Chapter 24 #2
The chatter stopped. Not because the words were alarming on their own; Rawlings called briefings regularly. But “now” carried its own weight. Scheduled meetings had times attached. “Now” meant something had changed between one hour and the next.
Reeves looked at me. I had nothing to give him.
“Let’s go,” I said.
I left the bite equipment where it was and walked Jolly on a short lead through the corridor toward the briefing room. Officers filtered in from patrol, the bullpen, the break room. Nobody was rushing, but nobody was dragging their feet either.
I took a spot along the back wall of the briefing, Jolly at my feet. Reeves settled beside me, arms folded tight across his chest. Briggson was a few bodies over, standing with his weight on his heels. Vance was near the front, hands at his sides, his face grim.
The room filled. Rawlings came in last.
I’d sat in plenty of Rawlings’s meetings by now.
The man had a rhythm. He’d usually have coffee in hand, reading glasses on his forehead, and a certain unhurried authority that came from two decades in the chair.
He’d crack a dry joke before getting to the agenda, or he’d lean against the podium with both hands and just start talking.
Not today. He walked straight to the front of the room and stood there for a moment without speaking. No coffee. No glasses. His hands were flat on the podium, and his eyes moved across the room as if he were counting faces.
“I’m not going to dress this up,” he said.
“Officer Martinez was found at his residence this morning at oh-six-forty. Sergeant Vance went to check on him after being unable to reach him by phone. As you know, Martinez was on administrative leave, and Vance was concerned about his state of mind. Vance discovered him in the garage. He was hanging from a ceiling joist. The scene was consistent with self-infliction. The coroner pronounced him at oh-seven-twenty-two.”
Fuck.
My hand tightened on Jolly’s lead. Rawlings delivered it like he’d deliver any officer-involved report. Clinical, factual, stripped of everything that made it human.
That was how you did it. You gave them the facts first and let the feelings find their own way in.
Rawlings’s fingers pressed into the podium, white at the knuckles. The only part of him that wasn’t following protocol.
“A note was recovered at the scene.”
Nobody asked about the contents of the note, and Rawlings didn’t offer. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the note had said if the man had been found hanging from the fucking rafters.
Nobody moved. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. A chair creaked somewhere to my left.
Beside me, Reeves’s back found the wall, pressed hard against it, and his arms dropped to his sides. I didn’t look at him directly. Didn’t need to. I could feel the change in the space next to me. The way a person shrank when something hit them that they weren’t braced for.
Rawlings took a breath then continued. “There is no indication of foul play at this time.”
There were small movements around the room as everyone tried to wrap their head around the fact that one of their own had killed themselves.
They had no idea about Martinez running his mouth and potentially endangering investigations, and Rawlings wouldn’t disgrace the man’s memory by making that known.
All they knew was that their colleague had chosen a permanent solution rather than reaching out to any of them. No matter what the reason for the suicide, that was going to sting.
“Counseling is available. I don’t care how tough you think you are. Use it.” Rawlings’s gaze swept the room. “Martinez served this department for years. Whatever brought him to this point does not erase that. I need you to hear me on that.”
Jolly pressed into my leg. Firm. Deliberate. His ears had flattened against his head, and his body was taut against my calf. Not anxious, just reading. He always read rooms through the people standing in them, and right now, every person in this room was radiating the same frequency.
I put my hand on his head and kept it there.
“The department will release a formal statement once the investigation is complete,” Rawlings said. He paused, and for the first time, his voice lost its footing. Just slightly. Just for a beat. “He was one of ours. That doesn’t change.”
Rawlings dismissed the room. People moved. Slowly, in clusters of two and three, voices low. Some headed for the door. Some stayed in their chairs. Reeves hadn’t moved from the wall beside me.
“He sat right there,” Reeves said quietly, looking at a chair in the second row. “Monday morning briefings. Same chair every time. Used to do a crossword puzzle on his phone while Rawlings was talking, like he thought nobody noticed.”
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t have been a lie or a platitude, and Reeves deserved better than either.
He pushed off the wall and walked out.
The room emptied in stages. I stayed where I was, Jolly still pressed against my leg, until the last few officers filed through the door.
Rawlings caught my eye on his way out. A slight tilt of his head toward the hallway. I followed.
He waited until we were alone, his back to the wall.
“I’m sorry, Chief.”
He nodded once. The kind of nod that accepts the words without pretending they help.
Then his voice dropped low. “He left a note on his phone. Said he couldn’t live with himself.
That he’d given away information that put people in danger.
” Rawlings’s jaw worked once. “He didn’t name names or specifics. Just the guilt.”
I nodded. There wasn’t much to say.
“I wanted you to know,” Rawlings said. Then he walked away.
I went back to the training area.
The bite sleeve was on the table where I’d left it. The lead was coiled beside it. Jolly’s harness hung from the hook by the door. Twenty minutes ago, this place had been full of people doing work that mattered, building something that would outlast all of us.
I picked up the sleeve and put it in the equipment bag. Folded the lead. Unhooked the harness and tucked it under my arm. The actions were automatic, the sort of thing your hands did when the rest of you hadn’t caught up.
I zipped the bag and clipped Jolly’s leash.
We walked out through the hallway, past the front desk where the civilian receptionist was pressing a tissue against her eyes, past the lobby where someone had set a framed photo of Martinez against the wall.
Recent. Taken at some department event, his arm around another officer’s shoulder, grinning.
The parking lot was half empty. The sky was low and gray, the kind of overcast that sat on a mountain town like a lid. I opened the passenger door of the truck, and Jolly jumped up, turned once, and settled on the seat. I put the equipment bag in the back.
Then I got in, closed the door, and sat there.
Martinez hadn’t been a traitor. He’d been someone with a drinking problem who didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. He’d deserved to be fired, and I was pretty damned sure that’s where the investigation into his actions would’ve led.
But he certainly hadn’t deserved to die for those sins. I wished to fuck he’d reached out to somebody. Hell, I would’ve been the first person to tell him he’d fucked up and he had to pay the price for that, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
It was the end of the world now, at least for him.
Jolly rested his chin on the center console, his eyes on me. Patient. Present. Not asking for anything. Just there, the way he’d been there for seven years, through everything I’d ever carried.
I put my hand on his head. He exhaled, a long, slow breath that I felt more than heard.
I sat there a while longer.