“Y’all come on in the office,” Titus said. The three of them followed him, silent as stones. He put his hat on the peg and sat behind his desk. Carla, Davy, and Roger stood in a semicircle in front of him.
They were all staring at the cell phone sitting on his desk just to the right of his laptop. The phone was facedown inside of a tie-dyed cover. Roger’s face was pale as the belly of a trout. His lips were slick with spit. Titus thought he might have thrown up recently. Davy had his fist pressed tightly against his mouth. His jug ears were still bright red like he’d been slapped. Carla had her hands behind her back in a military stance.
Titus took a deep breath. He could smell the acrid scent of sweat and beneath that, another fragrance. A bitter aroma, both familiar and disturbing in equal measures.
Fear. He could smell their fear in the air like ozone before a lightning strike.
All of them, with the exception of Cam, had heard what Latrell had said about Spearman. His plaintive accusations hadn’t sounded like the ravings of a madman, not entirely. There were no half measures here. Titus had a feeling that once they opened Jeff Spearman’s phone, he would either be a beloved teacher murdered by a mentally ill former student or he would be a monster. Titus knew it was going to be one or the other. There was no middle ground. Taking one look at his deputies’ faces, he could see they knew it too.
“Where we at on witness statements from this morning?” Titus asked.
Carla cleared her throat. “We took as many as we could. Got about thirty. A lot of people didn’t want to talk,” she said.
“I tried to get all the adults to make statements,” Davy said.
Titus took off his shades. “Let’s see if we can track down a few more. I want to make sure we’ve got this covered,” Titus said.
“What’s there to cover? That fucker shot Mr. Spearman and we took him down,” Roger said. His eyes were wild and his words were full of bravado, but his thin lips quivered when he spoke.
“Y’all go on and get on that. I’ll take the phone over to the funeral home,” Titus said. Davy and Carla moved toward the door. Roger trailed behind them.
“Roger, not you. Have a seat,” Titus said. The big man stopped and moved toward the wood-framed leather-bound chair on the opposite side of Titus’s desk. Carla took a quick look over her shoulder before heading out the door.
Titus interlaced his fingers, leaned forward, and rested his forearms on the desk. He looked Roger in the eye.
“Roger, you were involved in a shooting today.”
“Yeah, and it looks like we killed a crazy bastard,” Roger said. He crossed his arms over his wide chest like a child about to refuse to partake of the brussels sprouts on his plate. Titus went on.
“As you know, as I explained after I was sworn in, any officer involved in a fatal shooting is placed on administrative leave for at least two weeks,” Titus said.
“What? You can’t be serious! Latrell shot Mr. Spearman in front of a whole classroom of kids. Kids we know. Kids you know, Titus. We did what we had to do, and now you putting me on desk duty? Really? You…” Instead of finishing his statement he suddenly popped straight up out of his chair.
Titus studied his deputy with cool, dispassionate eyes. Roger was a big man and he often used that to intimidate suspects, prisoners, and folks racing him for a table at the Watering Hole. He had never tried it with Titus, in much the same way a coyote won’t try to intimidate a grizzly if it’s alone. But now he came over to the desk and put his hands palms down as he leaned forward. His huge squarish head blocked out the fluorescent light in the ceiling.
“You gonna need all hands on deck, Titus. The shoot was good, but it ain’t gonna be good enough for Addison and those folks over at that cult of his,” Roger said.
Titus unlaced his fingers and leaned forward even more. “We will need all hands on deck. That’s why I need Trey to come back and give this a good look and make sure the shoot was above reproach. If I just ignore the fact that we killed a man on the steps of the high school, regardless of what he may or may not have done, then that will taint this office and our investigation of the murder of Jeff Spearman. Never mind the fact that everybody and their mama was videotaping the shooting from more angles than in a geometry book. I figure those videos are all over Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, hell, there might even be some folks posting to MySpace. It’s gonna get rough around here. I don’t need nobody thinking we sweeping something under the rug.”
