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[ TWO ]

A week earlier, Homicide Sergeant Matt Payne had been approached with a proposition—“cornered,” he had claimed, but no one took the statement seriously. It was a hard argument to swallow considering (a) the person approaching had been in a motorized wheelchair and (b) who that person was.

The fact of the matter was that Payne would have done anything for Andy Radcliffe, a nineteen-year-old who was working an internship with the police department.

Andy had a kind, round face with gentle coal-black eyes and a full head of dark hair clipped tight to his scalp. He generally wore neatly ironed jeans and an oversized white cotton dress shirt with a somewhat worn navy blazer.

He was a sophomore—a double major studying criminal justice and computer science—at La Salle University, in North Philly, not far from where he lived with his mother and little brother.

Three years earlier, returning home with take-out dinner for the family, he had been robbed on the street by teenaged thugs. Not content with what little cash he had, they then stabbed him in the back. The knife had struck his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Even before the robbery, Andy’s life had been anything but an easy one. Yet he still managed to keep a positive attitude after the attack, overcoming as best he could the obstacles that came with the paralysis.

Payne had found himself immediately impressed when he had met Radcliffe in the Executive Command Center, and even more when he’d heard his story.

Andy politely had brushed off Payne’s praise.

“What was I going to do? Not keep helping Momma and my little brother? Or, worse, become a burden to them? Momma taught me discipline, to work hard and never give up. Like my father.”

Andy explained that Luke Radcliffe had worked as a crane operator at the Port of Philadelphia for fifteen years—until he found himself suffering severe shortness of breath. Doctors diagnosed him with pulmonary fibrosis.

Andy had just turned ten.

Luke Radcliffe, as he bravely fought the advancing disease, was put on a lung transplant list. But the scars quickly covered more and more of the lung tissue, and, just a week after being rushed to the hospital and hooked up to an artificial respirator, he succumbed to severe infections.

The medical bills had been unbelievably expensive, and the cash from the modest life insurance policy Luke had taken out through the port had not lasted long. The family struggled to make ends meet, even as Andy’s mother took on extra work.

Andy, desperate to help, finally got a job at a grocery store. It was all the then-twelve-year-old could find. He worked part-time as a shelf-stocker and bag boy after school and on Saturdays. He would have worked Sundays, but his mother cautioned him to keep holy the Sabbath, and to take time to be with family. Later, the answer had been the same when he offered to go to full-time—his mother again thanked him, but adamantly refused to let him miss any school.

It had been because of the robbery, and his meeting the cop who worked his case, that Radcliffe found himself at La Salle studying criminology.

Detective Will Parkman was a former marine who Radcliffe said really wasn’t the hard-ass that people presumed. He described him as “an M&M, hard on the outside, soft on the inside. His buddies call him ‘Pretty Boy’ Parkman because . . . well, he’s the first to say he’s not.” Parkman had told him about a La Salle scholarship, helped him apply for it, and then later helped him apply for the police internship.

Rapier told Payne that Radcliffe really knew his way around computers. And Payne found he had the makings for a thorough investigator, which Andy had proved when he dug up a detail in a file that connected two critically important dots in Payne’s Halloween Homicides case.

Andy was diligent, worked long hours, and never sought preferential treatment. Thus, when Payne had looked up from his desk in the Homicide Unit and seen Radcliffe, hand on the armrest joystick that controlled his wheelchair’s direction and speed, fluidly rolling toward him, his next words had come as somewhat of a surprise.

“I have a favor to ask,” Andy said, “and I understand if the answer’s no.”

“No,” Payne said immediately, intending it as a joke.

“Yes, sir. Understood.”

Radcliffe bobbed his head once, thumbed the joystick to the right, and, after his wheelchair pivoted, began rolling out of the cubicle.

The look on Radcliffe’s face made Payne feel as if he had just kicked a litter of puppies off a cliff.

“Wait!” Payne said. “What is it, Andy?”

It was a moment before Radcliffe brought his wheelchair to a stop and spun back around.

Radcliffe said: “At La Salle there’s a class—Criminal Justice 350: Violence in Society—that I’m taking. I got it okayed to bring the others in my class on a tour of the department . . .”

“Sounds like a great idea.”

“. . . if I got a sponsor . . .”

“Upon further consideration, sounds like a really bad idea.”