Deviations (5 page)

Murtaugh popped the trunk and pulled out a Smith
& Wesson 9mm, two Robinson .223’s, and a couple pairs of clamshell earmuffs.
“Let’s do some shooting.” He handed me a rifle, the pistol, and a pair of
earmuffs.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s do some shooting.” A play
date with the chief.

The chief unlocked the padlocked gate and we went
in. We put our weapons down on the plastic picnic table inside the gate. He removed
his suit jacket and folded it carefully so the lining would rest on the dusty
table.

I’d never been to this firing range, which the chief
had built soon after he took over the department. It looked pretty nice, with a
bunch of sand-filled 55-gallon drums up front for cops to use as cover in
drills. Extending out a hundred yards were a couple dozen steel targets of
different sorts deployed at twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five, and one-hundred
yards. Yard markers, the kind they have at driving ranges at golf courses,
marked off the distances along the berm on the left.

“I like to come out here and shoot. Things can get
too noisy back at headquarters.”

“Okay,” I said. Whatever.

“You like to shoot?”

“Sure.” We had to qualify on pistols and rifles
twice a year. I was average—not the best, not the worst. But I was lying to
him. I had no interest in shooting.

“You see those metal targets?” He was pointing to
black silhouettes of a trunk and head, each with a white steel circle, maybe
eight inches across, next to the head of the silhouette, like a cartoon bubble.
“Know what those are?”

“Nope.”

“The black part is the hostage. The white circle
is the head of the bad guy.” He put his earmuffs on, took his pistol out of the
holster, checked the clip, and got into the two-handed stance. He aimed at one
of the targets at the twenty-five-yard marker and squeezed off a round. I heard
the ping as the white circle swiveled around from the left side to the right
side of the hostage head.

“Pretty nice, huh? You hit the circle, it’s all
set up on the other side for your next shot.” He got back in position, squeezed
the trigger again. The white circle pinged again and swung back to the left
side of the hostage. “You try.”

I didn’t want to. I hadn’t shot in almost a year,
and twenty-five yards was outside my accuracy range with a pistol, even when I
was sharp. I put my earmuffs on, checked my clip, and got in position. I fired
a round. Dirt sprayed up in the distance. I tried a second round. I heard a
ping, but the white circle didn’t move. I’d just taken out the hostage. Well,
that’s one way to end a confrontation.

“I’m gonna move in a little closer. I wouldn’t use
a pistol on a hostage taker at twenty-five yards.”

“Probably a good idea,” the chief said.

I killed a couple more hostages, finally started
hitting the bad guy at about twelve yards. I was getting into the rhythm of it.

I walked back to the table, where the chief was
checking the clip on his Robinson .223. “Let’s try the rifles.”

“Which set of targets?” I said.

“Hundred yards,” he said. “Hit any of the closer
ones and we can ruin them. Get dimples in them, they can deflect wildly.”

I could tell the chief wanted to get down in the
dirt, but his suit looked like it cost as much as the Robinson. He bent his
knees, leaning his elbows on one of the drums, closed an eye, and squeezed off
a round. I saw the white circle spin around to the other side, then a moment
later heard the metallic ping. I tried a round and heard a dull, distant thud
as it buried in the berm. We shot about twenty rounds each, alternating. He
missed one. I landed one.

We walked back toward the plastic picnic table and
put the rifles and the earmuffs down. “Nice range,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s a good setup.”

“Get any pushback from the housing development?”

“We did at the start, especially from the night
shooting. But we built up the berms some more and did a better job giving them
a heads-up. Plus, we explained why it’s good that we all know how to shoot
straight.”

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dusted
off one of the plastic benches next to the table. Apparently, we were going to
talk now. I sat opposite to him and folded my hands on the table.

“I want to resolve your employment situation.”

I laughed. “I thought that me being fired made it
resolved enough.”

The sun was breaking free of the berm on the east.
“You’re a mess. To start with, you’re an alcoholic. I could tell that from the
things you said at the AA meeting yesterday. You know it, but you’re still in
denial. I understand that. It’s very common.”

