Well shit.
Taking the coffees to the sink, I dumped them out, locked up, and went back to my hot tub.
I couldn’t get Luke’s face, nor his erection, out of my thoughts for a long, long time.Chapter 6No, ma’am. You cannot feel my baton.
-Luke to a perp
Luke
“You killed my husband!” The woman screamed from the side of the road.
A young patrol officer, by the name of Wednesday Carmine, had the young woman by the shoulders, trying her hardest to keep her back from barreling towards me.
Downy stepped in, grasping the woman around the middle and taking her to the opposite side of the crime scene, shutting her into his cruiser.
I gave him a thankful nod, and turned my attention back to the chief who was staring at the scene unblinkingly.
I closed my eyes, bile rising up my throat.
“Tell me what happened,” the chief ordered softly.
The Chief looked tired, and I didn’t blame him one bit. He’d been called in after only getting off a few hours before. We’d all been putting in quite a bit of overtime lately, seeing as we were short in every department.
Then my mind turned back to the scene. The horrible fucking scene.
I’d killed him, but how the fuck was I supposed to know that was a fake goddamned gun?
“I’m not a fucking mind reader or precognitive. I can’t look through the gun he was holding in his hands and see that it was plastic! All I saw was the black gun pointed at my face and I reacted,” I explained, much more calmly than I felt.
“The gun?” The Chief asked.
I nodded, pointing to the weapon that was still lying next to the man’s dead body.
“I told him to drop it. I fucking told him!” I ground out.
The chief raised his hand in a calming gesture. “I know. Now. From the beginning, tell me what happened.”
I lifted my hands, scrubbing my head with my tired fingers.
“I arrived on scene with Downy. We’d gotten a report from a neighbor that a man had a gun pointed at his wife in the front yard. When we got here, he did indeed have a gun,” I sighed. “Downy and I both ordered him to put it down. When he refused, the wife ran forward and got in his face. When he pushed her away, he turned the gun on us, and I fired.”
The chief’s muttered, “fuck” didn’t really make me feel any better, either.
We both knew it was about to become a shit storm of mass proportions.
And two hours later, when I found myself in a meeting discussing the event, I was anything but better.
“Officer Roberts,” The IA (Internal Affairs) bitch asked. “Can you tell us why you didn’t use your Taser?”
I suppressed my growl of frustration.
“I’m an officer of the law. I’ve been an officer for six years. On the Kilgore PD for five of those. I was a Marine for nine years. I’ve been on the end of a gun more times than I can count. And none of those times did I ever think of pulling a Taser. First off, when I have a gun pointed at me, I’m not going to Taser him; I wouldn’t be within range. Secondly, a Taser makes muscles contract. If I shoot him with the Taser and his finger’s on the trigger, there’s a very high possibility that he’ll get a shot off before I can take him down,” I explained through clenched teeth.
The woman came off as quite a bitch.
I’d never seen her before, and I didn’t care to see her ever again.
I doubted she’d ever been in the field as an officer of the law. Any right minded officer wouldn’t have bothered asking a stupid question like the one she’d just asked.
I really wanted to go the fuck home.
I’d had a bad fucking night, and this was the last thing I wanted to do was sit in a meeting with an IA, the chief of police, the fire chief, the two first responders, Downy, and myself.
“And why didn’t you shoot him in the leg or arm? Surely you could have done something…anything better than what you did,” the IA asked.
My fists clenched, and I saw Downy wince. He knew my temper just as well as anyone, and this bitch was getting on everyone’s last nerve.
“Have you ever shot a gun before, Ms. Dion?” I asked calmly.
She nodded. “Yes, I have.”
She sounded offended that I’d asked, but fuck her.
“When you’re shooting at a target, are there legs on the target?” I asked.
She blinked, thinking about it. “No.”
I nodded. “Right. Well, the reason that is, is because when you’re in a situation where you’re shooting at a live person, most likely due to a volatile situation, you aim for the biggest part of the body. That’s center mass. The reason being is that I could miss. Or wherever I shot them at, say the leg, will only pissed them off and they’ll shoot me anyways. Which was what I was trying to avoid.”
Ms. Dion nodded her head at my explanation. “Okay, well that’s all I have for you tonight. You may go. Y’all too,” she said, pointing to Downy, as well as the first responders, Tai Stoker and Drew Dillon. Both firefighters with the Kilgore Fire Department.
“Don’t go far, Roberts. I want to speak with you after we get done,” the Chief ordered tiredly.
I nodded, walking out with Dillon and Tai, I barely managed to control the urge to slam the door like a temperamental child.
Barely.
I only just managed to make it into the hallway before the metal trashcan in the middle of the hallway, kicking it with such force that trash spewed like confetti.
The bull pen turned to witness the act, surprise evident on all of their faces.
It was a sight to behold, me getting mad.
I wasn’t one to lose my temper in front of others, so if it happened in a room full of my colleagues and people I respected, it was big, and they knew it.
“I loved the part where she asked me why I didn’t get the body off the street faster,” Tai said, flabbergasted.