The door hadn’t even clicked shut before the department chaplain stuck his head in. “I’m ready for the prayer. I had to wait for the chief to leave,” he said, walking in and sitting down in the chair next to the bed. He opened a black notebook with the city seal on the front. The preacher was wearing a clerical collar with his dress uniform suit coat. Little white tufts of hair sprang randomly from his pink head.
“Chief was here,” she said, sorting the dreams from the present.
“‘The Nondenominational Prayer Specified for Police Officers Shot in the Line of Duty.’” He cleared his throat. “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of’—no, wait. That’s the one for ‘Killed in Action.’ Oh, here it is,” he said, turning the page. “‘Officers Surviving Injury in the Line of Duty.’” “‘Yea, though I walk through the valley—’ It’s the same one,” he said, dismayed.
“Chaplain.” She tried to gently interrupt him. “Could you get me some water?”
“Oh, sure,” he said, and stood up quickly, searching the room. The notebook fell on the floor and the prayers scattered. He bent down to scoop them up and banged his head on the food tray as he tried to stuff most of the prayers back into the notebook. “I’ll put those in order later,” he said, and continued looking for water. “Where do they keep the ice?” he asked, picking up the hospital cup with its flexible straw.
“I think the ice machine is next to the nurses’ station.”
“Oh, right,” he said.
“Is Homicide here?” she asked before he opened the door. He was having trouble with the cup and the notebook with the loose prayers.
“They’ve been waiting until I finish.”
“Could you tell them to come on in?”
“I’ll get the water.” He seemed relieved to be going rather than praying. He pried open the door with the edge of the notebook, then wedged it open with his foot, calling out to the detectives in the hall, “She said for you to come in. I’m bringing her water.”
In all police-involved shootings Homicide processed the scene, took statements, completed the initial investigation, and presented the results to Internal Affairs, which then conducted its own investigation.
The two detectives from Homicide filled the doorway. Salt tried to even out her breath, like she had been taught on the firing range, right before squeezing the trigger, a breath in, part of a breath out.
The detectives, Hamm and her partner, Best, were two of Homicide’s most respected and they were both fat, really, really fat. But neither seemed to mind all the jokes: “Their basic food groups? Glazed, powdered, jelly, and chocolate.” “Is that your belly or did you swallow the suspect?” “Two pigs in a poke.” In fact they both wore little pig pins: hers on her jacket lapel, his as a tie tack. Their reputation as detectives was exceptional but they had additional high visibility because of their size. Both were almost as wide as they were tall. Hamm, now at Salt’s bedside, quickly tried to put her at ease. “We just want to get the basics and we’ll be out of here. From what we could tell from the scene, you did all the right things.”
“Why did he do it?” Salt asked. A flashbulb of memory went off, bringing into focus the hairs of his knuckles spreading from the joker hat as he’d tightened on the steering wheel.
“He was a ‘three strikes you’re out’ candidate,” answered Best, “twice convicted of violent crimes committed with guns. Name, Johnny Mitchell, out of New York. They have him linked to a major drug cartel, but only as a contract worker, very low rung. His handlers won’t give a shit that he’s gone. He was known for pinching off something for himself anyway. He had a trunkload of guns, mostly handguns and a couple of rifles, all with altered serial numbers.”
“I’m starting the tape,” said Hamm, placing a mini-recorder on the tray table and rotating it in front of her. Best gave the date, time, and place of the interview, as well as the names of those present.
“Officer Alt, tell us what happened on the afternoon of April 18th,” Hamm said for the record.
Salt began with the gore violation, leaving out the rules of the game she and Pepper had been playing, trying to give them every other detail. When it came to the part where the perpetrator jumped from his car with the gun pointed at her, she remembered to say, “He put me in fear of my life,” the phrase that justified the use of deadly force by a police officer.
