The Final Bullet

by Chris Taylor

  Miles scoffed. “You make it sound so melodramatic, Detective. The man was having an argument with his wife. Lives were hardly hanging in the balance.”

  Lachlan held on to his temper by his fingernails. “I’m calling the situation as I read it. At the time, the victim made vocal threats. He was armed and his actions were aggressive. He told me he was going to kill his wife.”

  “He used those words?” the other IA investigator asked.

  Lachlan concentrated his attention on the younger officer who had introduced himself as George Kitchener.

  “I’m not sure that he used those exact words. I think it was more along the lines that he was going to do away with her, but coupled with the fact he had a .22 rifle in his hands, his intentions were clear.”

  “How far away was Detective Griffin?” Kitchener asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Lachlan replied slowly. “We’d agreed to split up, so we could approach the situation from different angles.”

  “Could you see Detective Griffin from your vantage point?” Miles asked.

  “No, but I knew he was somewhere nearby.”

  Miles narrowed his gaze. “How did you know, Detective Coleridge?”

  Lachlan returned the asshole’s stare. “Because that was the course of action we’d agreed upon.”

  “And Detective Griffin always follows orders, right?” Miles murmured, an insinuating gleam in his eyes. “That’s not what your superior told me when I met with him earlier. In fact, wasn’t there a situation only a week ago when Detective Griffin expressly disobeyed an order?”

  Anger once again surged through Lachlan and he held it in check by sheer force of will. The supermarket scene had nothing to do with the car accident. It didn’t involve Martin’s brother, for one thing. It wasn’t fair to compare the two situations. It just wasn’t. Fucking Becker. When Lachlan replied, his voice was full of steel.

  “Detective Griffin and I have worked together for the past five years. We know each other well. I was confident Detective Griffin was where I’d asked him to be.”

  Miles merely smiled. “Your loyalty’s commendable, Detective Coleridge. Perhaps a little misplaced, but commendable just the same.”

  Lachlan’s hands tightened around the edges of the Formica table. He leaned forward, wanting to smash his fist into the guy’s face. A tiny voice in his head once again whispered caution and with an effort, he forced himself back in his seat.

  “Think what you like,” he growled. “Your opinion means nothing to me.”

  Miles chuckled. “Brave words from an officer in the midst of an ugly IA investigation. “They sure breed them tough in the country, don’t they, George?” Miles smiled at his colleague. Kitchener merely offered a shrug. At least they both weren’t pricks. Lachlan had to be grateful for that.

  “You say the victim made threats against his wife,” Kitchener asked in a mild tone.

  Lachlan nodded cautiously. “That’s right.”

  “Was Detective Griffin close enough to hear?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Tell us about the moment before Detective Griffin shot the victim dead,” Miles demanded.

  Lachlan drew in a deep breath and eased it out. “By that time, I’d managed to get the victim to let the two other hostages, and others who were hiding in the aisles, go free. It was only the victim’s wife, Elsie Irwin, behind the counter, and her husband. I was maintaining communication with the armed man, urging him to hand over his gun. She was heading toward the exit while I tried to talk him down. I assume he caught her movement, because without warning, he raised the gun in Elsie’s direction. That’s when Detective Griffin discharged his weapon.”

  “Did Mr Irwin say anything at the point where he raised his rifle?” Kitchener asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. It happened very quickly. One moment I was talking to the gunman, the next he swung around and aimed.”

  “Could you see Detective Griffin at this point?” Kitchener asked.

  “No, my attention was focused on Barry Irwin, but I knew Martin was nearby.”

  Kitchener nodded and made a note on the pad in front of him. Miles simply threw Lachlan a hard stare.

  “Thank you for your time, Detective,” Kitchener murmured.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Miles growled.

  “That’s it?” Lachlan asked.

  “For now,” Miles added. “Don’t go leaving town.”

  * * *

  Lachlan spied Martin at his desk looking none the worse for wear and was filled with relief. Martin looked up at his approach, his eyes full of fear.

  “How did it go?”

  “As well as could be expected. Miles is a prick and Kitchener is only marginally better.” Lachlan shrugged. “They’re from IA. It’s the way they’re made.”

  “What did you say? Did you cover for me?”

  Lachlan frowned at the desperation in Martin’s voice. “I didn’t need to cover for you, Martin. All I did was tell them the truth.”

  Lachlan’s reassurance didn’t appear to have an effect on Martin’s state of mind. The tension in his face remained and his lips were taut with fear. A surge of sympathy went through Lachlan at the thought of what his partner was about to endure. If Lachlan could ease Martin’s burden, he’d have done so. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do.

  “You’ll be fine, buddy. Answer their questions honestly and they’ll have nothing to hang on you. You were right to fire that bullet. Irwin turned without warning and aimed. You thought he was going to shoot his wife. Who knows, if you hadn’t, we might have been burying her. Then he’d be in a jail cell and we’d probably still be fronting IA, explaining why we let it happen.” Lachlan shrugged. “Sometimes you can’t win, mate. All you can do is get through each day as best you can and hope you live to see another.”

  Martin’s lips twisted upwards in a parody of a grin. “It’s a wonderful life we lead, isn’t it? Who’d want to be a cop?”

