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TITLES BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN
HONOR BOUND
HONOR BOUND
BLOOD AND HONOR
SECRET HONOR
DEATH AND HONOR
BROTHERHOOD OF WAR
BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS
BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS
BOOK III: THE MAJORS
BOOK IV: THE COLONELS
BOOK V: THE BERETS
BOOK VI: THE GENERALS
BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED
BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS
BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS
THE CORPS
BOOK I: SEMPER FI
BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS
BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK
BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND
BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE
BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT
BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES
BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH
BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE
BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!
BADGE OF HONOR
BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE
BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS
BOOK III: THE VICTIM
BOOK IV: THE WITNESS
BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN
BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS
BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS
BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE
MEN AT WAR
BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES
BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS
BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES
BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS
BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS
BOOK VI: THE DOUBLE AGENTS
PRESIDENTIAL AGENT
BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT
BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE
BOOK III: THE HUNTERS
BOOK IV: THE SHOOTERS
BADGE OF HONOR VI
THE Murderers
W. E. B. GRIFFIN
JOVE BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canda), 90 Eglinton Avenue Ease, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Lt., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South AfricaPenguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
THE MURDERERS
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 1994 by W.E.B. Griffin.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
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375 Hudson Street, New York 100014.
ISBN:
JOVE®
Jove books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
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bsp; 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “J” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
For Sergeant Zebulon V. Casey
Internal Affairs Division
Police Department, Retired, the City of Philadelphia.
He knows why.
THE Murderers
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ONE
Officer Jerry Kellog, who was on the Five Squad of the Narcotics Unit of the Philadelphia Police Department, had heard somewhere that if something went wrong, and you found yourself looking down the barrel of a gun, the best thing to do was smile. Smiling was supposed to make the guy holding the gun on you less nervous, less likely to use the gun just because he was scared.
He had never had the chance to put the theory to the test before—the last goddamned place in the world he expected to find some scumbag holding a gun on him was in his own kitchen—but he raised his hands to shoulder level, palms out, and smiled.“No problem,” Jerry said. “Whatever you want, you got it.”
“You got a ankle holster, motherfucker?” the man with the gun demanded.
Jerry’s brain went on automatic, and filed away, White male, 25–30, 165 pounds, five feet eight, medium build, light brown hair, no significant scars or distinguishing marks, blue .38 Special, five-inch barrel, Smith & Wesson, dark blue turtleneck, dark blue zipper jacket, blue jeans, high-topped work shoes.
“No. I mean, I got one. But I don’t wear it. It rubs my ankle.”
That was true.
Christ, that’s my gun! I hung it on the hall rack when I came in. This scumbag grabbed it. And that’s why he wants to know if I have another one!
“Pull your pants up,” the scumbag said.
“Right. You got it,” Jerry said, and reached down and pulled up his left trousers leg, and then the right.
Jerry remembered to smile, and said, “Look, we got what could be a bad situation here. So far, it’s not as bad as it could—”
“Shut your fucking mouth!”
“Right.”
“Who else is here?”
“Nobody,” Jerry answered, and when he thought he saw suspicion or disbelief in the scumbag’s eyes, quickly added, “No shit. My wife moved out on me. I live here alone.”
“I seen the dishes in the sink,” the scumbag said, accepting the three or four days’ accumulation of unwashed dishes as proof.
“Ran off with another cop, would you believe it?”
The scumbag looked at him, shrugged, and then said, “Turn around.”
He’s going to hit me in the back of the head. Jesus Christ, that’s dangerous. It’s not like in the fucking movies. You hit somebody in the head, you’re liable to fracture his skull, kill him.
Jerry turned around, his hands still held at shoulder level.
Maybe I should have tried to kick the gun out of his hands. But if I had done that, he’d have tried to kill me.
Jerry felt his shoulders tense in anticipation of the blow.
The scumbag raised the Smith & Wesson to arm’s length and fired it into the back of Jerry’s head, and then, when Jerry had slumped to the floor, fired it again, leaning slightly over to make sure the second bullet would also enter the brain.
Then he lowered the Smith & Wesson and let it slip from his fingers onto the linoleum of Jerry Kellog’s kitchen floor.
“Where the hell,” Sergeant Patrick J. Dolan of the Narcotics Unit demanded in a loud voice, paused long enough to make sure he had the attention of the seven men in the crowded squad room of Five Squad, and then finished the question, “is Kellog?”There was no reply beyond a couple of shrugs.
“I told that sonofabitch I wanted to see him at quarter after eight,” Sergeant Dolan announced. “I’ll have his ass!”
