Long after they’d gone, Tilly stayed quiet, trying to remember what she could of all she’d seen and heard. Though most of her ached for a dose of something that would drown out the world and its pain, make her forget the men, part of her rebelled. She had to tell someone; she had to expose them, stop the cycle, prevent someone else from ending up in her self-made Dumpster hellhole. But would anyone believe her?
After a couple of minutes, she realized there was someone who would believe her. Glen—she had to find Glen.
3
Chaos.
Tess had watched it on TV, had trained for it in simulations, but never had she seen it, on this scale anyway, up close and personal. She couldn’t be involved, could only watch because she was on administrative leave, which was normal after an officer was involved in a shooting. Three days was the standard leave, unless extended by the department shrink. Only her leave had been extended indefinitely, not by the shrink but by the chief.
Not because the shooting looked bad to trained investigators. No, because it looked bad to a crazy blogger who hated police.
“Execution by Cop—Our Kids Aren’t Safe in Their Own Backyards” was the headline Tess woke up to the day after the shooting. Cable networks had grabbed the line from the blog Pig Watch, making the blogger famous overnight. The man who ran and wrote the blog, Hector Connor-Ruiz, was a local irritant with an ax to grind with the PD. He often penned poison anti-police letters to the editor in addition to writing the blog. Tess knew his radar had zeroed in on her in the earliest moments after the shooting. Because he listened to a scanner all the time, he’d arrived at the shooting scene before homicide investigators and the DA shooting team.
“Climbing the rank ladder wasn’t enough for you, huh, Commander?” he’d taunted from outside the yellow police tape. “You had to get down and dirty with blood on your hands.”
He’d agitated a crowd of onlookers, and before long rocks and bottles started to fly. Luckily, both Barnes and the subject Tess shot were transported by paramedics so the investigative teams wrapped things up as quickly as a thorough investigation would allow.
But Connor-Ruiz wasn’t finished.
With half-truths and outright lies, he lit the fuse that exploded the bomb of rioting. As the hours passed, rocks and bottles gave way to trashed patrol cars, angry mobs, fires, and looting. News crews from all over the world descended on Long Beach filming everything with a kind of ghoulish glee.
Tess’s mother and brother, who’d both moved to Sacramento two years ago, begged her to come stay up there, away from the madness, but Tess couldn’t leave. Her department, her friends and colleagues were going through fire and brimstone because of her; she couldn’t run away now.
“It’ll blow over.” Terry Guff, a retired cop who’d worked with her father, sat across from Tess. His craggy, lined face with puffy bags under his eyes sometimes reminded her of a bloodhound, but his gaze was hard and appraising, more like a wolf’s. “It calmed down after the Watts riots, and again after Rodney King.”
Tess sat huddled across from him in the corner of the restaurant booth, baseball cap pulled down, signature red hair gathered into a ponytail and sticking out the back of the cap. She and Terry were in a diner in Huntington Beach, a place Tess felt she wouldn’t be recognized.
It had been five days and things seemed to be getting worse, she thought as she held her coffee mug in two hands and fought the frustrated tears that threatened.
The chaos had almost made it to her front door. She’d been called a lot of names in her lifetime because of her red hair—Ginger, Fire, Red—but now, in print, Connor-Ruiz was calling her “the Red Menace.” This morning, spray-painted on the row of mailboxes outside her condo complex was the phrase Fry the Red Menace.
It was disconcerting to say the least that protesters had discovered where she lived. What saved her from completely freaking out was the fact that her condo community was gated. The malcontents could hang out in front, vandalize mailboxes, but couldn’t come to her front door.
She swallowed and looked her friend in the eye. “Gruff,” she said, calling him by an earned nickname, “it’s different now. During Watts, even with King, the brass, the politicians—they all backed the badge. That’s not true any longer. Now, if they think it’s politically expedient, they throw us under the bus before all the facts are in. The mayor has done that with me.”