“He put me in fear of my life,” she repeated, took in a few short breaths, then let a long breath come slowly, controlling her breathing, still seeing the rounds going into his chest. She looked down at her fingers pulling the trigger on a frayed edge of the bedsheet. Hamm lightly covered Salt’s fist with her own soft, fleshy fingers. The tape recording would not reflect that touch.
“Do you know how many rounds you fired?” asked Best.
She was tempted to say “enough” but conceded, “I don’t know.”
“You fired four rounds center mass,” said Hamm.
The words were posted on the walls of every classroom in the training academy: Ability. Opportunity. Jeopardy. In every deadly-force situation an officer had to instantly evaluate: Ability. Opportunity. Jeopardy.
“Salt?” Detective Hamm reminded her that the tape was running.
“I didn’t know I had been shot but I saw my rounds go into his shirt.” She felt the stitches stretch on her scalp as her jaw moved.
“That concludes the preliminary interview with Officer Sarah Alt. The time is seven-forty-five p.m.,” said Best, shutting off the recorder.
Salt didn’t want to ask but did anyway. “How long before I know how it’s ruled?”
“You did fine,” said Hamm, collecting the recorder and their interview notes. “We took the guns to the crime lab. They’ll do what they can to raise the serial numbers. But since the perp’s not at large they won’t be in any hurry, backed up like usual. When and if we get some numbers ATF will do traces.”
Then they were gone and it was all fuzzy, like they were moving too fast and she was in slow motion.
The notebook with the prayers wasn’t with the chaplain when he came back with her water. Placing the full cup on the food tray where the recorder had been, he asked, “Is your family here? Do you need me to talk to them about anything?”
“No, my mother lives in North Carolina.” Salt hadn’t listed any family on the emergency call section of the personnel form. Pepper would know who and how to call if something worse happened. It was good of the chaplain not to mention her father. Or maybe he didn’t know. She often wondered how much talk there was of him. It was a long time ago and not many people were left that had worked with him.
She looked to the window, where the sky had changed from satiny pink and orange to deeper violet and gray. The chaplain asked if he could get her something other than water. She told him no and thanked him for coming. Closing the door softly, he left the room.
Her stitches were without a bandage so that air would help them heal more quickly. Alone now, she reached up and touched again the line of shaved scalp. It was on the opposite side from her father’s wound. She thought about having to cut the rest of her hair to match the shaved part.
From her bed Salt watched through the wide window as a searchlight scanned the oncoming night, moving back and forth across the low clouds above the skyline. What was it they wanted you to see that you hadn’t already? Another searchlight from some opposite location crisscrossed the first light and the two lights came together, then spread back out over the city sky.
4.
COODA POTPIE
Their fear for her had been great and this was her first day back at work. Individually and as a group they were formidable, huddling, large arms encircling her, hugging in turn, badges snagging on silver buttons, batons tangling, their vests buffering breasts and chests.
“Nice hair,” said Big Fuzzy, punching her on the arm. But at the hospital he had stumbled over his words: “When
you came on the radio, I could hear it in your voice and since you never—I mean I knew. Oh, hell . . .” his voice trailed off and he looked away before continuing. “When you said, ‘Radio, start me another,’ I knew it was bad.”
“Fuzz,” she had said, and laid a hand on his arm.
They were guarded in their tenderness. Blessing and Pepper had started a play fight at her bed, jostling for position at her side, going for their batons, threatening moves to their holsters.
“Unhand her, you vile piece of excrement!”
“You, sir, are a scalawag!”
They had a baton sword fight with swashbuckling moves, jumping on chairs and the bed across the hospital room. The nurses threw them out, laughing and charmed by their antics.
