Charlie-316

by Colin Conway

  “Or a wallet,” McNutt said.

  Garrett nodded. “Yeah, could be. I drew my gun anyway, because at that point, I didn’t know.”

  “If he came out with a wallet?” McNutt asked.

  “I’d have been really glad,” Garrett told him, “but he didn’t. Shots were fired, and I couldn’t tell from where. In my mind, the suspect at the car was shooting at me, so I returned fire. After he went down, the shots continued. I was finally able to determine that they were coming from the house across the street.”

  “When you fired at Trotter,” Harris asked, “What was he doing?”

  “I thought he was shooting at me,” Garrett said.

  “He was facing you?”

  “Definitely,” Garrett answered, his tone sincere and certain. “When I made the decision to fire, he was facing me. It was a split second after I saw him reach behind his back, and shots were hitting my car. I feared for my life, and it was my reasonable belief that he was the source of the threat. I didn’t realize I was being ambushed at the time.”

  “When did you know there was more than one person shooting at you?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. Everything happened so fast.”

  “Are you aware that Mr. Trotter was hit in the back with your round?” Harris asked.

  Garrett gave her a small, rueful smile. “Kinda hard not to know that, after all the media play it got.”

  “Can you explain that?”

  “All I can think of is that between the time I saw him facing me and decided to shoot and when my finger actually pulled the trigger and the bullet was fired, he turned away.” Garrett lowered his eyes and shook his head. “It looks bad to people, I know. He was facing me when I perceived the threat and chose to respond with deadly force.”

  “After those initial shots hit your patrol vehicle, why didn’t you immediately call for back up?” Harris asked him.

  Garrett heaved a sigh. “I wish I had, but it happened quickly. All I could think of is that they had the tactical advantage, and I had to act right away.”

  “Is that why you charged at the house, too?”

  “Looking back, that was just stupid on my part. Stupid, SWAT bravado. My blood was up, you know? Someone was trying to kill me, and the threat was coming from the house. When the shots let up, I decided to take advantage of the lull and take the fight to them. Aggression wins fights.”

  Next to her, McNutt smiled slightly.

  “Let’s move forward to when you and Officer Zielinski were scanning the scene. According to him, you didn’t turn on your dash camera until you went to get your flashlight from the car.”

  “That’s true. Ray would never lie.”

  “We have the video as well,” Harris said.

  “Your point, Detective?” Thomas asked.

  “Why didn’t you turn on the dashcam?”

  Garrett looked mildly sheepish. “I forgot. Everything jumped off so fast. His bad driving, and then trying to catch up to him. He wasn’t stopping right away, so I was updating dispatch. I usually punch the button for the camera at the same time as I hit the overhead lights, but I forgot. Once I forgot, it just wasn’t on my mind anymore until I was with Ray and came back to the car to get my flashlight. I realized it was off, so I turned it on.” He shrugged. “It was an honest mistake, but I figured better late than not at all.”

  Harris opened her mouth again, but Thomas raised his hand to stop her. “Detective, you went over all of this in great detail earlier. It’s after midnight and we’re deep into our third hour here. Officer Garrett has cooperated fully. His answers have been the same each time you’ve asked them, because he’s told the truth. Is there any reason we can’t call an end to this interview at this point? I think all of your questions have been asked and answered, have they not?”

  She glanced down at her notes one last time. There was a check mark next to each of her questions. Some had two or three, indicating she’d come at the question multiple times in different ways. Garrett’s statement had been clean, and it meshed with everything she knew about the incident until now. She didn’t know about the additional issues he was dealing with and had purposefully compartmentalized them during the interview. What happened after the shooting had no bearing on what happened during the shooting. And her sense of it was that Garrett was getting a rough ride that wasn’t his fault.

  “I think we can call it quits,” she agreed.

  Both she and McNutt stopped their recordings, and Thomas did the same. When he and Garrett stood, Harris cleared her throat.

  “Uh, there’s one last piece of business,” she said.

