Charlie-316

by Colin Conway

  Baumgartner stared at the mayor.

  Sikes shoved the tie into Lofton’s hands before stalking away with Amanda Donahue on his heels.

  Baumgartner and Farrell turned to each other. “Who’s talking from our side?” the chief asked.

  Farrell gave him a weary shrug.

  Lofton stared at his tie. The mayor’s sweat was all over the middle of his David Fin. He shoved it in the nearest trashcan and headed up to his office.

  Chapter 10

  “What on earth are you doing here?” Clara Garrett was surprised to see her son but delighted all the same.

  “Just checking on you, Mama.”

  “Well, get over here and give me a hug.” She did her best to make her voice strong and resilient. She knew her son worried about her health.

  Ty Garrett leaned down and embraced her. She felt him being careful not to squeeze too hard, like always. Today, he held on a little longer. She smelled the clean scent of his soap and the coffee on his breath. She held on to him, glad to have her boy in her arms.

  “Did you sleep yet?”

  Garrett pulled away and settled into the chair next to her bed. “Some.”

  “Couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours.”

  He smiled. “I’m off for the next three days. I’ll get some sleep tonight. How are you, Mama?”

  She waved his question away. “The same as always. Spend more time in this bed than I ought to, but that’s not worth talking about. Let’s talk about you instead.”

  Garrett didn’t answer right away. His mother’s disease kept her confined to bed most of the time, though he knew the caregivers managed to get her outside in a wheelchair to enjoy the afternoon sun in the warmer months.

  “I saw the news,” Clara said quietly.

  “I figured.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. Not a scratch.”

  “Like that comic book you used to read.”

  He grinned. “Luke Cage.”

  “He’s got nothing on Tyler Garrett,” she said. “You’re a real-life hero, son.”

  “Not everyone thinks so, at least not from what I saw on TV this morning.”

  “Some of it looks bad,” she admitted, “but it could be a good thing, too, after everything shakes out.”

  Garrett looked at her as if she were crazy. “Good?”

  She nodded. “Yes. As tragic as this situation is, it might cast a light on an even bigger tragedy, son. Black men in this country have been getting killed by police for decades, and hardly anyone pays attention. If they pay attention to this, even if it is for the wrong reasons, maybe then they start paying attention to the other.”

  “They’re painting me as the bad guy, Mama.”

  “Some,” she allowed. “But in the end, when the facts come out, you’ll be a hero. Just like when you pulled that woman off the bridge earlier this year. That’s who you are, Tyler. You are your father’s son.”

  An expression of pain flashed across Garrett’s face. “I’m nothing like my father. I wish I were.”

  Clara smiled at him. “Nonsense. You’re him, through and through.”

  Garrett shook his head. “He cared about other people, even more than himself. At least, that’s what you told me.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “I wish I’d known him better,” Garrett whispered.

  “You’d have made him proud. He always said that the best way to change the system was from the inside and look at you. Joining the police, making a difference, from inside the system.”

  “Sometimes I think it’s a broken system,” he said.

  “You’re doing your part to fix it.”

  Garrett sat quietly, shaking his head.

  “My son, don’t lose confidence in what you are doing. We are put on this planet to serve others. You’re serving. Your father believed that, and he lived it right up until his last day.”

  “What if he was wrong?”

  Clara gave him a perplexed look. “How do you mean?”

  “What if the best you can do is to make a life for yourself? Protect the ones you love, and get what’s yours?”

  “That’s the police officer and the cynic in you talking now. You can’t look at the world that way just because you’ve seen some terrible things. Or because of what happened last night.” She smiled at him. “You’re a good man, son. You help people every day. Risk your life. All for people you don’t even know. Your father would have been proud of you. I know I am.”

  Garrett drew a wavering breath, weariness showing through his usually strong demeanor. “I’ve tried to build a good life,” he told her. “To be a good troop. Keep my head above the water line in this job. To work the streets, you know, but not become the streets.”

  “I know it has to be hard.”

  “Harder than people know,” Garrett said, a slight edge in his voice. “And after working so hard, I get into this mess. I did the right thing and yet all these talking heads are all trying to crucify me…”

  “The department is on your side,” Clara said. “And the mayor, right?”

  Garrett nodded. “For now.”

  She gave him a curious look. “For now? What’s that mean?”

  Garrett sighed. “I hit him in the back, Mama. I shot that man in the back.”

  Clara didn’t react. “You didn’t mean to, I’m sure.”

  “Of course not. They were shooting at me. It all happened fast.”

  “Your life was in danger.”

  “It was.”

  “Then you did what any reasonable person would have done. You protected yourself.”

  He took another unsteady breath and let it out. “There’s something else. They couldn’t find his gun.”

  Clara remained silent for several long moments. Then she reached out and patted Garrett’s hand. “You’ve always told me that some of the smartest people you’ve ever met work as police officers,” she said. “You work with good people. They will figure out what happened. You don’t have to worry.”

  Garrett let out a short laugh. “I can’t do nothing but worry. They’re sending cops to jail for doing their jobs these days.”