  “Beats me,” Lachlan quipped.

  Martin flashed him the whisper of a smile and Lachlan sighed quietly in relief. As his partner pushed away from his desk and stood, Lachlan gave him a friendly slap on the back. “You’ll be fine, mate. Just get in there and tell the truth. It will be over before you know it.”

  It was nearly three hours later when Lachlan looked up and spied Martin exiting the interview room. His face was pale. Even his lips were bloodless. At the desolate expression in Martin’s eyes, dread filled Lachlan’s gut. Martin turned and headed straight for the door. Lachlan got to his feet and moved to intercept him.

  “Martin! Wait up! What is it? What happened?” he asked, trying to keep the urgency from his voice.

  Martin stopped and slowly turned. “They think I shot him on purpose.”

  Lachlan gasped in shock. “You have to be fucking kidding!”

  “No.”

  “How the hell could they arrive at that conclusion?”

  Martin laughed without humor. “I don’t know, but that’s exactly what Miles implied.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I can’t remember the exact words, but his meaning was darn well clear.”

  “That’s bullshit!” Lachlan exploded. “They can’t pin that on you! You made a split-second decision to save a woman’s life. That’s exactly what happened.”

  Lachlan stared at his friend. Tears glinted in Martin’s eyes.

  “They’ve stood me down, Lachie.”

  Shock held Lachlan momentarily speechless. “Fuck,” he eventually murmured.

  “Without pay,” Martin added, his voice hoarse. “What am I going to do, Lachie? What the fuck am I going to do?”

  “Don’t worry about the money,” Lachlan hastened to reassure him. “We’ll work something out.”

  “You have no idea. The mortgage has us stretched tight and then we have the private school fees. This shit could go on for months. How the hell am I going to manage?”

  “Go and see Becker. Take all of your
leave. You must have some owing.”

  Martin closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Yeah, three or four weeks. I guess it’s better than nothing.”

  “You’ll be all right, Martin. We’ll get through this. The IA bastards will speak with Elsie Irwin and she’ll corroborate our story. We thought her husband was going to shoot her and I’m sure she did, too. You saved her life, buddy. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Let’s hope she sees it that way,” Martin muttered and slowly turned back toward the exit. Feeling helpless and with an impending sense of doom, Lachlan watched his partner stumble away.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ava glanced at her watch and her heart skipped a beat. Lachlan was due for his appointment any minute. Except for that first time, when he’d been nearly thirty minutes late, he’d been very punctual. She liked that about him. She liked lots of things about him. She wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t made that first call; if he hadn’t become her patient.

  Would they be lovers now, enjoying a torrid, but fleeting, affair? Although she wasn’t one for meaningless flings, for Lachlan Coleridge, she might have made an exception. It wasn’t every day that a sexy, sensitive, thoughtful man came waltzing into her life. The fact that he was related to her brother-in-law hadn’t been a deterrent at the wedding, but his marriage certainly was now.

  She’d assumed he was single at the wedding and hadn’t given much thought to asking pertinent questions. Now that she knew he had a wife and children, things were different.

  “Tell me more about Kristy,” she said not long after he’d settled himself on the couch.

  They’d taken to having their therapy sessions out on the enclosed porch. Ava sat in the leather recliner with a notepad and pen on her lap, while Lachlan stretched his long body out on the settee. With his boots kicked off, his feet crossed at the ankles and his head nestled against a tapestry covered cushion, he looked comfortable and relaxed until she posed her question.

  Almost immediately, his body tensed and he turned toward her with a frown. “Why would you want to hear more about my wife?”

  Ava shrugged. “She’s the mother of your children. She’s an important part of your life. At some stage, she was important enough for you to marry. I’d like to hear more about her and what happened to cause your marriage to fall apart.”

  His lips twisted derisively. “That’s easy, Doc. I already told you. I’m what happened. I treated her like shit.”

  “In what way?” Ava asked carefully.

  Lachlan made an impatient sound in the back of his throat. “I didn’t hit her, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’d never do anything like that, but I didn’t treat her very well, either. When I wasn’t at work, I was often propping up the bar, swapping shoptalk with my mates. When I did make it home, the kids were usually in bed and Kristy was hopping mad. She’d accuse me of shirking my responsibilities, of never being there for her and the kids.” He flicked her a glance and then stared at his feet. “She was right.”

  “Was it always like that?” Ava asked quietly.

  “No.” He drew in a deep breath and blew it out on a heavy sigh.

  “We got married straight after I graduated from the academy. We had the world at our feet. We were high school sweethearts, in love with life and each other. We didn’t imagine anything bad could come our way. He laughed without humor. “Hell, I can’t believe how innocent we were! We didn’t have a clue!”

  Ava started in surprise. She remembered him telling her at Martin and Pam’s barbeque that his children were four and two. She guessed him to somewhere near thirty. If he’d entered the police academy right after high school graduation, it took quite a few years for the children to come along. She was curious to know why.

  “You didn’t have children right away.”

