31. Detective Walsh
Detective Walsh
WYATT
They booked me at the Thirty-Eighth.
Two officers walked me in through the side entrance and put me in a holding cell at the end of a corridor with nothing in it but a concrete bench, a stainless steel toilet, and a fluorescent strip overhead that hummed at a frequency nobody had ever bothered to fix.
I sat down and leaned my head against the wall.
My right hand was throbbing. My knuckles were swelling, the skin split across the middle two. I flexed it once and let it rest on my knee.
I always knew that mouth of yours was an asset to the force in more ways than one.
That bastard.
A door opened at the end of the corridor. Andy's voice came through a second later, talking to the officer at the desk.
I stood and went to the bars.
She came around the corner still in her duty belt, braid half undone, badge crooked on her chest.
"Andy."
She walked over and reached through the bars. Her hand settled on my cheek. Her fingers were cold. I leaned into them before I could stop myself.
"Are you hurt?" she asked.
I covered her hand with mine and shook my head. "I'm fine."
She stayed like that for a second. I watched the worry leave and a smile break through.
"Good." She tapped my cheek and opened the cell door to come inside.
I moved toward her but she put a hand flat on my chest, holding me at arm's length.
"Do you understand what you did?" Her voice hit the concrete walls and came back twice. "You assaulted a police officer. That is a felony in the state of Nevada."
Her hands were fists at her sides.
"You could lose your job. You could go to prison."
I didn't answer.
"Say something, Wyatt."
I looked at her. She was furious with me and I didn't care. All I could think about was the look on her face after Elliot said what he said. Her whole body went still. Something in me snapped and I would not take it back.
I had always hated Elliot Handler. I hated his arrogance and his smile that never reached past his teeth. I hated the way he carried himself as if everyone around him owed him something.
I knew they had history. I knew he was part of her life before I was. But she wasn't his anymore. She was mine. And he had no right to speak to her that way.
I was not going to stand there and let any man talk about the woman I loved like that. Least of all Elliot Hollywood Handler.
"I don't want people talking to you that way."
She stared at me. I watched the anger hold for one more second and then give.
Her fists uncurled, then she grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me into her.
I wrapped my arms around her and we stood there in the middle of that cell with my chin on the top of her head, her face pressed into my chest, her breath coming hard through my shirt.
"I love you but what you did was stupid." She was talking into my shirt. "You can't just hit people. That's a crime, Wyatt. You had no right to do that. You're going to—"
She stopped.
I didn't hear anything after the first three words. I'd told her I loved her many times and she never said them back. But I understood. I held it. I waited. And she just said them in a holding cell, in the middle of a lecture, like it was that easy.
She must have felt me go still, because she pulled back and looked at my face. I bit the inside of my cheek but the grin was already pulling through. Her brow furrowed and it only got wider.
"Has anyone ever told you you look pretty even when you're mad?"
"You are so annoying."
"I love you too, Officer Walsh."
She stared at me and then laughed.
"I am going to leave you here to rot, Wyatt Brooks."
"But you won't."
She grabbed my face with both hands, pulled me down to her, and kissed me. "Don't ever do that again."
"Do what? Teach smug guys a lesson for disrespecting my girl? I'm not making any promises."
"You're going to end up with assault charges."
"As long as you're the one cuffing me, I'm not going to resist."
"Really?" She slapped my shoulder. "You're in a cell and you're making a sex joke. You're impossible."
"And you love me anyway."
"Yeah. I do." She kissed me again.
When she pulled back I leaned my forehead against hers. "What happens now?"
"It depends on what Handler wants to do. If he's smart, he lets it go. But knowing him, he's likely not going to let this go without a fight."
"Ugh. Sounds like a lot of work."
Her shoulders dropped. "Yeah."
I leaned down and pressed my lips to her forehead.
"Worth it."
Just as Andy predicted, Handler pressed charges.
The fire department put me on administrative leave the same week. I turned in my gear and went home to Birdie. She asked why I wasn't at work. I told her I was taking some time off.
The body cam footage entered evidence three weeks later. It captured Handler walking up to Andy, his smile, his comment about her mouth, and her face going still.
A courthouse reporter requested the exhibit from the clerk, and by the end of the week, it was everywhere.
People saw a firefighter defending a female officer from her own sergeant.
They chose sides fast, and almost nobody chose Handler's.
Andy and I became a story neither of us asked for.
Our names were in headlines. Strangers on the internet were calling us a love story.
The DA dropped the charges right after that.
I don't know what Sergeant Hollywood was expecting.
Between the footage and the public pressure, it was never going to trial.
The fire department brought me back with a formal reprimand and a four-week suspension without pay instead of what I had assumed would have been termination.
Captain Thompson called me into his office.
"I'm sorry it has to be this way, Brooks."
"I understand, Captain."
He closed the door. Leaned against his desk and crossed his arms. "Don't tell anyone I said this. That guy has been asking for it for as long as I've known him. Between you and me, I'm glad someone finally stood up to him."
I smiled. "Thank you, Captain."
"Consider this an unpaid vacation." He opened the door. "Now get out of my office."
LVMPD opened an internal investigation into Handler the same week.
The footage made it impossible to avoid.
Once the investigation was open, women started coming forward.
Civilians. Women Handler had encountered on the job.
Witnesses he'd interviewed. Family members of victims. Women who were already in the worst moments of their lives when they met a sergeant who saw vulnerability as opportunity.
Three, then five, then seven. They'd never reported it because who do you report a cop to?
But now there was footage, and their stories had a name.
Seven women. I sat with that number for a long time.
I was in the courtroom for Handler's hearing. I watched Andy take the stand. The clerk read her full name into the record—Cassandra Allison Walsh. She didn't flinch. She sat under it like she'd been waiting her whole life to stop hiding from it.
