The Murderers (Badge of Honor 6)

D’Amata shook his head.

There was a just-perceptible hesitation.

“Where’s Milham?”

Hobbs shrugged.

“Lieutenant, there’s nobody out there but me,” D’Amata said.

“Is Captain Quaire in his office?”

“Yes, sir,” D’Amata said.

“Hobbs, see if you can find out where Milham is,” Natali ordered. “You get out to the scene, Joe. Right now. We’ll get you some help.”

“Yes, sir.”

Natali walked to Captain Henry C. Quaire’s office, where he found him at his desk, visibly deep in concentration.

“Boss,” Natali said. It took a moment to get Quaire’s attention, but he finally looked up.

“Sorry. What’s up, Lou?”

“Radio just called in a homicide. In the Twenty-fifth. The victim is a police officer. Jerome H. Kellog. The name mean anything to you?”

“He worked plainclothes in Narcotics?”

Natali nodded. “He was found with at least one bullet wound to the head in his house.”

“You don’t think…?”

“I don’t know, Boss.”

“We better do this one by the book, Lou.”

“Yes, sir. D’Amata was holding down the desk. He’s on his way.” He gestured across the room to where D’Amata was taking his service revolver from a cabinet in a small file room. “And so am I.”

“Give me a call when you get there,” Quaire ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

There were two Twenty-fifth District RPCs, a District van, a Twenty-fifth District sergeant’s, and a battered unmarked car D’Amata correctly guessed belonged to East Detectives in front of Kellog’s house when D’Amata turned onto West Luray Street.A Twenty-fifth District uniform waved him into a parking spot at the curb.

Joe got out of his car and walked to the front door, where a detective D’Amata knew, Arnold Zigler from East Detectives, was talking to the District uniform guarding the door. Joe knew the uniform’s face but couldn’t recall his name. Zigler smiled in recognition.

“Well, I see that East Detectives is already here, walking all over my evidence,” D’Amata said.

“Screw you, Joe,” Zigler said.

“What happened?”

“What I hear is that when he didn’t show up at work, somebody in Narcotics called the Twenty-fifth, and they sent an RPC—Officer Hastings here—over to see if he overslept or something. The back door was open, so Hastings went in. He found him on the floor, and called it in.”

“Hastings, you found the back door was open?”

“Right.”

Kellog’s row house was about in the middle of the block. D’Amata decided he could look at the back door from the inside, rather than walk to the end of the block and come in that way.