He glowered indignantly around the squad room, turned around, and left the room.
Sergeant Patrick J. Dolan was not regarded by the officers of the Five Squad of the Narcotics Unit—or, for that matter, by anyone else in the entire Narcotics Unit, with the possible exception of Lieutenant Michael J. “Mick” Mikkles—as an all-around splendid fellow and fine police officer with whom it was a pleasure to serve. The reverse was true. If a poll of the officers in Narcotics were to be conducted, asking each officer to come up with one word to describe Sergeant Dolan, the most common choice would be “prick,” with “sonofabitch” running a close second.
This is not to say that he was not a good police officer. He had been on the job more than twenty years, a sergeant for ten, and in Narcotics for seven. He was a skilled investigator, reasonably intelligent, and a hard worker. He seldom made mistakes or errors of judgment. Dolan’s problem, Officer Tom Coogan had once proclaimed, to general agreement, in the Allgood Bar, across the street from Five Squad’s office at Twenty-second and Hunting Park Avenue, where Narcotics officers frequently went after they had finished for the day, was that Dolan devoutly believed that not only did he never make mistakes or errors of judgment but that he was incapable of doing so.
Tom Coogan had been on the job eight years, five of them in plain clothes in Narcotics. For reasons neither he nor his peers understood, he had been unable to make a high enough grade on either of the two detective’s examinations he had taken to make a promotion list. Sometimes this bothered him, as he was convinced that he was at least as smart and just as good an investigator as, say, half the detectives he knew. On the other hand, he consoled himself, he would much rather be doing what he was doing than, for example, investigating burglaries in Northeast Detectives, and with the overtime he had in Narcotics he was making as much money as a sergeant or a lieutenant in one of the districts, so what the hell difference did it make?
Coogan had absolutely no idea why Dolan had summoned Jerry Kellog to an early-morning meeting, or why Kellog hadn’t shown up when he was supposed to, but a number of possibilities occurred to him, the most likely of which being that Kellog had simply forgotten about it. Another, slightly less likely possibility was that Kellog had overslept. Since his wife had moved out on him, he had been at the sauce more heavily and more often than was good for him.
It wasn’t just that his wife had moved out on him—broken marriages are not uncommon in the police community—but that she had moved in with another cop. A police officer whose wife leaves the nuptial couch because she has decided that the life of a cop’s wife is not for her can expect the understanding commiseration of his peers. Kellog’s wife, however, had moved out of a plainclothes narc’s bed into the bed of a Homicide detective. That was different. There was an unspoken suggestion that maybe she had reasons—ranging from bad behavior on Kellog’s part to the possibility that the Homicide detective was giving her something in the sack that Kellog hadn’t been able to deliver.
The one thing Jerry Kellog didn’t need right now was trouble from Sergeant Patrick J. Dolan, which could range from a simple ass-chewing to telling the Lieutenant he wasn’t where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be, to something official, bringing him up on charges.
Tom Coogan wasn’t a special pal of Jerry Kellog, but they worked together, and Kellog had covered Coogan’s ass more than once, so he owed him. He picked up his telephone, pulled out the little shelf with the
celluloid-covered list of phone numbers on it, found Kellog’s, and dialed it.
The line was busy.
Two minutes later, Coogan tried it again. Still busy.
Who the hell is he talking to? His wife, maybe? Some other broad? His mother? Something connected with the job?
Fuck it! The important thing is to get him over here and get Dolan off his back.
He tried it one more time, and when he got the busy signal broke the connection with his finger and dialed the operator.
“This is Police Officer Thomas Coogan, badge number 3621. I have been trying to reach 555-2330. This is an emergency. Will you break in, please?”
“There’s no one on the line, sir,” the operator reported thirty seconds later. “The phone is probably off the hook.”
“Thank you,” Coogan said.
The fact that the phone is off the hook doesn’t mean he’s not there. He could have come home shitfaced, knocked it off falling into bed, or on purpose so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. He’s probably lying there in bed, sleeping it off.
That posed the problem of what to do next. He realized he didn’t want to drive all the way over to Kellog’s house to wake him up, for a number of reasons, including the big one, that Sergeant Dolan was liable to ask him where the fuck he was going.
He thought a moment, then reached for his telephone.
“Twenty-fifth District, Officer Greene.”
“Tom Coogan, Narcotics. Who’s the supervisor?”
“Corporal Young.”
“Let me talk to him, will you?”
He knew Corporal Eddie Young.
“Tom Coogan, Eddie. How are you?”
“Can’t complain, Tom. What’s up?”
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