I’m teetering on the brink. Don’t know if I want to cry or leap out the thirteenth floor window. I left a message with Tiff at the Public Defender’s office but she hasn’t called back. Why did I call her, anyway? I wish I hadn’t.
I keep seeing the little boy’s ghostly-pale face. The streaming blood. His partially closed, unseeing eyes. His unmoving chest.
My arms felt so empty when an ER nurse reached into the car and took him from me and laid him carefully on a gurney. How small he looked lying there, so fragile. So sad. A moment later, I was half running behind the gurney as the white coats slammed through the double doors into the ER. One of the nurses, a woman, called out “We got a pulse” followed with “But not much of one to brag about.”
But not much of one to brag about?
Just as I thought that those were an unprofessional choice of words to use and that “but not much of one” is better than none at all, which is what I got when I checked his pulse in the police car, my knees buckled. An orderly and a uniformed officer prevented me from curling down to the floor.
They guided my stumbling self to a couch in a small room just off ER; it might have been a little chapel. My memory is fuzzy now, but I vaguely recall hearing the mother screaming out in the hall and an assortment of voices trying to calm her. I started to go out there, but the officer stopped me with a gentle hand on my arm, saying kindly that it wasn’t a good idea. He held onto me until I sat. He was a good cop but I don’t remember his name, or his face.
I was still sitting there when all the brass arrived. First, I told Mark what happened, then the Deputy Chief, the police chaplain, and I think a couple of others. When I said that I was going to remain at the hospital, Mark and the DC shook their heads, and Mark ordered me back to Detective’s to make a statement. A hospital spokeswoman said she would call with updates. We have yet to hear a word from her and it’s been four, almost four and a half hours.
I know deep in my gut that my bullet hit Jimmy and the thought of that has doubled me over with intestinal cramps a couple times. Yes, Mitchell fired, but I know—I know—it was my bullet. I had a perfect shot, just as I had two months earlier with the tweaker. I aimed my first one at the man’s medulla oblongata, just below his nose so that the bullet would stop the scum fuck dead in his tracks, stop him from reflexively cutting the boy. Then Tommy bumped my arm.
It had to be my shot that did it. It had. To be. My shot. Not Mitchell’s. Mine.
“Sit down, Sam.” Mark says, his voice addressing me as a friend, not a subordinate. “You were about to unleash your Bruce Lee on Tommy?”
I sit heavily, arms crossed, like an angry, defiant teen. I look through the blinds out into the work area at the detectives mingling about in groups of twos and threes. Mitchell, still in uniform, comes in and sits at one of the empty desks. The others look at him but quickly turn away when he looks back. I wonder how his interview went. Is he writhing in guilt, too? Or is he blaming me? Yeah, that’s probably it. He knows I shot the boy. He knows—
“Sam?”
I jerk my head toward my friend, surprised that I’m sitting in his office. My brain quickly plays catch up.
“You got to keep it together, Sam. A lot of shit’s coming down in the next few days and weeks. The press is going to eat us like free hors d’oeuvres. The other coppers look up to you. Do it for you and do it for them, too.”
I look at him, fighting unsuccessfully to hold back tears. After a moment, I nod. “I understand, Mark… but a child… it’s… it’s too much to bear. Too much…”
He nods compassionately, his eyes glistening. “Your interview went well. I know it’s hard when Homicide grills you and you’ve gotten it twice in two months. That’s why I sat in this time. There will be more, you know the procedure. They’ll grill the hell out of you so there are no surprises for the press to salivate over. There will be a grand jury, too. Maybe a public inquest. It won’t be cut and dry like last time. They’re going to come at you hard. Count on it. And count on the media stirring the citizens into a feeding frenzy.”
I’m trying to listen to Mark but it’s hard to focus with all the images, sounds, and smells ripping through my skull. When he said “grand jury,” I heard the gunshots in that bedroom. When he said “the media will,” I felt the little boy’s limp body against my chest.
“Tiff ’s here.”
That I hear clearly. Mark is looking behind me and making a come-in gesture with his fingers.
I stand, spin around, and nearly collapse into Tiff ’s arms. “Tiff…” I’m sobbing like a toddler and trembling within her embrace. I lean my head on her shoulder.
She pats my back, no doubt confused. “Sam? I’m sorry I didn’t get your message sooner.” When she leans back to better see me, I burrow my face into her neck. “What’s…? I was in a meeting and…” I feel her head turn. “My God, Mark, I can’t believe what has happened. I just heard on the radio about a police shooting. I don’t understand… what’s going on with the police department?”
I feel my face tense. From over her shoulder, I see a few of the guys glance over at us, no doubt uncertain as to how to take her question. Oblivious, Tiff leans her head back. “Sam? What on earth?” Then, without compassion, “Why are you crying?” She looks back at Mark, and says, as if I’m not in the room, “I’m not understanding. Sam left a message that he needed me to come down. Does this have anything to do with that little boy who was killed?”
I jolt as if electrocuted and push back from her.
“Killed!” Mitchell shouts from across the room. “What did you say?”
Confused, Tiff looks at my face, toward the guys out in the work area, and back at me. Her eyes drop to my bloody clothes. “Sam! What in the hell…”
“What did you hear,” I whisper.
Her eyes stare at my shirt and pants. “Why are you covered—”
I enunciate each word. “What. Did. You. Hear?”
She takes a step back from me “They said on my car radio that a boy had been taken hostage and that he had just died in the hospital. An anonymous source said the police…” Her eyes travel up my body to meet mine. “… killed him.”
“What the fuck!” I hear Mitchell bellow. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him through the window spring to his feet and hurl something across the room. “What the fuck!” he shouts again.
I pinch my eyes closed and cover my face with my hands. Other voices are shouting. There’s pounding, like a fist on a desk. I’m dizzy. I lower my hands in case I fall but I don’t open my eyes. I don’t want to open them. I don’t want to see anything. So dizzy.
Why are Tiff and I dancing? Why is she leading me…
“Sam?” Tiff ’s voice. I open my eyes.
“Wha…” I’m slumped against her, my face pressed into her chest as she struggles to hold me up.
From behind me, Mark is shouting. Into the telephone?
“Nononono!” Pederson’s voice, I think, from out in the work area. “We have to hear it from a citizen who hears it on a car radio?”
“Sam?” Tiff ’s voice. “Sam, what is it? Mark? Help me. Damn-it! Would someone please talk to me?”
Hands on me. Mark’s and Tiff ’s guiding me to a chair.
“Trash can,” I manage.
Mark grabs his wastepaper basket and thrusts it under my chin just in time for me to dry heave