Chapter 10
Loco
The days after that passed like film burned too fast. Time became a series of tasks. Paperwork. Interviews. Internal Affairs. Detectives. A dozen retellings of the same hallway, the same powder cloud, the same gunshot.
I went back to the apartment once, with a specialty crime scene team.
Char’s living room had been turned into a laboratory of evidence markers and flash photography. The carpet still held dark stains where Lamonte’s blood had soaked through. I stood there for two minutes and then I walked out before I threw up.
The suspect wasn’t caught.
Not that day. Not the next.
A citywide BOLO (be on the lookout) went out. Warrants. Pings. Tips. Units posted on Char and Nita. Patrols doubled. Detectives didn’t sleep.
He stayed a ghost. And ghosts were dangerous because you could never tell where they would appear next.
Char woke up fully alert on day two after the overdose—after the injection, after the choking, after the code blue and the shock that hauled her back from the edge.
That was the official diagnosis or determination they came to as to why her heart stopped.
She was weak, hoarse, bruised. Furious in a quiet way that looked like shame.
The tox report came back and it was fentanyl as suspected.
I saw her once, from the doorway, while a nurse adjusted her IV.
She turned her head and her eyes met mine.
She tried to sit up and failed. I didn’t go in.
I couldn’t explain it to her. But grief had changed the shape of me.
I didn’t trust what would come out of my mouth if I sat next to her.
Not because I blamed her, but because I couldn’t fix her. I couldn’t save her from her own pain.
Nita stayed with her as much as the hospital allowed. She slept in chairs. She fought nurses. She ate vending machine food and spit it out. She cried where Char couldn’t see.
I kept my distance, not from Char’s pain, but from my own. Because if I got close, I might fall.
And I didn’t have time to fall. I had to bury my closest friend.
Lamonte’s funeral came a week later. Lamonte didn’t have family.
He grew up in foster care, joined the Marines right out of high school and our unit was his family.
I understood it. My parents had me later in life.
Mom died when I was twenty-eight and dad died at thirty-two.
I was an only child. Being left to handle his affairs I had to make decisions I had never made before.
Hard ones.
I called some of the guys we were close with from the unit. Gonzo, Gabriel Gonzales hit the road right after my call. We were the three amigos in the unit. Battle buddies that knew what it was to have someone’s back. He would be beside me as we laid our brother to rest.
The city was gray that morning, the sky low and heavy like it wanted to press us all into the dirt early.
I stood in my uniform in front of the church and watched squad cars line up like soldiers.
He would have both honors today, his Marine Corps military honors and the blue line brothers holding court too.
Cops poured in from every precinct. State. Federal. Guys Lamonte had trained with. Marines in dress blues who’d flown in from across the country, faces carved from stone, eyes reflecting that same kind of loss that never softened.
The bagpipes started up and my stomach twisted.
There was a thing about bagpipes—something primal in the sound. It didn’t let you lie to yourself. It screamed loudly into the air, someone was gone and they weren’t coming back.
The casket was draped in a flag.
I stared at it like I could will it to open and prove everyone wrong. Like Lamonte would sit up, grin, and say, “Y’all are some dramatic as hell motherfuckers. Dayum.”
But it didn’t open. It stayed closed. His voice didn’t wake from his slumber to tell me to cut this shit out.
Because the world didn’t do miracles on command. I walked behind the casket with the honor guard, my hands at my sides, boots striking pavement in time with the others. The rhythm should’ve steadied me.
It didn’t.
It just reminded me of marching with him. Training with him. Running with him until our lungs burned.
This march ended at a grave. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Inside the chapel, I took my seat near the front. The pew felt too narrow, the air too warm. I could feel eyes on me—guys who knew the story, who knew I’d been there, who knew I’d started CPR on one woman while my best friend fought for our lives behind me.
Some of those eyes held sympathy. Some held questions.
Most held the same quiet truth, it could’ve been any of us.
The chaplain spoke.
Lamonte’s high school sweetheart sat in the front row like she’d turned to glass.
I didn’t know what to tell her. They had long ago given up on making shit work, but they maintained a friendship.
