More Than Friends (24 page)

Melanie yawned. “Can we finish this conversation in bed? I’m beat.”

“Oh, honey, you didn’t have to wait up for me. I could have gone home.” Melanie had been up since early that morning and they hadn’t slept much the night before. Her confession of her feelings could wait. Maybe she’d try to orchestrate a more romantic moment.

“I wanted to see you.”

“All right, let’s go tuck you in.”

*

“We’ve got K-9 coming. Let’s establish a perimeter and hold it.”

For the next couple of minutes, officers keyed up on the radio giving their locations, laying out the shape of their perimeter. Evelyn visualized their locations, and when she came to a stop at a nearby intersection, she gave the streets out as well.

She had responded to the call for help in locating a suspect in a stabbing. As the first officers arrived on the scene, they determined that the seriously injured victim was an Asian gang member and the suspect most likely belonged to a rival group. The victim gave a good description of the man who had fled
on foot, and enough officers had been close that they now believed they had him contained in this neighborhood. Both K-9 officers had been helping out in another sector and weren’t close to them yet.

She scanned the area around her slowly, searching the concealing twilight for motion. Her radio was eerily quiet. Did her fellow officers feel as frozen and impatient as she did, waiting for their quarry to reveal himself? Her muscles tensed with the effort of priming for flight at a moment’s notice. By the time he made a move she would already be seconds behind. Despite her readiness, she was actually surprised to see movement from a line of shrubs behind the apartment complex across the street. She was too far away to make out his features, but he wore a dark T-shirt and jeans, the same clothing description reported by the victim.

“Where is the dog?” she muttered as she watched the guy creep around the edge of the building. He hadn’t looked in her direction yet, but he clearly tried to stay close to the wall, in the shadows. She keyed her radio. “Fifteen, I think I’ve got the suspect over here.”

Her sergeant called the K-9 officer, who responded that he was still five minutes away. If she didn’t take this guy into custody, they might lose him. She opened her door and slipped out, crouching next to her car. The dog probably wouldn’t make it in time, but a couple of her fellow officers were already on their way.

She pulled her gun and, holding it at her side, she circled the car and moved to her left, using the cover of a neighboring building. She needed to get much closer before making her presence known. When she was close enough to have a chance in a foot race if he decided to run, she raised her gun and called out, “Police! Show me your hands!”

He tensed and froze. He turned, making a half-hearted show of lifting his hands to chest level in front of him. When he twisted one side of his mouth in a cruel sneer, she could practically hear him saying,
All alone, huh? Think you can take me?

His eyes darted around as if gauging the odds of successful flight. The apartments he’d tried to use for shelter before blocked him in on both sides. His only choice was to come at her or turn and run away from her, but by the time he turned she’d be several steps closer and building momentum.

“Fifteen, I have him at gunpoint on the east side of the K building.” She immediately heard several sirens start up nearby. They’d been headed to her silently so they wouldn’t alert the suspect of their location, but now the cavalry was coming full force. In the time it took her to speak into her shoulder mic, he must have made his decision. As her finger released the button, he dashed forward. She yelled, “Stop!”

But he didn’t. She registered his hand moving toward his back pocket and the flash of the streetlight reflecting off something metallic. The loud report of her gun as it bucked in her hand nearly drowned out her next shouted order.

She staggered back a couple of steps as he crumpled to the ground in front of her. Tires squealed and, seconds later, Riggs and another officer pushed past her. Riggs trained his gun on the inert suspect while the other officer rolled him onto his back. A slick of wetness spread across the front of his shirt. Riggs nudged aside an open switchblade with his boot.

“Shots fired. Send us a forty-seven.” He barked the order for an ambulance into his radio.

Excited voices peppered the air in response, but she could barely make sense of the words. She stared at the suspect’s face. His features, which had looked so mean before, now seemed almost peaceful. Stringy dark hair fell across his forehead, almost obscuring his eyes, and splotches of acne marred his cheeks and chin. He probably wasn’t more than eighteen.