“You mean people like Addison gonna be upset a white cop shot a Black kid. You put me on leave, then people are gonna think the shoot was bad anyway,” Roger said.
“Roger, there are some folks that are always gonna think it was a bad shoot because of that reason. We can’t worry about them. We gotta worry about keeping our own house in order. That means desk duty for two weeks while Trey investigates the shoot and the rest of us see what’s going on with Spearman, this phone right here, and Latrell. When Trey is done, you’ll be back,” Titus said.
Roger straightened. He crossed his arms again. “You don’t believe any of that shit Latrell was rambling about was true, do you? You can’t. You ain’t gonna find nothing on that phone except pictures of Jeff Spearman at Phish concerts,” Roger said.
“Whatever is or isn’t on this phone, I don’t need you on the road right now. Things are going to be heated. We need to do our due diligence. You can keep your sidearm, but put the riot gun in the evidence room,” Titus said.
Roger glowered at him.
Here it comes, Titus thought. I’m either going to be a Black bastard or he is going to go there and drop the N-bomb. He didn’t want to fire Roger, but that would be his ticket out the door. A good leader doesn’t tolerate disrespect. He’d read The Art of War in college unironically, which set him apart from a lot of the trust fund babies he walked with through the halls of UVA. They read it for style points at corporate meetings. He was reading it for the actual battles he’d face in the Bureau. Both in the field and in the office. He’d read one phrase over and over from Sun Tzu’s seminal tome:
“Even the finest sword plunged into saltwater will eventually rust.”
He couldn’t have people around him who didn’t respect him. Disrespect was a pestilence. If you let it go unchecked it would infect the entire department. That was doubly true if you were a Black man. No matter how much folks protested to the contrary, their preconceived notions carried weight when they dealt with you. He didn’t need Sun Tzu to tell him that.
Roger uncrossed his arms. “You making a mistake. A big one,” he said.
“You think you’re going to see him tonight in your dreams?” Titus asked.
Roger’s face softened. “What?”
“Latrell. You think he’ll be waiting for you tonight? I think he will. He’ll be there with half his head gone. Roger, even if I wasn’t going to have Trey do an investigation, I’d take you off the road. You can pull your gun a thousand times, but pulling that trigger is a whole ’nother thing. And before you tell me it’s not, I know you threw up before I came in here. It’s because of what you’re seeing in your head, isn’t it?” Titus asked.
Roger opened his mouth a crack. His thick tongue appeared, then disappeared.
He didn’t answer Titus’s question.
“It’s just two weeks, Roger. You help Cam on the phones and type up warrants and summonses. It was gonna be Davy’s turn this week with summonses but you’re gonna take it for him.”
“I got some sick leave,” Roger said.
“Suit yourself,” Titus said.
Roger turned on his heel and left the office.
Ten-to-one he runs for sheriff in three years, Titus thought.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He grabbed it and checked the screen. It was Darlene. He touched the decline button. He sent her a text.
Cant talk. Im OK. Will call later.
He knew she was probably worried sick. She’d told him more than once that she wished he was in another line of work. Being a cop’s girlfriend hadn’t been her childhood dream.
His phone buzzed again. She’d sent him a text back.
Okay.luv u.
Titus typed a two-character response.
U 2
He did love her. He did. He simply had a hard time expressing it. He realized that made him a walking cliché. The tough lawman who had a hard time sharing his emotions. He was lucky that Darlene didn’t blindly accept that cliché. She’d pushed past his defenses and deciphered the vagaries of his love language.
To an extent.
He hadn’t told her everything that had happened in Indiana at the DeCrain compound and, to her credit, she had only asked him once. She accepted that he wasn’t ready to talk about it, but he knew she was also quietly confident he would one day confide in her all of his secrets.
Titus picked up the evidence bag and headed out the door, bound for the funeral home where Jeff Spearman was currently lying in repose. Latrell’s cell was an old flip phone. It didn’t have any fancy security apps on it. They’d be able to pry open Latrell’s secrets with ease.