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  “How many kids do you estimate were out there?”

  “I’d say twenty, maybe twenty-five,” Grant continued. “As soon as I arrived, I dove in and tried to see what I could do to contain the situation. The shooter—what’s his name? Donald Trueman, right? He was punching another kid in the gut. When I tried to stop him, he took a swing at me. I got him on the ground and was about to cuff the little bastard when this bottle sails right past my head.”

  “Who was the bottle thrower?” Miller asked, leaning back in his chair.

  None of the officers present on the beach the day before had fully recovered. Now that it was mid-morning with hours left before they would see a bed, the sergeant and everyone else in the room looked as if they were on their last legs. Ratso kept nodding off; Jimmy Townsend had to kick him several times under the table to wake him up.

  “As far as we can tell, the bottle thrower was the kid who got shot,” Townsend offered, glancing down at his notes. “His name was Timothy Hillmont. I checked our records, and he’s never been arrested or cited before. Perhaps you should ask Rachel what she found out. She notified the family, right?”

  “Did you witness the actual shooting?” the sergeant asked.

  “Nada, Sarge,” Townsend answered, rubbing the dark stubble on his face. “I was busy dodging bottles and wrestling kids. I heard the shot, and then everything just turned to worms. Grant was firing at the shooter. I saw the Hillmont kid on the ground. When I saw Rachel on the ground beside him, I thought they’d shot her as well. She had blood on her face, blood in her hair. I squeezed off a couple of rounds, trying to take down the shooter. We all thought we’d nailed the little sucker,” he said, pausing and chuckling. “Guess we need to spend more time at the pistol range. At least we didn’t shoot each other.”

  Townsend’s chuckles made Rachel’s stomach turn. “You’re lying, Jimmy,” she said. “You saw what happened out there. Do you think I didn’t hear what you said to Grant? Maybe you wouldn’t think it was so funny if it was one of your kids who got killed tonight.”

  Townsend’s face flushed in anger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “And I refuse to let you call me a liar.” He pushed his bulky body out of the chair, his shoulders bunched up around his ears.

  Rachel was faster. She stood and kicked her chair aside, curling her finger and challenging him. “You got the best of me the other night,” she said, yanking out her baton. “Maybe we should even the score.”

  “That’s enough!” Miller shouted, grabbing Rachel’s baton and placing it on the floor by his chair. “One more outburst, and I’ll place you both on suspension.”

  “Rachel’s the one making all the trouble,” Townsend said, squeezing himself back in his chair.

  “Jimmy, I want you to interview the other kids,” Miller said, wanting to bring the meeting to a close as soon as possible. “Ratso, I want you to pull all their records, and see if any of the rioters have ever been in trouble before.”

  The sergeant bypassed Ratso for the moment, zeroing in on Ted Harriman instead. “What was your involvement in this incident?”

  “I was the last unit to arrive, sir,” Harriman said in his Georgia drawl. “I gathered up some juveniles on the perimeter of the problem area. Since I had three of them in tow, I really couldn’t jump back in at that point and give the rest of the crew a hand. Like Townsend, I heard the first shot, but I didn’t see the actual shooting go down.”

  Rachel’s face fell. If Harriman said he had not witnessed the shooting, she had to believe he was telling the truth. Outside of Chris Lowenberg, Ted Harriman was the only man on her watch she felt she could trust. Staring at his rich mahogany skin, she thought about Captain Madison. Since the captain had not been present during the incident, Rachel doubted if there was anything he could do for her.

  “Ratso,” Nick Miller said, “what did you see out there?”

  “Ah,” he said, looking at Grant, “you mean the shooting. Sergeant?”

  “What do you think we’ve been talking about?” Miller said, his voice thick with sarcasm.

  “I saw the boy with the yellow shirt pointing a gun at Grant,” he said. “I dropped down for cover. I didn’t see what happened after that.”

  Rachel’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere. “I saw it all,” she said. “Why don’t you ask me what happened?”

  The room fell silent.