The night before, the mayor of Long Beach had given a press conference to announce that he would convene a grand jury to look into the incident, effectively saying he considered the shooting a questionable decision by Tess that could lead to criminal charges against her. And this before the homicide investigators and the DA investigative team had finished their work, before all the evidence was in, before any police board of inquiry had been convened. Tess felt hung out to dry.
The Long Beach PD officer-involved shooting policy was simple and clear: for the use of deadly force to be justified, the officer had to articulate all the facts surrounding the incident and state clearly that they feared for their life or the lives of others.
Tess feared for Officer Barnes when she first arrived on scene, and when the subject beside Barnes pointed something at her, she feared for her life, believing he had a gun.
Now, because of that fraction of a second—the blink of an eye, really—when she believed she had to fire in order to save her life and Barnes’s life, she was being second-guessed in the public eye, at worst being called a cold-blooded killer, and at best incompetent.
It’ll blow over?
Things hadn’t gone sideways with the brass immediately. The subject she’d seen bent over Barnes was trying to take his gun, she was certain. What saved her life was the fact that Barnes was wearing a retention holster; the thug never could have pulled the service weapon out the way he was yanking. But he had pointed something at Tess, and she’d fired. Her focus was on saving her life and the life of a fellow officer. That was an in-policy shooting in anyone’s universe.
But it turned out to be Barnes’s Taser he’d pointed, something that further investigation showed was nonfunctioning, either because Barnes had dropped it or someone had knocked it from his hand or belt. And when the guy Tess shot died in the hospital and it was discovered he was only fourteen years old, her universe was shoved off its axis.
Added to the crushing realization that the subject she’d shot was only a boy, he was also a star football player for Poly High. Six-one, 180-pound Cullen Jamal Hoover already held a slot on the varsity squad. And it seemed to Tess that every time a picture of Hoover was flashed on the TV screen, he looked younger and more innocent. She figured soon she’d be seeing his baby picture.
Connor-Ruiz’s first headline had made her sick to her stomach. And so did worry for Barnes. He was in a coma and couldn’t tell investigators anything. He’d suffered a horrific head injury, most likely from a baseball bat found on scene.
The homicide investigators tasked with the case developed the theory, a guess really, that he’d stopped someone, maybe one of the subjects who’d fled when Tess arrived, maybe Cullen. JT had followed and found himself in the middle of an ambush. He’d gotten off the 999 call just before being hit with the bat.
“Tess, you did nothing wrong,” Guff said, breaking her from her brooding. “You have to have faith in the system. The mayor is in full CYA mode. He did you a favor in a way. The grand jury will clear you, and then there will be no question that you did what you had to do.”
Tess sipped her coffee and hoped Guff was right. But the sick knot in the pit of her stomach wouldn’t unwind.
–––
Two days later some good news came when JT Barnes finally woke up. Tess wanted to go to the hospital, but she knew her presence there would bring the chaos from the streets. And Barnes didn’t need that.
“He doesn’t remember anything.” Jeannie Haligan, a dispatcher and Tess’s best friend, wrapped her in a hug as soon as Tess opened the front door. “I talked to his wife
for a long time. He remembers going to work that night, but that’s it.”
Tess released Jeannie and shut the door. They walked to the kitchen, where Tess had dinner ready.
“But he’s okay? No permanent damage?” Tess handed her friend a glass of iced tea.
“So far, not that they can tell. He has a traumatic brain injury, but the swelling is down and he’s talking and walking—only he can’t remember anything from that night.”
Tess said nothing, just set about putting dinner on the table. She’d baked a chicken with potatoes and made a salad. It struck her that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone all out on a home-cooked meal. Maybe a long time ago for Paul? But with the promotion to commander, she rarely had time to do anything other than fast food or something thrown in the microwave.
“Smells great,” Jeannie said.
“Thanks. Hope it tastes good.”