“Fisher.” Sergeant Stahlman stepped in front of her, blocking her view as the paramedics arrived and surrounded the boy. She had no doubt that’s how she would think of him—a boy. “Fisher, look at me,” he said, and she shifted her eyes to his face. “Let me have your gun.” He gently touched her hand.

She still clutched her gun in the hand that now hung limply at her side and didn’t even feel like a part of her body. Stahlman eased the weapon from her hand, ejected the clip, and cleared the slide. He would give her gun and her spent casings, which had been marked and left where they landed on the ground, to the crime-scene officer.

“Fisher, we need to do a walk-through of the scene. Then we’ll get you out of here and away from the media. You’ll go downtown with the homicide detective. They’ll do a drug test and a bunch of paperwork. Jeb will drive you.”

“My car—”

“We’ll get one of the rookies to drive it to the station. When you’re done, someone will take you home.” He met her eyes, as if trying to gauge how much of this conversation she would retain later. “Homicide will tell you all of this again, but you’re off work for a few days. I’ll call you tomorrow and check in.”

She nodded.

“They’ll need a statement. Do you want a union attorney?”

“No.” Her mind latched onto the words. “I have an attorney.”

“Do you want me to make the call for you?”

“I’ll do it.” She dialed the number from memory. When she heard the voice on the other end, she nearly choked on her relief and could only manage a weak, “Dad, I need you.”

Chapter Twenty

Thirty minutes later, Evelyn sat alone in the homicide office. Two clusters of cubicles took up the center of the room, and several older, mismatched metal desks lined the outside. She’d been in this office only a couple of weeks ago while transporting a suspect from a crime scene. She’d brought him here, waited while homicide talked to him, then took him down to be booked. But this time the adrenaline rushing through her had nothing to do with questioning a suspect.

The detective had left her in a chair next to his desk, one of the metal ones closest to the door. After she declined his offer of coffee or a soda, he left to get himself a cup. He’d scrubbed his hand over his face, most likely already thinking about the late night ahead filling out paperwork and updating the chain of command. A police shooting went all the way up to the chief of police and the mayor. The media vans had already arrived before she left the scene, and their presence would send the requests for information trickling down.

Her picture, probably the one they took when she graduated from the academy, would flash on the screen.
Breaking news. This just in.
By the morning broadcast, the entire city would have seen her face. Well, not her face as it looked now, but that of a young kid, clad in a navy dress uniform, buttoned all the way up with a tie tight around her neck. She’d been an eager recruit, soaking in everything they taught her, dying to show her father she could make a bigger, better difference than he did.

But tonight, she wasn’t sure what she’d accomplished. As hard as she tried to remind herself that he’d stabbed a man, when the boy’s face floated into her head she couldn’t shake the feeling of despair. She wished she could go back to being that optimistic kid she’d once been.

Across the room, the door opened and Charles W. Fisher entered. He wore khakis and a plaid button-down shirt, but he walked as if dressed in a power suit. His gaze landed on her and his expression softened for just a second before he tightened his jaw and strode across the room.

She lurched to her feet, fighting the urge to stumble into his arms like a child. She shoved her shoulders back and focused on the badge pinned to her chest and the gun belt around her waist. So what if her holster was currently empty? She was a police officer and would conduct herself as such.

“Mr. Fisher, can I get you some coffee?” the detective offered.

“No, thank you.”

“Okay. Please have a seat and we’ll get you out of here as quickly as we can.” He took the chair behind his desk, then pulled a tape recorder from the drawer and pressed the record button. “Let’s start with your account of what happened.”

She settled back into her seat and her father pulled a chair over next to her. As he sat, he put a hand on her shoulder and she drew a deep breath, as if she could pull his reassurance in as well.

She closed her eyes, replaying those moments in her head. Finally speaking aloud, she described the events as if narrating a documentary. As she reached the point where the suspect rushed her, ignoring her order to stop, she tried to slow things down, grasping for details she’d only registered peripherally at the time.

The detective prompted her. “Did you see the knife?”

