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She then felt Marie’s grip ease and watched helplessly as her granddaughter collapsed at her feet.

And then she suddenly felt light-headed. Everything became a blur. She closed her eyes.

Samantha turned back to look at Mrs. Schnabel just as the elderly woman went limp, her knees buckling. She hit the floor first with her left shoulder, then rolled onto her chest, crushing her big round eyeglasses that had fallen from her face on impact. Her cheek came to rest on the bra and panties where a crimson pool of blood from her granddaughter had begun to form.

“Someone please help!” Samantha cried, kneeling beside them and starting to tremble.

Her plea was lost in the screams of patrons running out the emergency exit doors and in the blaring of alarms.

Samantha looked out through the glass walls and saw that the mass of teenagers in the flash mob, no longer laughing, were racing back through the casino, then out the doors.

Samantha then saw, closer to the mall, a middle-aged woman forcing her way past the fleeing mob. The woman ran into the mall, then into the store, then looked in Samantha’s direction.

“Oh my God!” she wailed. “Mama! Marie! Oh my God!”

—

On the third floor of the casino, Tyrone Hooks was seated at one of the cocktail bars. He had ordered a beer, put his cell phone on the bar—he saw that the ROCKIN215 instant messages numbered more than two hundred—then swiped his Lucky Stars Rewards debit card in the video game machine embedded in the bar and began playing poker.

After a moment, the bartender slid a glass of draft before him and said, “Let me know if I can get you anything else, Mr. King.”

Hooks again pulled the cash wad from his coat pocket and took from it his Lucky Stars debit card. He pushed the card across the bar.

“Close me out. Gotta go after this one.”

III

[ ONE ]

Police Administration Building

Eighth and Race Streets

Saturday, December 15, 2:01 P.M.

Homicide Sergeant Matthew M. Payne, standing with a cell phone to his ear, listened to Homicide Detective Dick McCrory’s update while looking out from the third-floor hallway windows of police headquarters.

The half-century-old complex, commonly referred to as the Roundhouse, was built of precast concrete and consisted of a connected pair of four-story circular buildings. Interior walls were also curved, including those of the elevators. The imposing design of the exterior, some said, resembled a massive pair of handcuffs.

Payne raised to his lips a coffee mug that had STOLEN FROM THE DESK OF HOMICIDE SGT M. M. PAYNE in gold lettering, and took a sip. He had had the cheap mugs custom-imprinted—there was a representation of his badge in addition to the wording—after his regular heavy china mugs had repeatedly wound up in the possession of parties unknown.

He had expected that the personalized ones would bring the disappearances to an end. They had had, in fact, the opposite effect—the one he now held was the last of the original dozen—the unique mugs having become trophies of a sort around headquarters.

There was a faint chanting coming from below, and he looked down.

At least fifty protesters marched up and down the steps past the mottled bronze statue—“A Friend,” its plaque read—of a uniformed Philadelphia policeman holding a small child on his left hip in front of the Roundhouse.

Two uniformed officers of the Mounted Patrol Unit were across Race Street, standing by in support of the half-dozen uniforms of the Civil Affairs Unit who were on foot and creating a safety zone for the protesters, in effect defending their First Amendment rights of assembly and freedom of speech.

Payne watched as a young woman with a little girl—the latter licking a candy cane; they had just left Franklin Park—walked up to the officers on horseback. The woman then spoke to the closer of the two, and after he smiled and nodded, she lifted the toddler onto her shoulders so the girl could pet the horse’s rich brown mane. The young woman then held out her camera and snapped a photograph of them, with the smiling officer looming in the background.

“Dick, you’re right,” Payne said into the phone, “if you don’t try, you don’t get. Maybe we’ll get lucky if the CI is really onto something. Go find this guy he says wants to talk and bring him in. Lord knows no one else is talking about who took out Dante.”

He paused, listened, then said, “Okay, and have Kennedy do his dramatic routine when you’re slapping on cuffs, so all those watching from wherever they’re hiding don’t miss it.”

He listened again a moment, chuckled and replied, “Yeah, right. Nice try. If all else fails, I am not going to ‘just shoot the knucklehead,’ as much as he might deserve it,” then broke off the call.

The use of confidential informants was strictly regulated by Police Department Directive 15. First and foremost among its rules was that there had to exist an absolute professional relationship between an officer and a CI.