“Am I supposed to say something now?”

“Only if you want to.” His ice-blue eyes were locked
on mine.

“Pass.”

“Your shooting is terrible.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t fired anything for a year.
You’d be kind of rusty, too.”

“That’s not it. Your mechanics are fine, but your
hands are shaking.”

I looked down at them. He was right.

“You haven’t had a drink yet today, is that
right?”

“You brought me out here to see if my hands
shake?”

“No, I already knew you’re an alcoholic. I brought
you out here because I wanted to get in some range time. And because I wanted
to talk to you privately. Without being interrupted.”

I looked at him. “Okay, Chief, what would you like
to talk about?”

“First thing: ratchet back the attitude. I know
you’re going through a rough time, but it wasn’t me got you where you are.”

“What would you like to talk about, Chief?” I had
taken a little edge off the question. Not all of it, but as much as I could.

“You’ve got some bad stuff going on. Besides the
alcoholism. You’ve got a poor relationship with your ex-husband—and a son who’s
almost fifteen who’s got some problems. In addition, you felt isolated here on
the job because of your gender, which was largely the result of a dysfunctional
culture that never should have been tolerated—and which, I assure you, will no
longer be tolerated.” He paused and looked at me.

“Yeah, well, thanks for those insights, Chief,” I
said, standing. “You wanna give me a lift back to headquarters? I gotta go home
now and go back to bed.”

“On the other hand,” he said, “you have the
potential to become an excellent detective.”

I stopped.

“Sit down, Seagate. Please.”

I did it.

“I’ve reviewed the case file on the Arlen Hagerty
murder. I’ve interviewed your partner, Detective Miner, extensively. Your
instincts are first-rate. You handled the investigation very effectively,
putting the appropriate amount of pressure on the suspects and witnesses. You
resisted the unwarranted intrusion of Chief Arnold, who wanted to divert
resources from the murder here in Rawlings to a higher-profile murder that
occurred out of our jurisdiction, even though you knew that resisting him could
hurt your career. Finally, you have the one indispensable quality of a real
detective: you want to see justice done. You want to get the bad guy.”

I shielded my eyes from the sun. “Can you tell me
where you’re going with this?”

“As I said, I want to resolve your employment
situation. First thing, I want you to agree to take a Fitness for Duty
examination by a psychiatrist tomorrow morning at eight.

“What’s the point of that? You know I blew the
Hagerty case. You know I’m a drunk. Now you know I can’t shoot. You really need
a psychiatrist to tell you I’m unfit for duty? Just give me a piece of paper
that says I formally resign. I’m happy to sign it.”

He paused. “No, I want you to take the FFD. If you
fail it, I can terminate you properly. If you pass it, I can put you on medical
leave.”

“What’s that get me?”

“For one thing, it gets you health benefits. And,
if an opening occurs and you’ve passed the FFD, I have the option of re-hiring
you.”

“You’d re-hire me due to me passing a test?”

“Probably not. You’ve got the worst attitude I’ve
seen in many years, you have a record of insubordination, and you probably don’t
have what it takes to get sober.”

“Good talk,” I said. “How about that lift back to
headquarters?”

“Back in Sacramento, we had some success with AA for
the alcoholic officers. We put them on probationary status, had them attend an
AA meeting every day for ninety days—on their own time, unpaid. They didn’t do a
good job at the start. Most of them were as bad as you were yesterday. But they
have a phrase at AA: ‘fake it till you make it.’ We monitored their attendance
and participation, and we did random drug and alcohol testing and any other
monitoring that we deemed necessary and appropriate for ninety days. If, at the
end of that period, their performance on the job and in AA had been
satisfactory, we lifted the probation.”

I felt myself kind of breaking down. “Did it
work?”

“Sixty percent of the time we re-hired them, and
most of them stayed sober.”

We sat there for a few moments. I could hear a few
cars going by on 53 a few hundred yards away. There was a far-off whine from
some lawn equipment coming from the Meadows on the other side of the berm.

