Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Forty

“Explain it to me,” Jesse said again.

“I told you already,” Tate said, his voice edging into a whine.

Jesse leaned forward slightly in his office chair and put his arms on the desk. His fists were clenched. It took everything he had not to go over the desk and put his hands on Tate. But he needed to do this right.

For Rita, and for himself. There were rules for policemen.

“Explain it to me,” he said. “Again.”

Tate flinched slightly. He looked away. “It happened just like I told you. I was following the BMW—”

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why were you following Rita’s BMW?”

“I didn’t know it was her,” Tate said.

Jesse kept a poker face, but that was a new twist on the story. Before now, Tate had not claimed to be ignorant of the BMW or its passengers. He filed that away and listened.

“But she was speeding. And she was almost out of the town limits, so I pulled her over.”

“We found both vehicles outside the town limits.”

“Really?”

Jesse just looked at him.

“Oh, uh, yeah. She didn’t stop right away. I had to follow her a little. Hot pursuit.” Tate snickered. “You know what I mean?”

Jesse kept staring at Tate.

“Uh. Well. I guess I must have stopped her just outside the town limits. But she was crazy, Jesse. I mean, that chick was out of her damn mind. Screaming at me. Saying a bunch of shit. So I, uh, well, I know you know her, but I had to put her down.”

Jesse said nothing, but his fists clenched a little bit tighter. After all Rita had been through already...

“So after that, as I was attempting to put the cuffs on her — and she was scratching and kicking and biting and all that — that’s when the guy hopped out of the car. And I thought he had a gun.”

“And you shot him.”

“He didn’t give me any choice, Jesse. Honest.”

“Did you see a gun?”

Tate paused.

“No. But—”

“But what?”

“He made a move.”

“He made a move? The guy we had in our cells for two days like a coma patient? He made a move?”

Tate nodded. Jesse forced himself to sit back.

“And that’s when you put the cuffs on Ms. Fiore.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s when Officer Weathers showed up.”

“Yeah. About then. Yeah.”

Gabe had been first on the scene. Jesse and Molly weren’t that far behind him, followed by everyone else on active duty in the whole town, because Gabe had called in the gunshots.

By the time Jesse arrived, he’d found Rita in the back seat of Tate’s SUV, hands cuffed behind her back, scraped and bruised, doing her best to hold it together. Jesse had uncuffed her immediately. He’d let her out of the SUV and tried to place a hand on her shoulder. She shoved him away and walked around the scene for a moment, just breathing deeply.

Then she’d come back to him. “What the fuck” was the first thing she’d said, and it didn’t get better from there.

He’d had time to talk to her after they got her checked out at the hospital. She’d told him what happened.

He’d believed her. Not just because he thought he could trust Rita, and not just because they’d been a little in love once. But because he’d had Suit take a statement from Tate. Because he’d had Molly inspect the scene, and none of it fit together the way Tate had said. He saw photos of the cracked rear bumper of Rita’s otherwise immaculate BMW. He saw Peebles’s body, down on the ground, two in the chest, one in the head. Textbook grouping, center mass, like he’d been caught flat-footed standing outside the car. Not like a man who was lunging for a weapon. And there were other little details in Tate’s account that simply didn’t add up.

He’d told Rita he would make it right.

“I’m not sure that’s going to be enough for me, Jesse,” she’d said.

She looked at him as if he was a stranger. She blamed him. He could see it.

Jesse didn’t argue with her. Mostly because he thought she was right.

He went into his interview with Tate, and made him repeat his story over and over again like he was a suspect. Because that was the job.

“I really had no choice, Jesse,” Tate said. “You gotta know that.”

Jesse thought for a moment. Tate seemed to think he’d done everything properly. Or, at least, close enough.

“Is... Is the woman all right?” Tate asked.

“Ms. Fiore? You mean the attorney who’s probably going to sue the hell out of this department? The one who saw you shoot her client during a traffic stop? No. She’s not okay.”

“Oh.”

“She says her client did nothing but comply with your orders. She says you were the one out of control.”

