CHAPTER TWELVE
“Man you’re out of your mind. The Jaguars crushing the Dolphins? Get out of here!”
The senior staff were all in Grant’s office going on and on about everything but police work when his desk phone buzzed. He picked it up. “What?”
“Marti Nash is here to see you, Chief.”
Grant’s heart squeezed as soon as his officer said her name. Feeling exposed, he quickly looked at the clock on the phone. It was twelve after ten. “Send her through,” he said, and ended the call.
“Send who through?” RJ asked. “That consultant? My next meal?” They all laughed. All except for Grant.
“ Your next meal? Says who? Get in line,” said Pete. “I got first dibs on that nice slab of rib!”
“Not before me you don’t,” said another lieutenant.
“The chief told me to stay away from her,” said RJ. “Chief got first.”
“I don’t have any such thing and neither do any of you,” Grant shot back angrily. “That’s out of the question. For all of you. And I mean it.”
“Sure Boss,” said RJ very insincerely, and the guys all laughed at that too. Except for Grant.
And then knocks were heard on the Chief’s office door.
“Enter!”
When that door opened and Marti walked in, those feelings deep inside of Grant came bubbling up once again. It felt as if his heart had just walked in, which was freaking him out inside. Why would he feel that way about that particular woman? Why? !
And she walked in looking so refreshed, he thought, with her thick hair now beautifully done in large curls down her back with plenty of bounce, and that same briefcase from last night by her side. She wore a belted pair of slacks with a blouse tucked in that perfectly highlighted her gorgeous body. When she walked in over half of the men in the room, including Grant, went hard. “You’re late,” he said, to cover it.
“I was out front on time,” Marti made clear, “but your desk clerk had to get somebody to escort me back here. Then they had to call you first. Perhaps you can let them know that I have a right to be back here?”
“You have a right ?” asked Lieutenant Pete. “Your rights are based on what rights we give you.”
“Facts,” echoed RJ.
Marti was so accustomed to good old boys in her line of work that she ignored them. Kept her eyes on the chief, whom she noticed didn’t correct their disrespect. She was beginning to believe that he never bothered to correct anything they did because he pretty much let them do whatever the hell they wanted to do. He was a leader, she saw that two days ago at the Wafer House shooting. His men would follow him through the fire. But only if he asked them to. Grant McGraw, she believed, picked his battles very carefully. And his men showing her disrespect was no hill he was willing to die on. Which was fine by her. She could take care of herself.
When Grant stood up from behind his desk and grabbed a chair for her, she wasn’t surprised when his men stood up too. They put on the show in front of him because they knew he would look the other way in other weightier matters. It was that kind of top-down police force. And the top, if those men in that room were any indication, was rotten to the core.
Grant sat the chair beside his chair and motioned for her to have a seat up front with him. When she walked up front next to him and he sniffed her sweet perfume scent, another level of arousal shot through his body. He held the chair as she sat down.
But when she sat down, his men remained standing, as if they wanted to make it clear to her that they weren’t standing for her. When Grant sat back down behind his desk, his men sat down, too, to prove their point.
“I want to formally introduce you guys to our visitor, and I want you to notify your men of her arrival,” Grant said to his principals after they all sat down. “As I’m sure you all know this young lady is Marti Nash, the police consultant from the office of the Attorney General of the great state of Florida.”
Some of the men snickered. They knew what little regard Grant had for the AG’s office and any other personnel in Chauncey Devere’s corrupt administration.
“She’s here to observe our policing practices from investigation to arrest, and we are required, as ordered by the Assistant AG himself, to allow her to do her job.”
“When you say she’ll observe us,” said RJ, “what exactly does that mean?”
“Right,” said Pete. “That’s a wide-open criteria.”
“Who’s going to set the boundaries of what she can and cannot observe,” added RJ, “because nobody wants to be spied on all day long?”
“She won’t be spying on anybody,” Grant said bluntly, “and I’ll set the parameters of what she can observe.”
That seemed to give them some comfort, Marti noticed.
“But,” said Sergeant Carter, “this is going to seriously effect morale if it gets out of hand.”
Grant was miffed. “What did I just say? Didn’t I say I won’t let it get out of hand?”
“Yes sir, but --”
“But what, Sergeant?”
Carter looked at RJ, their other leader and the only one in the room with the balls to stand up to their chief. “But it can go south real fast, Grant,” said RJ. “That’s what Sarge means. Cops don’t like civilians coming in telling them how to do their jobs when they never walked a beat in their lives.”
“Here here,” said Pete. “That’s what I’m talking about. What can she tell us? I was a cop before she was even born I’ll bet, and many of our guys were too. But she’s gonna tell us how to do our jobs?”
Marti looked to Grant to set those buffoons straight, but he just sat there in what she realized up close was a very expensive suit, one of those Italian silk suits that no small-town police chief should be able to afford, and he allowed them to vent.