These fools were all assigned to the “War Zone.” Every police officer in the city would tell you that if you could work the Third, you could police anywhere. They were one-man cars, answering more calls per officer than in any other area, with a higher percentage of the calls violent. They had more projects than any precinct. Salt had never worked or wanted to work anywhere else—her shift, the four p.m. to midnight, busiest of all. Proactive policing and patrolling were luxuries. Most nights it was a struggle just to keep up. Radio would advise, “We have pages pending,” which meant ten calls per screen, or pages, calls waiting to be dispatched to the approximately ten officers who were already working other calls. “Can any unit clear?” radio would implore. On the rare occasion that they were caught up, the officers would try to get something to eat, take a restroom break, or check on problem areas. Socializing happened on calls, cars pulled together, driver’s window to driver’s window, briefly passing gossip, complaining about command, or quickly catching up on off-duty lives.
Almost every night was an adventure. She often felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. In the culture of poverty things sometimes appeared upside down. Citizens elsewhere never left their houses without identification in purses or wallets, while an ID for denizens of the zone might mean incarceration for outstanding warrants or going to jail under the correct name. Rookies became veterans when they learned to ferret out real names and dates of birth. For new officers, even the language presented a barrier. Accents of the ghetto, street slang, and the rapid-fire conversations of disputants left many rookies mystified.
Sarge, their watch and sector supervisor, yelled, “Watch, fall in!”
Salt turned to the roll-call room mirror, checking her newly shorn hair and the part left by Mitchell’s bullet.
She and her shift mates formed the line for roll call.
Theirs was the southeast quadrant of Atlanta. For policing it was divided into two sectors and ten beats, many of which had become ghettos of housing projects and poverty, testaments to the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and economic discrimination. Salt had policed beat 306 for ten years. Third shift, four to midnight.
“Okay, 3301, your regular, 3302, 3305,” said Sarge, going down the assignment sheet. “You, 3306”—he looked at Salt—“you’ll be on the desk.”
“Sergeant,” she responded, roll call formal. “I’ve been cleared for full duty.”
“Don’t you—”
“Sarge, request permission for my regular.”
“First day back and you’re already a pain in my ass. See me after roll call. 3307.” He continued down the roster.
After they broke she walked to the podium where the sergeant was signing forms and gathering his work. “Sarge, SOP says I can resume full duty.”
“Fuck the SOP and don’t quote it to me. Hell, I wrote the damn SOP. I just want you to take it easy for a while.”
“Sarge, I want to get back on the horse.”
He shook his head and crossed out a line on the work roster. “3306, your regular.”
And so she was back, carrying gear, clipboard, report forms holder, ticket books, and water bottle, and heading to get 306’s car. She loaded her utility belt with a large flashlight and her baton and checked the pepper spray and weapon clips in the leather pouches. The heaviest items were the radio with the attached shoulder mic on her left side, and the Smith & Wesson 9mm on her right. The belt fit snug against the bottom edge of the bullet-resistant vest under her uniform shirt.
The big white patrol cars were all Crown Vics and her car, which she shared with two other shifts, like many of the War Zone cars, had scraped doors, a smashed front bumper, and a siren that sounded more like a hiccup than a scream. But when she got all her gear settled and got behind the steering wheel, and as she strapped the belt over her chest, she felt the familiar giddy high of anticipation. All those dings and damage to the car were evidence of some adventure, some often-repeated tale of comedy, terror, heroics, or brotherhood. This dent or that bullet hole on a car could be read like a “How To” or “How Not To” manual of police work, or could be fine material for the next precinct comic. They couldn’t wait to get the rookies, fresh out of the academy, so the veterans could compete for who got to embellish the stories first and how much.
Radio gave her a couple of minor highway accidents back-to-back and she milked the last accident by not telling radio she had finished the call, so that she and Pepper could meet up for a six o’clock “afternoon” lunch. An easy afternoon, and a whole thirty-minute lunch at the Big Buddha. Then, as always, toward evening and on, the calls started and they responded and ran and tried to keep ahead of the violence.
