“It’s not for us,” I told him. “It’s for you.”
He licked a thin line of mucus from his lips, blinking rapidly. Sophie rose, dropping the keys and the cuffs on the ground in front of him with a splash. He flinched again.
Jen lowered the camera, turning it off. She looked at me and I nodded, so she set it on the ground beside his cuffs and his keys.
“We’re on it,” I told Morrison. “Our names, our badges, all of it. Everything we just did, it’s all there. Everything that just happened to you.”
He forced himself upright, doubled over with a new fit of coughs, then swiped at his eyes and his mouth with a beer-soaked sleeve. The pepper spray still had to be working him something awful, but the beer had probably gone a long way to relieving the pain.
“Hand it over to Internal Affairs,” I told him. “Give it to the commander. Take it downtown and hand-deliver it to the chief, send it through channels. Whatever you want, it’s yours.”
“You think I won’t?” he asked softly, furious.
I looked to Sophie and Jen, then showed him my palms. “I don’t know what you’re going to do, Morrison. You could get yourself cleaned up and go back to District and spin some story about a drunk-and-disorderly call or some other bullshit to explain your sorry state. You might even get away with pretending this never happened. After all, we did a pretty good job of staying away from your face.”
Morrison started hacking again, trying to clear his sinuses. I waited until he was finished to continue.
“Then again, you could drag your sorry ass back to District right now,” I told him. “You could raise holy hell, try to get the commander out of bed, hand him this camera here in person and tell him he’s just got to watch what’s on it. You could run it to your buddies downtown, you could give it to Internal, you could flip them to us and try to land our badges.”
I paused, wanting him to hear the next part, to make sure he got it and got it clear. Sophie and Jen were each standing with me now, the three of us together, and I realized that my fear had gone. I realized that everything I was saying to him wasn’t just the truth, it was what I believed. If I had to, I’d take the fall, and I knew Sophie and Jen felt the same way.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do, Morrison,” I said finally. “But I do know this: you deliver this camera to anyone in the department come morning, and there will be no one who hasn’t heard about it by lunchtime. And come roll call at third shift, they’ll be making up details of their own, there’ll be patrolmen in the Southwest talking about how you wet yourself, there’ll be bicycle cops riding Central, swapping details about how you begged – begged – for someone to help you.”
The radio on my belt crackled, dispatch asking my disposition. Looking Morrison dead in the eye, I radioed back that the situation had been resolved and that Officer Morrison and I were going 10-6. Dispatch came back with confirmation.
“Bring charges against us,” I said. “Charge us all, you’ve got the evidence. We’re agreed, we’ll all plead guilty, if that’s what it comes to. Each one of us is more than willing to stand up in open court and tell the world what we just did to you.”
Morrison didn’t move, and I thought that maybe he was staring at the camera, but maybe he wasn’t looking at it at all. Maybe he wasn’t hearing me anymore.
Sophie and Jen went back to the pickup, and I returned to my car, climbing in and killing the spot before restarting the engine. The light around Morrison vanished back into the night. He was finally beginning to stir, but he was doing it slowly, and I watched him, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to help. He made it into his vehicle and got it started, and I heard his 10-7 come over the radio, and I called mine in on top of it.
We headed in different directions, he toward the river, me up toward the top of the hills, the direction my fellow officers had gone, tiny Jen and gorgeous Sophie. We’d meet up after I got off shift, feel guilty and giddy as we waited to see if the phone would ring, if some officer we knew would be paying us a visit, asking us to clear up some confusion, to answer some questions.
Or maybe we’d find ourselves waiting for nothing, that Morrison hadn’t dared to breathe a word. Maybe we’d find that we had gotten away with something we never should have done, something we never should have had to do.
Driving up that hill, I didn’t fear the worst.
I knew I was covered.
Rule Number One by Bev Vincent
She stands out like a cactus blossom in the desert, seated in the roll-call room beyond the eight men in sky-blue shirts and navy-blue pants huddled in the back row like juvenile delinquents in remedial math class. The minute Brett lays eyes on her, he knows she will be his for the evening.
Her attire is simple, understated: a white blouse and blue slacks with white pinstripes. Sensible, flat-soled shoes. Long black hair caresses the shoulders of her blouse, which is open demurely at the neck. In her right hand she grips a pen, which hovers over an open steno pad resting on the desk affixed to her chair. A burlap satchel sits at her feet. She doesn’t look up when he enters.
The room is wide but shallow, containing three meandering rows of simple student desks, the sergeant’s podium, and a TV suspended from the ceiling. Printouts listing suspect information decorate the podium. Behind it, next to the door, American and Texas flags flank an empty table. A poster features the sergeant from Hill Street Blues saying, let’s be careful out there.
It’s nearly three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, so the television is broadcasting a Texas A &M football game. The Astros play later on, which means Brett’s radio will be filled with chatter every time someone scores.
Two bulletin boards sealed in glass cases cover the wall at the far end of the room. One features mug shots, wanted notices, and BOLO fliers. The other contains approved job postings for officers looking to supplement their income. Most are for night watchmen or nightclub-security positions. Brett has no interest in these – he already works the department maximum forty additional hours.
The comfortable weight of the gear on his utility belt – service revolver, radio, handcuffs, nightstick, and Taser – adds to his swagger. Two colleagues look up from their conversation when he takes the last empty seat in the back row. Phelps raises his eyebrows and tilts his head an inch toward the woman. Brett scrunches his mouth into an appraising pucker and nods. Not bad is the silent message they exchange. He doesn’t waste any time checking her out, though. He’ll have the next eight hours to do that. Guaranteed.
When the sergeant emerges from his office, he mutes the volume on the television but leaves the picture up. He reads a policy-change sheet and advises officers whose body armor is more than five years old that they have three more weeks to turn it in to be replaced. He has an orientation video available for anyone taking the sergeant’s test. After reading the names of officers who need to sign subpoenas before they go on duty, he assigns cars by unit number.
“Hoskins,” he says, “you have a ride-along.”
Which comes as no surprise to Brett. Nine times out of ten, he gets the riders. The only question is why she’s here. Most civilian passengers are either media or members of a mayoral task force. Her attire doesn’t provide any clues, but he appreciates the way her blouse clings to her body. If he had to bet, he’d say media. It doesn’t make much difference. Either way, he has to mind his p’s and q’s, keep the bawdy banter to a minimum, and not bust anyone’s chops unless they deserve it. It also means, however, that he has an excuse to handpick the cushier calls.