  Both men looked at her.

  “The SPD warrant,” Harris explained, slightly embarrassed. “We, uh, we have to arrest you on it and book you into jail.”

  “Of course,” Garrett said. “I understand.”

  “I’ll walk over with you,” Thomas said.

  Garrett shook his head. “No need. Just do me a favor and call Wei for me.”

  “All right. I’ll come see you tomorrow, too.”

  “You bet.”

  Thomas looked around the room, then excused himself. When he opened the door, a pair of uniformed deputies stood outside. Thomas gave them a nod and left.

  Harris waved in the deputies. One of them unsnapped his handcuff case. The metal cuffs rattled as he removed them.

  Garrett stood without a word, turned around and extended his wrists behind him. The deputy ratcheted on the handcuffs, then set the double lock mechanism so they wouldn’t tighten further. Gently, he guided Garrett toward the door.

  “Ty?”

  Garrett turned toward her.

  “Thanks for being honest,” she said. “Makes my job easier.”

  He shrugged. “I gotta tell the truth, man.”

  “I appreciate it. And…” She glanced at the deputies who had him custody and then back to Garrett. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  Thursday

  The police must obey the law while enforcing the law.

  —Earl Warren, 14th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court

  Chapter 48

  It was eleven minutes after midnight when Detective Wardell Clint spotted them coming down the hall. He knew because he’d been looking at his watch every few minutes for the last hour, waiting for the county to finish their interview with Garrett. He wanted to intercept them before they booked him and get Garrett into an interview room while he was in the habit of answering questions. A night in jail sometimes had a sobering effect on a person’s willingness to talk. For some, it loosened the tongue. Others, it hardened their resolve. Clint was all but certain Ty Garrett fell into the second category.

  The two deputies that flanked Garrett were unknown to him, but Clint wasn’t sure they’d say the same of him. He knew he had a reputation and that it drifted over to the county side, too. Hopefully, it would work for him and not against him.

  Clint waited until they were close, then intercepted them from the side so that Garrett would have less opportunity to say anything to them. He held up his badge for them to see.

  “Detective Clint, deputies. Is he under arrest on my warrant?”

  The deputies exchanged a look. The older one said, “I don’t know whose warrant it is. It’s an SPD warrant for drugs and felony assault. We’re booking him into jail.”

  “That’s my warrant,” Clint lied. “You can transfer custody to me.”

  The deputy shook his head. “No. We’re booking him. If you want to talk to him, set it up through jail.”

  “Deputy, this is my warrant, and my case. I have the authority here.”

  “Your authority over me is shit,” the deputy said. “I take orders from the sheriff, not some…detective.”

  Clint read the tea leaves and changed tactics. “Where’s the gun?” he asked Garrett.

  Garrett surprised him by answering. “What gun?”

  “The one y
ou shot Talbott with.”

  “I never shot anyone.”

  “You shot Talbott,” Clint said, not believing what he just heard. “You said it was self-defense.”

  “Don’t put that on me. I’ve had enough of people putting shit on me that I didn’t have anything to do with.”

  “You called me and told me that,” Clint insisted.

  Garrett fixed him with a cold stare. “I called you and asked how the investigation was going. Man, I think you’re losing it.”

  “That’s enough.” The older deputy guided Garrett past Clint. “Detective, you need to step aside.”

  “You shot Ocampo, and those others,” Clint said, ignoring the deputy and keeping pace. “Where is the gun?”

  The younger deputy put himself between Clint and Garrett. “You need to stop.”

  “I’ve got a witness, Garrett!” Clint shouted past him.

  “You’re crazy,” Garrett replied evenly, without turning his head. “Everyone knows that.”

