The Cadillac’s taillights were no longer visible.

What the hell, he’s probably going home anyway.

Matt opened the car door with two fingers, got the keys from the ignition, then opened the hood and took out the jack. It took him fifteen minutes to dislodge the bumper from the car’s underpinnings.

TWENTY

Inspector Peter Wohl was visibly disturbed when he opened the door to his apartment and found Detective Payne standing there.

“What the hell do you want? Are you drunk, or what?”

“Atchison threw something I’ll bet is guns in the river,” Matt said.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“In Chester,” Matt said. “I followed him.”

“You did what? What the hell gave you the idea you had that authority?”

“He met Frankie, Frankie gave him a package, and Atchison threw it in the river in Chester.”

“I’ll want to hear all about this, Detective Payne, but not here, and not when you’re obviously shitfaced. I’ll see you in my office at eight o’clock.”

The door slammed in Detective Payne’s face. He waited a moment and then started down the stairs. He was halfway down when light told him the door had reopened. He looked over his shoulder.

Amelia Payne, Ph. D., M.D., attired in a terry-cloth bathrobe, stood at the head of the stairs.

“Matt, what happened to you?”

You may be his lady love, but first of all, you are my big sister, who takes care of her little brother.

“Are you drunk?” Amy asked, more in sympathy than moral outrage.

“Not yet.”

“Well, come in here,” Amy said. “What does ‘not yet’ mean?”

“I mean that getting drunk right now seems like a splendid idea, one that I will pursue with enthusiasm, once I have a bath.”

“What is that stuff on you?” Wohl demanded, in curiosity, not sympathy.

“I don’t think I want to find out.”

“Come up here,” Amy ordered.

She is now in her healer-of-mankind role.

Matt climbed the stairs.

“It’s all over you!” Amy announced.

“I’ve noticed.”

She wiped a finger, professionally, across his forehead.

“There’s irritation. It’s a caustic of some sort. You need a long hot bath.”

“If he’s coming in here,” Inspector Wohl said, resigned to the inevitable, “he’s going to take his clothes off first.”

Fifteen minutes later, attired in the robe Amy had been wearing when she appeared at the top of the steps, Detective Payne entered Inspector Wohl’s living room. Inspector Wohl and Dr. Payne were now fully clothed.

“I am under instructions to apologize for accusing you of being drunk,” Wohl said. “You want a beer?”

“I’d love a beer,” Matt said.

Wohl walked into his kitchen, returned with a bottle of Ortleib’s, and handed it to Matt.

“I am under further instructions to question you kindly, having been reminded that you are undoubtedly in a condition of grief shock,” Wohl said. “So why don’t we start at the beginning?”

“I don’t like your sarcasm, Peter,” Amy said. “Look at his face and hands! He’s been burned! Have you got any sort of an antiseptic lotion?”

“Listerine?” Wohl asked. “Where did you get that stuff on you, anyway?”

“No, not Listerine, stupid!”

“On a pier, or near a pier, near the old refineries in Chester,” Matt said.

“Where you had followed, you said, Mr. Atchison?”

“That will have to wait until I do something about his face and hands,” Amy said. “I probably should take him to an emergency room.”

“I’m all right,” Matt said.

“You must have something around here,” Amy said to Peter Wohl.

“Look in the medicine cabinet,” Wohl said. “You were telling me you followed Atchison? And I was asking you where the hell you got the idea-”

“Stop it, Peter,” Amy ordered. “For God’s sake, what’s the matter with you?”

She glowered at him, then marched into the bedroom. Thirty seconds later she was back, triumphantly displaying a tube of medicine.

“This will do,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you had it?”

“I don’t even know what it is,” Wohl said.

Amy daubed the ointment on Matt’s face, then rubbed it in on his hands.

“Give me that, I’ve got a nasty scratch on my leg,” Matt said.

Wohl looked.

“I’m just dying to learn where you’ve been besides on a pier in Chester,” he said sweetly.

“I got these in the bushes outside the Yock’s Diner on Fifty-Seventh and Chestnut. That’s where I saw Atchison and Foley.”

“You have been a busy little junior Sherlock Holmes, haven’t you?”

“Peter, for Christ’s sake, at least hear me out!”

Wohl glared at him.

“OK. Fair enough. We’re back at square one. Start at the beginning.”

Ten minutes later, Wohl dialed a number from memory.

“Tony, I hate to call you at this hour, but this is important. Go out to South Detectives. I’ll call out there and tell them you’re coming. I want you to get a statement from two detectives. One of them is named Cronin, and the other’s name is Chesley. The first thing you say to them is to keep their mouths shut about what happened tonight at the Yock’s Diner on Fifty-Seventh and Chestnut. If they spread the story around the squad room, it’ll be public knowledge in the morning. Then I want you to question them, separately, about what went on at the Yock’s Diner. Payne was there, he followed Atchison there. Frankie Foley was there. Frankie arrived with a package. Atchison left with the package. Payne thinks Atchison gave Foley an envelope, and he thinks there was money in the envelope. Atchison then went to the riverfront in Chester and threw a package in the river. Payne suspects the package contained guns. What I want from the detectives are the facts, not what they think or surmise, something they can testify to in court without getting blown out of the witness chair by Atchison’s lawyer.”

Detective Tony Harris asked a question, during which Inspector Wohl glanced at Detective Payne. Detective Payne’s face bore, in addition to a glistening layer of medicated ointment, a look of smug vindication. Inspector Wohl, tempering the gesture with a smile, extended his right hand toward Detective Payne, the palm upward, all but the center finger folded inward.

Detective Payne was not cowed.

“When you’re right, you’re right,” he said.

Inspector Wohl returned his attention to the telephone.

“I know a couple of people in the Chester Police Department,” he said. “I’m going to call them, and then Payne and I are coming out there. Payne says he can find the pier; he marked the site with an old bumper. I’m going to ask the Chester cops to guard the site until we can get our divers out there at first light. What I’m hoping, Tony, is that Sherlock Holmes, Junior, got lucky again. I think he may have. Call me when you’re finished. I don’t care what time it is.”

He put the phone back in the cradle.

“What we have, hotshot,” he said, turning to Matt, “is a lot of ifs. If the package does contain firearms. If those firearms can be ballistically connected with the weapons used in the Inferno. If we can tie the guns to either Atchison or Foley.”

“If all else fails, we can shake the two of them up,” Matt argued. “What were they doing together in the Yock’s Diner? What did the package Foley gave him contain?”

Wohl could think of no counterargument.

“And when we find your pier, I will drop you off at your family’s home in Wallingford,” he said.

“He can’t go to Wallingford at this hour, looking like that,” Amy announced. “Mother and Dad have gone through enough in the last couple of days without him showing up looking like that.”

“And you can’t go to your apartment, either, can you, with Milham’s girlfriend there? That leaves here, doesn’t it?” Wohl asked.

“I could go to a hotel.”

“No he-” Amy began. Wohl held up his hand to interrupt her. To Matt’s surprise, she stopped.