That's two "if you're going to Homicide"s. Come on, Uncle Denny. Get the speech over with.

"Sure," Matt said.

"Aside from the fact that Captain Patrick Cassidy is an affable Irishman who is good to his wife and daughter, and probably has a dog named Spot, why aren't you made suspicious by his sudden new affluence?"

"There could be a number of explanations for it."

"I'm all ears."

"He cared for his mother for years. She could have left him money. Or the brother. Even if they didn't, I can hear his wife saying, 'Okay, that's over. Your mother's gone. I want a place at the shore.' "

"Even if they can't afford it?"

"I hope to find out they can," Matt said. "I was going to go to Easton today to check the brother's will."

"Was?"

"Here I am, at your orders," Matt said.

"We won't be at the Roy Rogers long," Coughlin said. "I just wanted a look around after the crime scene people did their business. I thought you might want to have a look, since you may go to Homicide."

That's two "if"s and a "may." Where's the speech?

"I would. Thank you."

They rode in silence for a minute or two, and there was no speech, which both surprised and worried Matt.

There has to be a hook in the two "if"s and a "may."

What's he done? Had a word with the commissioner, who will call me in and say that while I'm certainly entitled to go to Homicide, "the department has a real problem. They really need a sergeant with your experience in the Special Victims Unit and you'll certainly understand that the needs of the department are paramount, and I give you my word that you'll get to Homicide one day."

If that's what he's done, he certainly won't tell me.

Shit!

"Who were they talking about when I walked in?" Matt asked.

"Who's who?"

"The 'bastard' Frank Hollaran said he'd really like to see in shackles, that Mike Sabara wants to personally strap in the electric chair."

"Isaac 'Fort' Festung. The sonofabitch keeps sending Pekach postcards."

"Who is he?"

"You really don't know?" Coughlin asked, his surprise evident in his voice.

"No, I don't," Matt confessed. "The name sounds familiar… but no, I really don't know. What did he do?"

"How old are you, Matty?"

"Twenty-seven."

"I guess that's why you never heard of him. When you were seven years old-no, six; she was in the trunk for a year-Fort Festung beat his girlfriend to death, stuffed her body in a trunk, and put the trunk in a closet. When they finally found her, her body was mummified."

"Jesus! And he sends Dave Pekach postcards from prison?" Matt asked, and then, remembering, added, "I thought Dave said from France."

"He did," Coughlin said. "Festung never went to prison. After Dave got a search warrant, found the body, and arrested him, his lawyer, now our beloved Senator Feldman, got him released at his arraignment on forty thousand dollars bail, and he jumped it."

"He was charged with murder and got out on bail?" Matt asked, incredulously.

"Yeah, that's just what he did," Coughlin said, "and he's been on the run ever since. A couple of months ago, they found him in France."

"And now he'll be extradited and tried?"

"He's already been tried. The onlyin absentia trial I ever heard about. The jury found him guilty, and Eileen Solomon sentenced him to life without possibility of parole."

"The D.A.?" Matt asked, surprised.

The Hon. Eileen McNamara Solomon had just been reelected as district attorney of Philadelphia, taking sixty-seven percent of the votes cast.

"Before she was D.A., she was a judge," Coughlin said. "And no, Matty, it doesn't look as if he'll be extradited. He's got the French government in his pocket. And knows it. And likes to rub it in our faces, especially Dave Pekach's. That's what the postcard was all about. He's still thumbing his nose at the system."

"I'll be damned," Matt said.

"Get the case out and read it. It's interesting," Coughlin said, and then, nodding out the windshield, "I wonder if they're just slow, or they got something."

Matt followed his glance. The crime scene van was parked on Snyder Street, fifty yards past the Roy Rogers restaurant.

"I think there's a place to park right in front of the van," Coughlin said. "You can drop me here."

"You want me to come in?" Matt asked, as he pulled to the curb.

"That's the idea," Coughlin said, as he got out of the car. "If you're going to Homicide, you might find this educational."

That's three "if"s and a "may."

[THREE] Matt had to show his badge to the uniform standing outside to get past him into the Roy Rogers, and then was surprised to find Coughlin waiting for him just inside the door.

The restaurant was empty except for a man Matt guessed was the manager, sitting with a cup of coffee at one of the banquettes near the door, and a forensic technician trying to find-or maybe lift-prints from a banquette at the rear of the restaurant, by the kitchen door.

And then the kitchen door opened, and Detective Tony Harris came through it, and saw Coughlin. He walked up to him.

"Commissioner," he said.

"Tony," Coughlin said, as they shook hands. Then Coughlin asked, "They found something?"

"Jason didn't think they found enough," Harris said. "That's why he sent them back."

"The famous Jason Washington's 'never leave a stone unturned' philosophy?"

"Never leave the stonesunder the stone unturned," Harris said.

"Can you walk it through for me, Tony? Bright Eyes here just might learn something."

"Sure," Harris said. "Two doers. They came through that door. Two young black guys, one of them fat. They-I got this primarily from a guy who works here-took a look around, then the fat one walked to the last booth on the left and sat down, and the other one sat in the first booth-where you are, Matt. My eyewitness, who was mopping the floor by the door, ducked into the kitchen. He looked out, saw the fat guy take a revolver-wrapped in newspaper-from his jacket, and told the kitchen supervisor. She called 911.

"The next thing my eyewitness knew, there was a shot." Harris pointed to the ceiling above where Matt was standing. "We recovered the bullet. Full jacket.38. If we can find the gun, we can most likely get a good match. Then the fat doer went into the kitchen…"

"Let's have a look," Coughlin said.

"Yes, sir," Harris said, and led them through the restaurant to the kitchen doors.

"We have a bunch of prints from both sides of the doors," Harris said. "All the employees had been fingerprinted, so we're running the ones we lifted against those."

He pushed the door open.

"My eyewitness was behind the door, with his back against the wall," Harris said. "He saw the fat doer grab the telephone, listen a moment-presumably long enough to hear she was talking to Police Radio-rip the phone from the wall, call her an obscene name, hold his revolver at arm's length, and shoot her. She slid down the wall, and then fell forward."

He pointed to the chalked outline of a body on the floor, and to blood smeared on the wall.

"Then the fat doer herded everybody but my eyewitness, who he didn't see, into the cooler, and jammed a sharpening steel into the padlock loops."

He pointed to the cooler door, then went on. "Then he went back into the restaurant, not seeing my eyewitness, and started to take wallets, et cetera, from the citizens. Doer Number One, meanwhile, is taking money from the cash register.

"Right about then, Kenny Charlton came through the door. Doer Number One is crouched behind the cashier's counter. Kenny saw him, the doer jumps up, wraps his arm around Kenny, wrestles with him. The fat doer then runs up, sticks his gun under Kenny's bulletproof vest, and fires. Kenny goes down. Doer Number One steps over Kenny's body, takes two shots at it, and then follows Doer Number Two out the door and down Snyder. Mickey O'Hara got their picture, but it's a lousy picture. No fault of Mickey's."