Handler was terminated six weeks after the footage went public. Andy didn't celebrate. She just kept working.
Daphne pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and involuntary manslaughter.
Her attorney argued for leniency based on Sydney's story, the system's failure to investigate her death, and Daphne's full cooperation after the arrest. The judge heard all of it.
He also heard about Gus. Daphne didn't ask for mercy on that count.
"Gus was the kindest man I ever met. He died because of something I set in motion. I will carry that for the rest of my life whether this court tells me to or not."
The judge gave her fifteen years with the possibility of parole. She accepted it without appeal.
Lockwood went to trial. Andy told me he tried to buy his way out.
He hired expensive lawyers who pushed for delays and motions to suppress.
It didn't work. Dunne's confession named all five men.
Daphne's testimony filled in the rest. McCarthy fleeing the state told the jury everything it needed to know about guilt.
Preston Lockwood went to prison, and no amount of money followed him there.
Andy made detective within the year. She completed her ride-along hours, passed the written exam, and sat the oral board interview. Zeus Alexander signed off on her investigative experience from Gus's case and wrote the recommendation. Doug wrote the second.
She called me from the precinct parking lot the day she got her badge. Barb cooked a feast that night. Chicken, mixed greens, pasta, and a cake Birdie had decorated herself. The table was set for four by the time Andy walked through the door.
"So you really are Nancy Drew!" Birdie looked up from her plate.
Andy smiled. "Yes, I am." She leaned down and booped Birdie's nose.
Barb reached for Andy's hand. "We're so proud of you, Andy."
"Thanks for all of this, Barb."
I watched her from across the table. After years of being overlooked and the patience it took to keep showing up anyway, she'd earned every piece of this. She never cut corners or asked for favors. She put her head down and did the work until the work spoke for itself.
I didn't know what I'd done to deserve a woman like Andy Walsh. But I was going to spend the rest of my life making sure she knew it.
Gus's kids decided to keep The Lantern open.
"Dad loved this place," his son told me. "He loved this block. He would have wanted the doors to stay open."
They transferred ownership to Selena. She was the right choice. She knew the bar, she knew the regulars, and she'd been holding the place together long before any of us realized how much weight she was carrying.
She put Gus's picture above the bar, right where he used to stand. Every time the crew came in, Selena would pour an extra glass and set it on the bar beneath the photo. Nobody touched it. It stayed there all night.
Terrence got the internship at the downtown firm. The interview had been cut short the day of the shooting. The firm offered to waive the rest of the process after what happened, but Terrence asked them to reschedule. He came back, did the full interview, and got the offer on his own terms.
It was hard for him to come back to the bar. But he'd stop by every few weeks and give Selena and the crew an update on how the internship was going. Andy always asked. He always stayed longer than he planned to.
"Detective Walsh!" Travis raised his glass from the table by the window where the crew had pushed two together. "Congrats on the promotion!"
"Thanks, Travis." Andy squeezed my hand as we made our way to the bar. The Lantern was full tonight. Selena looked up from behind the counter and smiled when we came in.
She set a drink down in front of each of us as we sat down. "On the house." She squeezed Andy's shoulder before she walked away to attend to another customer.
I reached for Andy's hand under the counter. "Are you used to it yet?"
"Used to what?"
"Detective Walsh."
She smiled. "Not yet."
"Good. I like watching you figure it out."
Selena came back down the bar with a bottle and poured a glass. She set it on the counter beneath Gus's picture and walked away without a word.
I watched the glass. Behind us, the crew was loud. Travis was telling another story. But I wasn't catching a word of it.
Andy's thumb moved across my knuckles under the counter. "I miss him too."
I kept my eyes on the picture.
"Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah."
"I can't get what happened to Daphne's sister out of my head."
I turned my glass on the counter.
"Sometimes I think about Birdie getting older. Going to college, moving to a new city, starting her life. And I can't help being scared for her. Sydney was somebody's daughter too." I squeezed her hand. "What do I do? How do I protect her from guys like Lockwood?"
Andy looked at me. She didn't answer right away.
"You can't protect her from everything. No parent can. But the best thing you can do for Birdie is make sure she can protect herself when the time comes. And you're already doing that.
"She already has her own mind. Because you let her have one.
She argues with you, she questions everything, she tells you when she thinks you're wrong and you listen.
You've never made her feel small. You've never told her to be quiet because it was easier.
" She squeezed my hand. "That little girl has a healthy sense of who she is because of the home you built for her. That doesn't happen by accident."
She leaned into my shoulder. "You're on the right track, Wyatt. We just have to be there for her every step of the way."
I stared at the glass on the bar. "I worry I'm not good enough for her. My mom did this on her own, so I know it can be done. But the man who was supposed to show me how to be a father packed a bag when I was four. Everything after that I had to guess at."
She looked at Gus's picture.
"You can be the dad Gus was to you."
"That's a high bar to meet."
Andy leaned over and kissed me. "I told you. You're already doing it."
I looked at Gus's picture on the wall. Then I thought about Barb in the armchair with her reading glasses, Birdie asleep on her shoulder.
Andy on the living room floor doing voices for a stuffed bear.
I didn't have to be everything for Birdie.
I never did. She had Barb. She had Andy.
What I had to do—what I could do—was keep the home I'd built for her safe enough for her to grow up in.
"And if none of that works?" I said.
Andy smiled. "Then she calls me. And I arrest them."
Something I'd been carrying since the first time I heard Sydney's name loosened in my chest. I cupped Andy's face and kissed her. She leaned into me, her hand warm on the back of my neck.
Birdie was going to be okay.