I didn't want to believe it. But I had to. From the beginning I've told them all "trust the evidence" and I couldn't back down from that. I had to practice what I preach.
Even if it broke my heart to see what was there.
I wanted to believe Danny. I wanted to believe that it was a good shoot. Well as good as a shoot could be when the wrong man went down.
But the evidence just wasn't there. What we had was damming. And that hurt. Because it meant they were right. They warned me that he'd screw up one day. And screw up big. But they had given me the squad to set up. They gave me the power to pick who was going to be on my team. And Danny's record was solid. He was a good cop. And smart. And most of all willing to learn. He didn't know that I was watching that day. But I was. He was watching us, listening, asking questions in his head. I could see it. And I could see that he got it. He understood what we were doing and why. He was hungry for more than just patrolling the streets. And I wanted to give it to him. To hell with all the worry about his past, the trouble he got in as a kid. What kid doesn't get in trouble for a little vandalism or fighting. He'd cleaned up his act, grown up.
Or had he. I wanted to believe he had. I wanted to be able to except that he just saw wrong. That in the heat of the moment, and after getting banged in the head, his mind just made a mistake. That he couldn't hear the yells over the screaming of the crowd. That it was a good shot that went bad because that just happens sometimes.
But the evidence wasn't saying that. It was saying that he shouldn't have fired. All I could hope was that the missing evidence would change the story. So I sent them back. Back to fill in the pieces. And the pieces weren't perfect. In the right hands they could still be damming. But there was doubt. There was a chance, albeit slim, that Danny didn't fire the fatal shot. We didn't have that bullet so it could go either way. I could only hope that IAB was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. To not pursue the case without solid facts.
But then Danny had to screw it up. And I had to be the one to tell him that. I knew why he went there, I understood it. But I also knew why he shouldn't have. I didn't have time to explain it. Not with IAB breathing down my neck with lectures on procedure and rules and no grace periods. They had wanted a statement on the scene. They wanted to hang him right then. I barely got away with playing the injured card. Hell I was actually hoping the doctors would say that Danny was mildly concussed from the blow. Then IAB might be forced to admit that there was a legitimate reason why Danny didn't see things the right way. Rather shitty of me yes. But I believe in my heart that Danny is a good cop, a good investigator. And this was just one of those bad things that happen to good people.
But as his boss, his commanding officer, I had to be the one to stand in that hallway and tell him that he'd likely just screwed him over completely. That he had disobeyed orders. Even though as a friend, I could see that it was hurting him. I could see it in his eyes. He'd been thrust into a nightmare and just wanted to wake up. And he thought he could save himself. I wanted to grab him and shake him and scream at him, ask him why the hell he didn't just follow orders, why he didn't trust me, why he doubted that I, that we, weren't doing everything we could to make things right for him. And as unmanly as it was, I wanted to hug him, hold him, comfort him like he probably hadn't been in the years since his father and mother died. Because I could see the tears he was fighting to hold in. I wanted to tell him that everything would work out.
Even though it was a total lie. I couldn't tell him that. I knew it was more likely that it wouldn't.
And in the end, I was more or less right. The best I could do was cast enough doubt on what happened to force IAB to admit that they might not win. So they dropped the investigation with an 'insufficient evidence to continue' slapped into Danny's service record. But it was enough to keep him from his promotion for at least another year. And I was the one that had to tell him. I was the one that had to lay out the facts, the evidence to him. To tell him that he screwed up and the only reason he still had a job was because one bullet was never found. If it had, if it ever was, that could be the end of his career .
And I was the one that had to watch him walk away. Seeing him so whipped, so torn down hurt. I never thought that the day would come, I never wanted it to. But it had. And it makes my heart ache.