City Problems

by Steve Goble

  “You will live,” I said. “Goddamn it, but you will live. You have the right to remain silent …”

  I heard footsteps in the woods behind me. “Under control, Ed?” It was Irwin Trumpower.

  I was still aiming my pistol at Jeff Cotton’s face. Ten rounds left. But, yeah. Under control. “Yeah. We’re good.”

  I stepped off of Jeff’s gun. Trumpower took it up. Irwin stared at Jeff’s busted knee and wondered why it wasn’t a busted sternum. Training said I should have killed the kid who was trying to kill me, instead of trying a low percentage shot like going for his knee. Hell, he could have killed me ten times after I shot up his leg, if he hadn’t dropped his rifle.

  I didn’t answer the questions I saw in Trumpower’s eyes.

  “That Columbus cop,” Trumpower said. “She’s going to be OK. Tore up her clothes, made a bandage. She’s tough.”

  “Good,” I said. “Yeah, she’s tough.”

  “You OK, Ed?”

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  I was not OK. I wanted to shoot this bastard who had killed a girl. But I could not do that, after all.

  But at least it was over.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Saturday, 8:33 p.m.

  BACK AT THE S.O. I had showered to wash away the muck and thorns and blood from the events at Black Powder Creek. I had a fresh shirt and undies from my locker, even a pair of tennis shoes, but a road guy had to lend me some jeans. They were a bit too wide in the gut for me, but they were clean and dry.

  I stared at myself in the mirror, poked at a fresh scratch on my cheek and decided it was not going to start bleeding again, then asked myself whether I had screwed up by letting Jeff Cotton live.

  I knew the answer, of course. Cops are supposed to take suspects in alive if possible. Judges and juries decide which suspects deserve death. All that math changes, though, when a suspect points a gun at you. A cop is allowed to defend himself, and his brother and sister officers. The way to do that is to shoot to kill.

  I had shot at the kid’s knees, and I was struggling to figure out why.

  The problem was, of course, that I still wanted to kill Jeff Cotton. I’d seen enough of butchers killing pretty young girls, and I was a cop and I was supposed to make that shit stop. The fact that I could not make it stop, that no one could ever make it stop, didn’t matter to me. Part of my brain blamed me for what had happened and ignored the facts.

  The rest of my brain tried to convince me that killing Jeff Cotton would somehow fix things.

  That’s how depression works. It lies.

  Part of me even realized what was happening, that I was not being rational.

  But goddamn it, I wanted to go finish the job on Jeff Cotton.

  I finished dressing, clipped my gun to my belt, and walked out of the locker room. Sheriff Daltry was waiting for me in the hall. “You OK, Ed?”

  “Just scratched up, is all. Did a lot of running through briars and brush.”

  “How about on a mental level? Emotions, I guess? You OK? It ain’t easy, being shot at.” His words evidenced concern, but his expression seemed somewhat suspicious.

  “I am on an even keel, Sheriff.” I looked him straight in the eye. “Do you have some specific concern?”

  He licked his lips. “I am wondering how Jeff Cotton is still alive, considering the two best goddamn shooters in Mifflin County shot him. Now Ty was up in the air and says it was windy, so hell, he did great. But you were what, ten feet away, maybe twenty? And you shot him in the fucking knee?”

  “Sheriff …”

  “The knee. That boy had some goddamned serious weapon on him, didn’t he? If he hadn’t dropped it, hell, he could’ve shot you full of holes. Could’ve shot the SWAT guys full of holes, too.”

  “It was a judgment call.”

  “Yeah,” he growled. “It was a bad judgment call. Jesus.”

  “Sheriff …”

  “I’m glad he ain’t dead,” Daltry said. “Jesus, I’m glad he ain’t dead. That would make things way worse. But if he is not the killer, Ed, we’ve got a fucking disaster on our hands here.”

  “Killer or not, he ran and he shot at us.”

