J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

“Oh.” The smile faded. “That was you? Are you all right? I didn’t-no, of course I didn’t. How could I? Hurt you, I mean.”

“You didn’t hurt me. But I was concerned. You got out of there in a hurry.”

“Yeah, well. .”

“The man in the car. His name is César, right?”

She shrugged. “If you say so. Look, I should probably get out of here.” She nodded at the houses behind me. “This is supposed to be a surgical strike, you know? In and out. No witnesses.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

It was the wrong question to ask. Her cheeks flushed and she started digging in her purse for the car keys.

“No, wait. I’m just trying to help. I want to know what was going on in that car.”

She got the door open, then paused to laugh. “You really are sweet, you know that? I could tell you what was going on, but I wouldn’t want to corrupt your morals. . or put any ideas into your head.”

“You should be careful around that guy.”

“No kidding,” she said. She slammed the door and drove away. For the second time I watched her go. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. A student, maybe. She had a nice car, wore decent clothes, didn’t look at all like my idea of a prostitute. Not that I subscribed to any heart-of-gold hypothesis. Not that I romanticized the underworld or its inhabitants. She just seemed too. . something. Too real to do what she did.

I hadn’t gotten her name. I hadn’t written down her license plate number or anything like that. There was no way of tracking her down after the fact, declaring my identity and giving her some kind of warning to stay off base. With nothing but a sense of confusion, a sense of uneasiness to go on, I took a few steps and kept on running.

I should have tried harder than that.

My union attorney, no stranger to officer-involved shootings, meets me in advance of my official sit-down with Internal Affairs, telling me he’s expecting a walkover. “You’re in the clear on this, no question. If they want to make out that excessive force was used, the fact that you were unfamiliar with the weapon should answer that.” I wish I could share his confidence. As we file into the interview room, I scan the IAD office for Wilcox. He’s nowhere to be seen.

The detective with the tan lines on the side of his head conducts the questioning, with a colleague waiting in the wings to take notes. I brace myself for a grilling, remembering his demeanor at the hospital, but my attorney’s assessment proves prophetic. We work through the events leading up to the shooting step-by-step, without hostility. He asks the questions, I answer, and he moves right on without challenging what I’ve said. After a few minutes, we’re in a comfortable rhythm. My attorney relaxes into his chair.

“Let’s take a break,” the detective says once we’ve gone through the story beginning to end. He sends his colleague out for coffee, then splits for a bathroom break.

The attorney smiles. “I think that went well.”

“I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

When the interview resumes, three more IAD personnel sit down across the table, bringing their total to five. The newcomers are armed with old case files, every shooting I’ve been involved in going back to my days on patrol.

“You’re no stranger to this process,” the tan-lined detective says. “Some cops go through their whole careers without firing a shot in anger. You’re not one of them.”

The attorney’s done his homework. “All of those shootings came back clean according to this very department. You’re not suggesting Internal Affairs dropped the ball, are you?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. It just seems like, if you’re accustomed enough to the process, maybe it gets easier and easier to pull that trigger.”

“It’s hard to imagine any officer in Detective March’s situation acting differently.”

“Perhaps. We’re just concerned that what we’re seeing here is a pattern.”

The lawyer suggests this is something to explore in post-trauma counseling, not an IAD interview room. They spar back and forth in a passionless, technical way, like chess players making well-known moves, fully anticipating each rejoinder. I’m not sure exactly what purpose is served. After ten minutes, they arrive at a draw and agree to suspend the match-for now.

“What was that all about?” I ask in the hallway.

The attorney shakes his head. “What they’re saying is, We’ve got nothing, but we’re not ready to let it go. I was hoping we could get you back to work. Unfortunately they’re going to drag things out as long as possible.”

“And how long is that?”

“It all depends,” he says.

“On what?”

“On whether they find anything or not.”

Wanda receives my update on the Internal Affairs situation without surprise, thanks me for dropping by, and dismisses me with a wave of her hand. “Until they give you a clean bill of health, I don’t think you should be seen around here.” I ask halfheartedly about administrative duties, not wanting to be stuck at my desk. She doesn’t even respond.

“I’m just gonna check in with Cavallo,” I say. “Make sure she doesn’t have any questions about the case load.”

Cavallo’s work space looks serene and tidy, all the paperwork stacked just so. She motions for me to wait as she finishes up a phone call. From her end of the conversation I surmise she’s going back and forth with the crime lab about the priority of evidence. She hangs up the phone with a satisfied smile.

“The thing I love about homicide is all your requests go to the top of the list.”

“Theoretically,” I say.

There hasn’t been any progress on the Ford homicide, she tells me, and the last she heard from the team investigating Lorenz’s death, they hadn’t come up with an identification on the man with the skull ring, either. “Your open IAD case is the only thing keeping them from declaring victory. If they could, I think they’d just as soon call it even and go home.”

“Theresa, I need to bring you into the loop.”

Her eyebrows rise. “Meaning what? You’ve been holding something back?”

“We can’t do this here. Can you get away sometime? And I need you to do me a favor, too. I’m a little wary about approaching Wilcox directly, but you two got along when we were all working to bring down Reg Keller. I want you to set up a meeting with him so I can crash it.”

“You’re asking for a lot.”

“In return I’ll give a lot back. I have some new information that leads me to believe we missed something the first time around with Keller. It might have a bearing on your case. Since Wilcox did all the digging into Keller’s finances, we need his cooperation.”

“You think ambushing him is the way to get it?”

“I tried knocking on the front door.”

“He wouldn’t answer?”

I catch Wanda watching us through her open door. “I’ll tell you later. Just set something up and call me, okay? I’ll be eternally grateful.”

To her credit she doesn’t make me beg. We’ve been down this road before. Without losing any of her skepticism or even bothering to hide it, she still agrees to help out. “But if you have been holding back on me. .”

The meeting takes place in a downtown deli, one of the many that serves the lunch throng before closing up shop at three o’clock. They’ve commandeered a table for two and pulled up a third chair as if expecting someone. Wilcox doesn’t look surprised to see me. Cavallo must have tipped him off to the plan, uncomfortable with the idea of luring him under false pretenses. The fact that he’s still showed up is a good sign.