“You’d give me that deal?”

“I need to make one thing clear: I do not tolerate
unacceptable deviations from policy and regulations. I understand, on a human
level, your decision not to cuff the suspect in San Diego. For the reasons I
mentioned, however, that deviation was unacceptable. Policy and regs exist for
a purpose. Granted, that suspect had gone through a terrible thing, losing his
daughter. But have you considered that he could have pled to temporary insanity
and been acquitted, or done a few years and then been on probation? And as you
said, if he really wasn’t a danger to anyone, the months he would’ve spent in
custody preparing for his trial could have given him the time he needed to
process what had happened. Right about now, six months after his arrest, he might
have been a free man, or at least he could have been doing something productive
in some sort of halfway house or other community.

“But he does not have that opportunity. Because of
your own personal situation, especially your own despair about injuring the
child, you chose a course of action that enabled him to take his own life. You
wanted to kill yourself, Detective, and
he’s
dead.”

It was some weeks before I figured out what
Murtaugh was doing. I heard the echo of the word
potential.
I had the
potential to be an excellent detective. But I wasn’t yet. I certainly wasn’t
when I let the suspect take a flier. So Murtaugh might be willing to let me
back—on his own terms. He’d have me for ninety days. Chances were excellent I’d
screw up the AA meetings. Chances were also excellent the two of us would get
into it over something or other. It wouldn’t have to be real dramatic like me
wanting to kill myself but killing a suspect instead. It would probably be
something stupid like me not filling out forms the way he wanted me to. So I’d
quit and he’d publish some article about Motivating Fuck-up Detectives in a cop
magazine, and he’d feel all professional about how he’d clearly laid out the
rules but I just wasn’t ready to follow them.

That was how I sorted it through a few weeks
later. Sitting there on the plastic bench at the range that morning, hearing
how I had wanted to kill myself and now Warren Endriss was dead, I heard myself
sobbing. I was crying, way out of control, head in hands, tears and snot all
over my face. I kept crying, like an idiot, not thinking clearly enough to
consider what he was saying. Talk about your silly girls. A guy explains how you
wanted to kill yourself so you killed someone else, and you get all emotional.
Doesn’t sound to me like a potentially excellent detective. No, it sure doesn’t.

After a couple of minutes (I’m estimating here) I
had a pack of tissues out of my big leather shoulder bag on the table, and I’d
wiped the top layers of makeup and shit off my face. I actually had a compact
mirror somewhere in that bag, but no way I was going to pull that thing out.

“This isn’t gonna work, Chief,” I said as I stood
up and shoved my snotty tissue in my bag. “I appreciate how you laid this out
for me, and you’ve given me a lot to think about, but as you can see …” I
pointed to my face and started crying again.

“I don’t see anything, Detective, except a cop
who’s trying to get through a painful episode. Did you make a mistake that
day—”

“Which day you talking about, Chief?”

“That’s a good point. Two days. The one when you
got in the car drunk, and the one when you arrested Endriss.”

“I just don’t think I’ve got it together enough.”

“Why don’t you let me make that call? I told you:
do the Fitness for Duty exam tomorrow, and I’ll take it from there. I’m not
shy. If you fail the test, I’ll tell you that.”

No, shyness didn’t seem to be a problem area for
Chief Robert Murtaugh. Him thinking I might be able to do this gave me a little
boost—even though I knew he was wrong.

“Can I ask you a question, Chief?”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you attend AA meetings yourself?”

“That’s not your concern, Detective. What you need
to focus on is taking the FFD tomorrow.”

“Will there be anything else, Chief?”

“No, Detective.” He took a slip of paper out of
his jacket pocket and handed it to me. It was the name and address of the
psychiatrist.

“Thank you, Chief,” I said, my voice weak.

“Ready to head back?”

I nodded.

Chapter 4

“Good morning, Detective
Seagate,” he said.