  “Yeah.” Daltry glared at the ceiling. “Look, Ed, you know the policy. Officer involved in a shooting goes on desk duty until such time as we review the whole case. So you are on administrative leave, paid, as of right now. No cases. Dooman will just have to pick up the slack. Bax can help him. He’s smarter than I thought—found that fucking tractor that you fucking ignored. But you are not doing any road patrol, fieldwork, nothing like that, until I say so. I have no doubt it was a justified shooting, honest, I don’t, and considering how much noise that boy’s daddy is gonna make in the press and all, it is for the best that you didn’t kill him. But … other officers are gonna have a lot of questions, Ed.”

  “I know.”

  “You have a lot of PTO coming to you,” Daltry said. “Maybe don’t even do desk duty. Write your report on this—hell, always gotta write a goddamned report, right? Give me that report, then maybe go somewhere, up to Erie, down to the Smokies, hell, anywhere, and just get your head straight. Take that pretty little teacher woman with you. Relax. You ain’t been relaxed lately.”

  “Maybe. OK.”

  “Give me your gun. You ain’t carrying again until the review is done.”

  “OK.”

  “It’s policy, Ed.”

  “I know.”

  I gave him the gun and left him there.

  I saw Shelly near the conference room. She had a bandage wrapped around the wounded thigh and had borrowed a Mifflin County Sheriff’s Office shirt to replace her own torn blouse. She used a crutch to keep weight off the wounded leg.

  “You OK?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I am. Never been shot before, but … I’m OK. You?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m good.”

  We stood there together, silent, until it grew too awkward. I could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to say something. I had a guess as to what it might be. Eventually, though, she took it easy on me.

  “My captain wants me to take some time off,” Shelly said. “I told him I would, after I interview Jeff Cotton and see any other suspects arrested. He was cool with that. I have time coming, God knows, so … yeah. After this case wraps, I’ll take a break. How about you?” She looked as though she hoped I would say yes.

  “Same. Finish this up, then take a break.”

  Then I lied.

  “Sheriff wants me to go with you to interview Jeff—thinks I’ll be helpful. But that’s it for me once we do that. I get to sit out any further arrests, interviews, etcetera after that, pending a review of my officer-involved case. You’ll have to work with Bob Dooman, the black Adonis, if you need more assistance from Mifflin County after this.”

  She smiled. “That man could change a girl’s mind.” Then she turned serious again. “But you are off the case as far as any other arrests are concerned, right?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “No more cowboy shit?”

  “No more cowboy shit.”

  “Because that was dumbass cowboy shit. You could have gotten killed.”

  “Yeah. OK. No more cowboy shit.”

  “OK, let’s go talk to Jeff.”

  I led us to the parking lot, taking a route through the big garage bay that would keep us away from Daltry’s eyes. He didn’t need to know I was ignoring my orders.

  We decided Shelly would interview Jeff Cotton, with me along for the ride. I drove us in her car to Ambletown General Hospital. Brian Cotton was in the lobby, talking to a doctor. Cotton saw us and almost ran at us. “What the fuck did you do to my boy!”

  “I told him the boy would be fine,” the doctor said loudly. “Tough kid. Very, very lucky.”

  Cotton looked as though he would throw a punch, but he drew up short when I squared up to defend myself. “Jeff fled, and shot at a police officer,” I said. “He shot at me, for God’
s sake. Things could have turned out much worse.”

  Things should have turned out much worse for Jeff, I reminded myself. I should have shot to kill.

  “You had no business with him!” Cotton said it through clenched teeth, but he unclenched his fists.

  “Yes, we did,” Shelly said. “We have evidence linking him to a homicide. We want to talk to him. He’ll have a chance to convince us he is innocent.” I admired the steel in her voice.

  Brian started to say something, but his phone beeped and he answered it. “What?” He listened for a moment. “What? What?”

  He thrust the phone back into his jeans pocket. “You Nazis are searching my farm?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We already have evidence possibly linking Jeff to a homicide. We have a team there looking for more evidence.” And we have SWAT all over the place just in case your buddies make that difficult, you miserable fuck.

