OFFICER INVOLVED

by Lynch, Sean

  Sean Lynch

  Officer Involved

  A Farrell and Kearns Thriller

  Officer Involved

  All Rights Reserved © 2015 by Sean Lynch

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Sean Lynch

  Contents

  Officer Involved

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  This book is gratefully dedicated to the loved ones of those who answer the call. Theirs is often the greater sacrifice.

  Chapter 1

  Deputy Kevin Kearns instantly recognized the sounds as gunshots. He sat upright from where he’d been slouching behind the wheel of the marked police sedan and fumbled the door open. He heard the reports of what sounded like several different large-caliber handguns being repeatedly fired, and the deeper resonance of a shotgun blast. In the midst of the handgun shots, and a split-second before the shotgun discharged, he heard a man’s muffled scream.

  Kearns bailed out of the car and bolted across the sidewalk. He ran toward the dingy tenement apartment where only moments before his field training officer, Deputy Bernie Trask, and a sheriff’s detective named Mendenour whom he’d only just met, had entered. When he reached the apartment door he put his back to the stucco wall and discovered the revolver on his hip had materialized in his hand, though he didn’t recall drawing it. His heart was racing, and he could feel the adrenaline coursing through his body.

  Kearns had seen action before. He took a breath, willed himself into a calmer state, and knelt and checked the doorknob. It was unlocked. He pushed open the door slowly and peered into the apartment behind the sights of his Smith & Wesson.

  Detective Mendenour was face down on the floor in the hallway, only a few feet inside the apartment. From where Kearns squatted he could have almost reached out and touched him. He recognized Mendenour’s fat body, clad in a green nylon Oakland A’s jacket, from their introduction only a few minutes earlier. The plainclothes detective had apparently been hit from behind while running for the door.

  Kearns didn’t bother checking for a pulse. It took him only a second to realize Mendenour was beyond medical treatment. A portion of the back of his head was missing, and what remained of his face was a mask of pulp where the shotgun pellets exited.

  More gunshots sounded from within the apartment. Kearns’ field training officer was somewhere inside and the fight was still on. He gripped his revolver tightly and entered.

  He stepped into the apartment, over Mendenour’s body, and headed for the first room at the end of the hallway. The sound of gunfire was emanating from there, and the scent of burned powder got stronger as he proceeded. It was dark, and Kearns vaguely remembered noticing the windows were boarded up when he watched Trask and Mendenour enter earlier.

  Kearns had been mildly irritated the senior deputies had refused to allow him to accompany them, instead making him wait in the car. That irritation had switched to gratitude once the shooting started. He moved down the hallway, desperately wishing his eyes would more quickly adjust to the apartment’s interior gloom from the bright July sunshine outside.

  The unit, like many in this block of housing projects, was vacant and in need of major repair before becoming habitable again. There was no furniture in sight, trash littered the filthy carpets, and graffiti scarred the walls. He reached the room at the end of the hall and paused a second, his gun before him in a two-fisted Weaver stance.

  The gunshots were deafening now. There was no time to wait. Kearns dashed in just in time to see Deputy Trask, on one knee in the center of the room, drop his service revolver and put both hands in front of his face. An instant later his face was gone. The force of the close-quarters shotgun blast decimated his shielding hands, and the debris that was once the back of his head decorated the wall behind him.

  Kearns was firing before he realized it. The Combat Magnum bucked in his hands as he emptied it into the man standing over Trask. The first two .357 rounds caught him low in the back. He whirled and tried to bring the shotgun up and to bear on Kearns. It was a pump-action model, like the ones mounted in the sheriff’s patrol cars, and needed a fresh shell to be chambered from the tubular magazine before it could be fired again.

  Trask’s murderer was trying to cycle the pump as he wheeled to face Kearns, and the deputy’s remaining four bullets took him center-of-mass, tearing into his chest. He was a very large Hispanic man, and he didn’t fall until the last bullet struck. Once he hit the ground he didn’t move.

  Kearns had emptied his revolver. He reflexively snapped open the cylinder and was ejecting the expended cartridge cases when he sensed movement in the room. He threw himself to the floor as far as he could from the muzzle flashes he’d created.

  He landed hard on his stomach, rolled, and was clawing at one of the speed-loaders on his Sam Browne belt when a burst of gunfire peppered the wall where an instant before he’d been. The gunfire’s source was the darkness across the main room.

  Kearns inserted the speed-loader, containing six fresh magnum cartridges, into place by feel alone. He was silently grateful for the endless reloading drills his academy firearms instructor had made his recruits endure. Unlike most of his rookie classmates, Kearns kept up practice in the months after graduating.

