W. E. B. Griffin

The Murderers

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 amp; 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 amp; 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 amp; 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.