  “Only the crooked ones.”

  “Not always.”

  “It won’t happen to you,” she assured him, squeezing his hand for emphasis.

  “I wish I had your confidence.”

  “That’s what you need to show,” Clara said. “Confidence. You know you did nothing wrong. That’s what the world needs to see. A confident, righteous man who did his duty. Show them that.”

  He nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

  “I’ll tell you something else, too. Once you get through this, there could be big things on the other side. Opportunities. People around here haven’t forgotten your father’s name. Or mine, for that matter.”

  Garrett gave her a tired smile. “One battle at a time, Mama. Okay?”

  She squeezed his hand.

  Chapter 11

  Detective Wardell Clint adjusted his glasses and stared down at his handwritten notes. His chicken scratch was purposefully difficult to decipher, so that no one else could read his notes. The observations he made before putting together the official report were his business and his alone. He knew his bosses got into his desk when he wasn’t around, even though he locked the drawers. Probably other detectives, too. That was why he kept nothing but official documents in his desk. Nothing personal, not even a magazine. When the snooping bastards poked around, all they would find was official reports and his undecipherable notes.

  The problem was, even he found the notes hard to read at times. That was the price he paid for vigilance.

  Even though this was an officer involved incident, he treated it like any other death investigation. The first question of any such investigation was what kind of death was it? He’d long ago learned to assume every death was a homicide unless the evidence led him els
ewhere. It was the least dangerous assumption an investigator could make. If you let yourself believe something was a natural death or accidental, or a suicide, you might miss clues that pointed to homicide. That was a terrible mistake. However, if you started at homicide and the evidence didn’t match, instead leading you to a natural, accidental, or suicide, justice was still served. All was well.

  Too many cops took shortcuts, in Clint’s opinion. They thought they were smarter than everyone else, particularly the criminals. They were well-meaning but arrogant, and they made obvious assumptions, jumped to conclusions, or picked a theory and then sub-consciously bent the evidence to fit that narrative. He wondered if Harris was doing that with her ambush theory.

  He thought so. Not that the ambush theory was a bad one, necessarily. Just that she was jumping right to it. He wondered if she had even thought about what kind of death they were looking at.

  Not natural, clearly, but accidental? Clint wasn’t one hundred percent sure he could rule that out yet. There was no gun on or near the dead man, Trotter. He imagined a scenario in which Trotter gets out of his car after the stop to beef with Garrett, and then gunfire erupts from the empty house. Trotter turns to run and Garrett, believing that Trotter is firing on him, shoots him in the back.

  It was plausible, Clint realized. but in legal terms, it was not accidental. Falling off a ladder was accidental. One person killing another person made the death a homicide. Since Trotter didn’t shoot himself, that ruled out suicide, too.

  Or did it?

  Clint hesitated. Suicide by cop had become a common enough event that it should be considered. Maybe Trotter reached like he was going for a gun in order to get Garrett to shoot him.

  No, Clint decided. That didn’t make sense. Why have the shooter in the house, then?

  Or was that just a coincidence?

  If so, he thought it was a pretty unlikely one. Suicide by cop and an ambush, planned or otherwise?

  No, when you walked through the logic, it came down to one thing: the cause of death was almost certainly homicide. And when the medical examiner pulled the bullet out of Trotter and ballistics matched it to Garrett’s pistol, it would be a certainty. Unless it wasn’t, Clint thought ruefully. He’d studied enough ballistics to know there might be some problems headed their way. No need to go down that rabbit hole until the report returned.

  Clint moved on to the next question. Was the homicide justified, negligent, or was it murder?

  That one was tougher, and ultimately the prosecutor’s office would decide. The investigative team would need to collect and review a great deal of evidence before the answer to that question became clear.

  He reviewed more of his notes. There was nothing suspicious in the body location or position. Trotter was struck in the upper left scapula and the bullet must have torn apart his heart, because he died quickly. There wasn’t enough blood on the ground for any other explanation to fit, although Clint was curious to see what the M.E. found during the autopsy. He hadn’t seen an exit wound when they rolled Trotter onto his side to look for a weapon. That meant the bullet was still inside. If Garrett’s hollow point expanded fully and had its trajectory stopped before exiting the body, any bleeding would have been internal. Since the heart stopped pumping, only gravity and air pressure was left to push the blood out. That explained the small amount around Trotter.

  Of course, it still didn’t explain the lack of a weapon, and that part bothered him.

  He pondered that problem. There were two possibilities.

  There was a gun.

  There wasn’t a gun.

  He tackled the first. If there was a gun, where did it go?

  Clint put his mind to work on the possible scenarios. They came to him quickly.

  Some unrelated third party could have stolen it from the scene during the time window in which Garrett was pursuing the other shooter. Guns had inherent value in the criminal world, and this may have been a crime of opportunity.

  Maybe it was third party, who stole it to make things difficult for Garrett because he was a cop. Or because he was black.

  It was possible there was another passenger hiding in the car, who got out after the first exchange of gunfire, grabbed Trotter’s gun during that same window of time, and fled the scene.