  While reloading, Kearns fixed his eyes on the muzzle flashes coming from the gun across the room. The weapon producing them was a hi-capacity, semi-automatic pistol; a nine millimeter by the sound of it. The gun’s operator was shooting high, as Kearns had hoped, spraying the area where his revolver’s flashes had originated. The shooter likely had his vision impaired by the blinding muzzle and cylinder-gap flares erupting from Kearns’ four-inch barreled .357. Kearns had instinctively fallen back on military trai
ning which instilled the habit of closing one eye when firing in diminished light.

  Kearns rolled back to a prone position, brought his weapon up, and took an extra split-second to get a sight picture. He knew a hasty first shot could be his last. The instant he fired, the vivid flash from his magnum revolver would again illuminate him and his opponent would zero in.

  Aiming at the apex of his adversary’s many muzzle flashes, he squeezed off two quick shots, followed a fraction of a second later by a third. The hostile fire ceased. Kearns opened both eyes and rolled again, and when he gained a knee his revolver came up first.

  He heard a clatter and saw a thin Hispanic man drop a pistol and slump down the wall to the ground. There was a neat hole under his right eye.

  Kearns surveyed the room. He heard a man’s voice yell something in Spanish from somewhere else within the apartment, and then the sound of rapid footsteps.

  He rose to his feet and sprinted after them. The apartment’s interior got much lighter, as if someone had opened a door or window. As he entered the main room he saw the tattered curtains flutter over an open, sliding-glass door. He ran to the slider, parted the curtain with his revolver, and looked out.

  Running for a waiting car in the alley behind the apartment complex was another Hispanic man. He was wearing a white T-shirt and carrying a pistol. He was about the same height as the thin man, but had a much more muscular build.

  Kearns drew down on the fleeing gunman and yelled, “Sheriff’s office! Stop!”

  The man disregarded his command and leaped into a car through the open passenger’s window. The vehicle was a beat-up looking, 1970’s model Buick without license plates. The sedan began to speed away, its tires screeching. The gunman leaned out of the passenger window and fired twice at Kearns, but by then the car was well down the alley. Kearns held his return fire. He realized he had little chance of hitting the escaping gunman, and his high-velocity rounds posed a potential threat to the residents of the densely-populated community.

  Kearns holstered his revolver with a trembling hand. He re-entered the apartment, approached the body of his field training officer, and retrieved the Motorola Handie-Talkie from his dead partner’s belt. As a rookie in the Field Training Program, Kearns was supposed to be with his training officer at all times. Consequently, even in the modern age of 1990, rookies often weren’t issued transceivers of their own until the last few weeks of the program.

  Kearns keyed the mike and said, “Eleven-ninety-nine. Shots fired, officers down.” He gave the address of the San Lorenzo apartment complex, and broadcast what little description he could provide of the fleeing Buick and its occupants, including the vehicle’s direction of flight.

  Kearns went out the front door and sat down heavily on the concrete stoop of the apartment. A crowd was gathering in the street nearby the cruiser he’d left parked in front of the unmarked sedan Detective Mendenour had arrived in. Soon he could hear the sirens in the distance growing louder.

  Deputy Kevin Kearns wasn’t having a good day. His academy instructors warned him there’d be days like this, just like the song said. Since he’d only graduated from the sheriff’s academy a few months ago, he was hoping for a bit of a break-in period, to get his feet under him, before encountering an event like one he’d just survived. That’s what the Field Training Program was supposed to be; a time of training and evaluation, not a baptism by fire.

  But then again, Kearns had been baptized by fire before. More than once.

  He was used to it.

  Chapter 2

  “I need to make a phone call,” Kearns said.

  “What’s your hurry?” Sergeant Conley asked.

  “I want my legal counsel,” he answered.

  “What do you need a lawyer for? If you haven’t done anything wrong,” the deputy district attorney said, “why would you need an attorney?”

  Kearns’ eyebrows lifted as he looked up at the two men standing over him in the sparse interrogation room.

  “I’m entitled to legal representation,” Kearns said flatly, “per my Constitutional and Peace Officer Bill of Rights. I have a right to a lawyer, and until I get one, I’m not talking. I already told you that at the scene.”

  “You’re not even a fully-fledged peace officer,” the deputy D.A. said. “You’re still a rookie. You haven’t finished the Field Training Program.”

  “Not yet,” Kearns admitted.

  “Still on probation, isn’t he?” the deputy D.A. said to Conley.

  “That’s right,” the sergeant acknowledged. “As a probationary employee he can be discharged at will.”

  Kearns sighed. He’d spent time before in police interrogation rooms. Just because it was a familiar experience didn’t make it a comfortable one.

