The Investigators Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  PRAISE FOR W.E.B. GRIFFIN’S ALL-TIME CLASSIC SERIES

  BADGE OF HONOR

  W.E.B. Griffin’s electrifying epic series of a big-city

  police force . . .

  “DAMN EFFECTIVE . . . He captivates you with characters the way few authors can.”

  —Tom Clancy

  “TOUGH, AUTHENTIC . . . POLICE DRAMA AT ITS BEST . . . readers will feel as if they’re part of the investigation, and the true-to-life characters will soon feel like old friends. Excellent reading.”

  —Dale Brown

  “COLORFUL . . . GRITTY . . . TENSE.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “NOT SINCE JOSEPH WAMBAUGH have we been treated to a police story of the caliber that Griffin gives us. He creates a story about real people in a real world doing things that are AS REAL AS TODAY’S HEADLINES.”

  —Harold Coyle, bestselling author of Team Yankee and Sword Point

  “FANS OF ED McBAIN’S 87TH PRECINCT NOVELS BETTER MAKE ROOM ON THEIR SHELVES . . . Badge of Honor is first and foremost the story of the people who solve the crimes. The characters come alive.”

  —Gainesville Times (GA)

  “GRITTY, FAST-PACED . . . AUTHENTIC.”

  —Richard Herman, Jr., author of The Warbirds

  “Griffin pushes the police procedural to new and unforgettable heights.”

  —Mostly Murder

  THE CORPS

  W.E.B. Griffin’s bestselling saga of the heroes we call

  Marines . . .

  “THE BEST CHRONICLER OF THE U.S. MILITARY EVER TO PUT PEN TO PAPER.”

  —Phoenix Gazette

  “A BRILLIANT STORY . . . NOT ONLY WORTHWHILE, IT’S A PUBLIC SERVICE.”

  —The Washington Times

  “GREAT READING. A superb job of mingling fact and fiction . . . [Griffin’s] characters come to life.”

  —The Sunday Oklahoman

  “THIS MAN HAS REALLY DONE HIS HOME-WORK . . . I confess to impatiently awaiting the appearance of succeeding books in the series.”

  —The Washington Post

  “GRIFFIN’S BOOKS HAVE HOOKED ME . . . THERE IS NO ONE BETTER.”

  —Chattanooga News-Free Press

  “W.E.B. GRIFFIN HAS DONE IT AGAIN!”

  —Rave Reviews

  “ACTION-PACKED . . . DIFFICULT TO PUT DOWN.”

  —Marine Corps Gazette

  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  A sweeping military epic of the United States Army that

  became a New York Times bestselling phenomenon.

  “A MAJOR WORK . . . MAGNIFICENT . . . POWERFUL . . . If books about warriors and the women who love them were given medals for authenticity, insight and honesty, Brotherhood of War would be covered with them.”

  —William Bradford Huie, author of The Klansman and The Execution of Private Slovik

  “Brotherhood of War gets into the hearts and minds of those who by choice or circumstances are called upon to fight our nation’s wars.”

  —William R. Corson, Lt. Col. (Ret.) U.S.M.C., author of The Betrayal and The Armies of Ignorance

  “Captures the rhythms of army life and speech, its rewards and deprivations . . . A WELL-WRITTEN, ABSORBING ACCOUNT.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “REFLECTS THE FLAVOR OF WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER.”

  —Frederick Downs, author of The Killing Zone

  “LARGE, EXCITING, FAST-MOVING.”

  —Shirley Ann Grau, author of The Keepers of the House

  “A MASTER STORYTELLER who makes sure each book stands on its own.”

  —Newport News Press

  “GRIFFIN HAS BEEN CALLED THE LOUIS L’AMOUR OF MILITARY FICTION, AND WITH GOOD REASON.”

  —Chattanooga News-Free Press

  TITLES BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN

  HONOR BOUND

  HONOR BOUND

  BLOOD AND HONOR

  SECRET HONOR

  DEATH AND HONOR

  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

  BOOK V: BLACK OPS

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South

  Africa

  Penguin 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 INVESTIGATORS

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 1997 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 with

  out permission. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials in

  violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-63264-8

  JOVE®

/>   Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  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.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  In Fond Memory of Sergeant Zebulon V. Casey

  Internal Affairs Division

  Police Department, the City of Philadelphia, Retired

  “There came a time when there were assignments that

  had to be done right, and they would seek Zeb out.

