by Baxter Clare
"Calm down, Lieutenant," the chief soothed. "What we mean is that with a firearm you obviously had the advantage over a small knife. What we—"
"Yeah, I had the advantage and I used it. Timothy Johnston wasn't a boyscout playing with a Swiss Army knife. This fucker was a convicted felon with a rap sheet longer than my arm and a lot of time in stir. You weren't there, but I can guarantee you he wasn't going back in. And he wasn't going out alone. He'd already cut Kennedy and he was going for her again. I stopped him."
"All we're trying to ascertain is whether this was an overreaction or an absolutely necessary measure. It's possible that in a moment of extremely high stress you overreacted and simply—"
The sound of Frank gritting her teeth was clear to everyone in the room. She spoke each word slowly and with tremendous effort.
"With all due respect, sir, if I had fired out of sheer impulse, I can guarantee you Mr. Johnston would have had more than one bullet hole in him."
She'd seen enough shootings to know that when someone fired in terror, or fury, their victims were usually riddled with bullets. They want the fucker to go down and stay down. But Foubarelle was shaking his head at the floor, and Luchowski was glaring. Noah wouldn't look her in the eye and Nelson wouldn't stop looking at her.
"Did you consider your backboard, Lieutenant?"
Frank patiently explained how she had weighed all the consequences of a bad shot, and how Johnston's head seemed the most reasonable target area, the way he was positioned with Kennedy.
Finally Nelson wagged his head sadly, warning, "You know OIS is going to have to look into this."
"Of course."
"And that you'll be relieved of duty while—"
"Sir, my squad and I are in the middle of a very sensitive investigation and I can't—"
Now Nelson interrupted. "Oh, yes. That Agoura/Peterson case?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's going to be handled by RHD now. It should've been given to them a while ago," he said, with a scowl at Foubarelle.
Frank bowed her head to conceal her disappointment but then quickly raised it, determined to hold on to her case.
"Sir, I respect your judgment on this matter but I've put a lot of time into this case. I think it would be a mistake to let RHD—"
"Lieutenant, you are ROD and the case is downtown. There is nothing else to discuss."
"But Chief, RHD doesn't know the—"
"There is nothing further to discuss, Lieu-te-nant. Or would you rather go back to de-tec-tive?"
Frank clamped down on her back teeth. "No, sir."
"And, of course, you need to hand over your badge and weapon."
He held Frank's gaze for a moment as she slowly unholstered the 9mm. Satisfied that he'd restored order, Nelson nodded to Foubarelle and left the room. Luchowski followed him, throwing Frank an evil look, and Foubarelle stepped up to Frank with his palm up. Gently she placed her weapon in his hand, then the badge. It felt like giving up a major organ.
"I want this written up by the time I leave my office tomorrow," he warned.
She nodded almost imperceptibly. It was Standard Operating Procedure to get RODed after an Officer Involved Shooting. A statement and a written report immediately after a shooting was SOP also. Frank had been in an OIS before, but she'd never killed anyone. She knew she'd have to talk to Clay or another LAPD shrink before she'd be cleared for work, if and when OIS signed off on her.
Foubarelle left with a parting glare, and Frank crossed her arms. She asked Noah, "You want a shot, too?"
"Nope." He paced the tiny room in two steps, his big hands jammed tight into his pockets.
There was silence except for Noah's agitated pacing. Finally he stopped and stared at the floor.
"You know, I should have said something this morning. I mean, it just didn't feel good to me, her going in there. She should have been back at HQ, I mean, it wasn't her bust, or her squad. Hell, even her division. I don't know. It just seemed wrong. But I let you talk me out of it. I gave in. I deferred to you."
Noah said the word like an insult, then he looked squarely at his boss, his friend. "Tell me you didn't have your own reasons for dragging her in there, Frank."
Like a mantra, Frank reiterated her reasoning. "Reston's a bad area. They hate us there. I wanted as much force behind us as I could get. I—"
"That's a load of shit, Frank, and you know it. We had plenty of back-up without her."
"I've got that kid sitting out there as psycho-bait," Frank continued wearily. "I didn't think it was too much to see her in action."
Noah spluttered, "Well, you saw her, didn't you?"
