Jonathan Kellerman - Survival Of The Fittest

“Accidents,” I said. “Suicide by work?”

“Sure,” he said. “Cops like doing it that way because it spares the family the shame. The same thing happens with the people cops deal with: Some profoundly depressed character gets drunk or dusted, stands in the middle of the street waving a gun, and when the patrol car arrives, instead of dropping it he points it at the windshield.”

He pulled an imaginary trigger. “We call that suicide by cop. Only difference is, the character's family hires a lawyer, sues the city for wrongful death, and collects. Depression and litigation make a great combination, Dr. Delaware.”

“Do cops litigate, too?” I said.

He took off his glasses and stared reflectively out at the harbor. “Live ones do, Doctor. Stress pensions, all that good stuff. Lately, the department's been clamping down. Why? Does the sister want to sue?”

Casual tone and he was looking at his bread plate.

“Not that I know,” I said. “She's just looking for answers, not blame.”

“In the end, it's the suicide who's to blame, isn't it? No one else put that gun in Nolan's mouth. No one else pulled the trigger. Were there signs beyond his not being the life of the party? Not that I saw. He took things seriously, took his work seriously. I saw that as positive. He was no slacker.”

Our drinks arrived. As Baker tasted his, I said, “Besides being a fast learner, how was Nolan different from the other rookies?”

“His seriousness. His intelligence. We're talking major bright, Doctor. We'd go on Code 7s- breaks- and he'd whip out a book, start reading.”

“What kinds of books?”

“The penal code, politics. Newspapers and magazines, too. He always brought something. Not that I minded. I'd rather read a good book any day than talk about the usual cop stuff.”

“What's that?”

“Harleys, Corvettes, guns and ammo.”

“He had a sports car. Little red Fiero.”

“Did he? Never mentioned it. Exactly the point. When we were out cruising, he concentrated on work. When we broke, he didn't make small talk. Intense. I liked that.”

“Did you choose to train Nolan because he was smart?”

“No. He chose me. When he was still at the academy I was over there to give a lecture on rules of arrest. Afterward he came up to me and asked if I'd be his T.O. when he graduated. Said he was a quick learner, we'd get along fine.”

Baker smiled, shook his head, and spread thick, bronze hands on the tablecloth. The sun was beating down. I could feel the heat on the back of my neck.

“Pretty damn audacious. I figured what he was really after was a West L.A. placement. But I was intrigued, so I told him to come to the station after shift and we'd talk.”

He rubbed the tip of his nose. “The very next day he showed up, on the dot. Not pushy at all. Just the opposite- deferential. I asked him what he'd heard about me, he said I had a reputation.”

“For being intellectual?” I said.

“For being a T.O. who'd show him the way things really were.”

He shrugged. “He was smart but I didn't know how he'd do on the street. I figured it would be interesting, so I said I'd see what I could work out. In the end, I decided to take him, because he seemed the best of the lot.”

“Bad class?”

“The usual,” he said. “The academy's not Harvard. Affirmative action has made things more… variable. Nolan did well. His size helped- people tended not to mess with him and he never bullied anyone or lorded it over the characters. By the book.”

“Did he ever talk politics?”

“No. Why?”

“Just trying to get as full a picture as possible.”

“Well,” he said, “if I had to guess, I'd say his politics were conservative, simply because you don't find too many flaming liberals in the department. Was he waving any Klan flags? No.”

I'd asked about politics, not racism. “So he got along well with the people you policed.”

“As well as anyone.”

“What about other policemen? Did he socialize much?”

“A couple of times he and I had dinner. Other than that, I don't think so. He stuck to himself.”

“Would you say he was alienated from the other rookies?”

“Can't answer that. He seemed comfortable with his own lifestyle.”

“Did he ever tell you what led him to become a cop?”

He put the glasses back on. “Before I took him on I asked him that and he said he wouldn't spin me some yarn about helping people or being a New Centurion, he just thought it might be interesting. I liked that, an honest answer, and we never discussed it again. In general, he was a closemouthed kid. All work, eager to learn the ropes. My policing style is to make lots of arrests, so most of the time we were pursuing calls aggressively. But no John Wayne stuff. I stay within bounds and so did Nolan.”

He looked away. The fingers remained on the table but their tips had whitened. Sensitive topic?

“So there were no egregious problems on the job.”

“None.”

“Any alcohol or drug abuse?”

“He was health-oriented. Worked out after-hours at the station gym, jogged before shift.”

“But a loner,” I said.

He looked up at the sky. “He seemed content.”

“Any women in his life?”

“Wouldn't surprise me, he was a good-looking kid.”

“But no one he mentioned.”

“Nope. That wasn't Nolan's style- look, Doctor, you need to understand that the police world's a subculture that doesn't tolerate weakness. You need real symptoms to justify seeking help. My job was to teach him to be a cop. He learned fine and functioned fine.”

The waiter brought our lunch and the wine. Baker went through the tasting ritual, said, “Pour,” and our glasses were filled. When we were alone again, he said, “I don't know that we should toast to anything, so how about a generic “cheers.' ”

We both drank and he waited for me to begin eating before approaching the calamari, sawing each squid in half and studying the forked morsel before popping it into his mouth. Wiping his lips with the napkin every third or fourth bite, he sipped his wine very slowly.

“Someone sent him to therapy,” I said. “Or maybe he sent himself.”

“When was he in therapy?”

“I don't know. The therapist is reluctant to discuss details.”

“One of the department psychologists?”

“A private one. Dr. Roone Lehmann.”

“Don't know him.” He looked away again. Ostensibly at some gulls diving the harbor, but he'd stopped chewing and his big eyes were narrow.

“Therapy. I never knew that.” His jaws began working again.

“Any idea why he transferred from West L.A. to Hollywood?”

He put his fork down. “By the time he transferred, I'd moved to headquarters. An administrative carrot they'd been dangling in front of me for a while: revising the training curriculum. I have no great love for paperwork but you can't keep saying no to the brass.”

“So you didn't know about his transfer?”

“That's right.”

“After the training period you and Nolan lost contact.”

He looked at me. “It wasn't a matter of losing contact- breaking off some major father-son relationship. The training period's time-limited. Nolan learned what he needed to learn and went out into the big bad world. I found out about the suicide the day after it happened. Police grapevine. My first reaction was to want to wallop the crap out of the kid- how could someone that smart be so stupid?”

He speared a calamari. “The sister. What does she do?”

“She's a nurse. Did Nolan ever talk about her?”

“Never mentioned her. The only thing he said about his family was that both his parents were dead.”

He pushed his plate away. Half the calamari were gone.