  Or maybe Officer Zielinski took it in order to jam up Garrett.

  Clint slowed down and looked at each scenario. He couldn’t eliminate any of them without further evidence. Some of it might come from the dash camera videos, some from witness statements, and some of it from Zielinski’s interview, and eventually, Garrett’s.

  He wished they could interview Garrett now. He was torn when it came to the three-day rule. He’d heard all of the reasoning behind it, and he knew the union had bargained for it, but as an investigator, he still didn’t like it. In what other situation did witnesses get three days to think before making a statement? Much less someone who had shot someone else. They either made a statement when the police asked, or they lawyered up and said nothing. Cops were treated differently.

  That was part of the problem, as he saw it. Somewhere along the line, many cops forgot that they were held to a higher standard. Clint believed in a higher calling for law enforcement, that police officers must be better than their fellow people. Too often, though, he saw cops who believed they were better simply because they wore the badge, instead of realizing that because they wore it, they had to constantly strive to be better, to live up to the principles of the badge.

  It wasn’t easy, Clint knew. Even good men and women struggled. If it were easy, everyone could do it. Not everyone could, though, including some cops.

  A life like that was hard, and that is what brought Clint back around to the three-day rule again. If it protected good men and women doing a hard, nearly impossible job from getting screwed over by brass, the media, and the prosecutor, then it was a good thing. It just messed with the investigators who were trying to clear the case.

  Clint let the barest of smiles touch his lips. I guess that’s the price you pay for vigilance, he thought again.

  “What’re you grinning at, Ward?”

  Detective Butch Talbott stood several paces away, watching him.

  Clint scowled at him. “None of your business. What do you want?”

  “I just—”

  “And it’s Wardell, asshole. You know this.”

  Talbott raised a meaty hand. “Sorry, man.”

  “What do you want? I’m busy.”

  “I know,” Talbott said. “That’s why I swung by.”

  “To bother me?”

  “No. Jesus, why are you such a hard ass?”

  “I’m not a hard ass. I’m a hard worker. You should try it sometime.”

  Talbott’s patience slipped. “Whatever. I just came by to tell you I’m sorry you got stuck with the officer involved last night. I was up on the wheel, but—”

  “You ain’t black.”

  “Uh, no. I’m not.”

  “I guess we ain’t as color blind around here as we pretend to be.”

  “I guess not,” Talbott said, a little defensively. “It wasn’t my choice. I pull my weight.”

  Clint didn’t respond. Despite his earlier jab, he had to admit that Talbott was one of the better workers in the unit. He went out into the field more than most, instead of sitting at a desk and trying to solve a case with a phone and no shoe leather.

  Talbott was staring at him, expecting a reply.

  Clint said nothing.

  Finally, Talbott said, “Since I was supposed to be catching and you got tapped instead of me, if you need any kind of assistance, just let me know.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Least I can do,” Talbott added.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Talbott waited for more, and when it wasn’t forthcoming, he switched gears. “Me, Pomeroy, and a couple other guys were just about to head over to Waffles n’ More to get a bite a
nd have a team meeting. You want to come along, maybe join us?”

  “Not hungry,” Clint said, and turned back to his notes.

  He sensed Talbott’s presence for another few seconds before the big man muttered, “asshole,” and walked away.

  “Ofay,” Clint muttered back absently. He didn’t know if Talbott heard him and didn’t really care. He doubted the detective would have understood what he said, anyway. The word was a colloquial, derogatory term for white people, specifically the kind who tended to make life difficult for blacks. For Clint, it was a word mired in both race and class, and while every white person he knew wasn’t an ofay, he wasn’t surprised to find that many were.

  Clint focused again on his notes, and the problem of the missing gun. He scratched out the possible scenarios he’d come up with to explain why the gun might have gone missing, then turned to the second possibility.

  What if there wasn’t a gun? Then what?

  His mind exploded with possibilities, but he enforced some mental discipline and slowed things down. One big question loomed under this assumption. Did Garrett think he saw a gun? He wouldn’t know the answer to that until Garrett’s interview. There wasn’t anything on or near Trotter that could be mistaken for a weapon of any kind. Of course, all of his explanations for a missing gun could just as easily be applied to a missing knife, wallet, phone, or whatever. If that didn’t happen, what did that mean?

  Clint narrowed his eyes, thinking. While he thought, he made a few notes, trying to capture the questions and theories now racing through his mind.

  Trotter could have reached for something that wasn’t there. If Garrett was under the stress of being fired upon, he would have registered that as a threat and shot first. It was a legally defensible action. Clint himself had employed it in his own career on several occasions, though in his case, he’d punched first, not fired. His bosses who reviewed the use of force didn’t like it, but Clint figured that was just tough.

  No one ever said he or any other cop had to wait to get hit before acting. Whenever he’d seen a suspect balling up his fist or dropping into an aggressive fighting stance, that was enough to tell him what was coming. He always made his move at the earliest opportunity, and never regretted it once, even if the brass objected.