Frank reached around to the back of her neck. Thinking the best defense was a good offense, she tried turning the tables.
"I don't get why you're so defensive about her. You got a hard-on for her or something?"
Noah almost choked. "Me? Hey, you're the one who's been riding her since day-one. You're on her like stink on shit, man, and you're wondering if I've got a hard-on. Jesus, Frank, take a look in the fucking mirror!"
On top of all she'd been carrying for the last couple of hours, that was the straw that finally broke her. Adrenaline spurted into her bloodstream again, and Frank literally saw red. Her hands closed into bloodless fists. In a tight, barely audible voice, she warned Noah that he'd definitely crossed a line.
"Oh, did I? Well maybe it's about time, Frank! Take a fucking look around!"
It was already cramped in the tiny office, but Noah stepped even closer to Frank, mad-dogging her from only inches away. She was solid, livid fury, but he didn't back down.
"Just explain it to me, Frank. For Christ's sake, what the fuck is going on with you?"
Frank knew she could take him. A left uppercut, a right to his gut, and he'd fall like a rock. She held her stance for a long, taut moment. While she deliberated, some of her anger drained off. It felt curiously like standing in the surf as the breakers pulled away. Frank closed her eyes and bowed her head. She sagged against the edge of the desk, knocking over a pencil cup. Noah took up the space she'd left, insisting, "Talk to me, Frank."
Resisting Noah was taking more strength than Frank had. She asked resignedly, "What do you want to know?"
"Why do you hate her so much? What did she ever do to you?"
Frank dropped her face into her hands. From behind them she said, "I don't hate her."
"Well, you sure as shit don't like her. And I know you, Frank. She pushed some button in you that I've hardly ever seen go off. You were dead set against her the minute you laid eyes on her. Why?"
Frank worked her fingers against her skin for a long time. Finally she straightened up and combed her hands back through her hair, locking them behind her neck. She looked everywhere, except at Noah.
She wondered how Kennedy was doing, wondered if a doctor was trying to find her. Then she realized the nurse would know where she was. There was nothing to do but wait. And answer Noah. All the fight was out of him now; he looked as tired as Frank felt. She fished around the room again, hoping for something, anything, to distract her. Finding nothing, she settled for the imaginary ring on her finger. It was hard enough admitting to herself how Kennedy made her feel. She didn't know if she could actually say it out loud.
"Look, No. Let's just drop this, okay? I made a mistake. You were right, I was wrong. I should have listened to you. I didn't. I'm sorry."
"Frank, don't placate me. I'm asking as your friend. And I'm asking as a cop. I don't know what's going on with you, but whatever it is it might have gotten Kennedy killed today."
Noah's jabs were right on target, each one a TKO. It was Mag all over again. Frank's fault. If only she'd gotten the half-and-half on the list, if only she'd gone into the liquor store like Mag had asked. If only she'd left Kennedy behind like Noah asked her to.
Frank shut her eyes, running her hand against the tightness in her neck. Walking around the desk she slumped into a chair, wondering how things had gotten so out of hand. Noah was still
staring.
"Alright. That first day? I don't know. She just pissed me off. Right off the bat. She was so...young. So arrogant. She didn't have a nerve in her body. She just threw me off, for some reason. And there you were, acting like she was the greatest thing since Mickey-D's."
"You were jealous?" Noah asked incredulously. He dragged the only other chair in the room around the desk and hunkered across from Frank, their knees almost touching. Frank shut her eyes, wishing she could just succumb to the exhaustion pulling at her.
"I wouldn't say jealous...resentful's better. She was so fucking cocky, No, so sure of herself."
Frank paused. "I used to feel like that, seems like light-years ago."
"With Maggie?" Noah asked. Frank shut her eyes against the taboo name.
"Yeah," she finally whispered, and when she didn't continue, Noah coaxed, "Tell me more."
Frank flapped a hand in a futile gesture. "I don't know. Maybe it pissed me off that Kennedy reminded me of all that. Everything I used to have, used to be. Maybe it pissed me off that she still had it and I didn't, almost like she was mocking me. She made me feel stuff I didn't want to feel. She pissed me off. You know, part of me was hoping she'd lose it today. Piss in her pants or something. Anything to wipe that damn cocky smile off her face. I wanted to see her squirm for a change. And know that I was watching her."
