'I heard you and he got into some kind of scuffle one night, back in '84, just before you were separated as partners.'
Shane looked over at Captain Halley for help, but the captain only nodded slightly, encouraging him to keep answering. It was now painfully obvious that Mayweather had someone in the IA Administration Section open his sealed jacket in violation of his rights under Section 202. The fight with Steeltooth had been logged because Shane had needed medical attention for his injuries. However, neither he nor Molar had pressed for a hearing, so it went into his sealed record as an unsustained incident. He couldn't prove that Mayweather had opened his file. The deputy chief could claim he had heard about the fight secondhand. Now Shane had to answer the question or face insubordination charges. He felt used and double-crossed.
'I need an answer,' Mayweather said. 'Was there an altercation?'
'I guess you could say that. We had a kinda problem once.'
'What was that all about?'
'Shit, it was nothing… I mean, shoot… we… we'd been working long hours and I was nervous, facing that Internal Affairs board. I was stressed. Molar was fucking around. We were in the detective squad room in Southwest. He threw ice water on me, so I pushed him and he went down over a chair. If you knew Ray at all, you wouldn't have to ask what happened next.'
'What happened next?'
'We went down into the parking garage, and while six or seven guys from the squad stood around and watched, Ray punched out two of my teeth, broke my nose, and pretty much destroyed me.'
'And you're not mad about that?'
'Well, for a while I guess, but that was Ray. He and I had just about ended our tour by then, so we unhooked. I was rotating out. He was on the lieutenant's list back then. Pretty high up. The sixth band, I think, so he was going to get his bar in a month or two anyway. We both just moved on.'
'And you didn't harbor any resentment? I find that hard to believe.'
'Chief, if I could ask… has anybody looked at the damage on Barbara Molar's face? Has anybody seen what he did to her? 'Cause if all these questions strike to some other possible motive, that's why I went over there. I tried to break it up. He fired first, and I was forced to return fire. He was seconds from killing both of us. I hope you photograph those injuries because all I was trying to do was keep us off Forest Lawn Drive.'
'We'll get photographs, don't worry about that.'
There was another charged silence in the room that lasted for almost a minute.
'Anything else you want to say for this record?' Mayweather said.
'No, sir. That's what happened. I'm sorry he's dead, but he gave me no choice.'
'Okay, then.' Mayweather looked at his watch. 'This interview is concluded. It is five thirty-five A. M. This tape recording has been continuous, with no shutoffs, and it has been witnessed throughout by Captain Bud Halley.' Then he snapped the machine off and rubbed his eyes. 'That's it, Sergeant. I'm going to forward this transcript to the Officer Involved Shooting Section of the Robbery/Homicide Division, and they will schedule your Shooting Review Board. Don't sweat it. That board is mandatory with any incident involving firearms.'
'I know, sir.'
'Then get outta here. Go give the lab tech his sample and go home.'
'Yes, sir.'
Shane got up and moved past Captain Halley, into the hall. He waited for his CO to come out, thinking they would ride down together and Shane could get a performance critique, but Captain Halley didn't come out. The door was slightly ajar, and he could hear Mayweather and Halley talking. Then suddenly the door was kicked shut, cutting off the conversation and leaving him alone in the hall.
Chapter 5
Shane was forced to wander in the Parker Center garage, looking for his car. It was six A. M. He had started on the top level, which was aboveground, and had moved slowly through the garage, heading down, deeper into the bowels of the parking structure. He had his keys in his right hand. They had been left for him at the OOD's desk in Robbery/Homicide, but the uniform who had driven his car in didn't tell the duty sergeant where in the garage it was parked. The structure was huge, and his bare feet were cold on the concrete floor. As he walked, he could occasionally see flashes of red on his feet Ray's blood. He had stood in it, and it had seeped up, between his toes, staining his skin. After giving his urine sample, he'd been in such a hurry to get out of there and get home, he hadn't remained in the rest room to wash it off.
'Sergeant Scully. Over here,' a voice yelled at him; he turned around and looked back. He could see two uniformed officers standing by the elevator. He was six stories down, and the garage was dimly lit by the neon overheads. The two policemen moved out of the darkness toward him. The overhead lighting threw long shadows under their visors, and he could not make out who they were. As they got closer, he realized he had not seen either of them before. It was not unusual for members of the LAPD not to know one another. There were over nine thousand sworn members of the department sprawled over a huge geographic area. From the markings on their uniforms, he could tell that they were both first-year officers policemen I's.
'What is it?' he asked.
They were close enough now for him to see that they were both in their early twenties. Their silver nameplates indicated that the shorter one was Officer K. Kono, the other, Officer D. Drucker. Kono had a wide, flat face and the complexion of a native Hawaiian. Drucker was a bodybuilder. His arms bulged the short sleeves of his Class C uniform shirt. They stood in front of Shane, studying him as if he were roadkill that one of them would eventually be forced to scrape up.
'Whatta you want, Officer?' Shane asked Drucker. 'I've had a long night. I wanna get home.'
'That Ray's blood on yer feet?' Kono asked. He had no Hawaiian accent. He was pure West Valley, but his voice was shaking with emotion.
'Whatta you guys want?' Shane repeated.
'Why'd you have t'butt in?' Drucker asked. 'Who asked you?'
Shane could now see that they were both extremely emotional. They had obviously heard about Ray's death, which was spreading through the department like a raging virus. He speculated that Drucker and Kono must have come in and waited for him in the garage.
'He was killing his wife. He was taking batting practice on her with a baton.'
'So you butt in and give him a fucking street divorce,' Drucker hissed. A 'street divorce' was police slang for any domestic argument that turned into a murder.
'Get outta my way.' Shane tried to push past the two cops, but they held their ground and he found himself bumping shoulders with them violently. They weren't about to let him through, so Shane backed up and reevaluated the situation. He didn't have his gun. It had been booked by Homicide as evidence. He was alone in an empty garage. He was barefoot and tired, and his head still ached from where Ray had hit him. The two cops in front of him were jacked up on anger and out of control emotionally. In that moment, he had a flash of how it must feel to run up against enraged, violent cops in a desolate part of the city with no witnesses and no way to prove what really happened. Here he was, a sworn officer, standing in the police garage, yet he was beginning to pump adrenaline and fear for his safety.
'Is this about to turn into something?' he asked softly, glaring at both of them.
'Ray was the real deal, asswipe,' Drucker hissed. 'You're department afterbirth. Ray knew we had to take this fucking town back a street at a time. Since Rodney King, we've been eating shit and smiling about it. Ray knew that had to change. He knew the war was on, knew what we had to do out there. He understood you can't just stand around while a buncha freeway-dancers put it to ya.'
'If you believe that, both you guys need to take a swing through the Academy retraining program.'
'Swing on my dick, Tarzan,' Kono hissed.
Shane shook his head and smiled. 'Okay,' he said, 'I guess that ends this discussion. Your move.'
