C. Barry - Redemption

No smart-ass woman was going to change that.

As he sipped his drink, the arrow-straight streets began to waver. He frowned and blinked rapidly as they merged and parted. He looked down at his drink. It was the first one today. Was it an earthquake?

He looked out again, feeling suddenly dizzy as the city lights spun wildly. Whole blocks of skyscraper windows blinked on and off. Rows of streetlights twisted and warped.

This is wrong , he thought, taking a step back. Something was happening. He swung around, paranoid, feeling as though he were being watched.

Suddenly, his office lights flickered, and then went black. The usual thrum of the air-conditioning ground to a halt, leaving an eerie silence and the ever increasing ringing in his ears.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he swore he could see shadows circling his office. They mocked him with their swagger. He knew he was in trouble, but his mind seemed to shut down completely, unable to form a course of action.

His phone. He needed his phone. He leaned in the direction of his desk, but his feet wouldn’t move.

“Move,” he heard himself say, surprised at the high pitch of his voice. “Move!”

Nothing. Panic seized him again, more powerfully this time. He tried to wrench his body around, and the glass slipped from his fingers. He heard the heavy crystal shatter on the marble.

Finally freeing himself, he reeled back a few more paces and hit the wall. The office rocked up and down like a boat, and he swayed heavily. Fog filled his mind, and his body seemed detached and weak. His gaze dropped to the broken glass on the floor, a few feet away.

For long moments, he stared at the tumbler. It didn’t look right. His brain scrambled to find the wrong. The base was fine, but the sides were like knives, pointing straight up.

Charles laid his head back against the cold wall and looked up. Reya’s smile flashed in his eyes. And then the floor shifted again, sending him stumbling—one terrible step at a time—closer to the glass. He tried to call out, but the words wouldn’t form.

He fell forward like he was toppling off a tall building, felt the glass enter deep into his chest. The pain was quick and cold radiated from the floor. He couldn’t move, couldn’t yell for help. Flashes of his life passed by in seconds. The truth of what he’d been sunk in swiftly and terribly, and the fear of all the wrongs he’d done crushed him into the glass. Warm blood soaked his shirt and his face, and then there was no more cold.

“This board has completed its case review and investigation into the allegation of misconduct in the accidental shooting death of Joseph E. Viare,” Margery said in a smoker’s voice.

She peered up from the sheet in front of her and looked directly into Thane’s eyes over the table between them. Glasses perched on the tip of her nose made her look more like a librarian than a hard-nosed supervisor sitting at a long table of lawyers, various chain of command, and the police district’s community relations representatives.

She could try to intimidate him, but this wasn’t his first time in front of Internal Affairs, and chances were very good that it wouldn’t be his last. This was little more than a staring contest.

“Detective Thane Driscoll,” she continued, not breaking her gaze. “Our finding in this case is ‘not sustained.’”

Thane kept his poker face. A verdict of not sustained was better than he’d hoped for. He must be getting good at this.

“A written reprimand has been added to your file and supervisory counseling has been recommended,” she continued, looking back at the paper.

Only then did Thane breathe. Not bad for the accidental slash self-defense death of a child molester and killer. Or suspect, as they liked to refer to the bastard. Thane knew better. All the cops on that case knew better. Viare got exactly what he deserved. Thane had just gotten off with a slap on the wrist. He could live with that.

Then Margery laid the paper on the table and took off her glasses. She leaned back in her chair and said, “However, this is the second such incident you have been involved with in the past five years.”

Shit. He should have known he wouldn’t get off that easy.

“And although you were exonerated in the last investigation, we wouldn’t want to see you again.” She gave him a smile that could freeze Hell.

“Therefore, this board is recommending probation for a period of one year. If there are any further violations during that time, you will be placed on active suspension.”

He knew he could fight the probation, but if this was the worst they were prepared to do, he’d take it. The room was silent for a full minute as the wall of faces stared at him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“This hearing is concluded,” Margery said with a nod.

The board members stood up and proceeded to walk out. He gathered his files, tucked them under his arm, and escaped Margery’s watchful stare.

He accepted congratulations from the members of the Internal Affairs board on his way back to his desk. Martin met him halfway.

“How did it go with the old battle ax?” his partner asked as he walked next to Thane.

Thane smiled at the hot new receptionist no one had been able to land yet. “Probation.”

“Shit,” Martin said and waved at the receptionist. He was a married man. “For how long?”

“A year,” Thane answered as they entered the open squad room, crisply divided into chest-high cubicles that did little to defuse the noise of the twenty-two people working here. Phones were ringing, and ten conversations were going on at once. It created a din of productivity, but it didn’t fool him. There was little real justice here, or in any other precinct in this city, what with all the protections the bad guys had. Most of his coworkers were just going through the motions.

Thane reached their joint cubicle, where two horseshoe desktops faced each other and connected in the center. The tall cubicle walls cut the two of them off from the other units. The Paranormal Investigation Unit sign hanging on the outside made sure no one bothered them. He shoved the paperwork into his file cabinet as far in the back as he could. A year was a long time to be a good boy. He wasn’t sure if he was up to it.

Martin sat in his chair. He spoke quietly over the top of the piles of files and paperwork that covered their shared desktop. “You’re lucky. You know that, right?”

Thane sat down to face him and sorted through his mail. “So you’ve mentioned before.”

“I swear to God, I see you even look at your gun, I’ll shoot you myself,” Martin added for good measure.

Thane grinned. He wouldn’t.

Martin reached out and tapped a stack of papers. “Look, this is serious. No more…” He glanced around and lowered his voice more. “Accidents.”

Thane glanced up at Martin then. The death of the suspect hadn’t been accidental, and Martin knew it even though he hadn’t seen it happen. Fooling Internal Affairs was one thing, but Thane couldn’t fool Martin. They’d worked together for three years, thrown into this fledgling department from the beginning. No one wanted this job. It was more than a bonding experience; it was a damn tragedy.

“I’ll be more careful,” he said with a smile. For a year .

Martin pressed his lips together. “I hope so. It’s hell breaking in a new partner. Besides, I’d like to get out of this unit someday.”

Thane couldn’t agree more, but then again, it did bring him a whole new, mostly insane, definitely dangerous, set of criminals. They’d investigated murderers who took orders from God, occult leaders performing human sacrifices, homeless people who suddenly thought they were superheroes, you name it. If the crime involved a crazy person, he and Martin were called in. In a city like this, they had more business than they knew what to do with.