Distractedly, Frank rubbed at a doodle on the blotter. This time she continued without prompting.
"I've got things pretty much sewed up, No. The past is gone, it's over. It's all behind me, and I just keep moving on. I don't want to look back. I don't want to remember anything. I just keep looking forward. But I had no contingency plan for Kennedy. She got right in front of me, right in my face. It was like I couldn't go around her, couldn't move ahead. And I sure as shit didn't want to go backward. She’s hauled me out in places I didn't want to be at."
"Yeah," Noah agreed softly. "Maybe when she stopped you, she touched you, and maybe that's a good thing. You're human, Frank, not Robo-cop."
"Don't want to be human, No. Been there, done that."
They were silent for a moment as Frank's finger meandered over the desktop. The gentle motion was hypnotic in the quiet room.
Noah said almost dreamily, "Kennedy said something the other day.. .she made a crack about you, I forget what, but I busted up. I mean she was dead-on and I thought, man, she reminds me of Maggie, how she used to bust your chops all the time."
Frank stared oddly at her old partner.
"You ever thought about that? Kinda like a tomboyish Maggie? They both got that same look, you know? Just kinda happy and...glad to be alive."
For the second time that day Frank couldn't look at Noah. She nodded weakly at the floor. He pressed, "Maybe that's where she stalled you out."
Frank sat up, and with obvious effort reassembled her impregnable mask. "Look," she sighed. "I owed you Kennedy, but not..."
Noah let it go, placing a hand easily on Frank's knee. "You know, that could've been any one of us in there."
"But it wasn't."
"Would you feel better if it had been me? Or Jill?"
Frank didn't answer. Instead she asked why he'd been so insistent she leave Kennedy out of the bust.
Noah flapped his big hands in his lap. "I don't know. It just felt wrong. What was I gonna say? 'Gee, Frank, I'm like having a psychic flash or something.'"
"Could have."
"Would it have changed your mind?"
Frank thought about it, and Mag's last words zig-zagged in her head: Goddammit, Frank! When are you going to grow up?
"Probably not," she admitted, disgusted with herself.
Noah heaved a bony shoulder. "You couldn't have known it was gonna slip."
"No, but I could have listened to you. You've got good guts, and maybe if I hadn't been so hell-bent for Kennedy I'd have heard you."
"That's hindsight. Don't start second-guessing."
A cold smile twisted Frank's face.
"That's my specialty. We should go see how she's doing."
Frank started to rise, but Noah reached over and pushed her back down.
"Hold on. They know where we are."
Frank was too tired to protest. Noah rubbed at a bloody smear on his wrist, and she waited patiently for him to continue.
"You know, I gotta tell you, I was fucking scared."
Frank nodded her understanding.
"When I saw him standing there with his arm around her throat and the knife there...I didn't know what to do. I just felt so helpless. And stupid. I just kept wondering how the hell did this happen? And Kennedy, man, she looked so scared. But she was calm, man, and I remember thinking I had to be calm, too. For her. And then outside, knowing you were both in there...but at least outside I was doing something, you know?"
Noah looked up anxiously, and Frank bent toward him.
"You did good, No. You don't know how fucking glad I was that you were there. You handled Johnston beautifully. I know the commission's gonna try and eat us alive, but you did great. I wouldn't have done anything different than you did."
"Lotta good it did us."
"Hey. There was nothing else you could've done."
The silence settled between them again. Frank tried not to remember the clutch of fear in her gut, or the moldy bathroom, or Johnston's sudden shout. She did not want to remember the fear in the hallway trying to envelop her in its leathery wings or the disappearing white curl on Johnston's do-rag, or him dancing herky-jerky with half his head gone. Least of all, she didn't want to remember seeing Kennedy turn with her eyes too wide and her fingers red, and wanting to run as far and as fast as she could, screaming all the way. She didn't want to and wouldn't remember.
"You know what? After sitting in here with you, and with the way you shoot, I think you should get out of law enforcement and become a shrink."