“Morning” I’d give him, but “good” hadn’t started for
me at 7:58 in many years. “Good morning,” I said. “You’re Dr. Palchik? Did I
say that right?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” he said with a weary smile,
waving me into his office. It was really just a room, maybe fifteen by twenty.
Desk and office chair, two soft chairs and a coffee table, a computer on a tiny
desk in the corner. Lots of bookshelves, a few diplomas and other framed paper
on the phony wood-paneled walls. The office was on the second floor of a
hideous 1960s-era bank covered in some kind of white cement with stones stuck
in it. The second floor was home to the shrink and a few other apparently
underachieving professionals—a lawyer, an architect, and an independent
insurance agent—who probably shared sad stories of life’s injustices as they
stood shaking their dicks over the urinals in the men’s room down the hall.

“The sign in the parking lot said I’d be towed. Am
I okay?”

He looked a little embarrassed. “They don’t want
you parking there overnight, but you’re fine now.” He gestured to one of the
soft chairs and sat in the other. “Okay, Detective, shall we begin?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

He looked at the clipboard he had picked up off
the coffee table. “Okay, this is a Fitness for Duty examination authorized by
Chief Robert Murtaugh. As you know, an FFD is conducted at the request of the
Chief of Police when he or she has reason to question an officer’s
qualifications to perform his or her duties effectively—”

“Let me jump in here a second, Doctor, if you
don’t mind.” He lowered his head, looking out over his reading glasses. “I
don’t have any duties. I don’t work there anymore.”

He looked at his clipboard. He had a full beard,
mostly gray, which made him look older than his fifty or so years, but it gave
him the professor look I guess he was going for. “According to the paperwork—I
have it right here—Chief Murtaugh indicated that you are a Detective Second
Grade, Rawlings Police Department, now on unpaid leave.” He looked at me. “No?”

“Well, the unpaid part is true, but I’m pretty
sure I was canned.”

He sighed. “That’s something I think you need to
work out with the chief, but I have authorization to carry out the FFD exam,
and you’re here. How about we just proceed?”

“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you say.” No reason for
us both to be unpaid.

“Okay. I’ve reviewed your records, as well as a
report from Chief Murtaugh. For this FFD exam, I’m going to first ask you to go
over to the computer and respond to a number of questions. Then, when you’re
done—it should take about twenty minutes—we’ll talk. Okay?”

I nodded and we walked over to the desk. He
clicked on the mouse, bringing up something called the California
Psychological Inventory, which was a barn full of
questions where I had to choose how much I agreed with a statement about me.
Some of the statements didn’t seem to be getting at anything useful. Like “I enjoy
reading books of fiction.” What the hell difference does that make? Now, if it
said “I think I’m living in a book of fiction,” that might tell you something
worth talking about.

And what am I supposed
to do with “I enjoy long weekends”? Are they trying to figure out whether I’m
lazy or hate coming in to work? Why not just say “Don’t count on seeing me in
the office on your typical Monday or Friday”? That would be clear. But let’s
say I’m a normal professional type of person. And July 4 comes on a Monday, and
I’ve got the day off, so we’re not talking about whether I’m a shitty employee.
So, do I enjoy long weekends? Doesn’t it kind of depend on—let me just go out
on a limb here—doesn’t it depend on whether I’m a human? If I am, the only sane
answer is “Well, yeah, sometimes. Not all the time.”

The test was stupid. “I
consider myself more of a doer than a thinker.” Shit, on a good day, I try to
do a little doin’ and a little thinkin’. On a really good day, I do my thinkin’
first—to figure out what I should be doin’—then I do the doin’. Although, to be
completely honest, lots of times I do the doin’ first, without having done the
necessary thinkin’. Like last week, can’t remember the night, I ended up doin’
some guy who roughed me up, then wondering, What was I thinkin’? My point:
clicking on “More agree than disagree” isn’t really doing justice to the
richness, the complexity, the whole fucked-if-you-do, fucked-if-you-don’t
quality of life.

