The Murderers (Badge of Honor 6)

“Yeah, sure. As soon as Hemmings comes in. Take what you need.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ve seen pictures of her,” Captain O’Connor said. “What a fucking waste!”

“Chief Coughlin’s office. Sergeant Holloran.”“Captain O’Connor, Northwest Detectives. Is the Chief available?”

“He’s here, but the door is closed. Inspector Wohl is with him, Captain.”

“I think this is important.”

“Hold on, Captain.”

“Coughlin.”

“Chief, this is Tom O’Connor.”

“I hope this is important, Tom.”

“Sergeant Monahan of the Fourteenth just called in a Five Two Nine Two from the Detweiler estate. The girl. The daughter. Drug overdose.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Chief Coughlin responded with even more emotion than O’Connor expected. Then, as if he had not quite covered the mouthpiece with his hand, O’Connor heard him say, “Penny Detweiler overdosed. At her house. She’s dead.”

“I’ll be a sonofabitch!” O’Connor heard Inspector Peter Wohl say.

“Chief, I’ve been trying to get Chief Lowenstein. You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?”

“Haven’t a clue, Tom. It’s ten past eight. He should be in his office by now.”

“I’ll try him there again,” O’Connor said.

“Thanks for the call, Tom.”

“Yes, sir.”

At 7:55 A.M., Police Commissioner Taddeus Czernich, a tall, heavyset, fifty-seven-year-old with a thick head of silver hair, had been waiting in the inner reception room of the office of the Mayor in the City Hall Building when one of the telephones on the receptionist’s desk had rung.“Mayor Carlucci’s office,” the receptionist, a thirty-odd-year-old, somewhat plump woman of obvious Italian extraction, had said into the telephone, and then hung up without saying anything else. Czernich thought he knew what the call was. Confirmation came when the receptionist got up and walked to the door of the Mayor’s private secretary and announced, “He’s entering the building.”

The Mayor’s secretary, another thirty-odd-year-old woman, also of obvious Italian extraction, who wore her obviously chemically assisted blond hair in an upswing, had arranged for the sergeant in charge of the squad of police assigned to City Hall to telephone the moment the mayoral limousine rolled into the inner courtyard of the City Hall Building.

Czernich stood up and checked the position of the finely printed necktie at his neck. He was wearing a banker’s gray double-breasted suit and highly polished black wing-tip shoes. He was an impressive-looking man.

Three minutes later, the door to the inner reception room was pushed open by Lieutenant Jack Fellows. The Mayor marched purposefully into the room.

“Good morning, Mr. Mayor,” the Police Commissioner and the receptionist said in chorus.

“Morning,” the Mayor said to the receptionist and then turned to the Police Commissioner, whom he did not seem especially overjoyed to see. “Is it important?”

“Yes, Mr. Mayor, I think so,” Czernich replied.

“Well, then, come on in. Let’s get it over with,” the Mayor said, and marched into the inner office, the door to which was now held open by Lieutenant Fellows.

“Good morning,” the Mayor said to his personal secretary as he marched past her desk toward the door of his office. By moving very quickly, Lieutenant Fellows reached it just in time to open it for him.

Commissioner Czernich followed the Mayor into his office and took up a position three feet in front of the Mayor’s huge, ornately carved antique desk. The Mayor’s secretary appeared carrying a steaming mug of coffee bearing the logotype of the Sons of Italy.

The Mayor sat down in his dark green hi

gh-backed leather chair, leaned forward to glance at the documents waiting for his attention on the green pad on his desk, lifted several of them to see what was underneath, and then raised his eyes to Czernich.