"Man, you're not kidding. If I can get you to talk I can have an autistic kid's life history in five minutes. And wait'll you see my bill."
They shared tired smiles. Frank slapped Noah's leg and said, "Come on. Let's go see how she's doing."
21
Frank sat in recovery with a sheaf of papers on her blood-stiffened lap. Jill and Johnnie had brought them for her after she'd sent Noah back to division. He'd wanted to stay and see what the doctor had to say, but Frank had him copying the Agoura and Peterson murder books. She might be officially off the case but she was goddamned if she was going to give it up. Noah tried to talk her out of it, but she'd slapped a wad of bills in his hand and told him to take the binders to Kinko's and copy them there. She couldn't order him to, she was ROD, so she asked him as a favor. Before Foubarelle or RHD got hold of them.
"Frank...," Noah had sighed, trying to protest.
She'd gripped his shoulders.
"If not for me, then for Cassandra Nichols." Cheap shot, she knew, but it worked.
"Shit."
As Noah stuck the money in his pocket Frank told him, "When you're done with that go home and kiss the kids, make love to your wife, and sleep as late as you want. Fuck those IAD bastards."
Noah waved tiredly.
The doctor came out of the recovery room about an hour later and told her Kennedy was going to be alright. A flicker of relief penetrated the emptiness she felt. She asked if she could sit with Kennedy.
"After you clean yourself up," he said.
Frank scrubbed the blood off her hands with her nails, catching a sorry glimpse of herself in the mirror. It was the best she could do without a shower and a change of clothes, but she didn't foresee either of those in the near future. She snagged a tepid cup of coffee from a vending machine and settled into a chair next to Kennedy's bed.
An IV stuck out of Kennedy's hand and a half-dozen leads and wires monitored her vital functions. A large bandage plastered her neck. Kennedy's head was still enclosed in a block, but the doctor was happy. He told Frank it was a damn good thing the ambulance arrived as soon as it did.
"She was this close," he said, holding his fingertips slightly apart. Tunnel's knife had jerked into her carotid artery, causing the massive blood loss and a precipitous drop in blood pressure. Once they'd stabilized her and gone in, the rip was easily repaired, but Kennedy was going to be laid up for a few weeks. Luchowski had called her father, who was too sick to fly out, and there was no one else on her emergency contact sheet. Frank had thought hard about that, finally deciding that Kennedy could stay with her. It was the least she could do.
Despite the fatigue that had settled into her bones like lead, Frank tried concentrating on the statement she was writing. But she couldn't stop replaying the scene in Johnston's apartment. She and Johnnie had been the first ones down the hall. It was hard for her to believe she hadn't picked Tunnel up behind the doorway. If only she had, this never would have slipped out of her hands. She'd be home drinking a cool one, sitting on the couch in clean clothes, ignoring the TV while she wrote far less difficult reports.
And Kennedy'd still be getting to me, she thought. Frank glanced at the sleeping young woman and felt a wave of shame. Bleeding out on Tunnel's floor, Kennedy hadn't looked so cocky anymore. Frank squeezed her eyes against the similar image of Mag amid the candy bars, blowing pink spume. Both days, Frank's pride had been running the show. She wondered how many times she was going to have to do this. How many trips to the hospital would it take before she got it right?
She had no answer. In fact, Frank felt like she had nothing at all. She'd lost Mag, she'd almost lost a cop in her command, she'd lost her case to RHD, and she'd lost her badge. She thought that must be how it felt to drown: words were useless, fighting just made you more tired, there was nothing to see but waves and waves and more waves behind them, and always the dark weight of the water trying to pull you under. At some point it probably felt good to give up. Frank wondered if she was there yet, but then a lifeboat bobbed into sight. It was the realization that Kennedy could be in the morgue instead of the hospital. It wasn't a huge comfort, but it would do.
This close.
Remembering the grotesque spew and suck of Mag's breathing, Frank gratefully watched the even rise and fall of Kennedy's chest. The ride in the ambo, the waiting, blood everywhere—it was all too deja vu. It was Maggie again, but this time with a different script. Through her hazy fatigue, Frank wondered dimly if Kennedy wasn't some kind of second chance.