  Brian Cotton swore and ran out the door. We told the doctor we wanted to see Jeff Cotton, and he told us that was not going to happen because the boy had been through a lot of trauma and needed his rest. The physician, a fairly young head-shaven guy whose badge said he was Joseph Trout, MD, and was assigned to the ER, didn’t look as though he trusted cops any more than Brian Cotton did. We told him we were working a homicide case.

  “The girl in the creek?” His eyes went wide.

  “Yes,” Shelly said.

  “Oh,” the doctor said. “Horrible. Still, I need to act in my patient’s best interest.” He pulled a phone from the pocket of his surgical garb. “One moment.”

  We listened as he asked someone, presumably a nurse, how Jeff Cotton was doing and explained that two officers of the law wanted to talk to him.

  “OK, thanks.” He ended the call. “I guess the patient actually wants to talk to you.”

  Shelly and I exchanged glances, both somewhat surprised. Dr. Trout told us where Jeff was, and we went straight there.

  Gretchen Pearson, the public defender who had rushed to defend Van Heusen the skinny guitar man, met us at the door. “I’m his PD,” she said. “I advised him against this. I want you to know he has been administered pain medication, and I want you to wait a while before you talk to him.”

  “It’s a murder case, Gretchen. And we think there are more suspects.” I started to move past her.

  “All the more reason to talk to him when he is better and not medicated,” she said, hand on my arm.

  “Let them in,” Jeff called. “I want to talk.”

  We went in.

  I figured he would be in a bed, but he was in a wheelchair, his bandaged leg stretched out before him. He stared at his foot, fuming. My bullets had torn meat and bone, and his leg was tightly wrapped. The shoulder wound was really more of an arm wound and was mostly superficial. Bandages hid it from view.

  “I might not be able to ever play again,” the linebacker said.

  It had been less than six hours since I had shot the son of a bitch, and I was surprised, frankly, that he was willing to talk to us at all, let alone so soon. But he was a tough kid.

  Gretchen took a seat beside him at the small table-thing attached to the bed. She started writing on a legal pad, probably taking notes about how horrible cops are.

  Shelly and I sat in the two small armchairs nearby, and after a few formalities. Shelly started the recorder and spoke aloud all the time, date, place, subject preliminaries.

  After that, Shelly didn’t fuck around. “Why did you kill the girl, Jeff ?”

  “Whoa!”

  “Don’t answer that, Jeff,” Pearson growled.

  “This is why I wanted to talk now,” he said. “Jesus! I didn’t kill her!” He was obviously groggy, and slurring words a bit.

  “We have physical evidence connecting you to the girl,” I said. His attorney looked up, but I did not elucidate. No need to mention the Gadsden flag cloth we’d found with the body. Jeff and his lawyer could stew for a while, wondering what we had. And I was betting once our team finished searching the barn and surrounding property, we’d have plenty more.

  Jeff’s head whipped back and forth, and his lips were tight together, like a fucking Ziploc.

  “What evidence do you have, Detective?” Pearson looked at me expectantly.

  “If we file charges, we’ll tell you.”

  Meanwhile, Jeff Cotton broke. “It was Josh!”

  “Who?” Shelly looked at me.

  “Do you mean Josh Webb?” I asked. “Your quarterback?”

  “Yes,” Jeff said, grabbing his hair with both hands. “I tried to stop him, but …”

  “He went to the party with you?” Shelly’s voice was gentler this time. Pearson did not jump in with an objection.

  “Yeah.”

  “You told us before you went alone.”

  “I lied, lady, OK? I was … I was …”

  Pearson leaned toward him and touched his arm. “Jeff, maybe we should—”

  “No! Jesus, these cops think I killed a girl! Jesus! Let me tell the truth!”

  Shelly looked at me, then at Jeff. “So you lied when you said you went to the party alone.”

  “Yes, I lied.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. To protect my friends, I guess.”

  “Friends,” I said. “Who else went with you?”

  “Lee Boggs, Eric Corker.”

  “More teammates,” I added.

  “Anyone else?” Gentler still. Shelly was far more calm than I felt. I tried to burn a hole through Jeff Cotton’s head with my eyes, but he would not look up at me.