But, with about
ten-thousand questions and only fifteen minutes to go, I decided to put the
clicks right in the middle, making me pretty much a neutral person, at least
when it comes to taking bullshit computer tests. I tried to avoid the obvious
traps, such as the one that said “I like to set goals before beginning a project.”
Absolutely. You bet. Like, the next time I arrest a guy, I’m going to think
hard about whether my goal is to bring him in or let him jump off a cliff and
kill himself.

Yes, in the future I’m
going to think much more about the goals of the project. For now, though, I
thought as I looked over my answers and hit “Submit,” my goal was to finish
this dumb test. Twenty minutes loitering on the corner of Mumbo and Jumbo was
long enough.

“Okay, Detective,” the
shrink said after I returned to the chair. “Let me explain the function of the
next part of the FFD and how the process will proceed.”

I nodded.

“We’re going to talk for
a while here, as a way for me to work up a psychosocial diagnosis. What that
means, in lay terms, is that we’re going to discuss your job performance and
the factors that impinge upon it, in order for me to be able to write a brief
report to Chief Murtaugh. On the basis of that report, the chief can put you
back on active duty, terminate you, set down conditions for your continued employment,
or anything else he deems appropriate.

“Although part of the
dynamic is the question of what is in your best interest, the primary factor is
what is in the best interest of the Rawlings Police Department. Even though
there might be several compelling reasons to reinstate you as a means of
assisting you personally, the nature of the work you do—and the enormous effect
that your mental state could have on your ability to do that work
professionally—compel me, as a psychiatrist, and Chief Murtaugh, as head of the
police department, to put the interest of your fellow officers and the public
first. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“Yes, Doctor.” I
understood. The elaborate set-up was meant to prepare me for a one-paragraph
letter from Murtaugh in about a week.

“All right, Detective,
as I study the report from Chief Murtaugh, the main concerns he wishes me to
consider with you today have to do with conflicts with supervisors, poor work
performance, poor judgment, and working while intoxicated or hung over.”

Maybe that letter will have
only one sentence.

“You have never worked
directly under Chief Murtaugh, as he assumed his position after your leave
began, but the evaluations from his predecessor, Chief Arnold, are quite
negative.” He flipped through the papers. “He uses phrases such as
insubordination,
abusive attitude toward colleagues and superiors, failure to carry out
legitimate directives issued by a supervisor, inappropriate personal
relationships with fellow officers,
and
frequently hung over.
” He
stopped reading and raised his eyes, looking out over his reading glasses.

“Am I supposed to
comment on that?”

“Yes,” he said. “You
are.”

“Well, I kinda agree
with everything he said.”

Dr. Palchik looked at me,
stroking his beard at each corner of his mouth. “You understand, Detective,
what I said about the process. My job is to write up a report for Chief
Murtaugh. If you agree with Chief Arnold’s characterization of your
performance, my only option is to state that you agree with his assessment that
you are unfit for duty. And that will be the end of it.”

“I see where you’re
going, and I appreciate you giving me another chance to defend myself. But I
gotta tell you, he’s pretty much right.”

He paused and sighed.
“Could you tell me a little about your relationship with Chief Arnold?”

The HVAC system turned
on with a distant rumble, sending a little draft across the back of my neck. “I
thought Chief Arnold was a total asshole. A bad cop, through and through.”

“For example?”

“All right. My partner and
I were working the Arlen Hagerty case—that was my last case, when the Soul
Savers guy was murdered right here in town, last November—and the chief wanted
us to spend our time on the James Weston murder. You know, Dolores Weston’s
husband, the guy who died in the parasailing accident. That was wrong.”

“Tell me about that.”

“Weston was killed in
Maui, and we didn’t have any evidence to link the murder to our jurisdiction.
But the chief knew it was gonna be a higher profile case than the Arlen Hagerty
murder. The Maui police had been here in town and couldn’t tie the Weston
murder to this kid from Rawlings who was working on Weston’s boat in Maui, but
the chief was being real hardass about how we were to spend our time trying to
figure out a link. Meanwhile, the chief wanted us to let the Hagerty case
slide.”