On Thayer, in the very deserted darkness, Salt slowly steered the cruiser, tightening her bladder, and hoping for a quiet last ten minutes till the end of the watch. She touched the still raw scar on her forehead and at the same time saw her father’s hand as it had moved toward his bloody head. She’d seen him before in the cruiser with her, riding shotgun, while she’d remember him talking about the streets. “Oh, you shoulda been there, girl,” he’d say with a laugh. Then she’d imagine telling him, thinking he could see it through her eyes. Her eyes, her vision gained starry speckles. She shifted in the broken, low driver’s seat, distracting herself by trying to remember the childhood prayer. Just as some of the lines were coming up, something about lambs and through the darkness, a skeleton-like woman appeared under the dim rays of the lone working streetlight. Salt stomped on the brake pedal of the battered patrol car and felt the vibrations through the sole of her boot. She heard the scraping of the worn brake shoes and the grinding of bare metal. The pieces of the prayer vanished. As the woman came more fully into the light, Salt recognized Shannell—prancing, knees high, like a majorette—now in the narrow street, right in front of the still-moving patrol car, her giddy motions uninterrupted by the approaching steel bumper. Salt pumped the mushy brakes and brought the heavy police car to a stop. Shannell kept coming, and leaned toward the open window of the cruiser. When she stopped, her arms continued swinging, like a little girl being cute. Her head shook and swung in an impossible arc and reminded Salt of those bobbing toys that attach to the dash of a car. She was all bone, sweat shine, and skinny legs. Her scalp alternated between wild sprouts of hair and bald patches. A slipping tube top flattened what little curve of breasts she had and black leggings hugged the bones of her thighs.
“Big D cut,” Shannell said.
“How bad?” Salt tugged at the open neck of her navy/black uniform shirt, pulling it to get some air beneath her vest, undershirt, and athletic bra. Whoever had decided that dark wool-blend uniforms were the way to go for officers in a Deep South city had obviously never worked the streets. The humid heat had come early to the usually fine Southern spring and now the car’s barely working AC was already on overload. Salt kept the windows down anyway so she could see, hear, and smell the streets better. Except for Shannell, Thayer Avenue seemed deserted, although voices, children’s hysteria, harsh laughter, and fighting words echoed down from the corner. Salt recognized Etta James’s “Tell Mama,” but the music was thinned, coming from cheap or old speakers and a player t
hat skipped and repeated.
“You got to help my man. My Big D he bad cut.” Shannell had stopped but her body continued its involuntary disjointed gyrations. Her teeth clicked the downbeat over her words.
In this Southside neighborhood, on the doomed periphery of The Homes, it was really risky to be alone on the street at night. The doors and windows of the small sad houses that still stood were shut against predators that roamed the dark, like roaches seeking an opening to slide through. Every other lot was vacant, houses torn down as nuisance properties. No one sat on stoops, no children ran around catching fireflies.
Shannell grimaced, her lips pulled wide over her clenched teeth. “He’s bleedin’ like a faucet and walkin’ roun’, and bleedin’ lots and walkin’ and I’m tryin’ to fine him. You got to hep me fine him, he bleedin’ and walkin’ roun’.” She smiled, coy, some part of her brain reminding her that life would be harder if her D were found dead. She held on to the car, swaying, lost her balance, then leaned closer. Clown-like, her eyes squinted, her mouth opened in an oval. “Oh, you Salt,” she said, sounding pleased with herself.
“Shannell, you couldn’t tell it was me? You get something bad in your bump tonight?” Salt’s hands felt sticky as she lifted them from the steering wheel.
“You poleese car all muddy.” Shannell ran her hand over the windshield. “I couldn’t see.” She held up her hand, dirty, then wiped it through her fierce hair.
Salt shifted again in the seat as she moved the gear arm up to the park position. Even though at five feet eight she was as tall as some of the male officers, she could barely see over the steering wheel of this old cruiser because the seat was broken down to the floorboard. The big day-watch guy had been driving this car for a couple of years.
Cutting through Shannell’s crack chatter, Salt tried to get to the necessities. The best way to catch sight of Big D on these night streets would be by his clothes. “What shirt does D have on?”
“That Raiders one he love and always wear.”
The Policeman's Daughter Page 2