J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

Footsteps in the hall. I turn my head. They’re gone. With effort I take my hands from the wall. The front door of the office slams shut.

I let out a breath. I crouch down, hands on knees. Gotta get myself under control. Gotta do something. I stare at the carpet between my shoes. The pant leg rucked up over my empty holster.

The switch flips. I go cold.

I poke my head into the hallway to be sure it’s clear. Then I race into the next office to the open gun safe. I torque the banana mag out of the Krinkov and grab a box of ammo. I start jamming rounds past the mag’s sharp metal lips. My hands are scraped, torn, but I keep loading. When the box is empty, I fit the mag into the little AK and pull the charging handle. The folding stock is already in place.

Running now, confident, invincible, with the assault rifle’s butt in the pocket of my shoulder, I push through the office door, scanning left and right with the muzzle. They’re already downstairs, disappearing into the corridor at the end of the atrium.

Adrenaline pumps through me, dispelling all pain. I glide ahead, descending the stairs in twos, sprinting past the fountain and into the corridor, with no thought but catching up to them, no thought but making them stop.

I reach the entry. I can see the parking lot outside. The bright sun.

Gunshots ring out.

I throw myself into a crouch, slamming into a wall of mailboxes. But there’s no shattered glass. No one’s firing at me. I get up and take a few steps forward. Through the glass I see them outside. One of them, the muscled shotgunner, disappears behind an open car door on the far side of the lot. The one with the skull ring is just standing closer, between my own vehicle and the one next to it. His mask is hiked up over his eyebrows, his right arm extended toward the pavement.

Outside, I advance in a crouch, my finger alongside the Krinkov’s trigger. His back is to me. Looking over the cars, I can only see his head and upper torso. As I hook around the back of my car, I see him clearly. My Kahr shines in his hand, the muzzle pointing downward. On the ground between his feet, lying in a tangle with his gun in one hand and a Five Guys bag in the other, Jerry Lorenz spits blood and glares upward at the coup de grace .

“Police!” I scream.

Skull Ring turns. We’re maybe four feet away from each other. I mash down on the Krinkov’s trigger.

His gray T-shirt erupts in a pink haze, his body jerking wildly. He staggers backward, rolling, and I advance. The thump of the gunstock against my shoulder feels good and right. The man falls. The gun goes silent. It’s empty and smoking.

A car screeches past us and I glance up in time to see the driver. Through the window I can see the outline of his unmasked face framed by a curly mane of hair.

“March.”

I throw the Krinkov down. Get on my knees beside Jerry.

His chest.

Two-no, three wounds. Thick, bright blood coming out in tidal surges, soaking his shirt. A line of blood down the side of his mouth.

“Don’t talk,” I say.

I put pressure on the wounds as best I can. I call for help. Traffic races past on Westheimer, oblivious to what’s happening.

Underneath me, Jerry’s gone pale. His eyes have an unnatural brightness. He’s going. I scream for help again, afraid to take my hands off of him, afraid he’ll slip away if I do.

“Come on, Jerry, don’t do this. Don’t leave me. You’re gonna be okay.”

He tilts his head and spits, trying to clear his mouth.

“Don’t talk. You don’t have to say anything.”

He looks up at me. “My kid .”

“I know, Jerry. It’s gonna be okay. Just stay with me.”

His eyes bore into me. I keep talking, keep reassuring, and then my eyes cloud and my throat fills with phlegm.

“Jerry, no.”

Under my hands, his body is still.

Behind me, I hear footsteps on the blacktop. A hand touches my shoulder.

“We saw everything,” a man’s voice says. “We called the cops and an ambulance. They gonna be here soon. You better get out of here, man. The cops are on the way.”

I shrug free of him. I slump against the car.

“I am a cop.”

He steps back, showing me his palms. “It’s cool, man.” Glancing down, his face goes blank and he starts retreating.

I sit there, sticky with my partner’s blood, watching his wounds glisten in the harsh shine of the indifferent sun. My head tilts back. My eyes close.

I long for the sound of sirens until they come.

They find me in the long antiseptic breezeway, where the nurses left me half an hour earlier, working on my hands with a reddened towelette. I see them in my peripheral vision. Only one of them advances, his footsteps echoing on the glossy floor. The shoes come into view. Black wingtips with a military shine. He settles his weight next to me and sighs.

“Getting yourself cleaned up,” he says. “Good.”

He rests his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“Just when you were saying all your goodbyes-”

“Shut up,” he says gently.

“You didn’t get to talk to him.”

“March, shut up.” The hand on my back feels so heavy. “He was a good man. A good detective. We all had our doubts in the beginning, but he worked out all right.”

I can’t answer him. All I can do is nod. The silence between us is full of understanding. After a while he squeezes my shoulder and begins to rise.

“There’s some people who need to talk to you. Some questions that need answering.”

“I have a question,” I say. “What did Lorenz have to engage them for? Did the people on the scene say anything about that?”

An air of hopelessness comes over him. “I don’t think anyone saw what led up to the initial shooting. We just don’t know. .”

More footsteps. I look up to find Bascombe there along with an assistant DA and a couple of plainclothes men I assume are from Internal Affairs. Behind them, several detectives from a different homicide shift. They’ll carry the ball on this, our own people being too close.

As we walk down to the elevators, I’m wrapped in an inviolate bubble, nobody alongside or too close, like they see me as a piece of evidence at a crime scene, something not to touch unless you’re properly gloved. I don’t care.

I don’t want them getting close.

“This is not good,” the ADA says. “Not. Good.”

Bascombe bristles. “Of course it’s not. It never is when we lose a man.”

“I’m not talking about that, Lieutenant. One of your detectives walked up to a suspect and unloaded on him with a full-automatic weapon. They won’t even know how many holes are in him until they can search him during the autopsy. And there are witnesses who saw it all. There might even be footage from the pawnshop surveillance cameras.”

“This isn’t an interrogation. Detective March is answering questions to help with the hunt for the suspect who got away. Anyway, the guy whose ticket he punched was about to shoot Lorenz in the head.” Bascombe looks my way for confirmation. I give him a mute nod. “Under the circumstances, what was he supposed to do?”

For the interview, they’ve commandeered the ground floor all-faith chapel, positioning me on the front bench and taking up a semicircle of positions between me and the door. The other homicide detectives-the ones who actually need this information-stand in back, staring down at their notebooks, fully aware of the awkwardness of the situation.

One of the Internal Affairs investigators breaks in. He’s in his mid-fifties and sports a healthy golf-course tan with light circles under his eyes and light stripes on his temples where his sunglasses rest.