The Murderers (Badge of Honor 6)

“Mick, just now, as I was driving over here, I wondered if you might not want to go with Captain Sabara when he arrests Cassandro.”

“Nice try, Denny,” O’Hara said. “But like I told Peter, a picture of a third-rate gangster in cuffs isn’t news. A District captain getting arrested is.”

Officer O’Mara put his head in the door.

“Inspector Sawyer is here, sir.”

Wohl looked at Coughlin, who nodded.

“Ask him to come in,” Peter said.

Inspector Gregory Sawyer, a somewhat portly, gray-haired man in his early fifties, came in the room.

He was visibly surprised at seeing Mickey O’Hara.

“I’ll see you guys later,” Mickey said. “How are you, Greg?”

He walked out of the room.

“Greg,” Coughlin said. “I wasn’t exactly truthful with you last night.”

“Excuse me, Chief?”

“That thing ready?” Coughlin asked, pointing at the tape recorder.

“Yes, sir,” Wohl said.

“Sit down, Greg,” Coughlin said.

“Yes, sir.”

“At the orders of the Commissioner, Inspector Wohl has been conducting an investigation of certain allegations involving Captain Cazerra, Lieutenant Meyer, and others in your division. A court order was obtained authorizing electronic surveillance of a room in the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel. What you are about to hear is one of the recordings made,” Coughlin said formally. “Turn it on, please,” he said, and then walked to Wohl’s window and looked out at the lawn in front of the building.

ELEVEN

At 7:40 A.M. Miss Penelope Detweiler was sitting up in her canopied four-poster bed in her three-room apartment on the second floor of the Detweiler mansion when Mrs. Violet Rogers, who had been employed as a domestic servant by the Detweilers since Miss Detweiler was in diapers, entered carrying a tray with coffee, toast, and orange juice.

Miss Detweiler was wearing a thin, pale blue, sleeveless nightgown. Her eyes were open, and there was a look of surprise on her face.There was a length of rubber medical tubing tied around Miss Detweiler’s left arm between the elbow and the shoulder. A plastic, throwaway hypodermic injection syringe hung from Miss Detweiler’s lower left arm.

“Oh, Penny!” Mrs. Rogers moaned. “Oh, Penny!”

She put the tray on the dully gleaming cherrywood hope chest at the foot of the bed, then stood erect, her arms folded disapprovingly against her rather massive breast, her full, very black face showing mingled compassion, sorrow, and anger.

And then she met Miss Detweiler’s eyes.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” Mrs. Rogers said, moaned, and walked quickly to the bed.

She waved a large, plump hand before Miss Detweiler’s eyes. There was no reaction.

She put her hand to Miss Detweiler’s forehead, then withdrew it as if the contact had burned.

She put her hands on Miss Detweiler’s shoulders and shook her.

“Penny! Penny, honey!”

There was no response.

When Mrs. Rogers removed her hands from Miss Detweiler’s shoulders and let her rest again on the pillows against the headboard, Miss Detweiler started to slowly slide to the right.