“Well, sir, Payne told us. And we saw the body. The bullet struck right about here.”
He pointed at his own face.
“Did Payne also tell you what happened?”
“He said there had been an armed robbery of a couple picking up their car in the lot; that he’d walked up on it right afterward, told the robbers to stop. They ran, he went after them. They fired at him with a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol, and he put both of them down.”
“Did they hit him?” Weisbach asked.
“No, sir,” McGuire said, and hesitated.
“Go on, Lieutenant,” Weisbach said.
“He was a little shaken up, sir.”
“How shaken up?”
“Acted odd, you know,” McGuire said.
“No, I don’t know.”
“Well, there was the business about his weapon,” McGuire said.
“What about his weapon?”
“I took it from him, of course,” McGuire said, and pointed to one of the desks in the room. There were two Ziploc bags on it. One of them held Matt’s Officer’s Model Colt. 45 pistol, and the other a magazine.
“Of course?” Weisbach asked.
“Yes, sir, and he gave me some lip that I was supposed to give it back to him. He didn’t give me any trouble, but he told me I was supposed to give it back to him after I counted the rounds left in the magazine.”
“At that time, Lieutenant, did you believe that Sergeant Payne (a) posed a danger to others or himself, and/or (b) that he had committed a crime of any kind?”
“No, sir. From what I saw it was a good shooting.”
“Two things, Lieutenant. There is no such thing as a good shooting. They are all lamentable. Some of them are unfortunately necessary, but there is no such thing as a ‘good’ shooting.”
“Sir, I meant-”
“Secondly, Lieutenant, you might find it valuable to refresh your memory regarding the regulations dealing with taking a weapon from an officer in a situation like this.”
“Sir?”
“The sergeant was right, Lieutenant. Absent any reason to believe that the shooting officer poses a danger to himself or others, or belief that the officer has committed a felony, the regulations state that his weapon will be returned to him by the supervisor after he counts the rounds remaining in the magazine, and takes possession of that.”
“Inspector, I thought it was evidence…”
“So you implied. The point here is that a clever lawyer, such as Mr. Giacomo, may make the point that your disarming of Sergeant Payne against regulations is proof of bias.”
“Jesus, I didn’t know.”
“Obviously. Now, was there any other indication of what you considered odd behavior in Sergeant Payne?”
“He was… sort of out of it, sir. Distant, maybe, is the word.”
The telephone on one of the desks rang, and Captain Kimberly went to answer it, and the door opened and Inspector Peter Wohl and Amelia A. Payne, M.D., came into the room.
“Hello, Mike,” Wohl said. He nodded at the others.