Conn’s phone, silent through the meal, buzzed. He picked it up and read a text from the duty sergeant. The Block. Now.
Something big must be going down for him to call Conn into the East Side Precinct on his day off. He wasn’t detailed to the undercover unit, but had gotten a reputation as a useful officer for street work. Clean-shaven with his hair slicked back, he looked like a cop. Tousled, unshaven, in a stretched-out, grimy wife-beater, he looked like a guy fresh out of prison looking to score a hit. Hawthorn didn’t hesitate to use him when he needed him.
“Work calls,” Conn said.
“Me too,” Shane said. “I’ll have that fuel pump in by the weekend.”
“Thanks.” Conn paid the bill, then drove Shane back to his shop. After a couple of years on the job and a few run-ins with sergeants, he lost the jitters that appeared any time he got called on the carpet. But something about this had his stomach kicking around the chicken fried steak.
Underneath the layer of Christmas cheer—garland, lights, a decorated tree sheltering toys for the boys and girls club—the precinct was business as usual with civilians filing reports, uniformed officers catching up on paperwork, detectives making calls. Even in the age of email and texts, the phones still rang constantly, doubling up on each other. It was a familiar sound, one Conn walked through without thinking much about it. He was in a place where he didn’t have to listen for the unexpected, where he could turn down the preternatural alertness he’d learned early in life.
He rapped his knuckles on the duty sergeant’s office door, waited until the guy looked up. “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Hawthorn wants to see you,” he said, his face blank.
Conn felt his eyebrows pull together slightly. The sergeant was easygoing, and had a reputation for backing his officers in questionable situations. Conn had given him no grief, or less than he usually gave a sergeant. “Where is he?” he asked.
“Briefing room,” the sergeant said, and went back to his paperwork.
Conn made a right at the bullpen and turned into the briefing room to find Hawthorn waiting for him, a couple of manila folders in his hand. “Close the door,” he said.
Conn closed it, shoved his fists into his jeans pockets. Lieutenant Hawthorn gestured for Conn to sit down, so he did, shifting his hands to his jacket pockets.
“What can you tell me about arrest of Jordy Bettis?”
Conn frowned, and stared straight at his LT. Other cops managed to look at people without coming across like they were two seconds away from hitting something. Hawthorn was capably demonstrating that exact technique: cool, collected stare, unwavering but also not challenging. Conn still hadn’t mastered it. “Not much to tell. It was a noise disturbance call. He got in my face. I arrested him. It’s in my report.”
“I want to hear it from you. What was Bettis’s condition when you booked him?”
Conn felt his shoulders hitching up toward his ears, and consciously lowered them. “I had to take him down to get him cuffed, so he’s probably got a few bruises.”
Without a word Hawthorn flipped open the manila folder to reveal pictures of a battered, beaten face. Two black eyes. Split lip. A gash on his cheekbone fastened together with surgical tape.
“He’s got multiple bruises on his torso consistent with a beatdown, and no defensive wounds other than deep abrasions on his wrists.”
Incredulous, Conn flashed a look at Hawthorn. “You suggesting I handcuffed this guy then beat the crap out of him?”
“That’s what his lawyer’s suggesting,” Hawthorn said.
Conn’s brain danced sideways, like a deer on black ice. Hawthorn opened another folder and slid it across the table. “Look that over. If you have anything to add, or change, now’s the time to do it.”
Conn kept his hands in his pockets. He didn’t even look down at the report. “I stand by my initial report, sir. Whatever happened to him did not happen in my custody.”
The open file remained on the table between them. Conn had spent enough time in offices to know the furniture was pretty much the same—gray tables, chairs and cubicle walls in matching fabric. The difference here was the guns, the uniforms, the handcuffs, and the fact that this was the only world had Conn ever wanted to be in.
“It’s not your first time having this conversation,” Hawthorn said.
That’s what was in the other file. Conn’s personnel record. He felt the tips of his ears heat, but he didn’t respond. Hawthorn could read, and he was third-generation LPD, the son of the former chief of police, now the mayor. He had knowledge and connections in the department Conn couldn’t begin to imagine, much less understand. Connor didn’t make the mistake of assuming Hawthorn didn’t know every single detail of Conn’s history from the moment he reported to the academy.
“No, sir,” he said finally.
“Four months ago you drove your cruiser through a chain-link fence.”