But what Marti didn’t know was that he allowed them to vent so that he could see what she was made of. If she would defend herself. If she had the mettle to stand up to the alpha males on his police force, or if she was a weakling and he would have to hold her hand to protect her from the big, bad cops.
He leaned back in his chair and watched her as those big, bad cops gave him an earful.
“Will she follow us on our lunch breaks?”
“Will she sit in on interrogations of suspects?”
“Will she listen in on our private conversations?”
“Will we be ordered to allow her to hang around our houses after work the way she was hanging around yours last night?”
Grant frowned when Pete mentioned last night. “How would you know who was hanging around my house last night?” he asked him.
Pete realized he had said too much and looked to RJ to bail him out.
“What he meant was,” RJ began saying, but Grant cut him off.
“I don’t give a damn what he meant.” Grant’s eyes remained on Pete. “How would you know who was hanging around my house last night?” he asked him again.
“It’s my understanding that a beat cop drove by your house on his normal patrols and saw her car in your driveway.”
Grant knew that was a lie because no beat cop patrolled his street. Especially since, given his acreage, his house was the only house within a mile on that street.
And although Grant was willing to let it slide since they had real police work to get to, Marti wasn’t about to. Her reputation mattered to her and no bozos from Belgrave were going to trample on it as if she was some hoe in town ready for whatever hoedown they threw her way. “I was at the chief’s house last night,” she said, addressing Pete directly, “because your sergeant gave me his address and told me he would love to meet with me at his house.”
RJ smiled and then laughed, prompting all of the other senior staff to laugh. Marti was offended. “Did I say something funny?”
“Everybody knows that Chief Grant McGraw does not allow any human being inside his house,” RJ said.
“He doesn’t allow dogs and cats in there either,” Pete added, and they all laughed at that.
Marti glanced at Grant. He didn’t allow anybody to go inside his house, but yet he all but pulled her inside of that same house and washed her clothes for her and even blow-dried her hair? No man had ever even thought about doing something like that for her. And he allowed her to have dinner with him too? A man who never wanted company? That sounded crazy to Marti. That made no sense to her. Why would he be so kind to her if he shunned all others?
But his kindness toward her was none of their business. “I didn’t know anything about that,” was all she said about her visit to his house, and she pivoted back to the point. “When you assumed that I’ve never been a beat cop, your assumption is absolutely wrong.”
“Why’s that?” asked Pete. “You were a cop for a few days, maybe even a few months, and couldn’t cut the muster? And because of that nothing service we’re supposed to give you street cred?”
“She doesn’t need you to give her shit,” said Grant. “She was a detective lieutenant with the Memphis Police Department. She’s no 90-day wonder. She’s an eleven-year veteran cop from a jurisdiction that will make ours look like shitsville.”
When he said those words, the gasps in the room made Marti inwardly smile. It was as if they couldn’t believe it.
Because they couldn’t. “I thought that consultant stuff was the job for slobs who couldn’t cut it as cops,” said Sergeant Carter.
“Or some college nerd that never was a cop,” said another senior staff in the room.
“Why would a veteran police officer want to be a consultant ?” asked RJ. And he said it as if the very word itself was a contaminant.
“Isn’t that like a super-major downgrade?” asked Carter.
“Why would you walk away from being a lieutenant to becoming some nothing consultant?” asked Pete. “That’s like Gladys Knight deciding to become a Pip.” They all laughed.
Grant looked at Marti. He was curious too.
But she said nothing about it. He could tell their questions rattled her. He saw it by the way she sat upright in her seat as if she needed to stiffen her backbone. But she, instead, moved on. “I won’t be observing anything personal,” she said to the men. “That’s not my job. I’m here only to take a closer look at the techniques you guys are using and why those techniques might have led to your extremely high DNA exoneration rate. That’s my one and only focus. There are just too many innocent people being arrested, tried and convicted in this jurisdiction. Why is that?”
“Ask the State Attorney’s office. They’re the ones with the final say on who gets prosecuted. Not us,” said RJ.
“Right,” agreed Pete and the rest of the senior staff.
“It’s true that the State Attorney’s office decides who gets prosecuted,” said Marti. “But it’s based completely on the evidence that you present to them. It begins with you. Something is wrong at the beginning of the process, not the middle of it. It’s my job to find out what’s wrong in the beginning.”
The seniors looked at each other. Marti could tell they didn’t like it one bit. But that wasn’t her problem.
“Anything else?” Grant asked, rescuing her.
“We’re good,” said RJ, although Marti could tell they weren’t satisfied at all.
“Alright everybody back to work,” Grant announced, and the men stood up to leave.
“What do we call you?” one of the lieutenants asked.
“Everybody calls me Marti.”
“You will call her Lieutenant Nash,” Grant ordered. He knew his men. Give’em an inch, and they’d take a mile. The men left, closing the door behind them.
