Charlie-316

by Colin Conway

  Garrett stared at the silent black screen and crossed his arms.

  “They’re persecuting him in the media,” Norris said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “They’re talking about him like he’s the criminal.”

  “What the world sees is that you shot an unarmed white man in the back,” Thomas said. “The guy might be a complete piece of shit, but they don’t care about that part of the story. It doesn’t fit the narrative.”

  Norris groaned at the expletive and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Garrett, however remained silent and glared at him. Thomas had made his point.

  “Whether the perception and reality are the same, it doesn’t matter. It’s all perception to those news whores. They’ll continue to beat that drum until it becomes reality or viewers stop watching. Hopefully, the latter happens. If this story continues to grow, watch out. Then when the truth comes out, it will be a whimper among all the other noise.”

  Norris chuckled. “Your pep talk needs some work, son.”

  “I’m not here for a pep talk, Father. I’m here to protect. Remember that if someone from the administration comes by, okay? They don’t care about you as a person.”

  Norris sniffed. “That’s been obvious all day.”

  “Nobody is defending me to the press,” Garrett complained. “Why?”

  “That’s your administration,” Thomas said. It was a cheap shot, but he saw the opening and took it. He knew Chief Baumgartner couldn’t, and wouldn’t, release Garrett’s name. However, Thomas’s job status as the union president relied heavily upon a base of employees dissatisfied with their employer. Therefore, Thomas took every chance he could get to stoke the fires of animosity toward the administration.

  “Why aren’t you out there then?” Norris asked.

  Garrett nodded. “Yeah, why aren’t you?”

  Thomas knew this question was coming and rolled with it easily. “You don’t want me out there fighting perception. That’s a waste of my time and your resources. For one thing, we don’t have any facts established yet to stack up against the innuendo they are presenting. For now, that’s an administrator’s job and one, frankly, that will never end. Even after this event’s long been forgotten. My primary duty is to protect your employment status and your rights. I’m here to make sure you don’t get screwed during this process. We will address the media if and only when doing so furthers that goal.”

  “You said the city only cares about their welfare, not mine. What did that mean?”

  Thomas nodded and smiled. “See, now, you’re thinking. To the city, it’s all about money. Never forget that. They’re going to be looking at exposure, pure and simple. The first thing they’ve got to ensure is whether the initial stop was legal.”

  “It was.”

  “Second, was the shooting good?”

  Garrett stared at him.

  “Third, was the investigation carried out in a lawful and professional manner?”

  “He’s got no control over that,” Norris pointed out.

  Thomas pressed on. “Fourth, who out there in Trotter’s family is going to claim unlawful death?”

  “SPD’s been dealing with his family for years,” Garrett said. “He’s a generational turd.”

  Norris cringed at the description.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Thomas said with a wave of his hand. “What the city is looking at is risk versus reward. Right now, some bean counter in the administration has probably affixed some number to Trotter’s death. With each tick off the checklist that number is going to go down until they can get it to something acceptable. Even if you’ve done everything right, the family can still file a lawsuit against you and the city. Depending on the numbers, the city may pay, even if it is go-away money.”

  Garrett shook his head and dropped into his chair.

  “Do you think the city is going to offer me up as a sacrifice?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “That can change, though.”

  Garrett’s eyes slanted. “How?”

  “If any of those boxes on the checklist don’t get marked off completely.”

  Ty shook his head. “I’m tired of waiting. I want to talk with someone. Can we get the county detectives in here and get started? That way I can be done with this.”

  “No, we can’t, Ty.” Thomas lowered his voice to portray patience and caring. It was something he’d practiced over the years. Garrett was so amped up he was going to be his own worst enemy if he didn’t wake up soon. “The waiting period is for your own good. It gives you time to recover before you tell your story.”

  “Listen to him, Tyler,” Norris said.

  “Here’s my recommendation. Get a pad of paper and go someplace quiet. Make notes. Get your story straight. Understand? Make sure it’s exactly as you want to tell it. Not as you remember it, but how you want to tell it.”

  Norris harrumphed. “Are you saying to lie?”

  “No, I am not. However, if you think it’s important to mention certain elements, do so. Maybe you realized it was Trotter before you stopped him. That could be an important detail for many reasons. Maybe the last time you had contact with him he had a knife. Who knows? Or maybe you felt your safety was in jeopardy for some reason? Again, who knows? See what I’m saying? Take your time and get the narrative straight in your head.”

  Garrett nodded. “I get it.”

  “Be prepared when the detectives get here. They won’t be your friends when they show up. Do you understand that?”

  Garrett’s face lightened.

  “You thought they were going to treat you nice because you’re all brothers in blue, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  “Don’t. This is your life we’re talking about. Not theirs. They are investigating a homicide. Even if it was justifiable, it’s still a homicide. They are going to do their job. Understand?”

  Garrett nodded.

  “When you’re doing that, if you think of anything that needs my attention, call or text me any time. Understand? It’s that important. Day or night, it doesn’t matter. I’m here for you. Oh, and when you’re done with that exercise, destroy the paper. We don’t need the wrong eyes seeing you working out your thoughts and getting the wrong idea. Reality can be affected by perception. Never forget that.”

