and I was amazingly calm. The aftermath, though, that was the hard part. The nausea, sleeplessness, agitation. The guilt. And feeling different from the other cops.”
“All normal.”
“Yeah.”
“Not pleasant, not fun, just normal.” She drinks the last of her coffee and sets the cup down. “The press is no longer attacking, eh?”
“I’m not complaining. Bastards.” The first newspaper headline after the shooting read in large print: Police Detective Shoots Teen. Then for the next two weeks, there were articles demanding a thorough investigation, and several additional stories about the “boy’s” hard life and how he had been turning it around. Two stories included photos of the nineteen-year-old as a toddler sitting by the family Christmas tree. Then when the media found out that I was a high-ranking martial artist and a past champion of full-contact fighting, they asked in their editorials why I hadn’t I kicked the gun out of the boy’s hand. Why, when I had options other than shooting, did I choose to shoot?
Same thing Tiff asked.
“Do you want to give me your answer now, Sam? You don’t have to. You can wait another week. You know I can’t release you to go back to work unless you can tell me that, should a situation call for it, you could use deadly force again.”
“What are the odds?” I ask rhetorically. I know there’s no answer, but that doesn’t keep me from asking myself that twenty times a day, and every night at two am and at three. And four.
“You know the answer, Sam. The chance of it happening again is no greater than of it happening the first time. But the department doesn’t—”
“—want an officer,” I say it with her, “on the street who would hesitate and risk his life, or the life of another officer or citizen.”
“Exactly,” she says.
“Yes, I can do it. I just don’t want to go through all the shit again.”
“That’s part of… ‘the game,’ to use your words from a couple of weeks ago. Right?”
I nod and look out the window again.
“Tiff okay with you going back?”
“She’s not a consideration in this.”
“Okay. You’re good to go then. I’ll forward my recommendations to your bosses.”
Good. Well, I think it’s a good thing. Actually, I’m not sure.
“Glad to see you back on board,” Mark booms, pumping my hand and nodding toward a chair. My boss is handsome, fifty-eight years old, trim, with dark hair sprinkled gray. He’s been my lieutenant for the three years I’ve worked in detectives, but we’ve been friends much longer. He’s twenty-three years my senior so sometimes our friendship is a tad father/son, and I’m okay with that. As a boss, I consider him one of the good guys, a leader unaffected by his rank, one who loves his people, and who has never used anyone as a stepping stone to get ahead. That’s rare in the police biz.
“Thanks, Mark,” I say, plopping into the chair at the front of the desk. “Sort of glad to be back.”
Laughter erupts outside the glass-enclosed office where the night shift dicks are slipping on their jackets and exchanging barbs with the day shift crew as they remove theirs. I’ve missed the camaraderie.
“So,” Mark says in a between-you-and-me tone as he moves around behind his desk. He doesn’t sit. “You’re ready to do it?”
“I am. I think.”
“Tiff okay with it?”
Tiff and I enjoyed a few dinners with Mark and his squeeze, David. Mark’s gay, no biggee to me, though I’m guessing it is with some of the guys in the squad. I’ve seen the occasional smirks and eyebrow bobbing, but I’ve never heard anyone trash talk him, probably because he’s one of the best lieutenants around.
“We had our weekly last night. That part was fine, but it’s pretty clear it’s not happening.”
“Too bad.” He said once that we make a beautiful couple and that Tiff could turn a gay man straight. Asking me about her is his way of asking how we’re doing. He doesn’t say it, but I know he thinks we’re just having a bump in the road, that we’ll work through it. He knows a lot about our relationship, but he doesn’t know everything.
“Not really.” I sigh. I’m tired of thinking about Tiff. “So what do you got me doing?”
Two months earlier, I was working the Burglary Unit and returning to the office after interviewing a witness, when radio sounded the hot-call warning beeps, followed by dispatch announcing an armed robbery in progress at a second-hand store at the intersection of Southeast Fifteenth and Taylor. As fate would have it, the address was right outside my car window where I was waiting at a stop light. Half a minute later, the hold-up man was taking a non-stop to Hell, and the old man and I were enjoying breathing.
Mark moves around to the front of his desk and sits on its edge. He looks down at me. “The doc ask you the question?”
“Can I drop the hammer again? She did and I said, yes.”
“Let’s just pray that you never have to. But no one will work with someone who can’t.”
I nod at my friend. “I know the drill, Mark.”
“I know you do and you know I got to ask it. Okay, enough of this shit. You got your gun back from the Evidence Property Room, right?”
I pull my jacket flap back and reveal my Glock. “A couple weeks after the Shooting Board gave me their stamp of approval.”
“You’re back in the Burglary Unit and I’ve teamed you up with Tommy for a few days. He’s on his second day off and will be back tomorrow. Why don’t you set up your desk or something, and then take off early. But come back mañana raring to roll.”
“Can I work these short hours everyday?”
“No.”
By noon I’ve cleaned everyone’s lunch remnants off my desk, made sure my computer was working, talked with several of the dicks, and had coffee with a uniform friend. Now I’m taking a stroll along Water Front Park which parallels the Willamette River to soak up a little spring sun and watch the first sailboats of the season skim over the water. I think it’s still too chilly for sailing but in rainy Portland any brief sun break brings out the shorts and water toys.
It feels good to be back at work, better than I imagined considering that I’d been having second thoughts about police work even before the shooting. I joined the PD for the classic reasons, security, and to help others, but I quickly found out that most of the time crime fighting is tantamount to trying to lower the ocean by removing one glass of water at a time. Liberal judges release dangerous predators out onto the street, the media criticizes the PD’s every move, new laws and restrictions make it ever more difficult to protect and serve and, with the exception of Mark, too many in command positions use the backs of those under them for knife plunging practice.
I knew about these things before I took the long battery of tests to join fifteen years ago but, in my naiveté, I was convinced I could handle the challenge. Now I’m starting to question if I want to. Do I want to do this for the rest of my working life? Is it satisfying enough? Do I want to spend the next fifteen years dealing with all the politics and the monstrous negativity? If I’m growing weary at the half way point in my career, at a time when I can resign and move somewhat easily into another job, how weary will I be ten years from now when I’ll no longer be as marketable to employers? I don’t know the answer.
Then there’s the shooting.
The uniform officer I had coffee with summed up his shooting this way.