"What?" Mike asked, almost breathlessly. He could feel the supportive squeeze of Steve's hand on his left forearm.
Olsen cleared his throat then said a little louder, "He said Pettet's hands were raised like he was surrendering and he didn't have the knife…and that you shot him anyway…"
A tense silence filled the room. Mike was glaring at Rudy, who was meeting the intense scrutiny with sympathetic eyes. Steve could feel the muscles in Mike's forearm tense, and though he was staring at his partner's profile, he knew Mike had clenched his fist. No one moved.
Finally Olsen took an audible breath and glanced away, breaking the stalemate. "Look, for what it's worth, I don't know - I'm not a hundred percent convinced that we can believe this guy carte blanche, if you know what I mean,so, just so you know, even though IA will be conducting their own investigation of course, I am going to authorize a couple of our guys, probably Norm and Dan - who already are the best informed cops working on this - to dig into everything about this guy to find out if anything is hinky."
As Olsen spoke, Steve could feel Mike relax a bit. The older man's ramrod straight posture had eased and he slumped slightly where he sat on the edge of the bed. Steve tightened his grip.
Olsen got slowly to his feet. "Look, ah, I'm gonna head over to the office and talk to the boys. Why don't you hang around here for a little while longer, Mike, and I'll give you a call when I'm gonna go home and I'll swing by here and pick you up. Or, if you want to leave sooner, grab a cab. Is that okay?" He had reasoned, correctly, that what his old friend needed right now was not the superficial comfort he would receive from well-meaning but ultimately uninvolved colleagues, but the genuine unwavering support he could only get from his partner.
Mike nodded slowly, like he was coming out of a trance. "Yeah, ah, thanks, Rudy." He slid off the bed as Olsen approached, and they shook hands.
Olsen glanced towards the head of the bed. "Steve, you take care, and I'll see you soon. Mike, I'll see you at home." And he turned and left the room without looking back.
Silently, Mike sat back down on the bed, looking dazed and suddenly overwhelmed. Steve gave him a few seconds before he said, "For what it's worth," he said quietly, "I don't believe him."
Mike turned slowly towards his partner and a small affectionate smile brightened his face. "You were looking at me," he said kindly, "you didn't see Pettet." The smile disappeared. "Steve, what if he was right? What if Pettet didn't have the knife?"
Steve sighed as loudly as he could through his broken nose. "You saw the knife, right?... Right?" he reiterated louder when Mike didn't respond immediately. When the older detective nodded, he said warmly, "Then I believe you, and so will everybody else."
Smiling self-consciously, Mike replied with uncertainty now lacing his voice. "But I couldn't even see straight by then, I was dizzy and passed out right after… maybe I was wrong… Maybe he was surrendering…" He started to get up; Steve reached for his arm but he was already too far away. He turned to face the bed.
"Look," he said quietly, "I'm getting a little tired, I think I'll go home. I'll find out when they're letting you out tomorrow. See you then." With what looked like bone-weary sadness he started towards the door.
"Mike," Steve called, and the older man turned back, "you okay?"
With a sad smile, Mike nodded then continued towards the exit, opening the door and disappearing from sight without a backward glance.
Steve leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes in anger and frustration. After several seconds, he sat up and reached for the phone on the bedside table.
# # # # #
"Okay, fellas, this one's gonna be a sonofabitch. We're gonna have to prove that Mike, in his debilitated state – losing blood at a near-fatal rate, having to shoot with his left hand at a PCP-crazed subject who was attempting to stab his partner while they were grappling on a bed – was cognizant enough to see the knife in the perp's hand in a split second before firing a kill shot."
Olsen looked from Haseejian to Healey, who were once more seated before his desk. He took a deep breath before asking, "Do either of you think Mike shot an unarmed man? And I want honest answers here, not what you want to be true but what you actually think to be true."
The sergeants glanced at each other then turned back. Haseejian cleared his throat. "Look, Captain, you know we were all a little shocked, pleasantly so don't get me wrong, when Gerry said we didn't have to worry about anything, and deep down in my heart, I know that Mike would never deliberately shoot an unarmed man, but… well, I don't know about Dan," he looked briefly at Healey, "but I have had niggling doubts.
"Like we said before, he was seconds away from unconsciousness, he was bleeding out, he had to have been in incredible pain, he'd just seen his partner stabbed by this little out-of-control psycho and he was shooting with his left hand – I'm surprised he could even get a second shot off let alone put it dead center of the kid's chest. But seeing a knife in the kid's hand – that's gonna be a hard one to prove," he finished morosely.
Olsen nodded soberly then turned to Healey. "Dan?"
Healey took a deep breath before starting quietly. "I agree with Norm, it's been wishful thinking on our part till now, and I honestly thought we'd 'dodged a bullet', so to speak, when Gerry said everything was hunky-dory. But now, with this guy's statement, I just don't know."
Olsen sat silently for a few seconds, looking down, then he slapped his palms lightly on the table. "Good. Good," he said with suddenly renewed vigor as he looked up and met their somewhat startled expressions. "That's just the open-mindedness we need right now. I want you two to head up your own investigation into this witness. Find out everything you can about him – why it took him so long to come forward, where he was when you did your sweep just after the shooting, who he is from his background to his political leanings to the toothpaste he uses. I want to know everything.
"My cop instinct is telling me that there's something fishy going on here and I want to know if I'm right. So I want you guys to work fast and I want you to use every weapon in your arsenal and if, when you think you've uncovered everything you can about this guy and things still seem to be on the up-and-up, then we'll begin to deal with the fall-out. But until then, I want you two to proceed on the premise that he's got an agenda and Mike is in the right. IA's angle is going to be the polar opposite, of course, and I want us to be on Mike's side until every possibility has been exhausted.
"Am I understood?" Olsen asked as he sat back and studied his two sergeants.
Haseejian and Healey exchanged another look, but this time they both turned back to the captain with smiles on their faces.
"Absolutely, sir," said Haseejian with what sounded suspiciously like glee in his voice.
# # # # #
The knock on the door and the simultaneously ringing of the doorbell brought him quickly out of his reverie. He was suddenly aware that the sun had gone down and the room was eerily dark.
He had been sitting in the armchair in his living room for the past several hours, almost unable to move, numb and heartsick. When he had left the hospital, he had stood on the curb lost in thought; when he finally climbed into the back of a cab, he asked to be taken home. The idea of having to face someone was just too overwhelming; he needed to be alone.
Now, wincing slightly, he carefully got to his feet and crossed to his front door, turning on a lamp on the way. He snapped on the porch light, then opened the heavy front door without checking the peephole, something he knew he shouldn't do but too depressed to care right now.
He took an involuntary step back as his eyes fell on the grinning faces of his two sergeants, immediately noticing the large pizza box that Healey held in his hands.
Haseejian chuckled. "Hi, Boss. Um, special delivery," he announced somewhat louder than necessary, then both he and Healey took a sideways step, and out from behind them appeared a smiling Steve Keller.