  Chapter 49

  Lieutenant Dan Flowers parked in the driveway and walked straight to the front door. He could feel his jaw clench in irritation and forced himself to let it relax. He didn’t like being kept out of the loop, and whatever Captain Farrell was doing, he was definitely not in the loop about it. First, he called Clint off a quadruple homicide for some secret squirrel mission, leaving Hollander and Hill shorthanded. Both were solid detectives but there was a ton of work at the scene. He didn’t understand what could be more important right now in the life of a homicide detective than working that case. Double homicides were rare enough. A quad? Detectives went an entire career without encountering one.

  He definitely didn’t understand why he was the errand boy sent to fetch Detective Pomeroy to bring to the station. The guy’s partner just died. If the bosses were doing anything for him, it ought to be making sure he had peer support.

  No, this was unusual, and Flowers saw it for what it was. Something more was going on. He didn’t know what, exactly, but it stunk. And he didn’t like being kept in the dark about it, either.

  Pomeroy didn’t answer his front door. The house was still. No TV, no music. A small light was on in the kitchen, probably the one above the stove, Flowers guessed. Otherwise, the house was dark.

  Flowers rang the doorbell multiple times and pounded on the door. No answer. He peered through the small window in the door, looking to see if he could spot Pomeroy. Maybe he’d been drinking and passed out. Some people were hard as hell to wake from that kind of stupor. As far as he could tell, though, Pomeroy wasn’t crashed out in the living room. Maybe he made it to his bed.

  He considered his options. Farrell had been very clear about bringing in Pomeroy. No questions, no talking, no one else was to know. Bring him to the detectives’ division so they could talk to him. By “they,” Flowers assumed he meant the captain and Clint, because they sure as hell weren’t including him in their little shadow investigation, whatever it was.

  Flowers knocked again, then hit the doorbell in frustration. Almost on a whim, he tried the door handle and found it unlocked.

  That was weird, Flowers thought. Cops never leave their doors unlocked. If Pomeroy was on a bender, that would explain the oversight. He hesitated before going inside, not wanting to get mistaken for an intruder and shot. In the end, he swung the door open and called out to Pomeroy.

  “Justin! It’s me, Dan. Your lieutenant. Don’t shoot me. I’m coming in.”

  He’d barely finished speaking when the smell hit him. It wasn’t overly strong, like death that had been at it for days, but the harsh, cloying smell of blood was still unmistakable.

  “Shit,” he muttered, and drew his gun.

  He stepped inside the living room decided to clear that room and the kitchen first. “Justin,” he called out again. “It’s Dan. Holler if you can hear me.”

  In the kitchen, he saw what he knew he would find but didn’t want to admit. Pomeroy sat leaning against the cupboard below the kitchen sink. His arms were at his side and a darkening pool of blood spread out from his body on the cream-colored linoleum floor. Pomeroy’s fixed stare and still form left no doubt in his mind.

  “Shit,” he said again.

  Flowers put his gun away. The gashes at Pomeroy’s wrists were visible even at this distance, and there was no sign of struggle in the place. Investigators would pore over things for hours, but he knew they’d eventually arrive at the same conclusion he did.

  Suicide.

  His mind raced. Talbott shot, and now Pomeroy kills himself? Then there was the Ocampo killings. What the hell was going on?

  Flowers let out a long, nerve-wracking breath. Then he took out his phone to call the captain with the news. Before he dialed, though, his eyes caught something. Two small packets of clear plastic in the puddle of blood next to Pomeroy. There was only one thing Flowers had ever seen packaged that way.

  Drugs.

  He hesitated. It only took him an instant to decide, and then he texted a detailed message to Cody Lofton first. Only after he was satisfied with that did he punch in the captain’s phone number and hit send.

  Chapter 50

  “He’s a cold, calculating son-of-a-bitch,” Clint told Farrell.

  They sat in the captain’s office at a round table he used for small staff meetings. Farrell had been listening to Clint’s account of the hallway encounter, followed by Clint’s theories surrounding the entire last week’s events.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “You told me earlier this week that you thought he was innocent.”

  “I was turned around. I can see it straight now. He shot Talbott.”