“I think so.” She immediately wished she could somehow take back that statement. She took a slow, even breath and prepared for damage control.

“You think so?” The detective’s face conveyed what she already knew—she’d better come up with a better answer.

His hand in his back pocket. The flash of silver.
Had she heard the snick of the blade opening or had her mind manufactured the memory based on the facts she now knew? She replayed it again—the flash of silver—silver that crystallized into the shape of a knife blade popping out of the handle.

“I saw it,” she said with more conviction.

The detective stared at her, but she kept her face expressionless. If he hoped to use his interrogation skills on her, he was wasting his time. She’d grown up under the watchful eye of Charles W. Fisher; nothing fazed her. Her father’s presence beside her now calmed her. For the first time in a very long time, she was glad he was in the profession he was.

“How many shots did you fire?”

“Two.” That’s all she’d needed.
Shoot to stop the threat.
That’s what the policy said. The boy had dropped as soon as she’d fired.

“Then what?”

She took a deep breath and forced herself back into the stoic recitation of facts. “Officer Jeb Riggs arrived on scene, and he and another officer…” She tried but couldn’t bring the other officer’s face into focus. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who it was. They secured the suspect and his weapon and called for an ambulance. Sergeant Stahlman took my gun. I came here shortly after that.”

She thought they must be done, but the detective continued to ask questions, sometimes having her repeat details she’d already given. She answered honestly but succinctly, providing only the information relevant to his questions. She wasn’t here for therapy but merely to provide an account of the events. The sooner she did and the paperwork got done, the sooner she could return to work.

When they’d finished, the detective finally looked at her like a fellow officer for the first time all night. “Thanks, Fisher. I’m sure someone from OPA will be in touch with you.” The various reports and supplements from tonight would be handed over to the office of professional accountability for review. Someone there would ultimately clear her to return to work. “They’ll want you to meet with a counselor sometime in the next few days, but you know how that goes. It’s a formality.”

She nodded. She’d have one more person to convince that she was fine with the events that had precipitated her use of deadly force. Logically, she was. She’d followed policy and done what any good officer would in her place. But each time she imagined his face, her stomach threatened an embarrassing revolt. And her mind played tricks, making her memory of him seem more angelic every time.

*

“I’ll drive you home,” her father said as they walked to his SUV parked at a meter in front of police headquarters.

Evelyn shook her head. “Not home.”

“Where to then?”

“Melanie’s.” She opened the passenger door and slumped into the seat. He didn’t say anything, but his expression relayed his disapproval. She started to suppress her reaction, then remembered Melanie’s advice about open communication. “Kendall knows and she hates me.”

He still didn’t speak, and when she looked over at him, he stared straight ahead as he navigated out of downtown.

“No gloating?” she asked.

“Would it do any good?”

“Just because I didn’t take your advice doesn’t mean I didn’t hear you.” She squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t find a quick fix to her lingering feelings about tonight’s events, but somehow she knew that holding Melanie would help. That had to count for something, right? “My head knows you were right to tell me to stay away. But my heart didn’t listen. Do you know how that feels?”

“I do.” He glanced at her, his eyes soft with concern—not the practiced kind he used in court, but real caring.

“What happened to us, Dad?” Maybe it was tonight, or maybe it was Melanie, but something made her want—no, need to know how they had gone so drastically astray from the father and daughter of her youth. “I know you were disappointed when I went into the academy, but I always thought we’d get over that eventually. And maybe someday, you’d be proud of me.”

“I am proud of you, Evie. Don’t you know that?”

“You’ve never said it.”

“I assumed you knew. I’m your father. I’ve always been proud of you.”

“You hated that I became a police officer.”

“I admit I always hoped you would take over the firm sooner or later. When you were a kid, I missed a lot because of my long hours. But I told myself I was building something for your future. You would sit in my office and listen to me practice my arguments, such a smart, rapt audience. I assumed that when you were old enough—but you didn’t want any part of it. That hurt a little. But I always wished I hadn’t traded away those hours of your childhood. Those years passed so fast.”