  These assignments included police shootings, civil-rights

  violations, and he tracked down fugitives

  all over the country.

  He was not your average cop.

  He was very, very professional.”

  —Howard Lebofsky

  Deputy Solicitor of Philadelphia

  ONE

  Anearly new, but quite dirty, antenna-festooned Buick pulled into the employee parking lot of the Philadelphia Bulletin and into a parking space bearing a sign reading RESERVED MR. O’HARA.

  Mr. Michael J. O’Hara, a wiry, curly haired man in his late thirties, wearing gray flannel trousers, loafers, a white shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the tie pulled down, and a plaid sports coat that only with great kindness could be called “a little loud,” got quickly out of the car, slammed the door, and entered the building.

  He took the elevator to the third floor, where it deposited him in the city room. He walked quickly across the room crowded with desks holding computer terminals, filing cabinets, and the other impedimenta of the journalist’s profession to a glass-walled office, the door of which also bore his name. He went inside, opened a small refrigerator, and took out a bottle of Coca-Cola.

  Then he sat down at his desk, punched the computer keys that would inform him of messages received in his absence, found nothing that could not wait, and took a swallow of his Coke.

  An assistant city editor—Seymour Schwartz, a skinny, bespectacled forty-year-old whom Mickey regarded as about second among equals of the assistant city editors—appeared at his door.

  “You got anything for me, Mickey?” Sy asked.

  “Genius cannot be rushed,” Mickey said. “I thought I already told you that.”

  “We go to bed in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Hold me a large chunk of page one,” Mickey said. “Journalistic history will be made in the next five minutes. Presuming, of course, that you leave me alone.”

  Sy Schwartz threw up both hands in a gesture of surrender and walked away.

  He both liked and admired Mickey O’Hara, who had not only won the Pulitzer Prize for his crime reporting, but was regarded—by his peers, including Sy Schwartz, not only by the sometimes politically motivated Pulitzer Prize committee—as just about the best police reporter between Boston and Washington. But as long as he had known O’Hara and worked with him, as many elbows as they had rubbed together, he never knew when Mickey was being serious or pulling his chain.

  He did know him well enough, however, to know that when Mickey said he wanted to be left alone, the thing to do was leave him alone. He went back to his desk to wait for whatever Mickey was about to send him.

  O’Hara looked at the blank computer screen, wiggled his fingers, reached for the Coke bottle, and took another swallow. Then he locked his fingers together, wiggled them, and, without looking, reached into a desk drawer and came out with a long thin cigar. He bit the end off, spit the end out, and then very thoughtfully and carefully lit it.

  He put it in one corner of his mouth, flexed his fingers a final time, and began to tap the keys. Very rapidly. And once he had begun to write, he did not stop. The words appeared on the computer screen.

  Slug: (O’Hara) “Really Ugly” Woman Robs Bucks County Bank by Michael J. O’Hara Bulletin Staff Writer

  Riegelsville, Bucks County—A bandit described as “a really ugly white woman with hairy legs” robbed the Riegelsville branch of Philadelphia’s Girard Savings Bank of more than $25,000 shortly after the bank opened this morning.

  FBI agents and State Police swarmed over this small village on the banks of the Delaware to assist Riegelsville’s one-man police force—part-time Constable Karl Werner—in solving the crime.

  According to P. Stanley Dailey, 28, of Riegelsville, assistant manager of the bank and the only witness, the bandit, wielding a sawed-off double barreled shotgun, took him by surprise as he was entering the bank by the rear entrance shortly after 8 a.m.

  “She waited until I had unlocked the door, and had turned off the alarm, and then put her shotgun in my ear,” Dailey, still visibly shaken hours after the robbery, told this reporter.

  The bandit then took him, Dailey said, into the rear of the bank, where she ordered him to lie on his stomach on the floor of the employees’ rest room, and then bound and gagged him with air-conditioning duct tape.