“If any one of my men call you Marti or anything other than Lieutenant, you correct them. That’s the only way you’ll get any respect out of them.”
Marti looked at Grant. He said nothing while they grilled her, but now he was concerned about them respecting her? And based on some title she no longer even had? This man was becoming a serious enigma to her!
“About that Wafer House shooting,” she said. “How’s the investigation going? Have you found the gunman yet?”
“Not yet, no.”
“Do you have any leads?”
“None. We let the bad guy get away because we had eyewitnesses that pointed us in a different direction. We’re investigating those eyewitnesses.”
Marti knew that was a waste of time. They had faulty memories because of the trauma, not because they were intentionally lying. But any cop should have known that. “Last night I reviewed in detail the demographics for this police department because I noticed something that I had to confirm with data.”
While Grant was reviewing her credentials, she was apparently reviewing his department. “What did you notice?”
“I noticed, and the data confirms, that there are no women on your police force.”
Grant studied her. “There are women.”
“In dispatch roles, yes, but not as police officers.”
“This is a very conservative town. Men aren’t too keen on their wives in the line of fire.”
“Blacks aren’t keen on blacks in the line of fire either?”
What was she talking about? “Say again?” asked Grant.
“I also noticed that in a town that has a nearly forty-one percent African American population, there’s only one black guy on the entire police force. Just one. And that’s if you can call him black.”
Grant had her a hard look. Was she one of those bleeding-heart liberals that viewed everybody else as weird and wrong? “What do you mean if you can call him black?”
“Just what I said.”
“If he’s not black, then what is he?”
“He’s an oreo. Which is his right. He can be whatever he wants to be. But he’s it. The black population, essentially, has no representation on this police force whatsoever. That’s a problem.”
“What’s an oreo? Other than a cookie?”
Marti sometimes forgot that she wasn’t in Memphis anymore. “A person black on the outside, but white on the inside. A sellout. An Uncle Tom. Whatever you choose to call them. But that’s his right.”
“And why would having one black man, and a very high-ranking one at that, be a problem?”
“Because sixty-five percent of the prisoners that were at least technically exonerated by DNA were African American. That’s why.”
Grant stared at her. “What’s your solution if it’s such a problem you’re making it out to be?”
Marti didn’t like the premise of his question, but she picked her battles too. “Fire some of these good old boy rednecks and hire more African Americans.”
The desk intercom buzzed before Grant could respond. Grant pressed the button. “The mayor’s office just called, sir.”
“And?”
“He wants you and that lady--”
“ That lady is Lieutenant Nash,” Grant corrected his desk clerk.
“Excuse me, sir. That’s the way the mayor referred to her.”
Grant glanced at Marti. “What does he want?”
“He wants you and the lieutenant in his office right now.”
“Did he say what for?”
“No sir. But he’s upset.”
Grant ended the conversation and just sat there, seemingly taking his own counsel, Marti thought. Then he stood up, prompting Marti to stand too. He grabbed his suitcoat off of the back of his chair. “Let’s go,” he said, and began hurrying for the exit.
Marti grabbed her briefcase and followed him. He knew the mayor was the chief’s boss, but she had a feeling that wasn’t why he would have hurried out. The mayor, apparently, rarely called him over to City Hall. And he was upset too? Something was up, and it wasn’t something good, was how Marti interpreted it.
But as the twosome made their way through the lobby to the exit doors, RJ, Pete, and Carter were leaned against the information desk watching them leave. They noticed how the chief opened the door for the consultant and then placed his hand on her lower back as they walked out of the station. The three men also noticed, as they walked over to the front window, how their chief opened the passenger door of his Mercedes for her and did something they found quite intimate: he buckled her in.
“How you like that?” asked Pete. “He’s scaring us away from her so he could have it all for himself.”
“You think he’s tapping that already?” asked Carter.
“Hell yeah,” said Pete.
But it was RJ, who was actually in the know around there, that Carter wanted to hear it from. “You think so, too, Cap?”
“Grant McGraw has never met a woman he hasn’t slept with.” RJ looked at Carter. “So what do you think?”
Carter grinned. “Chief twenty years older than I am and he gets more action than I get! That’s not fair,” he added and laughed.
But as they watched the chief and Marti drive away, RJ and Pete were far more serious. “What do we do, Cap?” Pete asked as they watched.
“Tell them to get ready. Her presence could be a serious problem. We may have to move sooner than planned.”
Pete exhaled. “If this don’t work, we are screwed,” Pete said. “You know that right?”
“What do you mean we , white man?” asked RJ.
Pete and Carter looked at him. Sometimes they wondered if they were being played by him and if this black man really was one of them. But then he plastered on that smile that always reassured them, and all their doubts flew away. And they smiled too.
“Stop worrying,” RJ said. “Nobody’s getting screwed. Except the chief, of course,” he added, and they all laughed.
But RJ knew it could all blow up in their faces. He knew they were taking a hell of a risk.