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  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.”

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  Day of the Cheetah and Hammerheads

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  —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.”

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  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  A sweeping military epic of the United States Army that

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  “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

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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,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York 100014.

  ISBN:

  JOVE®

  Jove books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

&n
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?”