus doesn't drink," McFadden said.

"I thought you just said, or implied, that to look credible in the various bars and clubs in which you sought the elusive Mr. Williams, it was necessary to drink something other than soda."

"I don't know how Hay-zus handles it, sir."

"Weren't you with him?"

"No, sir. We split up. Hay-zus took the plain car, and I took Payne and we looked in different places."

"Using a personal vehicle?"

"Yes, sir."

"Must have been fun," Wohl said. "To judge by the way Payne looks and smells this morning."

"He looked all right to me when we went home," Charley said.

"I'll take your word for that, Officer McFadden," Wohl said. "Far be it from me to suggest that you would consider yourself to be on duty with a bellyful of booze and impaired judgment."

"Yes, sir," McFadden said.

"I have a theory why you were unable to locate Mr. Williams last night," Wohl said. "Would you care to hear it?"

"Yes, sir," McFadden said.

Wohl glared at Jesus Martinez.

"May I infer from your silence that you are not interested in my theory, Officer Martinez?"

"Yes, sir. No, sir. I mean, yes, sir, I'd like to hear your theory."

"Thank you," Wohl said. "My theory is that while you, McFadden, and Payne were running around town boozing it up on what you erroneously believed was going to be the taxpayer's expense, and you, Martinez, were doing-I have no idea what-that Mr. Williams went back to Glengarry Lane and burglarized poor Miss Peebles yet one more time. You did hear about the burglary?"

"Yes, sir," Martinez said. "Just before we came in here."

"Miss Peebles is not going to be burglarized again," Peter Wohl said.

"Yes, sir," they replied in chorus.

"Would either or both of you be interested to know why I am so sure of that?"

"Yes, sir," they chorused again.

"Because, from now until we catch the Peebles burglar, or hell freezes over, which ever comes sooner, between sundown and sunup, one of the three of you is going to be parked somewhere within sight and sound of the Peebles residence."

"Sir," Martinez protested, "he sees somebody in a car, he's not going to hit her house again."

"True," Wohl said. "That's the whole point of the exercise."

"Then how are we going to catch him?" Martinez said.

"I'll leave that up to you," Wohl said. "With the friendly advice that since however you were going about that last night obviously didn't work, that it might be wise to try something else. Are there any questions?"

Both shook their heads no.

Wohl made a gesture with his right hand, which had the fingers balled and the thumb extended. Officers McFadden and Martinez interpreted the gesture to mean that they were dismissed and should leave.

When they were gone, and the door had been closed after them, Captain Michael J. Sabara, who had been sitting quietly on the couch, now quietly applauded.

"Very good, Inspector," he said.

"I used to be a Highway Corporal," Wohl said. "You thought I'd forgotten how to eat a little ass?"

"They're good kids," Sabara said.

"Yes, they are," Wohl said. "And I want to keep them that way. Reining them in a little when they first get here is probably going to prevent me from having to jump on them with both feet a little down the pike."

EIGHTEEN

"What we're going to do," Officer Jesus Martinez said, turning to Officer Charles McFadden as they stood at the urinals in the Seventh DistrictPOLICE PERSONNEL ONLY men's room, "is give your rich-kid rookie buddy the midnight-to-sunup shift."

"What are you pissed at him for?" Charley McFadden asked.

"You dumb shit! Where do you think Wohl heard that you two were boozing it up last night?"

"We wasn't boozing it up last night," McFadden argued.

"Tell that to Wohl," Martinez said, sarcastically.

"If we make him work from midnight, then who's going to be staking out the house from sunset to midnight? Somebody's going to have to be there."

McFadden's logic was beyond argument, which served to anger Martinez even more.

"That sonofabitch is trouble, Charley," he said, furiously. "And he ain'tnever going to make a cop."

"I think he's all right," McFadden said. "He just don't know what he' s doing; is all. He just came on the job, is all."

"You think what you want," Martinez said, zipping up his fly. "Be an asshole. Okay. This is what we'll do: We'll park Richboy outside the house from sunset to midnight. We'll go look for this Walton Williams. Then we'll split the midnight to sunrise. You go first, or me, I don't care."

"That would make him work what-what time is sunset, six? Say six hours, and we would only be working three hours apiece."

"Tough shit," Martinez said. "Look, asshole, Wohl meant it: until we catch this Williams guy, we're going to have to stake out the house from sunset to sunrise. So the thing to do is catch Williams, right? Who can do that better, you and me, or your rookie buddy? Shit, he don't even know where to look, much less what he should do if he should get lucky and fall over him."

Sergeant Ed Frizell raised the same question about the fair division of duty hours when making the stakeout of the Peebles residence official, but bowed to the logic that Officer Payne simply was not qualified to go looking for a suspect on his own. And he authorized three cars, one each for what he had now come to think of as Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the Kid. He also independently reached the conclusion that unless Walton Williams was really stupid, or maybe stoned, he would spot the car sitting on Glengarry Lane as a police car, and would not attempt to burglarize the Peebles residence with it there. And that solved the problem of how just-about-wholly inexperienced Matt Payne would deal with the suspect if he encountered him; there would be no suspect to encounter.