As they sat down to eat, Jeannie talked about life in the communications center with all the madness going on in the city. Right now they were enjoying an uneasy truce. They’d only just backed down from twelve-hour shifts, and Jeannie hadn’t had a day off since this started.
She filled in many of the blanks for Tess, things that wouldn’t or couldn’t be aired by networks or cable, because all Tess had seen of the action in Long Beach was on the television. Things had calmed down some in the week since the shooting, but often when officers made stops or contacts, they were surrounded by angry crowds or people with cameras.
“A lot of the people we go 10-15 with don’t even live in Long Beach,” Jeannie said, commenting about the hundreds of arrests that had been made. “The other night, of the sixteen arrests made, only one person was local.”
“Where are they coming from?”
“All over.” Jeannie shrugged. “But a lot from Los Angeles and the Antelope Valley.”
Tess played with her food, unable to even taste the chicken, which Jeannie said was wonderful.
“Last night a graveyard guy went to make an arrest and got jumped by supposedly ‘concerned neighbors.’” Jeannie rolled her eyes. “He’s okay. When backup got there and they arrested the group, we learn they’re from Nevada. Big neighborhood.”
Tess put her fork down. “Ah, Jeannie, I hate this. All this violence because I had to shoot. What if someone else gets seriously hurt because I did what I was trained to?”
Jeannie reached out and put her hand over Tess’s. “And you were trained well. You did nothing wrong. The guys can handle it. They all know you did what you had to do for JT. This stuff, it will all blow over. These morons must have lives to get back to.”
Tess sighed, drawing her foot up onto the chair and hugging her knee. “That’s what Gruff said. But it just keeps going, and the grand jury hasn’t even been completely seated yet. I don’t see how anything can ever return to normal. And I can’t believe that kid was only fourteen.”
She swiped a tear away and shook her head. “Do you know, if we’d had a kid when Paul wanted to, I’d have a fourteen-year-old running around now.”
“Stop it, Tess. You know he forced your hand. What was your dad’s rule? Bad people and all?”
In spite of everything, remembering her police officer dad and his rules made Tess smile. She’d eventually made her own rules, and the one Jeannie referred to had made it onto her list.
“Rule #9: ‘Bad people make bad decisions—never blame yourself for that.’”
“Right. That kid made a bad decision to smack JT in the head with a baseball bat and then to point the Taser at you. Don’t blame yourself.”
The bat recovered at the scene had Barnes’s blood on it, and the only fingerprints belonged to Cullen. Yet headline after headline repeated the meme that he was unarmed. Connor-Ruiz even speculated that the teen was trying to perform CPR on the fallen officer. Protesters began marching with posters proclaiming, CPR Will Get You Shot!
“That’s the hardest part in all of this. I keep wishing it could have gone another way.” She toyed with her now-cold chicken. “I even asked Dr. Bell if I should reach out to the mom—”
Jeannie gave an exaggerated shake of the head. “That woman wants your badge and a big payout. What did Bell say?”
“He and the city attorney both thought that was a bad idea.”
“Emotions are too high, and she’s surrounded herself with people who want to turn this into a payday,” the city attorney had said. “After all city liability has been adjudicated, you can try if you still want to, but not now.”
“Tess, you made the only choice you could at the time. Stop second-guessing yourself.”
Tess knew Jeannie was right. And bottom line, she’d make the choice again. She’d believed that lives were in danger and she had no other option.
But Tess’s belief held no water with a media culture that seemed intent on painting her as a heartless killer and Cullen as a spotless innocent victim. The truth was lost in hyperbole and mischaracterization. Tess had to cling to the truth or she’d lose herself in what-ifs. No one could know what was going on in Cullen’s mind, but he made a bad decision and had forced Tess to make the hardest one she’d ever made in her life.
Now, the place she’d grown up in, the city she’d devoted her life to, was becoming foreign and angry. What if it doesn’t stop?
4
MARCH
“Why didn’t you wait for officers who were equipped with radios and ballistic vests before confronting the subject?”