  Farrell nodded. “I think you’re right. They don’t have any good witnesses in that shooting, according to what I can get out of their investigators. Only one of them is even sure the shooter was black.”

  “We got his buddy, Derek Tillman.”

  “He’s recanted. Says now that he isn’t sure what he saw, except that the cop shot first.”

  Clint frowned. “He’s a liar.”

  “Maybe but try to prove it.”

  “I will. He made statements to me. The prosecutor can use me to impeach his testimony.”

  Farrell sighed. “Yeah, maybe. You know how that usually plays in court.”

  “Terrible, but it’s our only choice if he lies.”

  “That’ll be up to the prosecutor,” Farrell said. He leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “Let’s run through it one more time before Pomeroy gets here.”

  “All right. I’ll lay it out, you poke holes in it?”

  “My specialty.”

  “Okay, here it is. Talbott and Garrett hook up while on SWAT, start hitting dealers. Probably with Ocampo pointing them in the right direction.”

  “Source?”

  “Pomeroy’s testimony. They bring him into their little gang and they keep at it, living double lives and raking in drug money a few times a year. Then Garrett decides to cut them out and work directly with Ocampo.”

  “Source?”

  “Again, Pomeroy. We could have offered Ocampo some kind of deal, too, but that’s obviously not an option.” Clint closed his eyes and visualized. “As retribution, Talbott and Pomeroy get Todd Trotter to lure Garrett to a traffic stop in front of the house, so they can ambush him, and cut him out of the deal instead.”

  “Source?”

  “Supposition. I didn’t get a chance to confirm this with Pomeroy before being called to the Ocampo murders. We can maybe sweat Kayla Trent, Pomeroy’s girlfriend and the realtor of the house. Maybe she actually knows something, but that’s likely only circumstantial. Pomeroy’s the key and I’ll pin him down on this when he gets in here.”

  “The shooting goes down, but they miss Garrett. Then what? You think they sent those two guys to attack him while he was out on a run?”

  Clint shook his head. “I don’t think so. I never interviewed them, and we still should follo
w up. The case belonged to Talbott and Pomeroy, so those interviews were theirs to do. I don’t know if they ever did.”

  “Loose end.”

  Clint made a note. “I’ll handle it, but my sense of it is that when the whole black-cop-shoots-white-victim bit went viral, and Garrett’s address ended up on Facebook, these two thugs decided to go get some of what they believe to be justice. The whole thing was racially motivated, you ask me.”

  “It’s convenient that Talbott and Pomeroy caught the assault case, don’t you think?”

  Clint wagged a finger. “Convenient isn’t the right word. Fortuitous, maybe. The bigger point here is that Talbott was up on the wheel for call outs on the night of the shooting. Think about that for a second. If he and Pomeroy had been successful in shooting Garrett, he would have been investigating a murder that he and his partner committed. It’s a perfect plan. Even after they messed up and Garrett survived, if you hadn’t decided to make a change, Talbott still would have been the shadow, not me. That would have kept him close to Harris’s entire investigation, and even given him the chance to steer it a little.” Clint nodded his head with certainty. “I think they picked the night they did on purpose for that very reason.”

  “It was a happy accident they caught the assault?”

  “Probably, but then they chose to make the best of it. Talbott planted the drugs and they slapped the cuffs on Garrett.”

  “Source?”

  “Pomeroy, again. The rest is my own speculation, but maybe Pomeroy can confirm.”

  “They didn’t get the paperwork done in time, though.” Farrell shook his head in confusion. “That bothers me. Why go to all that trouble and then tank the paperwork?”

  “They may be dirty, but they’re not inept. Maybe they just wanted to shock him into playing ball and figured a night in jail was enough. Or maybe they didn’t think it through and once he was in jail, they realized that he was harder to get at. Either way, I think the paperwork fail was purposeful. You told me before that it was the chief that ordered them to obtain an arrest warrant. Talbott and Pomeroy wanted to let the prosecutor push it through later on down the road.”