The Investigators (Badge of Honor 7)

“I don’t know nothing about no safe-deposit box.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Matt said.

He looked at the Harrisburg uniforms.

“Take him away, please,” he said.

Mrs. Timothy J. Calhoun, holding her balled fists to her mouth, watched with horror and disbelief as her husband was led down the path and loaded into the backseat of the Harrisburg black-and-white.

Then she watched until it drove out of sight.

“I’ll need the gun and the badge, Mrs. Calhoun,” Detective Martinez said.

“And if you know where the key to the box is, Monica,” Charley McFadden added.

“You’re supposed to be his friend, Charley!” Monica said. “How could you do this to him?”

“He done it to himself, Monica,” Charley said. “Let’s go get his gun and badge.”

“You stay here! I’ll go get it.”

“I can’t let you do that, Monica,” Charley said. “I’ll have to go with you.”

When Harrison J. Hormel, Esq., first among equals of the assistant district attorneys of Philadelphia, arrived at work, he heard the sound of an electric razor coming from the office of the Hon. Thomas J. “Tony” Callis, the district attorney of Philadelphia.

He looked at his watch. It was 8:35, a good hour or hour and a half earlier than Callis’s usual appearance.

He turned and knocked at the unmarked private door to Callis’s office. When there was no answer, he tried the knob, and it turned, and he was able to push the door slightly open.

Callis, in a sleeveless undershirt, his suspenders hanging loose, was standing at the washbasin in his small private bath.

Hormel walked to the door. Callis saw his reflection in the mirror and took the electric razor from his face.

“What’s up, Harry?” he asked.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“It’s a long story,” Callis said. “One I’m not really ready to pass on right at this moment.”

“What’s the big secret?”

“I’ll give you a thumbnail, but no questions, okay?”

“You’re the boss.”

“Dirty cops. Lots of them.”

“Doing what?”

“I said no questions. The arrests are not finished yet. There’s an incredible amount of ifs in this one, Harry. If this happens, then that will. If that doesn’t happen, then this will. You follow?”

Hormel shook his head, “no.”

“I’ve been up since half past three,” Callis said. “Coughlin sent a Highway Patrol car for me. What I need now is to finish my shave, put on a clean shirt, have a couple of cups of coffee and thirty minutes to settle my thoughts.”

“Since when is Denny Coughlin investigating dirty cops?”

“Since Carlucci—who they got out of bed at six thirty, by the way—told him to.”