  “When I got there,” she said, “Grant had Donald Trueman on the ground and was kicking him in the ribs. In case you’re not aware of it. Sergeant, Grant has steel loaded into the toes of his boots.”

  “That’s a bold-faced lie,” Grant said. He yanked off one of his boots and tossed it on the table with a loud thud. “Check it yourself, Sarge. She’s out of her frigging mind.”

  Sergeant Miller reached over and felt the end of Grant’s boot, then handed it back to him. “There’s nothing there,” he said, glancing over at Rachel. “It’s just a heavy boot, Simmons. Granted, it might be heavy enough to do some damage, but it’s not outside of department regulations.”

  “He must have changed them already,” she said, grimacing. “He always wears steel-toed boots.” She narrowed her eyes at the other men. “They all know it. They just won’t admit it. They probably have steel in the toes of their boots as well.”

  “Forget the fucking boots,” the sergeant shouted, spitting the toothpick out of his mouth without realizing it. He didn’t like the way things were shaping up. He was responsible for the officers on his watch. If the shooting was reviewed by the brass and his troops’ conduct was determined to have been less than stellar, he would be the person who would end up taking all the heat. He was attempting to make lieutenant, and the test was only two months away. His climb up the ladder had not been swift, nor had it been easy. He was not about to kiss off his career over a shooting incident involving a gang of kids. “What do you think happened out there, Simmons?” he asked, a pained look on his face. “The situation appears fairly simple to me. One dumbass kid shot another dumbass kid. Happens all the time.”

  “It’s not what I think happened,” Rachel said forcefully, “it’s what I know happened. I was standing only a few feet from Grant. While Grant was kicking Donald Trueman, another kid threw a beer bottle at him. I’m not sure if it was Timothy Hillmont who threw the bottle, or someone standing close to him. Grant left Trueman on the ground and went chasing after Hillmont. He had Hillmont by the arm and was about to cuff him when someone yelled, ‘Look out! He’s got a gun!’”

  She paused and sucked in a breath. Grant had caused a young boy to lose his life. There was no way she was going to let him get away with it. As Lucy had pointed out the other day, just because they were police officers didn’t mean they weren’t accountable for their actions. “A second after the person warned us about the gun,” she said, “I saw Grant grab Hillmont by the shoulders and position him in front of his body, using him as a human shield. As soon as the kid caught the bullet in the chest. Grant dumped him on the ground and began firing at the shooter.”

  Grant leaped to his feet. “You’re a damn liar,” he said, waving his arms in protest. “You know what this is all about, Sarge. She’s still pissed about what happened on the beach. She’s making up this silly story to get back at me.”

  The room plunged into silence again. Jimmy Townsend looked down at his notepad. Sergeant Miller rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Ratso straightened up in his seat. They’d never seen an officer accuse another officer of so much as fudging on a parking ticket. If something went wrong in the field, the men made it right before they reached the station.

  Rachel stared into Grant’s eyes without flinching. “Trueman wasn’t aiming at Hillmont,” she said. “He was aiming at Grant because Grant had just kicked the shit out of him with a pair of steel-toed boots. You saw the emergency room report. Sergeant. If what I’m telling you isn’t true, how did this kid get four of his ribs broken?”

  “Well,” Miller said slowly, “any num
ber of things could have caused the boy’s injury. He could have been hit with a bottle, another kid could have punched him or kicked him.” A slight tremor appeared in his voice. “Do you realize what you’re saying, Simmons? These are extremely serious charges.”

  “I realize that,” she said, adrenaline coursing through her veins. “The Hillmont boy was only fifteen. He’d be alive right now if Grant hadn’t acted like a coward. Why did he need to use the kid as a shield? He was wearing his bulletproof vest. The kid was completely defenseless. For all practical purposes. Grant killed that boy.” She stopped and took a breath before spitting out the next sentence. “Since when are we allowed to use bystanders, or even prisoners, for that matter, as a shield to protect us from a bullet?”

  Grant paced next to the conference table, a vicious look on his face. Rachel felt herself perspiring and blotted her forehead with a napkin off the table.

