Rachel trained the gun on the wall again. She looked at Pembleton standing in for Kellerman, then let her arm drop to her side completely. The gun rested against her leg. It dangled partially out of her uncurled palm. "Bang!" she yelled and started to fall down, the gun spinning slightly as it hit the floor before she did.

Before Pembleton could comment, Rachel jumped up and repeated the whole thing from the other way, giving the group watching from the behind the mirror a good view of the proceedings.

Rachel was on the floor—the dirty, cold floor—and almost didn't look like she wanted to get up. She looked at Pembleton from upside down and gave him a crooked grin. "Thank you, Det. Pembleton, for listening to me. Maybe I should have talked to a psychologist when it first happened because I really do feel so much better now, but hey, 'physician heal thyself' never seems to really happen, you know?"

"Get up and give me my gun," Pembleton said shortly.

Immediately the grin died in Rachel's eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to make fun of anybody or anything. I just want you to believe me."

"I bel—I'll be right back," Pembleton said. He took the gun from Rachel's hand and didn't wait to see if she got up or not. He slammed the door on his way out of the box and went the group of detectives, looking at him expectantly.

"You were about to say you believed her, and then you stopped," Kellerman said quietly. "Do you want my head that badly?"

Pembleton was equally subdued. "You do realize that if we enter this girl's statement into the case file, we have to bring Lewis up on charges of use of excess force."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Lewis protested, but Pembleton went on.

"She flat out used the words 'police brutality.' It seems to me that Rachel Fishbein came here with a troubled psyche but no ulterior motives. At this point she would testify against Lewis as quickly as she would testify for Kellerman. She's right. If Mahoney intended to drop the gun, he would have dropped it right away. The shooting was clean, but somebody's going to take a fall here. I won't talk to Gee until you make a decision."

"Say that last bit again," Kellerman said, his voice hoarse.

"I won't talk to Gee—"

"No, the sentence before that."

"The shooting was clean, but somebody's—"

"Just the first four words. Please."

"The shooting was clean," Pembleton said.

There was a pause, then:

"The shooting was clean," Howard echoed.

"The shooting was clean," Bayliss echoed.

"The shooting was clean," Munch echoed.

"The shooting was clean," Lewis echoed.

Kellerman's eyes filled with tears. The shooting was clean. He knew it all along. Now all someone had to do was tell Terri Stivers. And it would be over for him. He didn't even care if he took the fall for it as long as he could protect Lewis from the excess force charge. It was too late for him to get his fellow detectives' confidence in him back, but at least he could go out with a clear conscience knowing the shooting was clean, knowing that they knew that the shooting was clean—that he was clean.

The shooting was clean.