  They sat in silence for several moments. Thomas finally stood and said, “I’ll get out of here and let you get back to it.”

  Without making eye contact, Garrett nodded, lost in his thoughts.

  Norris smiled at Thomas. “Like I said, son. Your pep talk needs some serious work.”

  Chapter 13

  Detective Cassidy Harris stood in the living room of the small house, staring down at the small chalk circles on the hardwood floor. In her case file were several versions of photos of that same floor. One showed the expended shell casings as they were discovered by SPD patrol. Another set of photos showed the casings with a yellow number placard next to them. A third introduced a ruler into the shot. These photos were taken before the casings were ultimately collected by the crime scene forensics technicians, packaged, and booked into evidence. Harris had already requested multiple lab tests for all of the casings, beginning with fingerprints. Maybe they’d get lucky and whoever ambushed Ty Garrett left a nice juicy thumbprint on one of the rounds while loading it into a magazine.

  She could really use a ground ball like that. With Todd Trotter shot in the back and no discernible weapon found on or near his body, her case became even more difficult. An officer involved shooting was already a heavy case to begin with, but when you added complications like the ones she had to deal with here, it only got worse.

  McNutt was moderately helpful but being saddled with Clint made matters worse. Most of the SPD investigators she knew were top shelf, but he had a reputation for being difficult, and looking for conspiracies within and without the police department. She didn’t kno
w how true that was firsthand, but his obvious contempt for Sheriff’s Office investigators was clear to her. She wondered if the fact that she was a woman and the lead added to Clint’s resentment.

  As if summoned by her thoughts, the front door opened, and Detective Clint stepped through. He didn’t bother with a greeting, and neither did she nor McNutt. Without preamble, he asked, “You saw the dashcam videos?”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “We need audio enhancement on Zielinski’s.”

  Clint tipped his head forward at her almost reprovingly. “That’s your big takeaway?”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. Garrett didn’t turn on his camera prior to the stop.”

  “We’re missing valuable footage,” Clint agreed.

  McNutt snorted. “Are you saying someone deleted it?”

  Clint turned his gaze to McNutt, unimpressed. “Are you? Is that how you all do it over at the sheriff’s office?”

  McNutt clenched his jaw, then opened his mouth to reply.

  Harris interjected, “If you two are going to keep at this, please go out in the backyard and get it out of your system. We’ve got work to do in here.”

  McNutt grinned. “Whattaya say, Honey Badger? Wanna go?”

  Clint scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous, son.” He turned back to Harris. “I assume your forensics are clean? That the recording wasn’t modified?”

  “Now who’s being ridiculous?” Harris asked. “You’re not the only one who can do his job, Clint.”

  “True enough. The sheriff does hate the chief, so the question is worth asking.”

  “You have my answer. The question I have is why didn’t Garrett turn on his camera?”

  Clint shrugged. “We’ll have to ask him. Maybe it was purposeful. Maybe he forgot.”

  McNutt moved closer to the two of them, puffing out his chest slightly. “Why is that even a choice? In our patrol cars, it’s automated. A deputy hits his lights, the camera automatically goes on. There’s no discretion involved.”

  Harris had to admit McNutt had a point. She looked to Clint for an answer.

  “It’s a labor issue,” Clint explained. “Years back, when the union bargained with the administration about the implementation of the dash camera system, officer discretion was one of the points they successfully negotiated.”

  “It’s not the way the system is even designed,” McNutt said. “Your tech guys would have had to modify it.”

  “That’s what they did. Obviously.”

  “What’s the policy say?” Harris asked. She’d pull the SPD Policy and Procedure herself for the case file but wanted to know now.

  Clint shrugged. “I haven’t been in a patrol car in twelve years, Detective.”

  “Yet, you know, don’t you?”

  He gave her the same amused smile he’d given McNutt the previous day. “I do. It says officers are strongly encouraged to activate the system on every traffic stop or other significant contact.”

  “Does it say ‘shall’ or ‘may’?” Harris asked. The first was a directive, the second a matter of discretion. It was an important distinction.

  “It doesn’t say either one. It says ‘strongly encouraged’ like I said.”

  She looked over at McNutt. “Sounds like a ‘shall’ with an escape clause.”

  McNutt shrugged. He obviously saw this as a dead end now.

  “How about your ambush theory?” Clint asked. “Any movement on that?”

  Harris couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not, so she answered him straight. “The idea holds up. Multiple rounds were fired out the open window from the living room.” She pointed at the window and the various chalk circles. “If Trotter was in on the ambush, he could have lured Garrett here for the shooters.”

  “Why?”

  Harris sighed. “How am I supposed to know that at this point? Or ever?”

  “It’s important.”

  “No,” Harris said, “actually, it’s not. I have to figure out what happened, how it happened, and who did it. There’s very little in the law about why, unless we’re talking about pre-meditation. You know very well how infrequently that gets applied.”