“So what did you do
about that?”

“I explained to him my
point of view—that our job is to work the murder that took place right here in
Rawlings, and if there’s any evidence the Rawlings kid conspired to kill James
Weston from here, we open that case.”

“And how did the chief respond?”

“He ordered me to shift
over to the Weston case. I told him
…
actually, I don’t remember what I told him, but I was
insubordinate. I definitely was. I just kept working the Hagerty case. And I
was abusive, too. I probably called him a shithead or something like that. So
that’s really what I’m saying about my relationship with Chief Arnold. I think
he was a crappy cop, and my performance reflected that. So I don’t want to lie
about that. You should write in your report that I was insubordinate and all
that other stuff, so if Chief Murtaugh thinks that disqualifies me, I can
understand that. If he’s the kind of chief who thinks insubordination is wrong,
no matter who you’re being insubordinate to or what the circumstances are,
well, I shouldn’t be a cop for Murtaugh, either.”

He spent a little while
writing this down, probably including the money quote: “I shouldn’t be a cop.”
He was actually pretty good at getting me to tell my story. I hadn’t said this
much to anyone in a long time.

He looked up. “Let’s
address the charge of an inappropriate personal relationship with a fellow
officer.”

“That one’s totally
true, too. I had a one-night stand with one of the uniforms. That was inappropriate.
I’m not gonna defend that.”

“Why was that
relationship inappropriate?”

“The official answer is
if a colleague has a relationship with another colleague, it can lead to
favoritism or something that could jeopardize their judgment or decision-making
or whatever. So, even though there’s about eight or ten inappropriate
relationships going on at any given time in the department, it’s still
inappropriate.”

“You say that’s the
official answer. What’s the unofficial answer to why that was inappropriate?”

“The unofficial answer
is that it was a shitty relationship. I slept with him—once—because
…
because I think I was
feeling lonely and, you know, old. And he slept with me because he’s a horn
dog. And probably so he could brag how he nailed a detective. He’s a uniform,
so it’s a status thing. That’s how it was really inappropriate.”

“And about the charges
that you were intoxicated or hung over while on duty?”

“I’m sure it’s in the
reports there. I was driving impaired, got in an accident, hurt a kid badly.
All that’s true. I was off duty. But I never drank or was drunk on duty,
although I know sometimes I was hung over on duty.”

“Chief Murtaugh has
indicated that you are to attend AA meetings every day for ninety days. Did he
make that clear to you?”

“He said that works
sometimes. Yeah, he said I should do that.”

“And are you doing
that?”

“I am.”

“One final question,
Detective.” He paused. “Do you have a drinking problem?”

“Yes, Doctor, I think I
do.”

He looked at me, holding
my gaze. I started to feel my face getting all hot and flushed.

“Yes, I’m an alcoholic.”

He did some more writing.

* * * *

Wayne had just refilled me
and this guy when “Special Report” came up on the screen. The five o’clock news
cutie, Bridget Moyers, was sitting there, looking all serious as she glanced
down at her laptop and back up at the camera.

“The Rawlings Police Department has reported that
the body of State Senator Dolores Weston was recovered earlier this afternoon,
and that they have concluded it was a homicide. We go now, live, to Chief of
Police Robert Murtaugh, who is about to make a statement.”

The guy next to me stood and took his wallet out.
He put a twenty on the bar and said to me, “You ready?”

“Gimme a second.” The TV cameras were having a
hard time with the glare coming off the dozen shiny silver globes, each more
than a foot across, anchored to the concrete in a semicircle in front of
headquarters. Most people thought they were just half-assed decorations, but we’d
put them there to keep losers from driving into the building to bust other
losers out of a holding cell. If you weren’t a cop, you probably wouldn’t
believe anyone would be dumb enough to think that was a solid plan, but we
installed them because it had happened at other departments our size. So there
were the reporters, trying not to trip over the big silver balls as they
strained to hold their microphones up close to the podium.