Harris looked to where the wrecker was being routed and saw a half-dozen firefighters working feverishly at an SU. It was on the backside of the motel, at a room with its door blown outward, where the flames appeared to be the hottest.
And where the blast took place.
The firemen were in the middle of a row of vehicles parked outside the motel rooms, and were inserting a heavy fire-resistant blanket in through the framework that once held the SUs front windshield.
The wrecker raced up to the back bumper of the SU, and a heavy-linked stainless-steel chain was quickly slung from the SUs bumper to a tow hook bolted on the front frame of the wrecker.
The driver ground the gearshift into reverse and carefully took up the slack in the chain. At a firefighters rapid hand signals and shouts of Go! Fuckin go, go, go!
the diesel engine then roared and the wrecker started tugging the SU away from the fire.
The wrecker didnt slow until it had slid the SU practically in front of Harriss Crown ic, leaving a trail of black tire marks across the parking lot.
Thats one of those really fancy Mercedes-Benz SUs. What the hell is it doing here?
And how the hell is it connected to that explosion? Theres absolutely no question it has to be. . . .
One of the emergency medical vehicles then pulled alongside the passenger side of the SU. Floodlights mounted on the side of the unit were switched on, brightly illuminating the SU. Two firefighters almost instantly appeared, carrying a heavy metal device with hydraulically powered pincers that Harris recognized as the Jaws of Life. The rescue tool proceeded to cut the right side of the Mercedes to pieces as other rescuers worked feverishly from inside the left-side doors to stabilize whoever was unlucky enough to be in the vehicle.
There suddenly was more shouting at the motel, and when Harris turned his attention to it he saw the impossiblea man on fire came staggering out of the motel room that had the blown-outward door.
One fireman rushed to the man. As he tackled him to smother the fire, a fire hose was trained on the both of them, instantly flooding the flames. Then the fireman stood and seemingly effortlessly slung the man over his shoulder. He ran with himslipping twice to the second ambulance, where the paramedics waited, ready to go to work.
Forty-five minutes later, twenty minutes after the motel fire had been brought under control if not put out, Harris watched the emergency medical personnel remove from the SU someone theyd strapped to a rescue backboard. The victim looked to Harris to be a young woman. She had I hoses dangling from her arm and wore an oxygen mask.
Five minutes later, the doors of the ambulance slammed shut, and its siren wailed as the unit began to roll. As if on cue, the other ambulance did the same only a minute later.
Harris scanned the motel and saw that the firemen were putting what Harris thought of as their toys back in their trucks. And he saw that the yellow and black POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape was being strung up, signifying the scene was being turned over to the police.
Well, now that all the excitements over, Harris thought, reaching for the door handle, professional curiosity overwhelms me.
Chapter TWO
The Philly Inn 7004 Frankford Avenue, Philadelphia Wednesday, September 9, 1:15 A. M.
Forty minutes earlier, Becca Benjamin, despite having to wait in her silver Mercedes-Benz G550 at the back of a lousy Northeast Philly motel, had just reminded herself that she could not believe how much her luck had changed.
Beccaa trendy twenty-five-year-old brunette with olive skin who was five-foot-seven and just under 140 pounds, having recently started winning her battles to keep the bathroom scale from tipping 150not only had reconnected with her prep school boyfriend two months earlier but they had found that they still enjoyed what first had brought them together: partying, mostly booze-fueled but with the occasional recreational drug.
They had first dated nine years ago when in the Upper School at Episcopal
Academy. She had been a voluptuous sixteen-year-old in I Form (tenth grade) and J.
Warren Olde, known as Skipper, then eighteen and in I Form (senior year), had begun flirting with her in the back row of an International Politics class. He was taking it for the second time, having yet to meet even the lowest threshold of the academic standards for passing the required course.
Skipper had a slender athletic buildhe was a star player on the academys championship lacrosse team, a midfielder who seemed to float effortlessly from one end of the 110-yard field to the otherand stood five-ten. His sandy hair was cut to his collar, with long bangs that he regularly swept out of his eyes. He was genuinely gregarious, quick with a laugh. And Becca, herself outgoing, had been immediately taken by his attentions.
Their relationship had lasted, though, only until the end of the school year. It had been a wild rideliterallyas an inebriated Skipper, driving Becca home after a graduation party, had misjudged a Dam View Road curveactually wound up going down an estates driveway at a high rate of speedand put his little Audi in Springton Reservoir. Becca wound up with a broken collarbone and a trip to the Riddle Memorial Hospital emergency room in Media.