  “It’s still important,” Clint argued. “It can lead to breaking the case. And it convinces juries, more than all the rest. You don’t answer the question of why, and reasonable doubt is only a whisper away.”

  “That’s a prosecutor’s problem.”

  “No, it’s ours. Everything the lawyers work with comes from our investigation. We gotta know why.”

  “Fine,” she conceded. “Then the answer is I don’t know yet? Okay?”

  “Fair enough.” Clint pointed at the chalk circles. “Based on location, there seems to be two clusters of shell casings. What’s your take on that?”

  Harris had already noticed this. “Either one shooter who moved position, or two shooters. All of the casings are the same caliber, so it’s hard to say just yet.”

  Clint nodded. “Firing pin and ejector marks will tell you.”

  “I know, but that takes time at the lab. And in case you haven’t noticed, this case is blowing up around us.”

  “Let the white shirts worry about that,” Clint said. “We work the case.”

  McNutt pointed to Harris and himself. “We work this case. You observe.”

  “And advise,” Clint added.

  “When asked. And we’re not asking.”

  Clint gave both of them a long look. Finally, he said, “I don’t recall reading ‘when asked’ in the OIS protocol. You want to show me that page, Detective?”

  “Listen, you—”

  “Enough already.” Harris interrupted, frustrated, “If you two can’t go five minutes without this macho crap, I’ll call the sheriff and the chief myself, requesting that both of you get pulled off this case for unprofessional behavior. Are we clear on that?”

  McNutt dropped into an angry sulk, but Clint didn’t seem affected by her threat.

  “I’m only trying to help,” he said to her. “And we both want the same thing, right?”

  “We do. So, play nice.”

  Clint shrugged. “What caliber were the shell casings?”

  “Forty-five.”

  “How many?”

  “Eleven.”

  Clint nodded. “Most .45s have a mag capacity below that.”

  “Not all,” McNutt grumbled.

  “Not all,” Clint agreed. “If we’re playing the odds, then that means either two guns or a reload.”

  Harris thought about it, then put the idea on the shelf. It didn’t resolve the mystery of how many shooters were in the house.

  Clint had moved on, too. He pointed at the broken jamb on the front door. “Garrett?”

  “Has to be.”

  “Pretty ballsy, charging the house,” Clint observed.

  McNutt scoffed. “You would think so.”

  “I do. Because it was. Ballsy, and stupid. He broke cover to do it, and advanced in the open. If the shooter or shooters were still in the house, they could have picked him off easily.”

  “It was an aggressive move,” McNutt said, “and aggression wins fights.”

  “Sound tactics wins fights, but that doesn’t matter. Garrett is SWAT and he’s still young enough to believe he’s immortal, so I get it. His tactical debrief to Lieutenant Flowers was that no one was in here when he entered.”

  “That’s right,” Harris said. “According to Garrett, there was a car out back leaving at a high rate of speed.”

  “Number of suspects?”

  “He couldn’t tell. Because it was an officer involved shooting, Flowers couldn’t ask him any more than the barest of questions, so we’re left with a lot of holes.”

  “Like the one in Trotter’s back,” Clint observed.

  Harris looked at him closely. “You have a problem with that?”

  “I have a few problems with this c
ase. No gun on Trotter. The bullet in the back. Whatever happened in this room. Why it happened.”

  “I have the same problems,” Harris said. “All we know for sure is that Garrett shot Trotter.”

  “We don’t even know that for sure,” McNutt said. “You SPD boys use Glocks, so we won’t even be able to match the bullet to Garrett’s gun.”

  Clint gave McNutt a look of mild astonishment. Then he turned to Harris. “Where’d you get this guy? Was it take a gym rat to work day, or what?”

  “Go to hell,” McNutt snapped. “It’s a problem.”

  Clint shook his head. “It’s not.”

  “Oh, really. Why not?”

  Clint sighed. “Son, I have neither the time nor the crayons to explain it to you.” He turned to Harris. “Let’s talk in the morning and brief each other.”

  He turned and walked out of the house.

  McNutt watched him go, muttering about him. Then he turned to Harris, “I guess he’s not as smart as he thinks he is, huh?”

  Harris bit her lip, nodding. Then she said, “Uh, Shaun?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’d you mean before? About the Glocks?”

  McNutt smiled. “You liked that?” He took a half-step closer to her and assumed an instructional tone. “See, Glocks are engineered to strict specifications. Very uniform, very precise and the barrels are polygonal cut. Between the precision of the manufacturing and the polygonal rifling, it’s impossible to match a fired round to a specific Glock pistol.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s not impossible.”

  McNutt’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, it is. I read—”

  “It’s not impossible, Shaun. It takes a lot more time and effort. If our lab can’t handle it, we might have to send it to the FBI, but it can be done.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.” How do you not know this? Harris thought.

  McNutt’s expression was a combination of chagrin and doubt. “Oh. I guess I haven’t read up on it recently.”

  “No problem,” she said, letting him off the hook so he wouldn’t pout for the rest of the day. “We’ll let the lab worry about lab work. We need to plan our approach. I’d like to be ready to interview Garret when his seventy-two is up.”