  Officer-involved shootings weren’t especially uncommon occurrences at the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, which boasted nearly one-thousand sworn deputies patrolling one of the most populous counties in California. But two deputies killed in the same day, in the same incident, was a catastrophic rarity. Kearns knew he was in hot water. A couple of hours earlier he had barely escaped with his life. That was a battle. The war had only begun.

  When the cavalry arrived, Kearns greeted the responding deputies at the front of the abandoned apartment with dread. Once they checked the interior, and discovered the carnage within, the already chaotic scene became a disaster zone.

  Within minutes more deputies showed up, along with the patrol sergeant and watch commander. Not long after that, plainclothes investigators made their entrance. The uniformed deputies sealed off the apartment once the plainclothes cops went inside. Fifteen minutes later one of the detectives emerged and was led over to Kearns by the patrol sergeant. By then the already large crowd of onlookers was growing larger, and the first of what promised to be several press vans had arrived.

  “I’m Sergeant Conley,” the detective announced. He was a tall, lean, stoop-backed fellow in his late forties with a lot of gray hair and a bushy mustache.

  “This is Deputy Kevin Kearns,” the patrol sergeant introduced him to Conley. “He just graduated from the academy in March. Deputy Trask was his primary field training officer.”

  “What happened?” Conley asked. He didn’t offer to shake Kearns’ hand.

  “With all due respect,” Kearns said, “I’ll wait until I consult with my legal counsel before answering any questions. I’m invoking my right to remain silent.”

  Sergeant Conley glared down at Kearns. “I can order you to talk.”

  “I know,” Kearns said. “But you can’t make me do it before I see a lawyer. Once I speak with counsel, Sergeant, I’ll be glad to cooperate.”

  “What’s your fucking problem?” Conley demanded. “I’ve got a quadruple homicide on my hands, and two of the victims happen to be cops. One of them was your own partner.”

  “I know,” Kearns said evenly, “I watched them die. My fucking problem, to answer your question, is that I didn’t forget the block of instruction at the academy on my legal protections associated with officer-involved shootings. I just graduated in March, remember?”

  Conley’s eyes narrowed. “Those other two stiffs in there? You’re saying you engaged them?”

  “I did,” Kearns said. “I shot them both. That’s all I’m going to say at this time.”

  “I thought the rookie was outside the apartment when it all went down,” the patrol sergeant said to Conley. “I assumed he went in after it was over. I figured he was only a witness.”

  “You figured wrong,” Conley said, shaking his head in disgust. “This changes things.” He stuck out his hand to Kearns. “Give me your gun, Deputy.”

  Kearns complied. He was led to an unmarked detective’s car and told to sit in back. He waited in the rear seat for a half-hour, until an obese detective he’d d never seen before got behind the wheel and wordlessly drove him to Eden Hospital in Castro Valley, only a few minutes away.

  Kearns felt naked and vulnerable without his
weapon, especially in uniform, but knew he had no choice but to go along with the O.I.S. investigation protocol, which mandated confiscating his duty revolver as evidence.

  At the hospital, Kearns and the silent detective walked past a nurse’s station where the staff was glued to a T.V. featuring Jerry Douglas and Beth Maitland sparring as John and Traci Abbott on The Young and the Restless. A nurse was summoned, and soon Kearns found himself relieved of two vials of his blood.

  “You’d better hope you ain’t got any booze or drugs on board, Rookie,” the detective finally spoke as the nurse drew the blood. He marked and pocketed the vials.

  “Don’t confuse my lifestyle with yours, Detective,” Kearns said.

  Kearns was a muscular fellow in his mid-twenties, slightly taller than medium height, with short, sandy-colored hair. He looked, and was, boot-camp fit. A daily exercise regimen had been a part of his life long before he’d pinned on a deputy’s star.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, Rookie,” the detective said, over-emphasizing Kearns’ status again. “A wise mouth ain’t going to make it any easier on you.”

  Kearns ignored him, and minutes later they were back on the road. The fat detective drove him to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Headquarters on Lake Merritt, across from the Oakland Public Library, and escorted him upstairs where he was placed in an interrogation room.

  After the detective left, Kearns sat alone. It was cold in the stark, featureless room, and the sweat which earlier soaked his body had chilled, causing him to shiver slightly. He knew from past experience that fatigue and a drop in body temperature were after-effects of the adrenaline surge he’d undergone during the firefight.

  A little more than three hours after the shooting, as Kearns dozed uncomfortably in his hard-backed chair, the door opened and Sergeant Conley entered with another man. Conley was carrying a push-button phone and a cassette recorder, and the man accompanying him had a yellow legal notepad and a large file.

  The other man was about ten years older than Kearns, which put him ten years younger than Conley. He wore a scrawny frame inside an expensive-looking, pin-striped suit and sported tassels on his loafers. He was prematurely bald, and wire-rimmed glasses surrounded his small, nervous eyes.