4th of July

Chapter 20

A SILENCE STRETCHED BETWEEN me and Broyles, who sat staring at me for so long I wanted to scream. It was an old interrogator’s trick and he had perfected it. Voices rippled across the small gray room until the judge banged her gavel and jolted Broyles into action.

I looked straight into his eyes as he approached.

“Tell us, Lieutenant Boxer, what are the proper police procedures for a felony stop?”

“Approach with guns drawn, get the suspects out of their car, disarm them, cuff them, get the situation safely under control.”

“And is that what you did, Lieutenant?”

“We did approach with guns drawn, but the occupants couldn’t get out of the car without assistance. We put our guns away in order to free them from the vehicle.”

“You violated police procedures, didn’t you?”

“We had an obligation to render aid.”

“Yes, I know. You were trying to be kind to the ‘kids.’ But you’re admitting that you didn’t follow police procedures, correct?”

“Look, I made a mistake,” I blurted. “But those kids were bleeding and vomiting. The car could’ve caught fire —”

“Your Honor?”

“Please limit your answers to the question, Lieutenant Boxer.”

I sat back hard in the chair. I’d seen Broyles operate many times before in the courtroom and recognized his genius for finding his opponent’s pressure point.

He’d just fingered mine.

I was still blaming myself for not cuffing those kids, and Jacobi, with more than twenty years on the force, had been suckered, too. But Christ, you can only do what you can do.

“I’ll rephrase that,” Broyles said offhandedly. “Do you always try to follow police procedures?”

“Yes.”

“So what’s the police policy about being intoxicated on the job?”

“Objection,” Mickey shouted, leaping to his feet. “There’s evidence that the witness had been drinking, but there’s no evidence that she was intoxicated.”

Broyles smirked and turned his back to me. “I have nothing further, Your Honor.”

I felt huge wet circles under my arms. I stepped down from the witness stand, forgetting about my leg injury until the pain called it sharply to my attention. I limped back to my seat, feeling worse than I had before.

I turned to Mickey, who smiled his encouragement, but I knew the smile was fake.

His brow was corrugated with worry.