“Come on, Jesse.” Tate made a face. “She’s a defense attorney. They lie like they’re breathing. I mean, who’re you gonna believe? A defense lawyer or—”

“I wouldn’t have to take anyone’s word for it if you’d kept your dashcam on,” Jesse said. “Why did you shut it off?”

“Oh, yeah, that.” Tate grinned sheepishly. “What can I say? New guy. Don’t know how to work everything yet. I thought I was turning it on, and, well, you know. I guess I shut it off instead.”

“Right.”

Tate looked offended. “You believe me, right?”

“It’s a dashcam, Derek. Are you telling me you needed special training for that?”

“Hey, now. Maybe I forgot. In the heat of the chase—”

“In your hot pursuit.”

“Right, maybe I just didn’t stop to think about the right way to work a little toy on the dashboard.”

“In this hot pursuit, how fast was Ms. Fiore driving?”

“Oh, wow, jeez, she must have got up to sixty.”

“Sixty.”

“Or even seventy. I didn’t clock her exactly.”

“On Paradise. Which turns sharply about fifty feet toward the 1A.”

“That’s why it was so dangerous, right? I had to stop her.”

“I’m sure the dashcam would show this, though? Right?”

Tate paused. “Yeah, well, it’s possible I turned it off before I started following her.”

“Right. But you were concerned about safety. You didn’t want anyone getting hurt.”

Tate smiled. “Yeah, you get it.”

“You had no choice.”

“Exactly. Exactly right.” Head bobbing up and down now, thinking Jesse was on his side, talking him through it.

“So you shot my only witness connecting a known mobster to a series of murders,” Jesse said coldly. “And you put a gun on an innocent woman. Because you had no choice.”

Jesse let the silence stretch between them. Tate squirmed in his chair.

Jesse wondered, for a brief moment, if Dix was right. If he’d bent over backward to give Tate a chance because he saw a little of his own anger in the younger man. If he was trying to justify the choices he’d made.

But he wasn’t that guy. He hoped like hell he had never been that guy.

Either way, he knew what he had to do. It made his decision easy.

“Badge and gun. Now.”

Tate jumped in his chair as if he’d been tased. “What?”

“Hand over your badge and gun. You’re suspended, pending a formal investigation.”

Tate looked stunned. “You’re firing me?”

“You’re on administrative leave. Standard procedure in any shooting.”

“I was just doing my job!”

That was too much for Jesse. “Your job,” he said, “is to protect people. And I need to know you can do that safely.”

Tate’s face went red. He looked at the ceiling, like he was praying for patience, and then he leaned forward and spoke through bared teeth.

“What the hell do you want from me, Jesse?” he said. “I am telling you exactly what you need to hear to make this bullshit go away. What else do you want?”

Jesse leaned forward and put his weight on the balls of his feet under the desk.

“I need your gun, Derek.”

Tate stood up, his jaw clenched, his eyes blazing. “Maybe you should try to take it,” he said.

Jesse stood up. Slowly. He locked eyes with Tate.

“You sure that’s what you want?”

God, Jesse wanted Tate to be stupid right then. He really wanted it.

Tate stepped back, his eyes widening a little. His hand went to his gun.

Jesse tensed for a moment, ready and waiting.

He suddenly knew, without a doubt, that Tate had not been making mistakes. He hadn’t been overzealous or inexperienced. He’d made these choices deliberately. He’d been testing the chain.

Jesse knew one other thing: He was finally seeing the real Derek Tate peek out from under his mask.

Tate seemed to consider his options. He looked at Jesse and realized, maybe, that he would not win this particular showdown. Or he was afraid to try.

Something changed on his face, and he looked at Jesse with scorn. He took the gun from his holster and flung it on the desk. Then he unpinned the Paradise PD badge from his shirt and put that on the desk, too.

“Keep it. Whatever makes you feel better,” he said.

Jesse put the gun in an evidence bag. “I asked you what kind of cop you wanted to be, Derek,” he said. “Now I know.”

Tate laughed in his face. “You’ve got no idea who I am,” he said. “But you’re going to find out.”

He turned and walked out of the office, slamming the door as he left.