  “I guess you’d rather one of us get killed than some punkass kid off the street,” Grant growled. “I never pulled that kid in front of me. If you saw anything, it must have been an optical illusion.”

  Ratso, who generally never said so much as a word during the squad meetings, suddenly spoke up. “Rachel got hit on the head before the shooting even went down, Sergeant. You know,” he continued, “maybe it affected her vision. She was bleeding pretty profusely when I saw her. She could have had blood in her eyes.”

  “You lost it out there,” Rachel said, glaring at the dark-skinned man. “I saw him trying to smash a boy’s head open on the pavement like a watermelon. What was that all about, Ratso?”

  “The kid was resisting arrest,” he said. The rage she had seen during the riot sparked momentarily in his smoky eyes.

  “He was in handcuffs,” she said. “How could he resist when he was already on the ground and cuffed? You beat him because you wanted to beat him. I didn’t know you were like that, Ratso. You’ve been hanging around Grant too long. You’re beginning to act just like him.”

  “You are mistaken,” he answered. “The suspect was fighting me, trying to flee. I didn’t do anything out of line.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Ratso,” the sergeant snarled, knowing the more serious problem involved the charge that Grant Cummings had used the Hillmont boy as a shield. “Cummings and Simmons, I’ll see you in my office. The rest of you start writing. No one’s allowed to leave the building until we agree on what happened last night.”

  Three pairs of red-rimmed eyes turned to Rachel. Even Ted Harriman looked annoyed. “Fucking women,” Townsend mumbled as Rachel walked past him.

  c h a p t e r

  TWELVE

  Rachel followed the sergeant down several corridors to the opposite side of the building, Grant stomping along a few feet behind them. When they reached his office, Miller pointed to a chair in the corridor, grunted at Rachel, then waved Grant into his office and slammed the door.

  “She’s full of shit,” Grant said, slouching in a chair.

  “Be quiet,” Sergeant Miller hissed, taking a seat behind a small metal desk. “Give me some time to think this through.” For a long time, the sergeant stared over Grant’s head. The tiny room was about the size of a broom closet, and it wasn’t even his office. He had to share it with the sergeants from the other watches. If he made lieutenant, he’d have a private office all to himself.

  He braced his head in his hands, trying to come up with a reasonable way to defuse the situation. Picking up his copy of the California Penal Code, he tried to figure out what type of offense they might legally charge Grant with for using a bystander as a shield. It certainly violated every rule within the department, but he was also concerned that Grant’s actions constituted a prosecutable felony. They could charge him with wrongful death or manslaughter, he decided, but he didn’t see how they could classify it as murder. Grant surely didn’t intend for the boy to die, and intent was a required element in a homicide. If Grant had done what Rachel said, he decided, he must have done it instinctively, like a person who raises his hands to his head when he believes someone is about to hit him.

  Did he believe Rachel was telling the truth? Absolutely. After two years of attempting to turn her into a competent police officer, he had learned enough about Rachel Simmons to know that she wouldn’t lie. He also knew she could have been mistaken. She was an inexperienced officer who had never been in a situation where gunfire was exchanged. Whatever Rachel believed she had seen, however, was what she would testify to in a court of law. She had made this clear with the Brentwood case. Another officer would have supported Townsend’s statements, whether he had actually seen him remove the gun or not. That’s the way things were done in a police department. Police science wasn’t specific. Lawyers were specific. Cops had simply learned to give the lawyers what they wanted. If cops didn’t doctor their stories now and then and present a unified front, every other person they took to court would go free.

  As a whistle-blower, Rachel Simmons could easily become the department’s worst nightmare.

  When Chief Gregory Bates had transferred from Simi Valley to Oak Grove ten years before, he had taken a force of poorly trained and marginal officers and made it into one of the finest departments in the county. Unlike the LAPD, Oak Grove had previously had an unsullied reputation. In the five years he had been sergeant, not one officer had been formally charged with brutality or the use of excessive force. If there were racist cops among the rank and file, they had learned to keep their prejudices to themselves.