She mattered and he would want her here.
She clutched the white paper program as if it somehow gave her some piece of Lamonte to hold onto.
The room blurred. My eyes didn’t water.
They burned.
I kept them open anyway. A lieutenant from the department spoke about service and sacrifice. About bravery. About a hero who ran toward danger without hesitation.
It sounded right.
It also sounded like words meant to keep everyone from admitting the darker truth. That sometimes you did everything right and still got shot in the neck by a piece of human trash.
Outside, at the gravesite, the wind cut through my uniform like it was made of paper.
When it was time for the police honors, the room shifted.
Even the civilians seemed to sense the ritual coming—the part that belonged to us.
The honor guard moved with precise, practiced motions.
The flag folded into a tight triangle. The rifle salute cracked the air.
All of it part Marine, part cop just like the man.
Each shot sounded like the gunfire in Char’s apartment, and my shoulders tensed reflexively, my body remembering before my mind could.
Then came the last call. And it hit me that I spent his last call with him, even though it wasn’t a call on the radio. Char mattered and he would have gone for Nita with or without me. But if I had been on my game, paying attention to him more than Char, we might not be here today.
A squad car sat nearby, radio turned up. A dispatcher’s voice echoed, formal and steady.
“Attention All Units,” the crackling came through loud with the dispatch voice almost echoing. “Please stand by for final call.”
There was a pause. This announcement necessary as there were active patrol units still on duty and the call would broadcast over their radios. We didn’t need anyone to chime in for the next sixty seconds or so giving full honor to our fallen comrade.
“Dispatch to unit zero, four, niner.” The numbers to his badge hit me like a punch to my balls.
Silence.
“Dispatch calling Officer Lamonte Davis.”
Silence
“Dispatch calling Officer Lamonte Davis, Metro Police Officer zero, four, nine. This is the last and final call for Officer Davis. He service the Metro Police Department with honor. Fallen in the line of duty, but not forgotten. His selfless service will be forever remembered.”
A pause.
“Officer Lamonte Davis, you are now clear of duty. We thank you for your service, dedication, and your ultimate sacrifice. Rest in peace, your brothers in blue will take it from here.”
My throat tightened. The world held its breath. Out of service. I felt something in my chest crack. Not a tear. A fracture in the cold.
Then the voice continued, barely holding together.
“End of watch.”
The sound that came out of the crowd was collective—like a thousand lungs losing air at once. Crying broke through the ranks. The hard men let it happen. Nobody judged. Nobody made jokes. We all knew that last call was a knife and it cut every time.
I stood there rigid, staring at the flag as it was presented to his former girlfriend, watching her hands shake as she took it, like it weighed a thousand pounds.
I didn’t want to take it. I didn’t want to hold the weight of that responsibility.
She mattered to him. Let his legacy reside with her from now on.
I wanted to step forward. To help. To say something. But I didn’t trust my voice. Because if I opened my mouth, I might say something I couldn’t take back. And there was already too much in my life that couldn’t be taken back.
After the service, people drifted in clusters, hugging, whispering, talking about Lamonte like he was still nearby. Stories flowed, laughter breaking through grief the way it always did when you were remembering someone who had been vibrant.
I stood alone for a moment, staring at the fresh earth. The grave looked out of place Too small for everything he’d been. My hands were behind my back, the posture of a man trying to keep himself contained. A soft weight hit me from the side.
Nita. She stepped into me and wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her face against my chest. I didn’t move at first. Then, mechanically, I lifted one hand and rested it on her back.
She trembled. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
I stared over her head at the loose dirt where the headstone would be placed. “Me too.”
Nita pulled back just enough to look at me.
Her eyes were swollen, red-rimmed. “Char is here,” she said softly.
My gaze shifted automatically. Char stood a few yards away under the bare branches of a tree, a black coat hanging off her like she’d lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose.
Her hair was pulled back, her face pale.
And even from this distance, I could see the fading bruises along her throat.
They were darker now, the way bruises did when the body tried to heal. But the shape was still there.
Fingerprints.
A memory stamped into skin.