“How can you be certain he was trying to remove Officer Barnes’s gun?”
“Is it protocol to enter a possibly dangerous situation so ill equipped?”
“It was dark; you couldn’t clearly see what he was pointing at you—why did you fire?”
“How do you know he wasn’t trying to help Officer Barnes?”
With a few of the grand jury questions still torturing her thoughts, Tess felt like she’d followed a rabbit down its hole, falling into a nightmare wonderland. Instead of the Queen of Hearts calling for Alice’s head, a cacophony of angry voices was calling for Tess’s. It was only rule #9 that kept her from screaming on this, the ninth day of grand jury deliberations.
She knew the truth. The officers who arrived on scene immediately after the shooting knew the truth and so did the investigators handling the incident. She’d learned the hard way that in this nightmare, backward world, the truth didn’t seem to matter. People made up their own truth.
Connor-Ruiz kept writing provocative headlines while JT worked his way through rehab, only to learn that he’d never be 100 percent again. Motor skills and some cognition had been affected by the injury. He certainly couldn’t ever be a cop again. And the three people who ran away the night of the incident still hadn’t been identified.
Yeah, Tess clung to rule #9 like it was a life preserver. Trouble was, quoting it wouldn’t work on the grand jury or the multitudes of angry people who seemed convinced she was a cold-blooded baby killer.
After a couple weeks of quiet, when the grand jury finished its work and began deliberating, the protests started to ramp up again. Downtown hotels filled with journalists, TV people, and what Tess and a lot of her friends believed were paid protesters.
A group formed at the east substation where Tess worked, but when they learned she was still on leave, they gathered at the main station downtown. Nasty signs and graffiti continued to appear outside her gated community. At one point protesters formed a human chain and blocked the 710 freeway, a major trucking artery. They wanted Tess’s head.
From an administrative perspective, over the months preceding the shooting, she’d watched a frightening anti-cop sentiment ripple across the country after a few high-profile incidents back East and in the South. She never thought such a poisonous flame would catch in Long Beach, but it had. It became a raging bonfire fanned by Connor-Ruiz with the news of the boy’s age and the fact that he did not have a gun. There was no video of the incident, just Tess’s account, and despite physical evide
nce supporting her version of the incident, the mayor and the DA wouldn’t take a stand, leaving everything up to the grand jury. And now Tess’s fate was in their hands.
Tess had lived and breathed police work her whole life. Her father and grandfather had been cops. In her baby pictures she was posed between her dad’s badge and the LBPD shoulder patch. She’d worn the uniform with pride for seventeen years, had never fired her weapon outside of the range before that night, and truly loved her job. She knew it was often popular to vilify cops for simply doing their jobs, but the personal vitriol directed her way hit like a sucker punch with brass knuckles.
The door to the DA’s office, where she waited to hear if the deliberations would end today with a recommendation, opened, and Tess turned, holding her breath.
“How are you holding up, Commander?” Detective Jack O’Reilly joined her and she exhaled temporary relief. She was here and not holed up at home because rumor was they were close. It was getting toward the end of the day’s session; she should know soon if a decision had been reached or if this would go on another day.
“I’m feeling powerless, but I’m okay.” Powerless didn’t begin to describe the weak, helpless, impotent feeling inside, but it was the best Tess could do.
“They can’t ignore the evidence no matter how loud those protesters scream.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am.” He held up his fist for a bump. “Us gingers and O’s got to stick together.”
The comment made Tess smile, and she bumped his fist, working hard to be as optimistic as he was. She’d worked with Jack years ago when they were both new on the job. That had been their nickname, the ginger and O unit. O’Rourke and O’Reilly, both redheads. Now Jack and his partner Ben Carney were the team investigating the shooting for the department. And she knew even weeks later they were still working tirelessly to locate the three unknown subjects who’d been with Cullen Hoover that night and clarify every moment that led to the shooting.
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