  “No one else,” Jeff muttered. Tears rolled down his face.

  “You met Megan Beemer at the party,” Shelly said.

  “She said her name was Megan. Never told us her last name. I didn’t ask.”

  “This girl,” Shelly said, slipping a photo from the folder.

  Jeff didn’t even look. He just nodded.

  “Answer aloud, please, for the recording,” Shelly said. Jeff glanced at his attorney, who nodded.

  He looked at the photo. “Yeah, that is the girl we met. Megan.”

  “For the record, the subject identified a photograph of Megan Beemer,” Shelly said to the recorder. “How did you meet her?”

  “She was dancing with Josh, and we all flirted around with her, you know. She was cute. Flirty. Fun.”

  “How did you end up taking her with you when you left the party?”

  Jeff snorted. “She had a button. On her shirt. A rainbow thing, said LGBTQ on it or some shit like that. Goddamned alphabet people. I asked her if she was gay. She said she was, kinda, sometimes. I said what does that even mean and she said it meant she preferred girls, but a guy now and then was OK. She was smiling and all, and I thought, yeah, she’s into this, you know? So we went out to my truck.”

  “Just you and her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where were your friends?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Crashing and burning with other girls, I guess.”

  “OK, so the two of you went to your truck.”

  “Yeah, just me and her, at first. We had some beer, and some whiskey, and then … you know.”

  “You had sexual intercourse.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you force her?”

  “Don’t answer that,” the lawyer said. “Look, I think—”

  “I want to talk,” Jeff said. “I did not force her. She was into it. Really.”

  “OK.”

  “After, I said to her let’s go back in, I know the guys in one of the bands, they’re on later. She said OK. But then the tailgate opened up and Josh and Lee climbed in. I saw her first, Josh says. Then they close up the gate and I hear Corker start up the truck.”

  I jumped in. “It’s your truck—how did he have keys?”

  “Designated driver, dude. The rest of us were shit-faced.”

  Shelly continued. “So you are all in the back of this truck, the girl and you three boys, and
one boy was driving. This truck, with a cover on the bed?” She showed him another photo, this one of his own pickup, taken near Black Powder Creek earlier in the day.

  “Yes.”

  “For the record, the subject identified a photo of his own truck, found at the arrest scene,” Shelly said to the recorder. “What happened next, Jeff ?”

  “Corker drove, we got drunker, and Josh got kinda pissed. Mad, I mean, not just drunk. Pissed off.”

  “Why was he angry?”

  “Because I fucked her and he didn’t,” Jeff said. “I think, anyway. And we were all talking, about gay marriage and shit. She was all for it, you know? Her and her LGBTQ button. And we were trying to tell her that God didn’t want it that way, and what the Bible said and all that. That was it, really. It got kinda tense—she was really pushing the whole gay thing. We argued about that.”

  “All of you?” Shelly’s eyes widened.

  “Yeah, all of us against her, man. Just arguing the whole gay thing. But Josh, I think it was … was … more personal for him. I saw her first, he kept saying, looking at me. I really think he was pissed because she fucked me, and not him.”

  The room went silent. Finally, Shelly prodded Jeff. “What then?”

  “Lee says hey, she’s open-minded, she likes girls and boys, and who knows, maybe lots of boys.”

  “And?”

  “And she says no, I want to go back to the party, and Josh says c’mon, honey, I saw you first, and he starts kissing her.”

  “Did she tell him to stop?”

  “Yeah, but laughing, you know, trying to be all calm and all like she was trying to calm him down. I think she was trying to do that, you know. Calm him down. She said let’s all sober up, OK? And Josh says OK, bitch.”

  “He stopped?” Shelly glanced at me.

  “Yeah.”

  “He did not rape her?”

  “No, ma’am. I swear.”

  “What happened next, then?” I leaned closer to the guy. I wanted him to feel helpless.

  He looked at me. “So we argued, about gays and gender and all that liberal shit, and Josh tells her she ain’t even gay so why should she even care, and she says ’cuz she’s human or something like that, and he says you fucked Jeff, maybe you should fuck me, and she says no way and then …”