  Snapping the penal code shut. Miller knew the problem was as serious as any he had ever faced in his career. If Rachel went to the press with her accusations about Grant Cummings, the entire department would stand in disgrace. The media hungered for stories about police brutality and misconduct. Bad cops sold newspapers and kept tabloid television shows in business. Once the cat was out of the bag, the Oak Grove Police Department, despite its previous record of excellence, would be known all over the county for its brutal and sexist cops.

  Things had gotten out of hand at the beach.

  If the situation had involved only Grant Cummings, it would not be so bad. Instead, it involved the core group of troublemakers that Miller had tried to keep out of sight of the brass. Working graveyards played with a man’s mind, and Miller had a tendency to get bored during the long, slow nights. He had moved too close to Grant’s group, having been friends with the man since the police academy. When they were younger, the two men had traded off girlfriends and shared wild times. He gave Grant a harsh look, wishing he’d had the foresight to have him transferred off his watch. “Was it you or Townsend who decided to put Valium in Rachel’s beer?”

  “Townsend,” Grant said, scratching the side of his face. “It was just a prank, Sarge. She’s so tight-assed and prudish, we thought it would be fun to see her smashed out of her mind.”

  “Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself,” he barked.

  “That little prank, as you call it, might ultimately cost you your shield.”

  “Nah,” Grant said, shaking his head. “I guarantee she never knew what hit her. What’s she going to do to us? As far as anyone will ever know, she was drunk as a skunk. If she didn’t want to get down and dirty with us, why did she come to the watch party?”

  The sergeant spread his elbows out on the desk. “She knew what was happening when she woke up, though. Right, asshole?” Once Rachel had passed out, they’d all acted like a bunch of sex-starved hyenas, taking turns fondling her breasts, cracking jokes about her, shoving sand down her jeans. Ratso had said she reminded him of one of those blow-up dolls they sell in sex stores—limp and lifeless, her mouth open for business.

  As far as the sergeant knew, none of the men had gone so far as to have intercourse with her, but they were all involved in what would be viewed by the public as disgusting and vile behavior. They had all been active participants, himself included. What would his wife think, his children? His oldest son was about to go to college. His twin daughters were just entering hi
gh school. They had always looked up to him, treated him like a god.

  “What’s all the talk about the beach for?” Grant said, his jaw thrust forward. “I’m not about to take the blame for what went on out there. I was the last man to have a go at her, remember? From what I saw, you had a bang-up time playing with her tits. Ratso’s even got a picture of you making out with her.” He gave the sergeant a knowing glance. “You know, I thought you might want a souvenir for your scrapbook.”

  “I should wring your lousy neck,” the sergeant shouted, furious. “If you’re telling the truth and you do have pictures, the prints along with the negatives better be in my hands by tomorrow night or you’ll be the sorriest motherfucker to ever walk the face of the earth. Are we clear on this?”

  Grant didn’t answer. He had suspected the photos would come in handy when he’d instructed Ratso to take them. He never thought he would need them this quickly, though. “I swear I didn’t shove that kid in front of me. If I’m lying, then why don’t the other guys corroborate Rachel’s story? It’s a crock of shit, that’s why. That woman’s dangerous, Sarge. She’s not fit to be an officer. She needs to go in for a psych evaluation, pay a visit to the department shrink or something. Look how she screwed up that robbery.”

  “Locking her keys in the car with the engine running was a dumb stunt, Cummings,” Miller said, “but I don’t think it can compare to the allegations she’s making about you.”

  “It was more than the car keys,” Gram told him. “She also locked her portable radio in the car, so she had to use the pay phone to check in with the station. She didn’t think of asking the clerk if the suspect had touched anything in the store until it was too late.” He paused and laughed. “The only thing the guy touched was the damn phone. By then Rachel had covered up the suspect’s fingerprints with her own. She begged me to help her, so I did. And this is the thanks I get. First she kicks me in the balls. Now she’s making up crazy stories about me, trying to say I was responsible for that kid’s death.”