  It was while he was being bound, Dailey reported, that he noticed that beneath her black patterned stockings, the robber’s legs were unshaven. She was dressed, he said, in a blue and white polka-dot dress, over which she wore a tan raincoat. Her hair was covered with a scarf, and she was wearing heart-shaped glasses, decorated with sequins.

  The robber then proceeded to the public area of the small bank, Dailey believes, and waited for the automatic timing device of the bank’s vault, set to open at 8:15, to function.

  She then helped herself to “the loose cash”—that is, currency involved in the previous day’s business, which had been placed in the vault in cash drawers at the close of the previous day. She apparently made no attempt to force her way into any of the vault’s locked interior compartments.

  The robber then left the bank building by the rear door, locking it after herself. Mr. Dailey’s keys were later found by the FBI in the parking lot.

  At 8:25 a.m. the branch bank’s manager, Mrs. Jean-Ellen Dowd, 42, of Upper Black Eddy, arrived at the bank.

  “I knew something was wrong the minute I found the door locked,” Mrs. Dowd told authorities and this reporter, “because Stanley [Mr. Dailey] is as reliable as a Swiss watch. But I thought he had a flat tire or something. I never dreamed it was something like this.”

  She entered the building and found Mr. Dailey in the rest room. Once she had taken the duct tape from his mouth, and he told her what had happened, she activated the alarm. The sound of the alarm was heard by Constable Werner at his full-time place of employment, the Riegelsville plant of the Corrugated Paper Corporation of Pennsylvania, where he is a pulper technician.

  He rushed from the plant in his personal vehicle, a pickup truck, which is equipped with a siren and a red flashing light. En route to the scene of the crime, he collided with a Ford sedan driven by Mr. James J. Penter, manager of the Corrugated Paper Corporation’s Riegelsville facility, who was on his way to work.

  Neither Constable Werner nor Mr. Penter was injured in the collision, but Constable Werner’s pickup truck was rendered hors de combat. Mr. Penter then drove Constable Werner to the scene of the crime, where, after questioning Mr. Dailey, he notified the State Police, who in turn notified the FBI.

  State Trooper Daniel M. Tobias of the Bethlehem Barracks was first to arrive at the scene. After obtaining from Mr. Dailey a more complete description of the robber as a female approximately five feet eight inches tall, approximately thirty years of age, with large, dangling earrings and an unusually thick application of lipstick and cheek rouge, Trooper Tobias put out a radio bulletin calling for the apprehension of anyone meeting that description and then secured the crime scene pending the arrival of other law enforcement officials.

  The Philadelphia office of the FBI dispatched a team of four special agents under the command of Assistant Special Agent in Charge (Criminal Affairs) Frank F. Young.

  After questioning Mr. Dailey and Constable Werner, Mr. Young spoke w
ith the press regarding the crime.

  “The FBI regards bank robberies as a very serious matter,” Young said, “and can point with pride to its record of bringing the perpetrators to justice. I have no doubt that when the FBI has had time to fully apply its assets, this crime will be solved.”

  Mr. Young, when asked by this reporter if a shotgun-wielding female with unshaven legs, dangling earrings, and an unusually thick application of lipstick and cheek rouge had been involved in other bank robberies, declined to answer.

  He also declined to offer an opinion about when an arrest could be expected, and when asked by a reporter from the Easton Express to identify the FBI agents with him, stated that it was FBI policy not to do so.

  The FBI agents with Mr. Young were known to this reporter as John D. Matthews, Lamar F.

  Greene, and Paul C. Lomar.

  END

  He stopped typing, pushed the Page Up key, and read what he had written. He tapped his fingertips together for a moment, then pushed the Send key on his keyboard. This caused as much of the slug of the story as would fit—it came out as (O’Hara) “Really Ugly” Woman Robs B—to appear on the computer monitor on Mr. Schwartz’s desk.

  Schwartz immediately called the whole story up on his monitor screen.

  He read it, chuckling several times, and then pushed a key that caused a printed version of the story to emerge from a printer on a credenza behind him. He snatched it from the printer and walked across the city room to O’Hara’s office.