  “No, I wanted to wait until I established myself, became more settled. In the early days of a police career, you tend to get moved around a bit, especially if you want to climb the ladder. We moved three times around the state before I was transferred to Moree as a detective. Of course, Kristy wasn’t particularly pleased with the waiting. If she’d had her way, we’d have had kids the first year we’d married.”

  “It was a source of tension,” Ava guessed.

  Lachlan grimaced. “Yes.”

  “Did Kristy work during your marriage?”

  “Yes, a probationary police officer doesn’t get paid anything fancy. She’d trained as a secretary, out of high school. She was lucky to pick up work in most places we lived. We were far from rich, but we did okay. It got a little tighter when the kids arrived, but by then I’d made junior detective and the pay was better.”

  Ava digested the information. So far, he described the typical early years of a young couple. Once again, she wondered where it had all gone wrong.

  “Something changed along the way, didn’t it?” she asked softly.

  His body tensed, like it had the first time she’d mentioned his wife. When he was silent for so long, she wondered if he would answer. Though he’d attended several therapy sessions and was making progress, they hadn’t discussed anything as intimate as the precise reasons behind the breakdown of his marriage. But if he was sincere in wanting to heal and find himself in a better place—and Ava believed he was—it was imperative that they deal with the difficult issues that were closest to his heart, starting with what caused his wife to leave.

  “It was my fault,” he finally murmured, his voice low and filled with regret. “Kristy was the same cheerful, kind-hearted girl I married. I was the one who changed. The kind of stuff I saw at work every day… Even now, the thought of it fills me with dread. You can’t imagine how awful it gets. No one teaches you how to deal with that kind of stuff—you’re just supposed to suck it up and get on with it. Being subjected to that kind of trauma over a long and extensive period of time gets to you after awhile, no matter how hard you try to forget.”

  He turned to look at her with eyes that were dark with remembered horror and pain. “How am I supposed to forget about the baby I found, strapped into his car seat and drowned when his mom, high on drugs and full of alcohol, took a corner too fast? Or the man who beat his eight-year-old step-daughter to death and then cut her up and stuffed her in a suitcase?”

  His voice grew hoarse. He dragged in a ragged breath. “I could go on and on and on, Doc. I’ve been a cop for more than ten years. The things I’ve seen… It does your head in. If there was somewhere we could go at the end of every shift and de-program all the shit we’ve seen, perhaps we’d be in a better headspace and there’d be fewer of us depressed as hell and feeling isolated and alone, with no one to talk to but the bartender.”

  He stared at her. “I don’t know what the stats are, but broken relationships are high amongst police officers. It’s probably a direct result of what we’re forced to endure on any given day without any outlet or way to talk through it, to understand it, to deal with it when it happens.

  “We learn early on that our spouses and girlfriends aren’t good sounding boards. The average person has no idea what we see and do and they don’t want to know. It doesn’t mean they don’t care, but most people on the outside simply can’t bear the thought. They’re horrified and disgusted by our stories. It doesn’t take a cop long to work out the war stories are best left at the office, or shared with colleagues.”

  “That must put a strain on personal relationships,” she said.

  “You’ve got that right, Doc. Now you’re getting the picture. I’m not trying to find excuses for why I fucked up my marriage, but most people come home from work and talk about their day. They trade stories back and forth, maybe share a laugh at something funny or commiserate over something that turned out wrong. A cop doesn’t have that kind of easy back and forth. We come home from dealing with something unspeakable, and we don’t say a word. Not because we don’t want to talk about it, but because we know it’s better for our spouses if we keep quiet. We learn, you s
ee, that it’s better to say nothing than risk distressing the ones we love.”

  The rawness in Lachlan’s voice tore at Ava’s heart. She wanted to go to him and hold him close and tell him she’d never be like that. She’d listen to whatever he wanted to tell her, even the worst of the worst, and she’d be grateful that he shared it with her, despite the ugliness of it.

  Marriage was supposed to be a partnership, taking the good with the bad. Okay, so most people didn’t deal with the bad quite like police officers did, but the principle was still the same. Unfortunately, a lot of people took the easy way out.

  Lachlan stared at her. “I can see from your expression you’re blaming Kristy for not wanting me to open up, but the truth is, I didn’t want to shock her or disgust her or frighten her with details from my job. She was young and good and innocent. I didn’t want to tarnish that.”

  Ava challenged him with her stare. “And yet, if you had, if you’d shared more with her and given her the chance to understand, she might not have left.”

  Lachlan nodded sadly. “I get that and it tears me up, but it is what it is. We do the best we can at the time… Kristy accused me of shutting her out, of never opening up, but the truth is, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to know about all the shitty things I go through almost every day. She wanted to ask about my day and be told that everything was fine. She’d never admit it, but that’s true.”

  “How do you feel about her now?” The question fell out of Ava’s mouth and she waited, on edge, for his answer. All of a sudden, she very much wanted to know.

  Lachlan sighed heavily. “Kristy and I fell out of love a long time ago. As far as I know, there’s no one else involved. I guess we just drifted apart. She had her life, raising the kids, attending pre-school functions, having lunch with her friends—and I had mine. I went to work, paid the bills, kept a roof over our heads. Sometimes, I met a colleague for a drink and swapped some shop talk. It was the only outlet I had.